In this blog, we are going to learn the basics of influencer marketing. Who are influencers? What do they do? And what is the secret of an effective influencer marketing strategy? Learn all this with the example of Adidas and Karlie Kloss influencer marketing.
Who is an Influencer?
An influencer is somebody who has the power of influencing or persuading or even motivating others to take action.
Influencers are the experts in their areas. For this very reason, they have the ability to influence others to buy a new shirt, take a trip to Hawaii, cook a new dish, try a new fitness regime, or practise meditation. Share on X
According to their expertise, they are categorized as beauty influencers, food influencers, fitness influencers, fashion influencers, and so on.
Who is a Social Influencer?
A social influencer or social media influencer is one who has a powerful presence on any of the social networking platforms and the ability to influence one’s followers there.
Social influencers can be Instagram influencers, Facebook influencers, Twitter influencers, Tik Tok influencers, Linkedin influencers, etc.
Who is an Instagram Influencer?
Instagram influencers are those who have strong knowledge of their field and a big number of Instagram followers who love to engage with them.
Instagram influencers are those people others look up to for suggestions, inspiration, and motivation.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Using social influencers to communicate the message of your brand to their followers is known as Influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing is an integral part of social media marketing. Moreover, influencer marketing is considered a mix of word-of-mouth marketing and celebrity marketing.
As the world moved to the digital age, a new form of word of mouth marketing came into existence known as social media influencer marketing.
There were many people on social media with a big fan following who were talking about many products and services.
These consumers were posting long social media posts about these products, describing their experiences, and telling their followers what it feels like to have that product.
Many brands soon realized the power of such posts by social influencers and their effect on their followers and on the brands themselves.
With that, soon started the concept of social media influencer marketing.
6 Expert Ways of Showcasing Brand Personality on Social Media
Example: Influencer Marketing Basics With Karlie Kloss And Adidas
Influencer marketing has been speedingly increasing in popularity. Brands like Adidas are teaching influencer marketing basics to us all. And this time, Karlie Kloss joined them.
The supermodel, Karlie Kloss, co-created her first collection with her longtime brand partner, Adidas. Karlie wishes this collection will encourage women of the next generation to use sports to boost their passions and accomplish their dreams.
In today’s world, influencer marketing has gained a lot of importance and this will only continue to rise. They unlock a massive channel of possibilities to meet and connect with your intended customers on the right channels.
This collaboration is also a major part of influencer marketing. The influencers not only bring your products in front of your target audience but can also help to elevate your brand story. You need to seek influencers who know what your brand stands for and your influencers will help you reach and engage with your audience, encouraging them to buy your products.
For fashion brands especially, creation and ambition is the largest selling strategy. Adidas is known for innovating and bringing life with its designs. And through influencer marketing, building a strong relationship with the influencers and customers, and motivating throughout with their brand campaigns.
So for your brand to begin understanding influencer marketing basics, you need to understand what influencers entail in the first place. Once you understand that, form an influencer marketing strategy. And then, there will be no looking back.
What is an Influencer Marketing Strategy?
An influencer marketing strategy is a strategy where brands partner up with influencers to their products or brands. The strategy covers the following areas:
- Finding the right influencers
- Co-creating the branded content
- Analyzing the data
- Managing influencers
- and more.
Right influencer marketing strategy is a balancing act between followers and engagement.
There are influencers who don’t have many followers but are still able to engage the audience. There are also many influencers with lots and lots of followers but a low engagement rate.
You have to analyze according to your product what you need the most. Do you need more exposure or brand awareness or customer reach? Do you need more engagement for your products?
To make the process of Instagram marketing strategy creation easier, we are sharing our 12-point checklists. You can apply it to find the influencers your brand really needs.
Also Read: 14 Effective Ways to Use Twitter for Fashion brands
Influencer Marketing Strategy: 12-Point Checklist to Find the Right Influencers
So, you have decided to partner up with some influencers for your brand. What is the next step?
Let’s see you own a small educational startup. You want to involve some mom influencers for increasing your reach to your target audience. What your strategy is going to look like?
Are you going to go to Instagram and content the first few mom influencers you see there? But how do you know they are the right fit and they are who you’re looking for?
Even though this process seems easy, it’s not. Studies reveal that many partnerships generally don’t produce the expected results because either the influencer was not the right fit for the brand, or the content alienated the audience and failed to bring any engagement.
To make sure that your Influencer marketing strategy is rock-solid and as effective as some of the best influencer agencies in New York City, you’ve to follow this 12-point checklist.
Once you’re done making a list of your favorite influencers you want to work for, answer the checklist questions. This will definitely help you in making the right decision.
