So, what exactly is influencer marketing? It’s one of the most powerful social media strategies out there, leveraging influencers to drive consumer action through trust and recommendations. According to Sprout Social's 2024 Influencer Marketing Report, 86% of consumers have purchased being influenced by an online personality. Talk about impact!
In this guide, we’ll show you how to choose the perfect influencer, create impactful campaigns, effectively reach out and measure success like an expert.
Step 1: Set Your Campaign Strategy
Before you jump into influencer outreach, take a step back and think things through. Planning is everything.
Here’s what you need to decide:
- Campaign Type: What kind of marketing campaign do you want the influencer to post? Paid or organic? Giveaways? Contests? Product collaborations? Sponsored posts?
- Platforms: Where do you want your campaign to shine? Instagram, TikTok, YouTube?
- Budget: How much are you ready to invest?
- Goals: What’s your main objective? Is it follower growth, website visits or video views?
The clearer you are here, the smoother your campaign will go!
Step 2: Find Your Perfect Match
Great campaigns always start with thorough research and data-driven insights on your audience. Finding the right influencer is more than just picking someone with a big following — it’s about aligning with your brand’s voice.
- Audience Fit: Research is key. Make sure their followers are your target audience. You can use tools like Modash or CreatorIQ to dive deep into an influencer's engagement and demographics.
- Influencer Size: There are four main influencer types:
- Mega: 1M+ followers
- Macro: 100K-1M followers
- Micro: 10K-100K followers
- Nano: Less than 10K followers
Pro tip: Smaller isn’t always worse! Micro and nano influencers tend to have more engaged, loyal followers, making them perfect for niche campaigns.
Step 3: Outreach
Timing is everything! Get in touch early enough to leave room for negotiation and content creation. Key outreach strategies include the following:
- Follow first: A little bit of friendly stalking never hurt anyone. Follow the influencer before reaching out. It shows genuine interest, and they’re more likely to respond to someone who’s already supporting their content.
- Email > DMs: We’ve learned that email often works better than sliding into DMs. But when you reach out, personalize your message with your name, the brand you’re representing and details on why you like their content and want to work together. These influencers could get several partnership inquiries daily, so make sure yours stands out.
Check out these outreach templates below:
Step 4: Collaboration
Once an influencer agrees, it’s time to set a meeting to collaborate and get aligned on next steps. This includes:
- Overview on clients’ objectives, project goals and brand guidelines.
- Request to see more demographic information from influencers' social media pages.
- Collaborate with the influencer on content and share a few inspiration posts from their channel that align with the request.
- Establish timelines, negotiate contracts and discuss payment based on Media Kits.
Send a follow-up email with everything, including a written-up contract that clearly states what you are requesting, any brand guidelines that need to be followed and the agreed payment and due dates.
Step 5: Measure Success
Once the content is live, it’s time to start tracking the performance. This will let you know if you’re hitting the key performance indicators (KPIs) you set, which will help clearly show the collaboration’s value.
For example, in a Shape Your Future Campaign with Oklahoma-based influencers, we set KPIs for Instagram follower growth, website visits, and video view rates. In just a week of these videos being posted, we saw a 2,157% increase in Instagram followers and exceeded all other KPI’s.
Tiffany in OKC: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DEhxuuGxgRK/
Wonderfully Maddie: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DEvHAuBvmHx/
The Power of Influencer Marketing
At the end of the day, influencer marketing is all about staying authentic, both to your brand and the influencer’s style. Audiences (especially Gen Z) can sniff out anything that feels fake, so keep it real and they’ll reward you with engagement.
Want to crush your KPIs and find the perfect influencer? Our strategic social media team is ready to help you make it happen. Drop us a line and let’s get started!
