Why Influencer Marketing Needs to be

a Critical Component of Your

Marketing Strategy

For those of you who may not have heard, there’s a new marketing wave called

Influencer marketing that is taking the business world by storm.

In fact, over the course of the last several years influencer marketing has grown by

leaps and bounds with no end in sight.

As a business entity, if your company has not integrated or implemented an influencer

strategy into your overall marketing plan, now is the perfect time to start.

As you read this special report, you will discover why influencer marketing is a powerful force that can revolutionize your business and increase your share of the market. You will also learn why it needs to be a critical component of your overall marketing strategy. You may be asking yourself...

What is Influencer Marketing?

In a nutshell, influencer marketing is a step-by-step process by which a company

conducts a search for the purpose of identifying a high-profile individual who has an

established, and sizeable social media relationship and following with a core group of

people who need, and are known to purchase the same goods and services you as a

business promote and sell.

High profile people who are recruited for the purpose of engaging their followers in the

role of an influencer marketer, do this by creating a lot-of-buzz, i.e. ‘high-impact

conversations’ amongst their social media followers regarding your brand, products or

services.

In practical terms, influencer marketing builds and expands upon the idea of the old

celebrity endorsement, with today’s emphasis centered around a content-driven

marketing campaign.

What Influencer Marketing is Not

The difference between celebrities and influencers is, an influencer is someone who has

invested time and effort in building their own brand, and nurturing their followers.

The folks who follow them have for the most part, a solid, trusting social media

relationship with them.

Due to this bond, an influencer will be vigilant in protecting their reputation as well as

the people who trust them.

Because an influencer is an individual who exercises patience and focuses on being

successful on social media, nurturing one follower at a time, they will not be interested,

nor will they be motivated by the thought or offer of a quick payout. Rather, they prefer

to operate under a steady-as-she-goes approach.

When executing on a social Media or content marketing campaign, your focus should

not be on directly selling your wares. Rather, it should be about demonstrating your

authority, credibility, and thought-leadership within your respective industry.

The Benefits of Influencer Marketing

Regardless of whether you’re a large corporate entity or a start-up, companies are

generating positive returns from influencer marketing campaigns right across the board.

In fact, influencer marketing has been shown to produce up to $11.69 in earned media

value (EMV) per $1 spent.

Because of its proven ability to produce a healthy return on investment, influencer

marketing is now a $1 billion industry on Instagram alone.

In a survey, almost half of all marketers who participated in the study indicated they

intended to increase their influencer marketing budgets. Going into 2019, a

reported 65% of brands planned to boost their overall investment in influencer

marketing.

Tangible Benefits from Influencer Marketing Include:

A) Influencers Sway Purchasing Decisions

Study after study shows that regardless of age, influencers have the power to sway the

purchasing decisions of consumers. Recently, in a joint survey conducted by both

Twitter and Annalect, 40% of respondents reported that they had purchased an item

online after seeing a social media influencer use it.

When the effects of online videos on purchase behavior were analyzed, more than 50%

of shoppers claimed online video helped them decide on which brand or product to buy.

Furthermore, more than 90% reported they specifically discovered new brands or

products on YouTube.

Another 22% of marketers cited influencer marketing as the fastest growing way to

acquire and attract new customers, with another 50% indicating they obtained higher

quality customers through influencer marketing, compared to other marketing avenues.

The results from these studies show that influencer marketing is a successful

tool for attracting consumers with purchasing intentions, and therefore is an

effective method for driving sales.

B) Gain Access to Millennial & Gen Z Consumers

As younger shoppers watch and pay less attention to TV, in favor of digital media,

influencer marketing has become a mandatory outlet for reaching critical Millennial and

Gen Z consumers.

85% of Gen Z uses social media to discover and learn about new products, indicating

that young consumers, in particular, are highly receptive to receiving specific product

information through social platforms.

On top of that, 40% of millennial YouTube subscribers believe their favorite influencer

understands them better than their friends, illustrating the trust, credibility, and deep

personal connections social media influencers forge with their young followers.

