Influencer marketing has already become one of the most popular and cost-effective ways for brands to expand their digital presence in 2021. In fact, nearly 75% of brands use influencers in their marketing strategy to promote products or services, and that trend is only going to increase into 2021. When implemented correctly, using an influencer to promote your brand can have significant ROI. In this article, we discuss how to amplify your brand’s influencer content, as well as why it’s important if you want to maximize the ROI of your influencer campaigns.
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How Social Influencers Can Help Your Brand in 2021
As we move into 2021 and beyond, it’s not enough to only include organic content in influencer partnerships. Brands will have to use more sophisticated marketing channels and targeted ads to maximize their digital reach. Back in the early 2010s, social media platforms were growing quite rapidly. In the early days of these platforms, companies could post sponsored content for free. Organic search was the driving force behind content amplification, and many companies seized the opportunity of marketing their brand on these channels for free. However, as these marketing channels become more sophisticated, organic search slowly became phased out by advanced search algorithms. And today, all the major social media platforms are pay-to-play for advertising.
Although brands no longer have the luxury to promote sponsored content on social media platforms for free, influencer partnerships remain one of the most cost-effective and cost-efficient methods of advertising. Through whitelisting, influencers receive permission from brands to run paid search ads through their channel. These promotions can be through their general content or through dark posts. Dark posts are target specific ads not included with published content. These could include Facebook ads, Instagram ads, etc. These types of influencer amplification were incredibly popular for brands in 2020 and will continue to grow in use into 2021.
Use Goals to Determine Influencer Marketing KPIs
There are three critical key benefits to influencer promoted content:
- Improved measurement ability
- Hyper-targeting of audiences
- Reaching new target audiences to increase brand awareness
Brands that run promoted content campaigns have access to tons of meaningful data that is otherwise unavailable through organic search results. These could include clicks, engagements, conversions, and more. When brands have access to these data points, they can measure ROI with influencer amplification and use that knowledge to adjust marketing and business goals for the future. They also have even better insight on how much of an impact an influencer has on their brand. Understanding this data is essential for brands to know whether their influencer partnership was successful.
The second major benefit to a social influencer partnership is hyper-targeting. Each brand has a particular target audience for its products, which could include age, location, ethnicity, interest area, etc. Likewise, social media influencers also have a specific audience of followers that fall into a specific marketing segment. The key to a great partnership is finding an influencer whose following fits your target audience. When sponsored content is highly relevant to the influencer, their audience, and the content is engaging enough to entice action, that is where brands can see their true ROI of their partnership. Not to mention, paid media amplification penetrates deeper into your target audience with extreme accuracy.
Lastly, amplifying your influencer content is the most effective way to reach new audiences through authentic influencer-generated content. Not every single person who follows an influencer will be part of your target audience. However, a brand-influencer partnership allows your products to reach new audiences you may have otherwise not have segmented in your original marketing demographic. Likewise, influencer sponsored content increases your overall brand awareness and traffic.
How To Amplify Influencer Content More Effectively
All influencer campaigns will include paid search campaigns in the near future. Now, just because influencer-based partnerships are popular does not guarantee every influencer-brand partnership will be a success. We review the “how” behind a successful influencer campaign in more depth in a later article. But for now, we will give a brief overview of how to most effectively amplify your influencer content.
The steps your brand should take include:
- Starting small (a few influencers)
- Budgeting up front
- Establishing influencer contracts for licensing rights
- Not putting the entire campaign responsibility on your in-house expert
- Working with an agency or media buyer
Starting small is important for many startups or smaller brands. These companies want to test with one or two influencers before expanding to more. Starting small ensures you understand how to successfully partner with influencers and are not pumping away a large portion of your marketing budget into a strategy that won’t work out. Likewise, you want to budget for amplification upfront to ensure you have enough funds throughout the campaign.
Once you find influencers that you want to work with, you want to set up the correct rights and licensing contracts. These contracts solidify the partnership and ensure both parties understand the promotional agreement going forward. And once you have an established partnership, you do not want to defer all of the responsibility to your influencer marketing expert. There are many bells and whistles to a successful influencer campaign, and it requires a collaborative effort from your marketing team to maximize ROI.
How Get Hyped Can Help Amplify Your Influencer Content
Lastly, running an influencer marketing campaign by yourself can be difficult, especially if you are a small business. If you would like help with the strategy, execution or scaling of your influencer campaign, contact us and our team of influencer marketing experts will work with your team to make your influencer campaign a success.
