But is influencer marketing worth it? The purpose of influencer marketing is to locate influencers in your industry and make them work for you by promoting your business.
"About 49% of consumers rely on the recommendations of influencers to make a purchase decision."
That's a lot, right? Well, that's why influencer marketing is rapidly growing to become one of the best and most preferred marketing tools. Check this out:


Traditional advertising channels are becoming less effective in attracting consumers. For example, display ads used to be quite effective in the past but currently, the worldwide click-through rate is at 0.05% for all types of display ads — that's five clicks per 10 000 impressions. This means that it is no longer as effective in lead generation.

The use of potent tactics, such as social proof and word of mouth by influencers, is responsible for its success in not only generating leads but also high-quality leads. Data shows that 71% of marketers think that the traffic from influencer marketing is of a higher quality than traffic from other sources.

Here's an infographic detailing the advantage of influencer marketing:

With more than 70% of marketers echoing the praises of influencer marketing, let's look at how you too can successfully create an influencer marketing that will be beneficial to your brand:

 1. Outline your Goals

Outline specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound (SMART) goals that you want to achieve with the influencer marketing strategy. This will give you the proper knowledge on the type of influencer you should use, and help you to measure the success of the campaign.

Your goal could be any of the following:
  • link building
  • brand awareness
  • audience building
  • building a brand identity
  • customer loyalty
  • engagement
  • lead generation

2. Define Your Audience

Your influencer marketing strategy won't be effective if you don't reach the right audience. Even before you hire the services of an influencer, you need to identify your target audience. Creating a buyer persona will enable you to know a lot about your audience and know who they listen to.

3. Choose the Right Social Media Platforms

You need to find the right social media platform that will be suitable for your brand to launch a successful influencer marketing campaign. Your brand may do well on particular social media platforms and not so well on others, due to your target audience. You need to identify what platform works for you and then look for influencers on that platform. The most suitable platform for you would have a high number of your target audience.

4. Outline your Brand Guidelines

Having a guideline for influencers to follow is crucial to having a successful campaign. The guide you provide will aid the creativity of the influencer and give you control over the kind of content the influencer will create for your brand.

The major reason for this is to ensure that your brand's values and quality are upheld. A study carried out among 1 200 influencers revealed that only 18% have undergone specific professional training that will improve their skills as influencers. This means that giving them a guideline will help a lot in ensuring that the quality of service they deliver is up to what your brand represents.

5. Identify the Level of Influencers You want to Work With

Marketers experience difficulty in finding the right influencers to use for a campaign. The success of your influencer marketing strategy is heavily dependent on you getting the right influencers for the job.

It is important to note that influencers are divided into five different levels based on the number of followers they have and the amount they charge. These levels are:
  • Mega-influencers: These influencers have over a million followers and can drive very massive engagement for every post they make.
  • Macro-influencers: These influencers have at least 500 000 followers.
  • Mid-tier influencer: These influencers' number of followers is within the range of 50 000 to 500 000.
  • Micro-influencers: These influencers' audience is between 10 000 to 50 000 people.
  • Nano-influencers: These influencers have the least number of followers ranging between 1000 to 10 000 and some cases less than 1 000.
The number of followers notwithstanding, smaller influencers may sometimes have more impact. This is because they can develop a strong connection with their audience.

After you have decided on which type of influencer to use, you can proceed to find the best influencer for your brand. You can easily find influencers in your niche by searching with keywords and hashtags on the platform. You can also make use of tools like BuzzSumo and HypeAuditor.

6. Reach out to the Influencer

Getting in touch with influencers is quite easy. A survey carried out among almost 1 200 influencers showed that 74% of the influencers do not have an agent or manager. This means that you can get in touch with them directly. The same study showed that 89% of influencers use email as the primary way to be contacted for jobs.

All that you need to do to get in touch with most influencers is send an email to their email address, which communicates your need to hire their services. Don't forget to give your brand guidelines to the influencer to go through before he starts to work for you.

7. Track your Results

Once the influencer gets to work, go back to your SMART goals and monitor them to know whether your objective in running an influencer campaign is being achieved.
Monitoring engagement, resonance, reach, clicks, conversions, ROI, follower count and brand awareness will enable you to accurately determine if the campaign is successful.  

Influencer marketing is an extremely productive strategy, one that top brands are in on. For instance, Adidas made use of influencer marketing to outdo other competitors such as Nike in 2015, through collaborating with Selena Gomez and using the '#MyNeoShoot'.

From just that campaign, there were 71 000 mentions of Adidas and the brand got 41 000 new followers. Within a year, the company recorded a 24.2% increase in sales.

For more information, visit www.idigic.net.