How to Build an Effective Influencer Marketing Strategy in 2023

Table of Contents

Introduction
Determining Campaign Types
Setting Effective Campaign KPIs
Types of Campaign Content
Selecting Influencers
Additional Strategy Tips
Conclusion

Introduction

As a small to medium-sized business (SMB), you’re always juggling hats - from being an accountant, to a business development specialist, to a marketer.

Running the operations of your business can often become overwhelming and difficult to maintain, but at the same time, the challenge teaches you how to prioritize the operations that most efficiently drive your bottom line, such as sales and marketing.

Most successful SMBs we work with use influencer marketing as a way to outsource some of the workload and to replace the often fruitless hassle of marketing the traditional way.

In our 5+ years of helping businesses run seamless influencer marketing campaigns, we’ve seen that influencer marketing has created ROI’s like never before - and it keeps marketers coming back for more.

Take, for example, the impressive journey of Kora Organics, a beauty company that has successfully made its way into Sephora's retail lineup.

Through an influencer marketing campaign managed by our team, Kora Organics achieved remarkable results. In just two months, the campaign generated over 148 thousand total impressions and achieved an exceptional Cost per Engagement (CPE) of only $0.21. These outstanding outcomes demonstrate the effectiveness of influencer marketing when implemented strategically.

We’ve seen the power that influencer marketing can have on SMBs and witnessed some of the most fascinating success stories in Canadian SMB history, so we’ve compiled what we learned into the following tried and tested techniques to guide you through your own influencer marketing strategy and give you a break from doing all the hard work yourself.

In this article, you’ll learn:

• how to determine the best type of influencer marketing campaign for your marketing objectives
• how to set effective KPIs to measure the performance of your influencer marketing campaign
• examples of types of content your influencers can create to meet your marketing objectives
• how to clearly communicate your key messaging to influencers to ensure the campaign embodies your brand perfectly
• what you need to do to find and select the best influencers for your campaign
• additional strategies and tips from our expert team on influencer marketing strategy building

Use these techniques to help you create the most effective influencer marketing strategy and maximize the marketing ROI for your SMB.

Determine the best campaign type

_{Ask yourself: What marketing and sales objectives and outcomes are you trying to achieve with your campaign?}

Marketing for small and medium-sized businesses is usually directed towards increasing or improving sales in the long run. You want to ensure that your marketing efforts are aligned with your overarching business goals, mission, and vision, because there are many types of influencer marketing campaigns you can choose from but not all of them will affect your bottom line in the same way.

From our experience in providing fully-managed influencer marketing campaigns to a plethora of small and medium-sized businesses, we’ve learned that the best campaign is one catered to serving specific business goals (such as improving brand awareness or introducing a new product). If you’re new to influencer marketing, we highly encourage that you choose one objective at a time to keep your campaign focused and to quickly start seeing results related to your KPIs.

So the first thing to do is to paint a clear (and specific) picture of which parts of your business and bottom line you’re trying to improve with your influencer marketing campaign.

To make goal-setting easier, at Embold we like to categorize influencer marketing into the following non-comprehensive list of campaign types. Each campaign type solves for a specific marketing and sales objective, and you can either prioritize one objective or combine multiple campaign types.

Whatever your marketing objective is (promotional, growth-focused, profit-focused, or market share-focused) there’s likely an influencer marketing campaign for it.

Types of Influencer Marketing Campaigns for Different Marketing Objectives:

1. Brand Awareness Campaigns: Optimal if your goal is to increase brand visibility, recognition, and positive perception
2. Product Launch Campaigns: Optimal if your goal is to introduce a new product or service to the market
3. Brand Ambassadorship Campaigns: Optimal if your goal is to create long-term brand advocacy
4. Lead Generation Campaigns: Optimal if your goal is to attract new qualified leads
5. Event Promotion Campaigns: Optimal if your goal is to promote a specific event and drive attendance
6. User Acquisition Campaigns: Optimal if your goal is to acquire new users for your product or service
7. Conversion Campaigns: Optimal if your goal is to drive direct sales or conversions

Your goals will help visualize and shape your campaign’s details so you can satisfy any of your marketing and sales needs, but setting the goals is not all. Once you choose a campaign type based on your marketing objectives, you should then set concrete measurements, or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), that you’ll look for in your campaign.

Set your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

The following are some examples of the best KPIs that many of our small and medium business clients have tried and tested to effectively measure their influencer marketing campaigns.

