Attention Brands: 5 Tips To Yield Great Influencer Marketing Results

Attention Brands: 5 Tips To Yield Great Influencer Marketing Results

You’ve likely found that ads are generally ignored, commercials are skipped, but influencer marketing continues to be effective and as a result, is on the rise.

It’s still a fairly new tactic and tips and best practices are still being discovered. We’ve got some experience in the field and are happy to share what we’ve found:

1) Don’t Make An Ad, Tell A Story — Also, don’t let this headline alarm you. Social media influencing works as a marketing and advertising tool because it is not an ad, per say. It’s someone advocating a product or service—and doing so, more often than not, authentically. So when you get down to working with an influencer, and they appreciate your brand’s product, have them tell a story; have them, in their own words and visual language, communicate what they love about it to their followers. This will go over much better than whatever you’re cooking up in your head. We’ve repeated this time and again, but it’s true. The great influencers have good engagement and retention because of their own unique voice and aesthetic—and that’s what got your attention in the first place …So don’t try and tell them what to do.

2) You Aren’t Selling Anything — “Wait a minute, I am, though…” You might say. That’s both true and not true. You are eventually selling something—but at this moment, you’re creating brand awareness, which you hope will turn into a sale. That’s marketing. That’s how you’ll track your return on investment (more on that later); which is why you’re working with influencers: To tell a story (as we said above), which creates brand awareness and intrigue, and ultimately converts into a sale.

3) Listen To Influencers / Don’t Micromanage — As an advertising or marketing director, you’re tasked with putting together a comprehensive and cohesive plan for your client or brand. Understood. We hear you. You’re accountable and so should the people your hire: Influencers, ambassadors, et al. All of that being true, it’s about collaboration. As we said above, influencers have your attention because people respect their opinions and aesthetics. So work with them, they’ll know how to post and when to post. All you need to task yourself with is making sure they understand your brand’s identity, purpose, function, etc. Remember: If they do a bad job, it’ll prohibit them from working with other brands in the future. Meaning, it behooves them to do a good job for you. So we repeat: Work with them; don’t micromanage. It’s called Influencer Marketing for a reason.

4) Trackable Links — If you’re really worried about your return on investment, create trackable links and make sure each and every influencer you hire has their own. That way, and only that way, you will know who worked best. This is an obvious one and only works if linking to something is part of your campaign (it might not always apply). But if you do link out, make it trackable, not proprietary. Meaning, if we ask an influencer to put repped.io in their bio, we won’t be able to trace the traffic back to them. We recommend using Branch for this. Shout out to Branch. That one’s on the house.

5) Rehire The Good Ones — We’ll end with this. Short and sweet. If and when appropriate, go back to the well aka rehire the good ones.