Unless you’ve been living under a Wi-Fi-less rock, you would know that all businesses are heavily weighing on influencer marketing and its pros and consIt is the next big thing in the digital marketing industry, right up there with digital ads and impact buys. Businesses have quickly come to understand the gravity of the current market scenario where reaching more consumers to grow their audience base is deemed essential to survive. Many marketers give credence to influencer marketing as the way forward. 

Social media influencers have been an indisputable part of the pathway to all brand’s progress because they promise authenticity, value addition, and trust – all ingredients capable of making brand campaigns go viral, making way for great returns on investment. Every influencer has a different equation with their followers. Recognizing the value the influencer brings to the table comes in the way of making a great campaign strategy. The idea is to churn out aesthetically visual content that can entice audiences. But, the question that needs answering is – Is there brands can  do influencer marketing the right way?

Let’s get this straight, there are no hard and fast rules in influencer marketing. Having said that, drawing up a checklist of rudimentary factors that forms the backbone of influencer marketing is crucial. If brands want to get influencer marketing right, here’s what they have to follow. 

What’s Your Goal?

With every brand campaign, your ultimate goal is to turn visitors into regular, paying customers. The clear-sighted route to take, therefore, is to be cognizant of who your core customers are and then craft a marketing strategy around them. It means that brands have to put in a lot of work to understand their customers preferences because they are their market. Customer experience itself is a strong tool to identify the brand’s worth and caliber in the industry. 

Share Your Story 

Say you’ve got a solid idea of who your customers are. Now, you’re goal is to make a long-lasting impression on them creatively and emotionally with a cutting-edge influencer marketing campaign. Deducing information from your customer research can also help you identify potential influencers you can partner with to share your brand story effectively. Executing it is a whole different ball game in itself. But firstly,  coming up with an interesting idea that influencers can take forward to their audiences is a must. In order to do that, brands have to identify the goal of the brand campaign. Ask these questions:

• What is the purpose of the brand campaign?
• Who are you targeting?
• Why are you targeting only a particular niche of audiences?
• Which influencer(s) resonate well with the brand’s core message?
• What is it that you aim to achieve once the campaign is finalised?
• What do you foresee after the end of the campaign?
• How different can you do it from your competitors?

The answer to these questions will help brands efficiently strategize the structure of their brand content. A lot of brainstorming is required to ace the first stage of influencer marketing. With Word, all you have to do is give us your expectations. Leave it to us to do all the heavy-lifting, right from ideating to execution of your campaign by collaborating with real influencers.

Hunt For The Real Influencers

Every great pro comes with a con. Presently, there are more social media influencers than celebrities in the world. So, how does one identify the needle in the haystack? It all comes down to identifying the real influencers who have mastered the art of influencing. Here are a couple of ways you can lock the right influencers for your brand

• Find influencers who post their content on a consistent basis. In addition, their posts should have genuine engagement from their audience. 
• A ‘Blue Tick’ doesn’t necessarily mean its the perfect influencer. Beware of ghost and fake following because that’s what determines whether they have a following of real people and not bots. At Word, we can help you understand an influencer’s reach, engagements, value, target audiences, and influence so that you’re made aware of the influencers you choose to work with.

• Their content should be honest and ‘influencing’ enough. Ask yourself this question – Are they ethically and candidly influencing their audience with their content? If the answer is yes, you know what to do.
• Find influencers who match with the core value of the brand. It’s simple – One cannot use vegan beauty bloggers to promote cosmetics that are non-vegan. 
• How do you plan on compensating them? You can either pay them or do a barter deal. It’s imperative that you have a conversation about the payment with your clients because that will ultimately decide the execution of the brand campaign. 

The Campaign Discussion

The best part about influencer marketing is content experimentation.  With planning comes content creation based on the brand campaign and it is here that creativity takes over. At Word, we think from the audience point of view. We thrive on making a difference through powerful content. So when we ideate influencer strategies for you, we ensure that it is path-breaking. As someone rightfully said, “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” With the ‘think new, think viral’ ideology, it’s always a win-win situation when you can help influencers create unique content to promote your brand – by giving them something they can be excited about, their followers also soon follow suit. 

We take inspiration from campaigns that have gone viral over the past few years. We understand what they did right and then, pick up cues to use in our own campaign. We’re not afraid to think out loud or jot down our ideas on a paper napkin because great ideas are the ones that tell a story. It should work two-fold; it should add value to your brand and reach out to more people. But, when we do come up avant-garde campaign idea, we keep the right target audience in mind because that’s the niche brands will want to target.

Conclusion

Every influencer marketing agency and business works differently. But, when it comes to executing brand campaigns via influencer marketing, Word follows the above mentioned standard procedure to ensure that the process is smooth. The aim is to build an experience worth sharing and that comes only by  being more fluid yet disciplined throughout the ideation activity.