‍Examples of KPIs based on Types of Influencer Marketing Campaigns:

1. For Brand Awareness Campaigns, you can set both concrete and abstract measures. Consider concrete KPIs such as brand mentions, content reach and impressions, and other content engagement rates. Influencers can share some of this data with you, but they could also help drive traffic to your business’ social media and webpages that you can then track yourself.
   An abstract measuring unit could be the tone used when people talk about your brand. If you create hashtags or certain phrases to be included in your campaign, you can also use social listening tools to see the impact of the hashtags or phrases you asked influencers to use for your campaign.
   With this type of campaign, remember that there could be many positive outcomes you are not aware of because some abstract KPIs are very difficult to measure.
2. For Product Launch Campaigns, you can measure KPIs like number of pre-orders, website traffic, trials and demos started, social media buzz, positive sentiment surrounding your product or service launch, or even resources accessed that are related to your new launch. Product launch campaigns can be so effective that their positive outcomes surpass the limits of social media, such as when the product is mentioned in podcasts and media outlets after becoming viral on social media.
3. For Brand Ambassadorship Campaigns, use KPIs like brand affinity (which can be measured through surveys and focus groups), audience growth, and the number and quality of content collaborations. Brand Ambassadorships can also be measured by the influencer’s own audience interaction and engagement. You can talk to them directly to get a sense of how people react to their content related to this campaign.
4. For Lead Generation Campaigns relevant KPIs are the number of leads generated through the campaign-related links and flows, conversion rates, and the cost per lead compared to other marketing efforts you’ve invested in.
   Keep in mind that lead generation requires repetitive messaging and patience, and those qualities apply to Lead Generation influencer marketing campaigns as well. You might not see immediate sky-high results, but with time, the number and quality of leads can improve with a well strategized campaign.
5. For Event Promotion Campaigns effective KPIs are the direct number of event registrations and ticket sales that took place through social media links, and indirect traffic to event registrations and social media links through word of mouth on social media. Social media engagement is also a good KPI for events as it shows the immediate reaction from target audiences towards the event promotion campaign. Lastly, collecting post-event feedback through social media also provides a great measure of how successful the event and campaign were.
6. For User Acquisition and Conversion Campaigns, you can optimize your influencer marketing campaign by strategizing it around KPIs such as number of app downloads, website registrations and trial sign-ups that take place after the influencer content is published. You can also compare sales revenue, conversion rates, and return on ad spend between pre and post campaign. You can also track new traffic to your content marketing and get a sense of the customer pain points and what your ideal customer is looking for in your product to make the most out of your influencer marketing campaign.

In conclusion, by tracking these KPIs you can refine your strategies and drive meaningful results for your small or medium-sized business.

Optimize content for your marketing needs

After you decide the campaign type and the KPIs you’ll look for, now it’s time to plot out the details. Follow the guide below to strategize your campaign content to optimize for your desired KPIs.

Some of the best-performing platforms that our clients love include Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. However, note that Instagram remains the best platform for influencer marketing in 2023 (Later and Mavrck, 2023).

‍Perfecting & Communicating your Key Messaging

Crafting compelling and effective key messaging is crucial for small and medium-sized businesses looking to excel in influencer marketing. Here are some tips to help you perfect and communicate your key messaging:

1. Identify your Unique Value Proposition: Think about what sets your brand or product apart and what you want to communicate to your target audience. Are you emphasizing sustainability, quality, affordability, innovation, or something else?
2. Keep it Clear and Concise: Your key messaging should be easily understood and memorable. Avoid using jargon or complex language that may confuse your audience. Focus on communicating the most important aspects of your brand or product succinctly and effectively.
3. Value-Oriented Messaging: Messages should provide value to the audience, not just promote a product. This could be educational, entertaining, or inspirational content.
4. Inject Personality and Authenticity: Infuse your key messaging with the personality and voice of your brand. Be genuine and relatable, using language that resonates with your target audience.
5. Provide Guidance to Influencers: Clearly communicate your key messaging to the influencers you're partnering with. Provide them with a comprehensive brief that outlines the main points you want them to emphasize. Consider providing key talking points, relevant product features, benefits, or brand stories that can be seamlessly integrated into their content. At the same time, encourage them to infuse their creativity, individuality, style, and personal experiences into the content.
6. Consistency is Key: Maintain a unified message that aligns with your brand identity and values across all platforms and channels. This helps reinforce your brand's image and aids in brand recall.
7. Evaluate and Optimize: Evaluate how effectively your key messaging is resonating with the audience and make adjustments if needed.

Check out this guide for more information to include in your key messaging.

Remember, key messaging is the cornerstone of successful influencer marketing campaigns. By perfecting and communicating your messaging, you can drive meaningful results for your small or medium-sized business.

Next, we’ll guide you to strategically choose the best influencers to flawlessly represent your key messaging in the most optimal content format you determined.

Select the optimal influencer

Influencer discovery and selection is arguably the most important component of an influencer marketing strategy. While you can have every other section of this strategy guide pinned down and perfected, choosing the wrong influencer can not only hinder your campaign’s performance, it can also cause more harm to your brand and waste your marketing resources. Don’t let the plethora of influencers available fool you, ensure you follow the guidelines in this section to avoid some of the most common mistakes small and medium-sized businesses make in their influencer marketing strategies.

