TYPES OF EFFECTIVE INFLUENCER COLLABORATION STRATEGIES

Marketing experts know the value and importance of using influencers in their marketing campaigns. Influencers are trusted by their followers and their recommendations are converting people into loyal customers. Here are a few types of influencer collaborations that are effective.

[Pexels]

1. Brand Ambassadors

Influencer relationships and collaborations can be enhanced by offering trusted influencers an opportunity to become a brand ambassador. As a brand ambassador, the influencer would promote your product on an ongoing basis. 

Essentially, you are working toward making them the “face of your company”. The ambassador will make posts, represent you at local events, and share their experiences  with your product on social media platforms. 

Some items to consider before offering a brand ambassadorship to an influencer are:

• Do the influencer’s beliefs align with your brand?
• Have they been a successful influencer for your brand already?
• Are there clear guidelines and expectations set for the ambassador?

2. Takeover

An influencer takeover collaboration is when the influencer actually takes over your brand’s account and creates content on the company’s behalf. A takeover can happen several ways. It can be a full takeover, in which the influencers have complete access to accounts. Or, it can be a takeover with a specific time frame like days or weeks depending on the campaign strategy. With a takeover campaign, you will want to be detailed in your brand expectations and collaboration requirements. Thus, yielding some control of the content.

3. Sponsored Blog Posts

Another way to develop an effective collaboration with an influencer is through sponsored blog posts. Blogs are another popular online source for consumers to gain information about products or services. Influencers who also have a blog can be an effective collaboration for a brand.

A sponsored blog is typically one of two types. The first type is solely dedicated to your brand or service. The entire post features your brand or the product. The post may include discount codes or a special giveaway to assist with engagement. The second, is a post with a mention or highlight of your brand or service. This type of sponsored blog post may include similar products in the article. 

If you are not completely thrilled about leaving the content to the blogging influencer, ask to be a guest blogger for their site. Your brand can create the blog post exactly the way you want it sticking to the message you want the consumer to hear.

4. Gifting

Gifting is a great strategy for collaborations with influencers. Your brand provides a free product sample to an influencer who in turn shares and creates content about it for your brand. Some items to be aware of when gifting include:

• Have an agreement in place with the influencer. Without an agreement, the influencer may not be interested in promoting your product. They may even share a negative review instead.
• The influencer may ask for compensation to promote the product gifted. Clear guidelines in an agreement can set whether the compensation is the gift itself or if a monetary exchange will take place as well.

5. Sponsored Social Media Content

Sponsored social media content posts is the most common type of collaboration with influencers. The influencer will create content and post on their social platforms promoting your brand. Your company pays a fee to have the influencer post the content about your product. This is an effective collaboration with influencers, especially when you diversify and utilize multiple influencers to meet brand objectives.

HOW TO MAKE INFLUENCER COLLABORATIONS SUCCESSFUL

In addition to choosing an effective strategy for influencer collaborations, you will want to think about how to make the collaboration successful. Here’s a list of the best ways to develop a successful influencer collaboration.

[Pexels]

1. The Right Platform Matters

Choose your platform or channel wisely! Depending on your product, consumers, and the influencer you obtain, the platform will matter. There are so many options for audiences nowadays: YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook to name a few. You must do the research to ensure you are reaching the right audience with the right influencer on the right platform to be successful.

2. Know Your Strategy

Make a plan with a strategy in mind before getting started. Do you want videos, pictures, or text advertisements? Decide on the content and how you want the message to be communicated. Let the influencer have some ownership in this process. They will feel like part of the team and the end results will be better.

3. Consider Micro and Nano Influencers

While mega influencers have larger followings, their engagement rates suffer compared to micro and nano influencers. Micro and nano influencers can make a large impact on their audience and are seen by followers as authentic and genuine when promoting a product. Plus, they are budget friendly and easy to work with.

4. Build a Relationship with the Influencer

Go the extra mile when establishing a relationship with an influencer. It doesn’t hurt to give an influencer virtual support even after your brand campaign is completed. Send them a brand gift every now and then…they may even promote it without an agreement! You want to stay in the forefront of their mind when purchasing and promoting. Who knows when you will look to them for another collaboration.

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS TO MEASURE

We’ve taken a look at effective influencer collaboration strategies and also how to make collaborations successful. There’s one last item to figure out before launching your influencer collaboration campaign, the parameters for success and how to track them. Here are the important KPIs to measure while running an influencer marketing campaign.

[Pexels]

1. Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is a significant component when it comes to marketing campaigns. Tracking your brand’s growth on social media accounts after starting an influencer campaign can help you determine the success of the campaign. Pay attention to the trends, spikes, and growth in the target demographic. Many social platforms have analytics tools built into the system. It is a fairly simple, but often manual process, to track these metrics.

2. Engagement Rates

Engagement rates are a key measure in determining the success of a campaign. An engagement rate is how much interaction your content is receiving. An influencer engagement rate keeps track of specific metrics like clicks, likes, shares, reactions, comments, and brand mentions. Each of these are important in determining how well your campaign is doing.

3. Website Traffic

Measuring the increase in traffic to your site is another great way to determine the success of a marketing campaign. There are tools like Google Analytics that can assist with the metrics like new users, time on site, pageviews, and total sessions. If an influencer is making an impact on their audience, your site will reap the benefit in the form of traffic.

4. Lead Generation and Conversion Rates

More likely than not, one of your main campaign objectives is probably to increase lead generation and conversion rates. To maximize the return on investment, measure the platforms and influencers that are generating the most leads and also how those leads are converting. A high rate of conversion will let you know that your influencer campaign is successful.

5. Sales

Sales go hand in hand with lead generation and conversion rates, but it is important to note that an influencer can boost sales through affiliate links, promo codes, and discount codes. These links and codes are easily tracked and can demonstrate the impact your influencer is having on sales.

6. Return on Investment

If your influencer campaign is meeting objectives and boosting sales, you will want to review the return on investment performance indicator. It is critical to know how much it is costing your company to generate sales with an influencer. This can be challenging to measure when using an influencer so ensure you have a set budget, know what your influencer is worth, create campaign goals, and track the cost.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This article discussed effective influencer collaboration strategies, how to make influencer collaborations successful, and the key metrics to measure during the campaign. Collaborating with influencers can be a valuable and effective way to market your brand on social media platforms. This type of marketing campaign can increase brand awareness, generate sales, and build a loyal customer base.

Have you had success with other types of influencer collaborations? If so, please share them in the comment section below.