Influencer Marketing Strategy for Partnering up With the Right Influencers
The first step of influencer marketing strategy is to find the right influencers you want to partner up with. Taking the example of mom influencers from above, what are the step you can take to shortlist influencers fr your project?
Point 1) How many bot followers does your chosen influencer has?
Beware of Bots and Fake Followers
Yes, there is a thing like bot followers. In case you are wondering what bots are, these are accounts created mainly for the purpose of following other accounts.
There are various companies out there that provide these kinds of services to increase your follower count by providing you with a lot of fake followers.
As these are not genuine accounts, it is but obvious that these followers are not going to have any interest in your product.
In addition, many of these accounts don’t even have a real person behind them. Many are just created for the sole purpose of being a bot i.e. to follow other accounts.
These accounts are called bots because they don’t have a human face attached to them. They don’t exist. They are fake and they don’t care what you are selling.
It all started when the concept of influencers became popular and people realized that they can earn through their social media. With that thought, an increased interest in increasing the followers emerged in everyone. As the number of followers is how many people still decide the fees of influencers.
Let’s say you see an account on Instagram which has 50,000 followers and an interest in your industry. But does that 50,000 follower count make her a good influencer?
What if 30,000 are bot followers?
Are you still going to pay her the same price that you would pay to an account with 50,000 real followers?
That’s why if you don’t analyze more, you will never brainstorm these questions and end up paying to influencers who don’t even have a genuine following.
And the majority of the time, people end up falling for the influencers whose main
What No One Tells You About Instagram Marketing Hacks But You Must Know
Point 2) How many ghost followers does your chosen influencer has?
Beware Of Ghost Followers
We have the problem of bot followers and we also have the problem of ghost followers. Ghost followers are inactive followers of an account. Just like a ghost, these followers exist in the background but they are actually not there.
Many of these accounts were created a long time ago but the account handler abandoned that social media channel or is no longer using that social media handle. I have abandoned many Instagram accounts myself. That means you will find me as a follower of many brands, celebrities, or influencers but I wouldn’t do much as their follower as I don’t access those accounts anymore.
There can be various reasons for inactivity but one thing we know is that these accounts are not important for your brand promotion at all.
When you’re in the process to find the right influencers, not only you have to figure out how many bot followers that account has but also how many ghost followers does that account have.
As the fees of the influencers are going to be dependent on these factors. If you don’t examine these things closely, you will end up paying more than required.
If you’re working with just a few small fees influencers, this loss is still bearable but when you’re working with many influencers, this loss can multiply and can become bigger than the fees of an Instagram marketing agency. In that case, it’s better to go with the latter.
Point 3) What is the real engagement rate of your that influencer?
Beware of Unengaged Followers
Unengaged followers are even a bigger problem than ghost followers. Do you want to partner with an Influencer who has 100,000 followers but most of them never engage in a conversation or interact with the influencer?
This interaction can be in the form of like, comment or share. Let’s forget about the likes for a moment because there are many bots/tools available for liking other accounts’ posts automatically without ever reading those.
Let’s talk about comments for a minute. First, comments can be bought as well. There are automation social media tools that allow you to enter a few comments in their backend and then the bot automatically starts posting those comments on other people’s posts.
If an influencer is getting this kind of misleading engagement, is it even worth it? As most of those comments aren’t coming as a direct response to what was being posted but they are coming for the purpose of being noticed and to get a follow back in return.
This Is Not It…
Even more, these bots that comment are not interested in what that influencer is promoting because they have not even seen the post. That comment was not left by a real human, but a fake follower or a bot. And you don’t want to partner with an influencer like that.
Then, there is another way of gaining engagement which is also not right. I call it “you scratch my back, I scratch yours” kind of engagement.
In a race to gain an influencer status, many people do follow this mantra where they leave a comment on other accounts only to get a comment back on their posts.
This kind of engagement is also not useful because the comments are not reflecting genuine interaction or interest. It’s an interaction done without any real interest in the product.
Influencer Marketing Strategy to Match the Audience
Point 4) What is the percentage match between your target audience and your chosen influencer?
Let’s say your target audience is women from New York who are above 30+ in age and have an interest in fashion. Now, when the time comes for selecting your influencers, you are required to even match the audience. Otherwise, you’re just throwing away your money on activities that won’t bring any results.
Do you know that every social media channel provides some data about the audience of an account? There is data about which gender follows your account the most, from which country does your followers come from. Share on X
So, when you plan to partner with an influencer, you need to make sure that the influencer has what you are looking for. Like in this case women as their main followers.
And more importantly, the location of that audience. If the followers of your chosen influencer are from Pakistan, the Philippines, Korea, or any other country but not from the US, then this is not the right influencer for you.