Here are some guidelines to help you choose the optimal influencers and social media platforms for your influencer marketing campaign:

Identify your Target Audience and the Influencers that Match:

To effectively reach your audience, it's crucial to identify and understand them first. Take the time to define your target audience by considering their demographics (age, gender, location, etc.), psychographics (interests, attitudes, behaviours, etc.), and the social media platforms they prefer. Look for influencers whose followers align with your target audience, as their audience is likely to have an interest in your brand or product. This alignment increases the chances of reaching the right people and sparking their interest.

You can evaluate influencers in a few ways:

1. Study their content: Take a close look at the influencers' content and engagement. Analyze the types of posts they share, the comments they receive, and the overall level of interaction. This can give you a sense of the audience's interests, demographics, and engagement patterns.
2. Review influencer media kits: Many influencers provide media kits or partnership packages that outline their audience demographics, engagement metrics, and follower insights. These kits often highlight the key details you need to assess whether their audience aligns with your target market.
3. Engage in conversations: Reach out to influencers directly and ask questions about their audience. Most influencers are open to discussing their followers' interests, age range, and other demographics. This conversation can provide valuable insights and help you determine if their audience matches your target market.
4. Use influencer marketing platforms: Consider using influencer marketing platforms that provide data and analytics on influencers and their audiences, like Embold. These platforms often offer audience insights such as age, location, interests, and follower growth trends. They can help you make data-driven decisions when selecting influencers for your campaigns.

Remember, while audience data is beneficial, it's essential to balance quantitative insights with a qualitative assessment of an influencer's content, authenticity, and alignment with your brand values. For example, authenticity and credibility are key to ensuring the influencer's content feels genuine and not overly promotional. You want an influencer whose audience trusts their recommendations. You should also consider the quality of their content and whether it aligns with your brand's image and values and whether it’s creative and engaging (compared to your brand standards). A combination of both data-driven analysis and personal evaluation will help you find the right influencers to reach and resonate with your target audience.

Use this comprehensive checklist to ensure you cover all your bases in your influencer outreach.

Additional strategy tips

Communication and relationship building

First, be clear and transparent with influencers about your expectations and deliverables. Clearly communicate your campaign goals, specific requirements, timelines, and payment details. Being on the same page from the start will help avoid misunderstandings and ensure a smooth collaboration.

Second, focus on fostering long-term relationships with influencers. Building a strong and ongoing partnership can lead to more successful campaigns. As influencers become more familiar and comfortable with you and your brand, their promotion will feel more genuine to their audience. Regularly engage with influencers, provide feedback, and show appreciation for their efforts to strengthen the relationship.

Lastly, remember that influencer marketing is not a one-time event. It requires ongoing monitoring, evaluation, and adjustments to ensure it's delivering the desired results. Stay actively involved throughout the campaign, analyze performance metrics, and make necessary adjustments to optimize future campaigns.

By prioritizing effective communication and relationship building, you can maximize the impact of your influencer marketing efforts and build lasting connections with influencers that drive long-term success.

If you need help in any step along the way in your Influencer Marketing journey, sign up for a free demo of the Embold platform to find out all the ways we can help. We want to ensure that influencer marketing strategy is as seamless and effective as possible!

Leveraging examples and success stories

If you’re a small and medium-sized businesses, you can leverage examples and success stories of other influencer marketing campaigns in the following ways:

1. Inspiration for Campaign Ideas: You can gain insights and inspiration for your own campaigns. Look for examples within your industry or with similar target audiences. Analyze the strategies, messaging, and creative approaches that worked well for others, and adapt them to fit your brand and objectives.
2. Learning from Best Practices: Pay attention to the tactics and best practices employed in successful campaigns. Look for patterns or common elements that contribute to their effectiveness. Consider factors such as influencer selection, content creation, campaign duration, and engagement strategies. Apply these insights to your own campaign planning and execution.
3. Adapting Strategies to Your Business: While it's important to learn from successful campaigns, it's equally crucial to adapt the strategies to fit your unique business and target audience. Consider how you can tailor the successful elements to align with your brand values, product/service offerings, and campaign objectives.
4. Leveraging Influencer Partnerships: Take note of the influencers who have been part of successful campaigns. Research those influencers and consider if they align with your brand and target audience. Leverage the success stories to approach influencers, showcasing how their partnership contributed to previous successful campaigns and why you believe they would be a great fit for your brand.
5. Social Proof for Stakeholders: When presenting your own influencer marketing campaign proposal, referencing case studies and success stories can help build confidence and support from decision-makers within your organization.

Remember, while it's beneficial to learn from others' experiences, it's essential to customize your influencer marketing campaign to suit your own brand identity, audience, and goals. Use examples and success stories as a starting point to inform and inspire your own unique strategy and execution.

Conclusion

Keep in mind that tools like our platform and our dedicated team of campaign experts can help you manage campaigns from start to finish with minimal work on your end.

We’re here to help you achieve the best results possible from your influencer marketing campaigns and guide you through it all.

If you’re hesitant, book a demo with us or better yet, try the platform that we created with you in mind for free.

Good luck with your influencer marketing strategy, and don’t forget to invest some time in checking out our other blogs that have even more valuable information on influencer marketing campaigns!