Influencer marketing is a partnership between brands and influencers in a particular niche. Influencers are individuals who have a significant follower base on social media. They may run personal blogs, brands, or channels and have a specific audience with similar interests. Businesses collaborate with influencers who may have an overlapping audience, or work in the same niche.
With consumers looking for authentic content over ads, influencer collaboration is producing better results than traditional ads. Besides, when comparing the costs, influencer marketing needs less spending than other means of advertising. When it comes to efficiency, statistics show that businesses make $18 on average for every dollar spent on influencer marketing.
Based on the statistics, we can conclude that influencer marketing is an effective method when used appropriately. However, it’s important to correctly choose an influencer for your business and judge if it suits your goals or not. This article helps you find collaboration opportunities and possibilities for various business needs and goals.
How To Collaborate With Influencers
One of the tips for success with influencer marketing on Instagram is to understand the right collaboration areas. If you are unsure of the areas in which you can collaborate with influencers, here are some ideas:
Product Seeding
Also known as product gifting, it refers to sending products to influencers to build relationships and get feedback on the product. The influencer will, on their part, do a post or video reviewing the product.
This influencer marketing strategy is a good choice for making your brand known through positive words and can also help to build social proof. The strategy works as statistics indicate that 49% of buyers make a purchasing decision based on the recommendation of an influencer marketer.
When to go with Product seeding
The Product seeding strategy is a great choice for brands with:
- A limited influencer marketing budget
- A clear marketing message that resonates with the brand
- Looking for an authentic product review
An example of a brand that uses product seeding
In 2019, Skinn Cosmetics wanted to expand its market reach to a demographic in their 20s and 30s. Since they had a limited budget, they did product seeding. They sent products to influencers without requiring them to post on their accounts. In one year, their traffic increased by 20%.
Influencer Whitelisting
Whitelisting is a strategy where an influencer allows a brand advertising permission on their social media account. The brands collaborate with influencers to convert the creator’s content into paid ads from the brand’s account. The content could be videos, reels, posts, and more. The paid ads will likely receive better engagement since the influencer’s content is already doing well.
When to do influencer whitelisting
Brands can leverage on whitelisting when they:
- Want to save on the cost of creating ads.
- Want to build relationships with creators.
- Increase engagement from their consumers.
- Increase the potential for user-generated content across different channels.
An example of a brand that uses influencer whitelisting
Florida Crystals collaborated with Priyanka Naik to run a paid advertisement reel on her account. The brand that makes organic sugar promoted the reel as a whitelisted ad. This helped build more awareness of the brand.
Account takeover
This influencer collaboration idea involves the influencer taking over the running of your official brand account. This could be for a day, week, or month. They take over all the activities of the account, including posting.
The account takeover strategy is effective for:
- Expanding the reach of your brand
- Cross-promoting products or services
- Strengthening your brand
- Building credibility
Hosting events and partnerships
Brands can create memorable experiences in their customers’ minds by having the influencer host events on their behalf. Such collaborations can be very impactful as the influencer can help generate a buzz around the brand.
Guest Posting and Sponsored Posts
Another effective way you can collaborate with an influencer in promoting your brand is through guest posting. You should work with influencers with high-authority blogs and post content that aligns with your brand’s voice for the best results.
A sponsored post involves paying an influencer to post about your brand. The post can be in the form of reel, video, post, or Instagram story.
How To Get The Most Impact On Influencer Collaboration
Now that you understand the areas where you can collaborate with an influencer, here are tips on getting a big impact on your relationship with an influencer.
Make your expectations clear.
A good influencer collaboration should begin with clear communication on your expectations. Both parties should understand their roles in the collaboration. This ensures that there are no misunderstandings during the partnership.
You should have an influencer brief that explains the specifications of a campaign and what is expected of the influencer. Some of the details to include in an influencer brief are:
- Posting schedule
- Key deliverables
- Compensation details
- Requirements or restrictions of your brand
Checking the ROI
Like any other marketing method, you need to check and determine if influencer marketing brings returns on investment. You should understand your key performance indicators to keep track of the performance of your campaign.
KPIs can include increasing engagement rate, CTR, and conversion rates. You can use social media analytic tools to track these metrics and determine if the influencer is bringing in the results you expected.
You will need to keep analyzing this data to determine whether your relationship with the influencer is working. This influencer marketing data can help you refine your campaigns in the future. When you optimize your campaigns using previous data, you will continue to see improvement in your campaigns.
How to identify the influencer to collaborate with
When searching for an influencer, you should find one whose values align with your brand’s. Here are a few ways to find influencers.
- Use influencer marketing platforms. There are different influencer marketing platforms, such as BuzzGuru, that can help find influencers in your niche and even connect with them.
- Search manually on social media. You can manually go through platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok to find influencers in your niche.
- Do competitor analysis. You can manually go through the profile of your competitor to see the influencers they are collaborating with.
Final Thoughts
While Influencer marketing strategies keep changing, some will never go out of fashion. If you are searching for effective influencer collaboration ideas, try one of the above options. These will guarantee you results in your campaigns.
