6 Steps To Do Instagram Influencer Marketing for your Brand
Studies reveal that there has been a shift in the way influencer marketing is being executed over the years. Initially, the focus was on blogs primarily but then it moved to YouTube and now Instagram is on the spot-lights. According to Quintly, the growth rate of followers is the highest on Instagram and this counts as one of the major reasons behind this shift.
It has also been noticed that the rate of interaction is relatively higher on this platform in comparison to other social media channels. According to a fact-based survey by Hashoff, it is found that almost 91.9% out of 150,000 influencers preferred Instagram as their favorite platform.
Hence, if you want to execute a campaign based on influencer marketing, Instagram is your platform to play on. To assist you in the proper optimization of your Instagram influencer marketing campaign, we have listed below some of the most effective practices for you to implement.
1) Fix Your Goals Before Launching The Campaign
There are several businesses that have launched an influencer marketing campaign without deciding upon their goals. Of course, they wanted to gain maximum exposure through the campaign but the result was a big setback. Henceforth, all marketers should always keep in mind the business goals to fetch the utmost engagement through the campaign.
Goals should be fixed on the basis of:
- Are you looking for increasing followers through the campaign?
- Do you wish to drive a good number of traffic on your landing page or website through it?
- Do you want to enhance your conversations and revenue?
Whatever it is, just ensure you fix it before executing the campaign. This will help you in executing the campaign properly and do the necessary improvements.
2) Work On Your Key Performance Metrics
Once you have decided upon your set of goals, next is to work on your key performance metrics through which you will be able to judge the success rate of your campaign. But what kind of metrics will be suitable for your goal?
For example, KPIs like social media impressions, reach, follow growth, engagement, etc., and will complement a goal that is based on increasing brand awareness. On the other hand, metrics like total basket value, conversion rate, and click-through rate, etc., are suitable for a goal that involves driving more revenues.
3) Find Your Ideal Influencers
Decide upon the type of influencers who will be helping you achieve your goal. Do you wish to get a huge reach through mega-influencers? Do you want to get hold of a small but relevant audience via micro-influencers? Before moving to the influencer’s following volume, you need to consider the most vital aspect of influencer marketing i.e. relevance.
Preferably, you need to work with those influencers who can curate content relevant to your industry type. However, there are cases when the influencer’s niche may vary as per the goal of your campaign.
Now let’s cite an example for your better understanding! HP Australia joined hands with fashion influencers in order to promote their latest product HP Spectra Laptop. Their goal was to target the young and fashion-centric people and make them aware of the product. So, you can see that the goal of the campaign complements the influencer.
Besides relevance, you also need to focus on the engagement rate. An influencer having a high engagement rate indicates that your audience is loving your content and is eager to interact with you. For getting accurate measurements on the average rate of engagement of influencers, tools such as Phlanx Influencer Engagement Calculator is great to utilize.
Once you get in touch with your ideal influencers, just ensure you maintain a good relationship with them. Developing genuine relationships helps in producing high-quality leads.
4) Execute Campaigns That Are Relevant To Your Goal
There is a wide range of influencer marketing campaigns that can be executed through Instagram. If you want exposure, you need to get influencers who will develop sponsored posts featuring your service or product. You can use your influencer for just mentioning your brand or post a review. Although the review will be a better option since it will help your target audience build trust in you.
You can also use influencers for a single day to take over your Instagram account. This is indeed a great way to gain new followers in your account. In addition to this, it will also help your present followers to get engaged in new content from a fresh point of view.
Well, there are several options for executing campaigns complementing your goals. The only thing is you need to have a clear idea of deciding upon which campaign will work best to achieve your goals.
5) Maintain Transparency
Instagram has simplified the process of maintaining transparency through sponsored posts both for brands as well as influencers. “Paid Partnership With…” tag can now be added by influencers which can be tagged to your company for the posts they develop for you. So make sure to allow your influencers to make the most of this tag as and when relevant. It also makes your brand fall under the FTC endorsement guideline and save you from paying high penalties w.r.t. failure to disclose.
6) Track Your Results
Just executing an Instagram influencer marketing campaign isn’t enough, you also need to make sure that the campaign you are executing drives satisfactory results in terms of ROI. You also need to ensure any improvements or adjustments are required or not for fetching the best results.
Although fetching better ROI may seem a bit challenging since its measurement is still one of the biggest challenges of influencer marketing. Investing in an influencer marketing tool can be of great help since it will help you track the performance of your campaign and do an accurate measurement of your ROI in a much easier way. Use Grin, an excellent ROI measurement tool for marketing campaigns.
If you follow these six steps before executing your campaign, you will definitely be successful without the risk of any loss. However, just make a point to work on the adjustments and improvements (if needed) in your campaign.