Last week we kicked off our Real Talk series on influencer marketing with a post on how you can use Mattr to analyze and choose influencers for a campaign. Today we’re following that up with a post guiding you through the next phase of the influencer marketing lifecycle, creating the actual campaign.
You’ve done your research and decided which influencers you want to work with, but what now? How do you establish a relationship between your brand and these influencers?
The first step is creating the campaign.
— Set your objectives. What is the purpose of the campaign? Are you trying to raise awareness for your brand or an event? Do you want to increase engagement or create brand advocates? Determining your objective is very important because it will help dictate what your influencers will do for you.
— Outline the tactics. What exactly will influencers be doing? They’ll want to know this, so you need to have answers ready for them. Are they taking photos? Videos? Of what? Where? When? You should have all this documented, along with examples of what you would consider perfect pieces of content. This helps them understand what’s expected of them.
— Determine your KPIs. How are you going to assess if your campaign was successful? The first thing you need to do is figure out the metrics, or key performance indicators (KPIs), you’ll use to make that determination. If your objective is focused on brand awareness, then shares could be a KPI. If your objective is engagement, likes or comments could be one.
— Benchmark goals. Your influencers need to understand what they’re striving for, otherwise they’ll be doing things without any sense of what’s good and what’s not. After you determine your KPIs, assign a specific goal number to each. 250 shares, 75 comments, 125 clicks. In doing this, your influencers have a target and something to strive for, which should make them more efficient and effective.
—Set the timeline. What’s the duration of the campaign? How long will the influencers be working with your brand? This is an important decision since it will affect your budget.
Now package all the earlier components of the campaign into one document (objectives, KPIs, tactics, etc.). After hiring your influencers you’ll send them this document, but you want to have it prepared beforehand in case any influencers have questions about the campaign. By preparing the document in advance you’ll be able to answer those questions.
Once the campaign is outlined it’s time to hire the influencers.
Using Virtual Agent within Mattr, you can hire influencers directly. No need to involve agents, lawyers or contract specialists. We’ve done all that for you to take the hassle out of the process. We use a pay-by-engagement model that’s simple and doesn’t include the lengthy negotiations that can accompany other payment models. The only area where negotiation might be needed is in those special circumstances where the influencer may receive something other than monetary payments, such as free products, free tickets or hotel stays or a product discount.
After hiring your influencers, answer any questions they might have about the campaign and make sure they’re comfortable with their role.
Next up, you’ll share more information about your brand with them so they’re informed on creating content that aligns with it. Check back here next week for more info on that topic.