How to Incorporate an Influencer Program Into Your Marketing Strategy

Influencer marketing is a part of almost every marketer’s marketing strategy owing to the numerous benefits that it offers. It is a cost-effective marketing technique that can help you achieve multiple goals.

If you are one of the few marketers who are still considering whether to start an influencer campaign or not, then it’s time to make that decision. You need to incorporate influencer marketing into your strategy right now.

Before we get into the details of how you should go about the process of adding influencer marketing to your strategy, first set aside a budget for it. You will have to make space for an influencer program by setting aside a portion of your marketing spend for it.Also, if you need to seek any approvals to do this, the first step is to do that and then plan your influencer program. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to incorporate an influencer program into your marketing strategy.Excited to learn more?Here you go.

1. Define Your Goals and KPIs

Any good marketing program always starts with an end goal in mind and influencer marketing is no exception. Decide what you want to achieve from your influencer program and . Do you seek to increase your brand awareness and reach or are you trying to sell more products? Or maybe, you simply want to direct traffic to your website.Whatever your goals may be, clearly define them and then choose key performance indicators (KPIs) that you will use to measure your performance on those goals. Your KPIs should be directly tied to your goals.For example, if your goal is to increase your brand awareness, then you might want to track your post views and impressions to assess whether you achieved that. 

2. Find the Right Influencers

This is one of the most important steps in this process and the success of your influencer program depends largely on who you decide to work with. So, do the smart thing and be thorough in your influencer search, instead of rushing things. You can even hire an or use an influencer search tool.Even if you do use a tool, you should know which metrics to focus on. Most brands make the mistake of looking at vanity metrics like the number of followers. Instead, you should be focusing on their engagement rates, audience demographics, and more. Influencer tools like can come in handy for this. This tool lets you dive deep into the influencer's profile and shows you their audience metrics, demographics, and more. You can also find out if they've got fake followers. This way you'd be better placed to decide which influencers to partner with.

What should you look at instead?

You should check how much engagement an influencer gets on their posts and the kind of comments they get. It is also important to work with influencers who are experts in a niche and are trusted by their followers. 

An influencer that just promotes any brand that approaches them is not credible and would not be good for your brand. So, always look at past brand collaborations and the kind of content an influencer posts before you reach out to influencers.

3. Choose the Type of Campaign

One important decision that you need to make when creating your influencer program is to decide what type of influencer campaigns you want to run. Brands collaborate with influencers in different ways and you should choose the ones that help you achieve your goals.Here are some of the most popular types of influencer campaigns that you can run.

Increase Sales via Discount Codes and Offers

If your goal is to of your new seasonal collection or products in general, you can offer unique discount codes to each influencer. They will promote the codes to their audiences and try to generate more sales for you.This is a mutually beneficial strategy as they will earn a commission for each sale that they generate. So, it’s in their best interest to try harder and get more people to buy your products.You can also use affiliate links instead of unique discount codes and using influencers. This is a similar concept and offers similar benefits.

Buzz Marketing for a New Product Launch

If you are launching a new product or product line, you can run a buzz marketing campaign using influencers. As part of this campaign, each influencer will:

• Talk about the upcoming launch and product features.
• Give sneak-peeks on what consumers can expect.
• Promote the launch event and ask people to join.
• Start a countdown for the product launch.
• And more!

The idea is to have enough influencers talking about your upcoming launch to create buzz on social media.

Build Brand Trust Using Influencer Product Reviews

You can also ask influencers to write detailed product reviews to build consumer trust in your brand. A good review from a trusted influencer can not only build your brand but also get people to try your products and increase sales.It can help more to the new ecommerce store like to get reviews on their bestselling products and boost their brand awareness as well trust.So, these actually have dual benefits and are one of the best ways to work with influencers.These are just a few of the many ways in which you can work with influencers. Design your influencer campaign keeping your end goal in mind.

4. Use the Right Tools to Manage Your Campaigns

When you work with multiple influencers, it becomes important to track each influencer’s performance and the value that they bring to the table. You will also need to manage multiple influencers and campaigns and keep things running smoothly.

So, what should you do?

You should invest in good influencer to run your campaigns. These will help you stay on top of individual influencer assignments, status updates, and performances.

5. Measure Performance and Improve Your Strategy

Most influencer marketing tools come with a built-in analytics feature. But, you can measure each influencer’s performance manually as well, if you don’t want to invest in a tool.

Simply by looking at the number of views, likes, shares, and comments that an influencer’s post generates, you can assess their performance. When you combine these numbers for all the influencers, you will get a fair idea about your campaign performance.So, analyze how well your campaign did vis-a-vis your marketing goals. Find areas for improvement and optimize your future influencer marketing strategy.

Conclusion

This is a simple, yet effective, guide on how to incorporate an influencer marketing program into your marketing strategy. Use this step-by-step guide to start your first influencer marketing campaign, if you haven’t already done so.Start creating your influencer program right now. All the best!