The year 2020 forced a transformational change in how people all over the world live, work, and play because of the COVID-19 pandemic. With most people being forced to stay at home for longer than they have ever in their lives, the consumption of social media has gone through the roof.
It prompted many businesses to allocate a larger part of their budgets to influencer marketing on social media, especially Instagram. However, just by spending more money, you cannot build brand awareness, boost engagement or build a loyal community. Some tips for implementing effective influencer marketing strategies on Instagram:
Establish Clear Goals and Key Performance Indicators
Even before you kick off an influencer marketing campaign on Instagram, you need to ask yourself the reasons for doing so. Unless you are clear about the objectives of your campaign, you will not be able to craft an effective influencer marketing campaign.
Typically, businesses tend to collaborate with social media influencers to increase their brand reach and boost engagement. However, with all brands chasing the same goals, it becomes even more critical to develop and follow best practices for implementing effective and efficient influencer marketing campaigns.
Figure Out Your Target Audience
Even though it is a critical aspect of marketing, often, brands get caught up in the excitement of collaborating with influencers. They overlook the identification of the target audience or do not pay enough attention to analyzing it. It can be a critical mistake as only by establishing a clearly defined target audience, will you be able to identify influencers with the best fit with your brand.
Using research techniques, you will be able to determine whether the followers of the influencers you are considering have demographics that fit the profile of your target audience. By defining your target audience accurately, you will also be able to figure out which of the several Instagram channels will bring the best results.
If this process takes longer than anticipated, you can continue to ramp up your engagement by engaging a social media marketing agency to buy 20 likes at a time for a small outlay.
Identify Influencers with the Right Brand Fit
Finding the right influencer to work with is perhaps the most important aspect of a successful influencer marketing strategy. Since the only reason you are working with influencers is to leverage their follower base, you need to find influencers who will be capable of reaching out to their followers and create a favorable impression of your brand.
When looking out for influencers, you need to keep the goals of your campaign in mind. Ideally, your Instagram influencer should not only have a large number of followers but also be an expert in your niche. You should also establish that the influencer has a high rate of engagement, the followers are genuine, and their demographics match that of your target audience.
Instagram influencers with a genuine influence are not easy to find but working with an influencer with a less than ideal fit may well result in a sub-par ROI. Using an influencer marketing platform may help you to make a shortlist that you can perform due diligence on.
Use a Balanced Mix of Macro and Micro-Influencers
Influencer marketing has hit the headlines more often than not because of celebrity personalities endorsing brands for astronomical sums of money. These influencers often have a follower base running into several million. As lucrative as these macro-influencers are in terms of opening up a huge follower base for brands to access, collaborating with them has two major issues.
The first is, of course, the huge cost of endorsement, and the second is their typically low rates of engagement, which is not unnatural, given the number of followers involved. Under these circumstances, it can often make better sense to work with micro-influencers. These influencers are typically experts in their domains but not celebrities and accordingly have a follower base of just a few thousand.
While this represents limited reach for brands, they get the advantage of a very high rate of engagement that can help the brand achieve its campaign objectives. Of course, the cost of the collaboration with these micro-influencers is minuscule in comparison, even though the days when they would be satisfied with product samples are long gone. Many brands prefer to work with smaller influencers because they are perceived to be more authentic by their followers, according to Forbes.
Conclusion
Even as you become busy with establishing your influencer marketing campaign objectives, identifying your target audience, and finding the ideal influencer to collaborate with, you need to retain your focus on the message you are going to send out.
Be sure to work hand in hand with the influencer to craft the messages to ensure that all your effort does not go to waste. Instagram followers will expect the content to be relevant and of high quality.
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