C) Influencers Are Trendsetters

More often than not, influencers are a source of information about new products within

their industry, (beauty, fashion, tech, fitness, etc.) whatever that may be. What’s great

about this is, an influencer’s followers respect and sometimes even idolize their opinions

within their areas of expertise.

Because of this, a product often gains “cool factor” when an influencer recommends it.

Due to their status, influencers are trendsetters that social media users trust to identify

and comment on the hottest products and trends.

Oftentimes, influencers receive access to new products before they are made available

to the general public. A good example of this is Huawei Mobile. They gifted top tech

influencer Judner Aura (UrAvgConsumer) with the new Mate 10 Pro smartphone prior to

its U.S. launch.

In turn, Aura created a 13-minute YouTube video that provided viewers with an in-depth

review of the phone, getting them excited about the new tech product in advance of its

U.S. release.

D) Authentic Messaging & Endorsements

Most large influencers are highly selective when choosing brand partnerships. In a

survey involving 50 influencers, what became clear is, relevance, trust, and brand

affinity are the most important factors they consider when deciding which brands to

partner with.

E) Relatability & Credibility from Peers

What is undeniably true is, Influencers are trusted by their followers, and their opinions

have high value and reliability.

On YouTube, 75% of viewers say it's important that YouTube feature people who are

genuine, authentic, and relatable. Fortunately, 70% of teenage subscribers say

they relate more to the platform’s influencers than traditional celebrities.

Moreover, 60% of subscribers say they’re more apt to follow purchase advice from their

favorite YouTube creator over traditional TV or movie stars.

These statistics clearly show that many consumers perceive an influencer’s

endorsement to be substantially more credible than a celebrity endorsement, which in

all likelihood is due to the ability of an influencer to relate with consumers.

F) Versatility Across the Most Popular Social Platforms

With many influencers active on multiple popular social platforms, engaging in

influencer marketing gives you and your brand an opportunity to reach audiences on

both web and mobile.

Depending on the influencer and type of campaign, sponsored content can be cross-

promoted on a variety of platforms, including Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and blogs

in order to maximize the reach of your campaign.

G) Shareability Across Both Web & Social Media

In comparison to advertisements, social media users are more likely to share influencer

marketing content with their own followers, expanding the reach of your brand’s

message to an even wider audience.

Because an influencer is an expert at creating content their followers love, influencer

marketing campaigns often explode, achieving a level of virality and consumer

awareness that traditional advertising campaigns lack.

H) Long-Term Influencer Relationships

Engaging in an influencer marketing campaign is about building positive relationships.

That’s why if planned and carried out carefully, an influencer campaign will establish a

clear and strong rapport with influencers, resulting in brands having strong and lasting

partnerships with influencers which generate long-term results as well as a handsome

ROI.

According to the latest reports, about half of marketers engage in influencer

partnerships lasting six months or longer, while 37% of influencers say they're working

with brands for longer periods as opposed to one-off campaigns.

I) Actionable Insights & Data

Your influencer marketing campaign can yield invaluable data in respect to your brand,

including engagement information such as views, likes, comments, and shares. You can

also track clickthrough rates (CTR), conversions, social sentiment, and other important

KPIs.

J) Immense Reach & Visibility

Many social media influencers have audiences in the millions, with the 50 most followed

Instagram influencer accounts totaling more than 2.5 billion followers.

While influencer marketing certainly isn’t about blindly following attractive numbers,

marketers can build highly effective campaigns that potentially can reach millions of

consumers by properly assessing influencers based on both qualitative and quantitative

factors.

Added to this is the fact that influencer marketing helps brands bypass obstacles many

other online marketing mediums face today. With the mainstream adoption of ad

blockers, as well as a user’s general contempt for most advertising mediums, influencer

marketing offers brands a viable, unobtrusive way to interact with consumers.

How to Find Industry Influencers

Finding an influencer that’s a good fit for your business isn’t about finding the most

famous person, but rather it is about finding an individual your target audience trusts,

and then leveraging his or her influence to promote your brand. The first step is to

identify influencers.

Pinpointing influencers

Influencers can be found in all segments of the market. and are used as conduits to the

entire target segment. While there are lists of generic influencers (such as the Time

100), they have limited use in marketing programs where specific segments of the

market are being targeted.

