It is no longer news that social media is currently one of the fastest-growing online customer-acquisition methods.
Social networks such as Instagram can carry legitimate power, meaning successful influencer marketing campaigns on the platform could lead to success for brands. Yet many are struggling to leverage influencer marketing on Instagram for business growth.
Several marketers have attempted to tap into the benefits of the platform by engaging top Instagram influencers only to end up with very poor ROIs. Such outcomes are not because their influencer partners and collaborations don’t yield tangible results, but mainly because many campaigns were launched with an ineffective strategy or without one at all.
So how exactly can you break the ice to make the most out of working with an influencer on Instagram?
You need an effective strategy to put the right foot forward to make your partnerships with social media influencers on Instagram a successful one.
Let’s dive in!
How to build an effective influencer marketing strategy to maximise your Instagram campaign
Not quite long ago, Crowdtap conducted a study to figure out how early influencers approach their partnerships with brands. They found that 76% of mega influencers value brands that provide them with creative freedom. Also, 67% of macro-influencers are keen to work with brands that provide them with competitive compensation.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Here’s how to design an effective Instagram influencer marketing strategy to make the most out of your campaign on social media channels.
Define your target audience every time you start an influencer marketing campaign on Instagram
Who exactly do you want to influence?
If you want your influencer marketing campaign to be effective, you have to define who exactly you’re targeting and be very specific. In fact, the better you can streamline your target audience, the easier it is to find relevant micro-influencers on Instagram who can truly influence your audience. The worst mistake you can make at this point is to assume you can target everyone.
If you have a bigger audience on other social networks, then find influencers who can spread the word about your brand on these platforms and find a way to point them to your Instagram account. If you think perhaps your Instagram audience is more conservative and consume traditional media, then maybe you can target traditional celebrities who are also influencers on Instagram, and so on. Companies and businesses must take note of the consumers’ behaviour and build their message, content, and posts around it.
Outline your goals and KPIs in your Instagram influencer marketing campaigns
What exactly do you want to achieve?
Goal setting is essential for any business, and it’s no different when it comes to Instagram influencers. Before you start working with an influencer, you need to set some goals. What do you want to achieve? Do you want to increase brand awareness? Drive more traffic to your website? Increase sales? Once you know what you want to achieve, you can then set some KPIs that will help you track your progress.
For example, you want to increase new followers by 20% in the next three months. Instagram is a great platform for establishing KPIs around brand awareness mainly because it’s a visual medium. Images are more effective than text when it comes to engaging with customers, so by sharing visual content on Instagram through an influencer, you can make your audience remember you and build a strong brand identity.
In addition, Instagram influencer marketing can also work for building relationships with customers. By working with an influencer, you can connect with your audience and engage with them directly. This gives you the opportunity to build trust and credibility with your customers.
Another example of a KPI is to increase purchases made via Instagram Shops. Recently, Instagram released this feature that allows users to buy products directly from the app. This means that businesses can track how many sales they generate through Instagram.
All of your efforts, research, planning, strategies etc. should reflect your goals and how you intend to achieve them.
Without a clear-cut goal and KPI, it wouldn’t take long for your Instagram influencer marketing efforts to go off course. Also, if you haven’t set any objectives or goals it will be impossible to measure the ROI of your campaign to determine if it is successful or not.
Find the most relevant influencers on Instagram
An influencer is an individual who many people see as an expert or a thought leader in a niche or a topic. As such, if you intend to launch a successful influencer marketing campaign on Instagram, you’ll have to find Instagram users who your target audience consider to be experts or thought leaders.
At this point, you should already have your audience defined. Now you have to map out your influencer landscape to figure out who genuinely influences your target audience. To achieve this, here are key questions you should answer about your niche:
- Where is your niche and where do shares and conversations about that niche take place on Instagram? Stories, posts, reels, or shops?
- What prompts people in your market to share and promote content about your niche?
- Is your market a fragmented one or is activity clustered among a few publishers?
- What’s the professional background of the key influencers in your niche?
- What’s their posting style? Do they post more images or videos on the platform?
The more specific your answers to these questions are, the easier it is for you to find the best possible Instagram influencers.
Post a detailed brief when looking for Instagram influencers
On theright.fit you can post a detailed brief that outlines what your brand is, who you are looking to work with, and the type of campaign you are looking to run. You can think of it as your Influencer marketing agency online.
Here's how it works:
- We will alert potential influencers that match your brief that there is a work opportunity for them
- These influencers can then apply directly to your brief, detailing their rates, audience and information on what they can do for you
- You can then chat with the influencer directly on the platform, shortlist, and book them
- Conduct a content and opportunity audit
It is absolutely crucial that you conduct a content and opportunity audit to better understand the needs of your audience before launching your Instagram influencer marketing campaign. It is also very important that you include the right influencers or content creators in this process.
Here are key things you should aim for with your content and opportunity audit:
- The overall feeling of your audience to the type of content you intend to create (video content, photos, stories) on Instagram
- What your competitors are doing
- What motivates your influencers to share your content
- Your target audience’s perception of you
- What your brand can do to make your audience start talking about it
As soon as you figure out the general topic areas that appeal to your audience, you should create a content plan. This is the point where you need a content calendar to plan and coordinate the content you plan to publish. It also aligns your content plan with your influencers and anyone you intend to work with for content creation and distribution.
Create quality influencer content
A successful social media influencer campaign on Instagram is built on quality content. Without quality content for your influencers to share, your target audience will have nothing to respond to. While many influencers may have tons of followers who trust their judgment, none of them will be willing to spend money once they observe your content doesn’t hold any value.
Most influencers create content to educate, inform, entertain or inspire their audience on Instagram. As such, for your partnership with them to be effective, you need to collaborate with the goal of creating content that is entertaining, inspiring, informative or educational.
Likewise, online marketers shouldn’t let good social media influencers fall into the trap of insincere engagement with followers especially now that people see through the fake ones and are not afraid to call them out about it.
Work with influencers to identify opportunities
Instagram influencers know the type of content that appeals to your target audience in order to trigger the response you want. That’s why they are experts and thought leaders in their respective niches. So work with your key person to create content that engages your target audience.
When your influencer starts sharing your content on their Instagram account, you can easily spot trends and opportunities. Influencers can also guide you about how to respond to your target audience and tap into opportunities easily.
Measure the outcome of your Instagram influencer campaigns
One of the easiest methods of measuring the outcome of your success with Instagram influencers is to compare your eventual ROI to the objectives you set at the start of the campaign.
If you’ve achieved all of your objectives successfully, then you should consider launching a new campaign with a higher set of objectives.
However, if you have not been able to achieve any of your objectives or failed to achieve most of them, evaluate your entire strategy and its implementation right from the beginning to the end. Take stock and launch a new campaign to enhance your result.
