How To Get Started With Influencer Marketing

1. Define Your Audience & Goals

Everything in marketing needs a clearly defined target audience and objective. This is the best place to start. Perhaps you’re launching a new product/collection or you want to enter a new location. We would recommend really honing down on your audience as you want to choose an influencer who is in that audience and whose audience is perfectly within your target market.

You also need to be clear in your objectives. Do you want to drive sales, new followers, more brand awareness? This will also help the influencer understand the best content to create too. Win-win!

When considering your brand, it is important to work with influencers who also work in a similar field, for example; if your brand is in fashion, it is key to work with influencers involved in fashion, makeup, and lifestyle.

This will make it easier to form a good relationship and increase brand awareness as you will have the same language and brand message.

As well as finding the right influencer, it is important to identify the right platform too. Looking to attract 16-25-year-olds? TikTok and Instagram are your playgrounds. If you have a slightly more mature audience, perhaps Facebook is your best bet.

2. Set A Clear Budget

Influencer marketing can be very expensive. For those with millions of followers, you could be paying in the tens of thousands for just one post! Getting value from your influencer marketing is important, but by setting an overall budget you will find it much easier to identify the right kind of project to get started with.

There are a couple of ways you could engage influencers.

1. Gifted – A gifted promotion usually involves a brand sending products (e.g clothes/food) to an influencer in exchange for promotion on their page via stories/reels or posts.
2. Paid Promotion – this type of promotion may include sending products however the main difference is that the influencer is paid per post/story.

The first option is a great cost-effective way of engaging with influencers and can still be incredibly useful for small businesses. However, those with a bigger platform usually charge per post/story and so there is a compromise to be made depending on your objective.

You could engage influencers on a commission structure where they earn a % of each sale used with their unique code. This can also be a great way to build relationships and grow with the influencers that work best for you.

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3. Trust The Partnership

You’re probably wanting to engage with an influencer because of the influence, reach, and audience that they have. They have built this up over time by creating and curating content that they know their audience enjoys and regularly engaged with. Because of this, they are extremely knowledgeable in content creation, let them work their magic.

You are of course allowed to give creative direction if there are certain colours or key talking points you’d like them to include. However, you must trust the partnership and not try to take too much creative control.

Our tip for getting the most out of your influencers is to give them a very clear and precise brief. We’ve spoken to a number of influencers who all prefer clear direction from the brands when it comes to talking points, colours, styling, and so forth. Usually, a bullet point list of talking points, USPs, and key facts works a treat!

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4. Influencers Aren’t Just For Christmas

When you bring an influencer into the fold, they will forever be associated with your brand. This is why picking the right *type* of influencer is key to success in marketing and branding. Building a relationship with these influential people will hold you in good stead as your business grows. Even better if they really enjoy and regularly engage with your product (when you’re not paying them!).

Make sure you are liking and commenting on their posts, share it to your stories, and give them support (even on the posts you aren’t featured) to help solidify this partnership.

You will find that the influencers that do well will always want to come back and do more work with your brand. Win!

5. Don’t Expect Instant Results

Rome wasn’t built in a day!

Creating an influencer marketing plan and actioning it is not easy work. It can be filled with rejection, half-cooked ideas, and a lot of brainstorming. But in the end, it is definitely worth it to drive sales and awareness to your business.

Enjoy the process and take the time to create and nurture relationships and create quality! Your brand will benefit from every extra step you take in expanding its image.

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If you need tailored advice on how to build an influencer marketing plan, drop us an email at hello@jetpackmarketing.com

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