Market research techniques can be used to identify influencers, using pre-defined

criteria to determine the extent and type of influence. For instance:

• Activists: These influencers get involved with their communities, political

movements, charities and so on.

• Trendsetters: influencers tend to be early adopters (or leavers) in markets.

In a study of what traits are associated with the top influencers, one researcher

found four archetypes of influencers.

• Educators – thrive on helpfulness and insightfulness

• Coaches – thrive on helpfulness and engagement

• Entertainers – thrive on engagement and inspiration

• Charismatics – thrive on insightfulness and inspiration

FREE Influencer Marketing Tools to Help You Find Influencers

If you decide to not use an agency for your influencer marketing, you will have to be

proactive in your search for influencers and once you have identified candidates you

deem to be ideal, build up a relationship with your chosen influencers.

You will first need to identify influencers that dominate in your specific niche.

If you are already an active online participant in your market niche, you already may

have set your sights on the best influencers. Otherwise, you will have to carry out

considerable research first.

Fortunately, there are a variety of influencer marketing tools that can help you in your

search.

As a first step, consider where your target audience spends its time. For instance, if you

are targeting older people, you will often look for influencers in Facebook groups talking

about your niche.

On the other hand, if your target segment is teenagers, then best you focus more on

sites like Snapchat, YouTube or Instagram.

Scores of influencers have gained fame off of the blogs they write. You will also

discover there are influential people in some niches who have acquired their fame

through podcasts.

Here are some tools that can help you find the influencers you seek.

HypeAuditor - Top Instagram Influencers Ranking

Discover.ly

Alltop

Hunter.io

NOTE: Hunter.io finds email addresses for you. You can carry out 100 searches per

month on the free plan. You simply enter a domain name into their search engine and

Hunter.io will do its best to find the email addresses attached to that domain.

Hunter.io can also be particularly helpful for finding the email addresses of people who

may be of value to your organization. For instance, as part of your influencer campaign,

you may wish to ask for a guest blogging post on an influential blog in your niche.

It can be difficult at times to find the correct email address when you need to approach

them with your request. You can enter a person’s name or company website into

Hunter.io, and it will come up with a suggested email address.

GroupHigh Monthly Influencer Lists

NOTE: Although GroupHigh is not a Free Influencer Marketing tool (it is a fully-featured

platform) they do have one section on their site that could be very useful to a small

business wanting to begin influencer marketing on the cheap.

They provide a series of 12 free centralized lists of influencers connected to particular

niches.

They build these lists from their platform’s influencer database. If one of these lists

covers your niche, you could use it as a starting point for determining influencers in your

niche who you can then approach.

The current lists available to download from their site include:

• Family Travel Influencers

• DIY List of Influencers

• Back-To-School Influencers

• Fall Holiday Themes

• Gift Guide Influencers

• Food Pairing Bloggers

• Winter Wonderland

• New Year's Resolution

• Valentine's Day Influencers

• Luxury Travel Bloggers

• Male Influencers

• Beauty Bloggers

• Pet Influencers

• Technology Bloggers

• Parenting Influencers

• Sports Bloggers

Google search:

Type in...

• 25 top You Tube influencers

• 25 top LinkedIn influencers

• 25 top Twitter influencers

• 25 Top Instagram influencers

• 25 top Facebook influencers.

Once you discover an influencer who reaches out and speaks to your target

audience...

Invest time into building a genuine relationship with a chosen influencer. By doing this,

you and the influencer will have a chance to see if both parties are a good fit. You can

do this by:

• Following them on social media

• Sharing their content

• Commenting on their blogs and engaging them in relevant conversations

whenever possible

How to Properly Pitch Your Influencers

Study, and then study some more and know their work

When you’ve identified key influencers you wish to target, become familiar with their

postings and their audience. Understand the tone of voice they use when

communicating, and the content they produce.

It’s not enough to know he or she may have 100,000 + Instagram followers. Until you

investigate, you won’t know if that particular audience are also the customers you want

to target. On top of that, the influencer’s sway over that audience may or may not

extend to decisions about your product or service.

