Tips for Successful Influencer Marketing

Making use of social media influencers in communications and marketing can hardly be considered a new idea. Storytelling in a relatable way through influencers has been playing a major part in marketing for years, in ways of promotional, sponsored and events. 

However, social media makes it possible to maximize impact and reach a whole new audience while becoming the place for a more diverse group of influencers to exist. To gain success in influencer marketing it is important to move from single to long-term campaigns and create strategy for the entire year. Below you’ll find five tips for successful influencer marketing.

1. Be strategic 

To gain success and results in influencer marketing, collaborations must be strategic and long-term. Planning successful influencer marketing is an important part of the marketing year plan and influencer collaborations should be placed in the very center of a company’s wholesome marketing mix. 

Carefully planning the use of your own and paid channels and earned media in influencer collaborations makes it possible to achieve greater results than purely just by “renting” an influencer’s social media channels.

2. Take interest in data and use it 

Fairly interesting influencer and nice content just isn’t enough anymore. You must be able to harvest data and make use of it in creating and planning strategy, choosing influencers, sharing content and as a way to measure results. 

It is essential to choose the right measurable goals and metrics at the beginning of planning a strategy. A common thread that brings every aspect of influencer marketing together allows you to have control, keep track of results and report. 

3. Continuously work with a diverse group of influencers 

To get desired benefits from influencer marketing, you need to recognize all possibilities at the planning stage. Remember to think about what kind of content you’ll need and is it possible to make use of influencers as target group experts or to invite them to be a part of your service design?   

Also consider what type of influencers are essential for your business: should you choose mega, macro or micro influencers, or possibly experts or nano influencers? Above all, successful influencer marketing should be ongoing  win-win-win teamwork in terms of the influencer, company/organization and always serving the audience. 

4. Keep track of new channels and pick the best ones for you to be active in 

Keep track of new channels and their development. Stay on top of what’s going on and update your channels when needed to support your goals. 

Especially in the last couple of years the focus has been in the huge success of video content, meaningfulness in social media and TikTok. It is very important to make use of video content in paid partnerships and to have enough resources to analyze the results. 

Social media influencer field is expanding. Sponsoring, e-sport influencers and influencers in traditional channels such as authors is opening new possibilities in collaborations.  

5. Responsibility 

Effective collaboration requires trust and authenticity. Trust comes from the transparency, openness and honesty of the collaboration. Authenticity requires finding the influencers that share the same values with your company and would even without a collaboration be willing to recommend the product or service. Authenticity also means the willingness to give the influencer freedom to deliver the message in their own style. For example bring up things that are meaningful to them and to let their personality show.

PING Helsinki has created an ethical code for content creators and businesses, which aims to encourage the transparency, trust and fairness of influencer marketing. Take a look here. 

We’ve also created an Influencer marketing toolbox for businesses and influencers. This comprehensive information package helps you through the process of influencer marketing from planning to final reports.  

Influencer collaboration pays off when it’s considered a part of your marketing and sales plan. So carefully consider which channels to choose, how and with whom you’ll plan and execute your collaboration, what kind of content you’ll need and how you’ll track and measure the process. 

Hopefully you found these tips for successful influencer marketing useful. If you should have any questions, we’re more than happy to help. Don’t hesitate to contact us!

PING Helsinki