How to Succeed Using Influencer Marketing and Brand Collaboration Three social media hacks you need to leverage your brand alongside accounts with large followings.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Some influencers' social media posts can become redunant, but influencer marketing remains one of the most cost- and time-efficient ways to increase your brand's awareness. This, of course, assumes the accounts are managed properly by someone who understands social media, knows what successful influencer marketing campaigns should look like and realizes the huge opportunities created by utilizing user-generated content.
Collaboration is king
Most businesses miss out on major online opportunities because they don't understand the benefits of collaborating with other businesses and/or influencers. Collaborating with businesses and content creators who have a similar target audience as you allows you to tap into their follower pool relatively quickly. The trick to successful influencer marketing is ensuring you choose the right influencers and companies to collaborate with.
Related: Influencer Marketing 101: A Blueprint
Case study
I launched a makeup contest using products from my client's cosmetic brand to utilize her network of 150-plus beauty influencers with a combined following of millions on just Instagram alone. The monthly makeup artist winner was awarded a $500 giveaway of products to use for themselves or to add value to their followers by giving the products away.
The results? Influencers shared the website link (to the client's website) where their followers were able to vote for their makeup look, resulting in 63,000 unique website hits in 24 hours. If just 1% of these visitors purchased a product while on the site, that's 630 people. The lowest-priced product available to purchase on their shop was $21, which would have generated a minimum of $13,230 in sales that day. Not bad for a 24-hour online collaboration.
When orchestrated by an expert who knows what they are doing, influencer marketing and collaborations are highly profitable.
Related: 7 Steps to Becoming a Seven-Figure Influencer in Your Niche
Be an analytics savage
Like any industry, the influencer marketing sector is plagued by fake influencers who bought their followers, rendering your influencer collab efforts futile. You can spot the fakes a mile away by looking at the number of followers they have in relation to the average number of likes and comments they receive per post.
If an influencer has 100,000 followers but an average of 10 comments and 100 likes per post, there's a good chance their follower count was artificially boosted. The same thing goes for another influencer who may have one million followers and average of 1,000 likes and less than 200 comments per post. Build a list of influencers who reflect your brand's tone, mission, products and/or services.
You should also run each influencer's username on Influencer Marketing Hub's Calculator to check their engagement rate. If their engagement rate is less than 1%, proceed with caution. The influencer calculator can also be used to give you a fair idea of what each influencer should charge you for a post. Ask the influencers who make your shortlist to send you screenshots of their engagement on posts/stories over the last two weeks or month to understand what you're paying for and whether the cost makes sense based on the size of their following and audience insights, including location, age, gender and so on.
If you're not comfortable diving into the social media world blind, look for social media service providers that have strong testimonials from reputable clients who they've worked with and who understand influencers.
One-hit wonders do not work
If you're expecting to pay an influencer and make thousands of dollars in sales overnight, you need to educate yourself on how the influencer marketing game works. The average amount of times a consumer sees your brand before buying is seven. The same applies to influencer marketing. One post and nothing more will most likely not accomplish much for your brand or result in many sales. Not everyone is online at the same time. If you create a strategy with your influencers on multiple content posts at alternating times and days of the week, more of their followers will see it, therefore increasing your chances of converting sales.
Influencer marketing can drive serious web traffic and multiply sales when you know what you're doing. Find a digital marketing consultant who is willing to assist you, and get out their and capitalize.