Tools that list influencers by the number of followers they have or the number of times

they Tweet in a day can be a helpful start to the process, but it’s by no means the best

strategy from which to select influencers.

What needs to be done is, you really have to get to know them

This point is critical.

Assuming you have chosen the ideal influencer for your company, you then really need

to get to familiar with their work.

Read their writings, follow their comments on others’ blogs and what, if any responses

are generated.

Do some research and study their blog or website. You can also Google them.

Look and see how they behave on other social media posts and channels. Ask yourself:

• Are their actions or tone of voice consistent with that of your brand?

• Does the tone and mannerism they use to communicate represent the kind of

temperament and messaging you want portrayed to your customers and

prospects?

• Is there any potential PR risk that could affect you down the line?

• How focused are they?

• How much response to they get from their readers?

Personalize your pitch

When reaching out to an influencer, best to not begin your pitch with... “Dear blogger” or

“Dear influencer.” And most importantly, don’t start by talking about you and how great

you are or how important this opportunity is for them.

Start by building a relationship with the recipient of your letter.

Share your thoughts on the content (blog, newsletter, webcast, articles etc.) they

produce and mention a particular conversation or specific post that resonated with you

and how that led to your decision to reach out to them.

The ideal influencer is one who will genuinely help you sway purchasing decisions and

they will have integrity.

Integrity is respect, and respect is earned. When the influencer recommends your brand

or shares your product information with his or her followers is when their integrity will

translate into action and become evident for you to see.

Make your offer interactive

Instead of only asking influencers to review your product, give them a real-life

experience with it and other brand advocates.

For example, when Omaha Steaks reaches out to food bloggers, they send them a

sampling of their steaks to grill up and try.

Often specific instructions and challenges are included as part of the share.

The more interactive you can make your pitch, the more enticing it is for the influencer

and his or her audience.

No cost endorsements

There’s a growing industry of “influencers” online today who are building up their social

following so they can monetize it.

There’s a lot of talk about the fees Instagram and other social celebrities demand for

product mentions in their posts.

Instead, focus on people whose social content is designed to inform, educate,

and truly entertain audiences.

Those with real influence among their audience are known to offer genuine, transparent

commentary. In practical terms, the introduction of a “paid endorsement” significantly

diminishes the power of recommendations.

Keep your offer to an influencer simple and straight forward

Be very clear about what you want the outcome of your influencer campaign to be as

well as the work you expect from your selected influencer.

Be clear in regards to the true intention of your outreach.

Make it as simple as possible for them to try your product or service. Offer instructions,

photos or sample content that they can repurpose.

Do whatever is possible in order to eliminate your influencer program from being a

burden on the time of the influencer.

Choose a theme

Influencers and bloggers often respond better to requests that are part of and

associated with an all-encompassing theme.

For example, it could be an invitation to join a road trip where a vacation journal is the

intended outcome, or a series of visits to favorite Halloween haunts that could result in a

series of articles about the best places to take your kids in order to get them into the

spirit of the holiday.

One-off product trials can also work, but numerous bloggers will appreciate ideas that

help them generate a series of content that will add value to their existing publications

and social offerings, which by extension includes their followers.

Create a community

Groups are more fun and often are welcome diversions for bloggers and social

influencers.

Instead of reaching out to a group of influencers individually, create an “advisory board”

or a “peer review group” that features each of them sharing their experiences on a

purpose-built website, or in a manner that allows them to engage each other.

For example, think about challenges such as a “phone switch,” where iOS and Android

phone users switch devices for a week and share their experiences in a panel

discussion.

Such group activities will make the work more enticing for them and way more

enjoyable and interesting for your audience.

Invest in a long-term relationship

If you truly wish to gain long-term business benefit and an ROI from your investment in

influencer marketing, think of ways on how you can work with an influencer on an

ongoing basis and incorporate them into a long-term strategy.

Ideally you want to choose an influencer whose experience, content, and audience are

closely aligned with your brand as opposed to simply having a large following.

With a perfectly aligned influencer onside, you can then plan and create a campaign

that tasks the influencer with multiple activities across a longer period of time.

When it’s all said and done, your business will receive more valuable rewards from the

campaign if influencers invest themselves long-term.

