Influencer marketing is a great way to improve your reach and engagement on social media platforms. Trusted influencers are sponsored to talk positively about your product or service in a way that connects with your target audience and sends them back to your business.
However, influencer marketing is more complex than it seems at first. You shouldn’t just choose an influencer with a few thousand followers and ask them to pitch your product to their followers.
Instead, you need to use data to optimise your influencer marketing strategy.
Choosing the right influencer
There are thousands of self-proclaimed influencers on the web. From Instagram photographers to TikTok performers, you need to cut down your choices and find the right influencer for you. Fortunately, a little data analysis can help you make the right choice.
Start by assessing how your target audience spends their time and money. There’s no point in teaming up with an influencer that primarily appeals to millennials if your target demographic is Gen Z. Use economic data trends to better assess your target audience and the kind of social content they are interested in seeing.
For example, if you are interested in appealing to millennials, you can use consumer behaviour data to find the right influencer. Millennial spending habits suggest that most millennials are interested in ethical consumerism and will choose products that “do good” in the world. Likewise, millennials today can pay for goods and services using a range of payment portals.
Using this data, you should find an influencer who supports ethical living as this appeals to millennials. Likewise, you should follow up on any influencer content with a range of payment portals that lead to your product or service.
Suggesting relevant content
Once you’ve found the right influencer, you’ll need to start creating content that satisfies you both. It’s important to understand that influencers are more than just mouthpieces for your brand, and few will allow you to dictate what you say and how you say it.
Instead, allow more experienced influencers to have greater control over the message. They intrinsically understand their audience better than you and will be able to create content that fosters great engagement.
Help your chosen influencer out by gathering data about consumer behaviour and any common queries or pain points you encounter. This will ensure that influencer marketing is a useful and relevant part of your overall inbound marketing strategy.
Your inbound marketing strategy should pique the interest of potential consumers and leave the discovery up to them. Working with an influencer will put consumers in the driver’s seat as they’ll have to come to you to find further information. This approach works particularly well with younger generations who typically respond better to a “softer” sell.
Assessing influencer analytics
Once your campaign has started, you’ll need to assess the effectiveness of your sponsored posts. Ideally, you should do this with the influencer’s input as a consideration, as they’ll likely have a deeper insight as to why a certain post was successful or not.
Fortunately, you can use social platforms’ analytic dashboards to quickly assess the effectiveness of current campaigns. Facebook’s insights and Instagram’s metrics pages are relatively straightforward and give you a snapshot of user data. You can use the “referrals” tab on both pages to quickly identify how much traffic your social pages gain from your influencer.
Of course, not all traffic will come directly from an influencer to your web page or social channel. Some consumers will come back to your online presence a few days after seeing an influencer’s post. Measuring this traffic can be tricky, meaning you need to have a clear idea of how to improve your use of influencer analytics.
Start by limiting the metrics you track before and after working with an influencer. Setting a clear goal helps you make a clear assessment of influencer-led campaigns. Next, try to create content that drives consumers towards a particular behaviour. For example, you might have your influencer recommend that their viewers complete a certain survey or sign up for a special subscription. This gives you a built-in KPI for your influencer analytics.
Ultimately, working with an influencer should help you convert more leads and reach more consumers. Influencers have a great understanding of their viewer’s needs and usually carry a loyal fan base. By aligning with effective influencers, you can get a snapshot of the voice of the customer. Pairing these insights with data like site referrals, bounce rate, and pageviews per session will help you create more campaigns that resonate with potential consumers.
Conclusion
Influencers can vastly improve your reach and engagement. However, before you throw money at a TikToker or Instagram influencer, you need to ensure that you use data to optimise your partnership. Track key analytic insights like bounce rate and referrals from social sites. You can even build in analytics by giving influencers sponsored links to surveys and questionnaires. Just be sure to tweak your approach as you go to ensure that your partnership supports your bottom line.
Author: Beau Peters.
