What is Influencer Marketing and How to do it Right?

If you’re launching a brand or a product and have an online presence, then influencer marketing should be part of your strategy. If you’ve never worked with influencers before it can seem a little daunting. 

Influencer marketing is a way to leverage the audience of someone on social media who may have lots of followers or be considered a trusted expert in their niche. It’s not just for huge brands with an endless budget and can range from gifting products, sponsored partnerships and collabs through to endorsements and recommendations.

Influencer marketing can save you the work of trying to get your message out to a large group of consumers all by yourself. Instead, influencers can do that for you by creating content that their audience wants to see that features your brand.

How Does Influencer Marketing Work?

Influencer marketing isn’t an exact science – it focuses on people and connections, after all – but there are a few key things to keep in mind when you’re thinking about starting your own influencer marketing campaign. 

It’s always best to plan ahead and make sure your influencer work matches up with your wider brand strategy and marketing activity, as well as your ultimate goals as a business.

First of all, you want to identify the right influencers to work with. You want to partner with influencers who have a following that matches your target audience, whose values align with those of your brand and who will be in your budget. It’s then a case of approaching those influencers (or their agents) to work out the best way of working together, and the type of content to create.

Once you’ve found your influencer, there’s things like contracts, deadlines, product features, payment and other admin to iron out as part of the partnership. You might want to gift products or pay for partnership or both. This is important to work out, as is providing a strong and clear brief to the influencer.

When it’s been agreed, the influencer you work with can go to work doing what they do best – creating content that resonates with their audience (and features your products). 

In planning the campaign, you also need to think about tracking success too – in terms of sales, follower numbers and content engagement. If this is done as an afterthought, it can sometimes be tricky and you might be left feeling disappointed if this isn’t communicated. You need to be able to see a return on investment as a brand and decide whether you want to.

Is Working with Influencers Right For You?

Working with influencers can be the perfect way to launch your brand, or drive awareness of it. However, it can also be time-consuming and requires dedication – sometimes it can take weeks of negotiation to secure the right influencer.

At eaeo, we have the tools, skills and experience to match you with the right influencers for your brand. Get in touch to discuss how we can help your business to work with influencers and amplify your brand!