Finally, be patient

If you don’t receive an immediate response to your email request, best to not be

pesky and begin to send numerous e-mails one after the other.

If the influencer you have selected does not respond to your request, don’t push.

Spread out your contact intervals or consider reaching out through different channels

such as:

• Make a phone call

• Send a Tweet

• Write about that person or his/her business in an article and send them a link to

it, or a copy.

• Comment on their blog posts

Remember, perseverance and patience pay big dividends.

When working with and engaging your influencer, do this...

• Empower your influencer through information and access to your brand, but don’t

take creative control. Ideally, you’ve chosen an influencer who is already

engaged with your brand. If not, take the time to make sure they truly understand

your brand’s voice and what you stand for.

• Invite them to your offices, offer tickets to your events, and share interesting

stories about your brand and the people you help and serve.

Never forget that your influencer is popular with your target audience for a reason, so in

order to keep the interaction authentic, you need to relinquish creative control.

When it’s all said and done, establishing a relationship where mutual trust exists, is a

key component to successfully engaging thought leaders in your market as brand

advocates.

How to Create an Influencer Campaign

When it comes to creating your own influencer marketing campaign, it’s necessary you first understand the various marketing methods you can apply in an influencer promotion.

From a commercial standpoint, an influencer marketing campaign consists of four

distinct steps:

1. The Identification of influencers, and the ranking of them in order of importance

2. Marketing to the identified influencers in order to increase their awareness of your

company and brands within the influencer community

3. Marketing through influencers and using them to increase market awareness of your

company and brands among targeted markets

4. Marketing with influencers and transforming them into advocates of your company.

NOTE: You can improve on your Influencer marketing campaigns by consistently

evaluating your results on a simultaneous basis after you carry out each of the four

steps above.

The first thing to be done when creating your influencer campaign is to

outline the goals you want to achieve.

Your goals should be divided into three separate parts:

1. The influencer’s demographic data

2. What the influencer will help you do

3. How the influencer will help you do it.

Here’s an example:

“This campaign will partner with a young, highly connected influencer with access to a

tech-savvy millennial group. Ideally, they (millennial group) will be into technology and

use an iPhone because downloads from the Apple Store exceed those on Android.

The campaign will include...

• At least 1 video of 30+ seconds to showcase how the game is played

• Two or three other social posts on Instagram and Snapchat where our

demographic is most active.”

Outline for influencer marketing campaign:

Who is the influencer?

Name:

Age range:

Popular on what platforms?

Campaign end goal:

Number of posts:

Which platform:

Goals you may want to include in your influencer marketing campaign are:

• Brand Awareness: Getting more people to know, recognize, and like your brand.

• Building Brand Identity: Getting people to see your brand personality and

values.

• Audience Building: Getting more people to follow and subscribe.

• Engagement: Getting more shares, comments, and likes for your content.

• Lead Generation: Getting more people to sign up for your lead magnets and

offers.

• Sales: Getting more people to purchase your products/services.

• Customer Loyalty: Getting people to stay interested and connected with your

brand.

• Link Building: Getting more links directed back to your site.

Getting the most out of your influencer campaign:

Now that you have outlined your goals, chosen an influencer, and started to build a

relationship with them.

Now it is time to create your actual campaign. Here are tips for getting the most out of

your influencer marketing campaign.

First, be authentic. The reason traditional ads aren’t as effective today is that people

crave authentic connections.

Jay Baer of Convince and Convert says it best: “If an influencer doesn’t fit a brand’s

ethos, the authenticity factor is going to plummet.” Choosing the right influencer is the

first step toward maintaining authenticity.”

According to Murray Newlands, “Different platforms are used to reach different

audiences and demographics, and the same goes for what product or service you’re

marketing: beautiful photos of your product belong on Instagram, while eye-catching

videos will perform better on Facebook.”

Here are some influencer marketing strategies you may want to consider:

1. Gifting: Giving free products and services to an influencer in exchange for a

review or mention.

2. Guest Posting: Creating and contributing content for an influencer’s blog.

3. Sponsored Content: Paying for your brand to be featured on an influencer’s

blog or social channel. You may or may not create the content for the post.

4. Co-Creating Content: Partnering with an influencer to create content that is

featured on your website, their website, or a third-party website.

5. Social Media Mentions: Getting a social media marketing strategy going with a

personality or brand to mention your brand, share your content, or post about

you.

6. Contests and Giveaways: Running a contest and asking an influencer to share

your giveaway event with their followers or readers.

7. Influencer Takeover: Allowing an influencer to take control of your social media

accounts for a set amount of time.

8. Affiliates: Providing a unique code that gives influencers a percentage of each

sale they drive.

9. Discount Codes: Giving an influencer a unique discount code for your product

or service that they can promote and offer to their audience.

10. Brand Ambassadors: Forming relationships with loyal brand fans wherein they

mention or promote your brand, products, and services in exchange for exclusive

offers, free products, or being featured by your brand.

How Much Should You Budget for Your Influencer Marketing Campaign?

When it comes to influencer marketing, the two questions that ultimately arise are:

1. How much should I spend on influencer marketing?

2. How much do I need to spend to make influencer marketing effective?

According to recent estimates, $20,000 is the figure that most often comes up, if you

decide to work with an agency.

At that price point, you should get an agency to help you manage, navigate and access

top tier influencers with proven campaign results.

It’s not uncommon to find larger brands spending millions of dollars on influencer

marketing with agencies (sometimes many agencies) and mid-sized brands spending

hundreds of thousands of dollars.

According to Julia Moonves, who is COO at Nomad Armory, she sums it up this way...

“You can put a ton of money in and get huge results. You could put a ton of money in

and get nothing,”

“As with any form of marketing, this one is not necessarily about the amount you spend,

but how you spend it and what your goals are.”

She also suggests you spend more time thinking about strategy than you do

about the dollar amount associated with your campaign.

If you want to do it for free, allocate in-house resources. Many brands, especially small,

young brands are able to go it alone for little to no spend. This small amount of spend

can produce big results.

So, what’s a good rule to follow?

If you have $10,000 or $20,000 to spend to bring in an agency, you will be able to scale

quickly and professionally with higher quality influencers delivering more professional

work.

At this price point your influencers should understand how brands operate and what

makes for a successful brand campaign.

This should be the measure of what you can and should spend in this space.

Based on the latest research, influencer marketing accounts for anywhere from 1 to 25

percent of a brand’s overall marketing budget.

However, if you’re small or just starting out, and 1 percent of your marketing budget is

less than $5,000, you should consider doing this work in-house. Simply incorporate it

into your on-going, long-term marketing plan.

How to Measure Your ROI on your Influencer Campaign Step by Step

1: Set campaign goals for accurate ROI tracking

The first and most important step in your influencer marketing program is to set clear

goals (See: How to Create an Influencer Campaign) and objectives.

Determining your goals lets you determine what kind of influencers to work with, types

of content, as well as distribution platforms, etc.

A sampling of common influencer marketing goals includes:

• Increase brand awareness

• Reach new/target audiences

• Improve brand advocacy

• Increase sales

• Manage brand reputation

2: Define metrics to measure campaign performance

With the campaign goals set, you need to identify the metrics to measure them.

Well-defined and clear goals should:

• Be specific. For example, if your goal is to increase revenue, define by how

much in dollars or percent growth.

• Set a timeline. For instance, you could track the increase in traffic within two

weeks of launch.

• Be achievable. Your influencer program is bound to fail if your criterion for

determining its success is unrealistic.

• You don’t need to pick a single metric to understand whether you’ve achieved the

goal. For instance, let’s say your campaign goal is to raise brand awareness.

Your performance metrics could include number of impressions, clicks,

brand mentions, follower growth, increase in brand engagement, etc.

If you’re unsure of which metrics to choose, look at the common performance metrics

used by other marketers.

According to a Linqia study, engagement is the most-used metric in influencer

marketing programs (cited by 90%).

The majority of marketers also use clicks (59%), impressions (55%), and conversions

(54%). Other metrics such as reach and product sales are also popular.

3: Develop goals and performance metrics for individual influencers

It’s important to understand which influencers are contributing and which are lagging

behind your expectations. By doing this you can focus on what works and reduce or

completely stop the flow of resources spent on underperformers.

Individual influencer goals must align with your campaign goals. For instance, let’s say

your main campaign goal is to generate a certain revenue within a certain time frame.

An individual influencer goal would detail the minimum amount the person would

generate within that time frame.

Individual influencer metrics include:

• Total impressions

• Number of clicks to landing page/website

• Average engagement rate

• Conversions to customers

• Amount of user-generated content created

• Revenue

4: Choose an influencer tracking platform

Rather than manually tracking your campaign’s ROI, look for influencer marketing

platforms to help. These can make it easier for you to accurately track your campaign

performance as well as the performance of your influencers. Plus, you will free up time

for other tasks that need manual involvement.

Some influencer marketing platforms that can measure your campaign’s ROI include:

• TapInfluence lets you analyze your ROI in real time. You can also track the

performance of each influencer based on metrics like reach, ROI, engagement,

and total media value. It also gives you access to industry benchmarks.

• Grin has the most comprehensive list of KPIs (key performance indicators) to

measure your campaign performance. It also lets you keep track of your

campaign based on metrics such as conversions, content pieces, revenue

generated, revenue ROI, media value, engagements, cost per click, and

impressions.

Additionally, it breaks down the performance of each influencer and content

piece based on the same KPIs.

• NeoReach has a tracking-and-reporting feature that lets you monitor

performance in real time. You can track engagements, impressions, and ROI, as

well as cost per impression and cost per engagement. Plus, you can monitor the

performance of your overall campaign, a post, or an influencer.

5: Measure the influencers

While most brands measure the performance of the overall campaign, that usually is not

enough. Pick an initial group of influencers to begin the campaign. Track each

influencer’s performance at the start. Document the engagement rates for each

influencer’s post and compare them to the collective group of influencers.

Here’s how you can do that:

• Unique URLs: Create a custom URL for each influencer to track the direct traffic

coming from that influencer’s blog or social media posts.

You can create a unique URL using a redirect through a service such as bit.ly. Or you

can append the URL with the information that you want to track.

• Unique discount codes: Provide a custom discount code for each influencer to

share. This metric is helpful for attributing sales brought in by each influencer.

Assessing your campaign results

Once you have access to the information regarding the performance of each of your

influencers, you can then filter out the poorly performing relationships and retain only

the top-performing ones.

If you so desire, you can add a few new influencers from your initial list and run another

short-duration influencer program using this new mix of influencers.

By following this process of elimination, you can improve the effectiveness of your

campaigns, increase your ROI while running successful influencer programs for your

brand.

When you stand back and analyze your campaign, you quickly realize it’s safer not only

in the short-term, but also in the long-term to run multiple short-duration campaigns and

keep filtering out the low-performing influencers.

If you commit to a long-term campaign with a group of influencers, you may be initially

setting yourself up for failure. Better to test, analyze and then move forward. In other

words, walk before you run.

In Conclusion

You now realize that influencer marketing at its core is basically cultivating and nurturing

human-to-human connections.

The good news is, by following the steps, strategies and guide-lines as laid out in this

special report, you can now go at your own pace and do it right, and when it’s done

right...

Your influence marketing campaigns will produce a healthy bottom-line ROI from your

influencer outreach efforts.

With that said, there’s no better time than the present to begin planning your own

campaign.

When you do, here are some first-steps that will get you started:

• Begin your search for your “just-right” influencers (See: How to Find Industry

Influencers)

• Plan and know what your strategy is before selecting influencers

• Get to know your influencers really, really, well

• Build a relationship with them before asking for their support (and then work on a

long-term relationship)

• Always be open and honest

• Focus on the influencers and their audience, not your company or yourself.

As you have discovered on these pages, influencer marketing can be an effective way

to increase your brand’s exposure, drive website traffic, build and maintain loyalty from

your audience, and ultimately drive more sales for your products and services.

That’s why influencer marketing needs to be a critical component of your over-all

marketing strategy on a moving forward basis.

However, it’s clear you can only achieve the results you desire when you put together a

strong, organized, and data-driven influencer marketing strategy.

This special report is designed to help you do exactly that.

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