You can’t find the exact audience match but as close as you can come to your requirements, the more effective your campaigns are going to be. I would recommend at least a 40% audience match before you decide on partnering with them.
Influencer Marketing Strategy to Match the Brand Personality
Point 5) What is the personality match between your audience and your selected influencer?
Every person and every brand has a personality. That personality is built on what kind of values does your brand has and how your audience perceives you?
When the brand personalities of two business partners don’t match, the effectiveness of the marketing efforts goes down.
If your brand has a fun personality, you don’t want to partner with an influencer who has a serious personality because your audience won’t be able to see your reflection in there.
If your personality is of a hip and trendy person, you don’t want to partner with an edgy personality. When the two brand images are not in sync, results are not produced.
My advice to you is to treat influencer partnership like a marriage alliance. Make sure that the two of you have something in common otherwise it’s going to be a rollercoaster ride for you.
Read: Branding and Rebranding: 8 Best Practices to Follow
Influencer Marketing Strategy for Buying Influencer Connections
Point 6) Do you have enough time for influencer research?
If you’re not able to find the right influencers or negotiate a good deal with them, then it’s a good idea to hire an influencer marketing agency.
I once read that when you hire a salesperson, you’re hiring him for his connections in the industry. It applies to influencer marketing agencies as well. When you decide to hire one, you’re getting access to their connections.
As the work of digital agencies involves partnering with influencers from various industries, over a period of time, they are able to nurture strong relationships with them. In addition, it makes it easier for them to manage influencers than anyone else.
Point 7) Are you trying to reach a big number of Influencers?
Even more, influencer marketing agencies already have a list of influencers from various industries so they are able to cut down a lot of time needed in the initial analysis, plus they are able to reach more influencers faster than others.
In case, you want to reach a lot of influencers and you don’t have enough time to invest in influencer research, working with an influencer marketing agency and letting them find answers to questions will be a great idea for you.
Point 8) Are you looking for a better negotiated price?
Moreover, because influencer marketing agencies share a close relationship with influencers, they are able to negotiate a better price as well. We all are aware of economies of scale.
Influencer Marketing Strategy for Maintaining Your Brand Image
On the internet, nothing dies. If you think you have said something inappropriate but you’re hoping that after ten years, people will forget about it. I will say forget about it.
Internet users don’t forget anything. Next time someone types your name or your company’s name, Google will show them all the results including that one unfortunate comment you once made accidentally.
That’s why you need to be way more careful of what you say and do on the internet. It takes many years to build a reputation and gain customers’ trust but it won’t take even 5 minutes to lose it.
By the same token, if influencer marketing is not done right, it can cause an irreparable reputation problem.
When you partner with influencers, you are telling your audience that you trust them but what if that person has a completely different image than what your company has built over the years? If there is going to be a mismatch like that, your partnership won’t work. Besides, it can cause more harm than benefit.
Under those circumstances, the concept of maintaining the image works on both sides. Just as you don’t want to partner with a clashing brand image, even the influencers don’t want to partner with a company whose brand image doesn’t meet with theirs.
Influencer Marketing Strategy for Online Reputation
Point 9) What is the reputation score of the influencers you’re partnering with?
As most of these influencers have invested a lot of time and energy in building their audience, they know they can’t promote just anything. A bad partnership can bring their engagement down.
Let’s say you partnered with an influencer but that influencer doesn’t believe in global warming and actively posts against the concept of that. And your data analysis has revealed that the majority of your audience is progressive and believes in Science. Not to mention, it’s also against the brand values.
If you still decide to partner with that influencer, your audience is going to lose trust in you and you will damage your reputation.
When you have to look for the signs of a bad reputation, you don’t just check on the same channel for which you’re partnering but you do an overall reputation analysis of that influencer.
To conclude, fixing your reputation is going to take a bigger budget and more energy than what you are going to spend if you decide to partner with a digital agency providing influencer marketing services.
Influencer Marketing Strategy for Creative Vision for Content Creation
Point 10) Do you need a creative vision for co-creating content with the influencers?
There are two ways of creating content when you are working with influencers. Either you give them full freedom and let them decide what to create on their own or you give them some creative guidance and co-create the content with them.
The second option is generally better because this post is still an adjustment in the form of an influencer post and ads can’t be created by anyone.
To increase the effectiveness and impact of this post, you want to have a creative vision. You will need help from a creative team here.
In addition, when you co-create content, you are able to make sure that the content matches your brand image and can get attention.
In case you want to give full freedom to an influencer, you still have to check the post before it is published to ensure it is up to your brand standard. For this as well you will need the help of a creative team.
Influencer Marketing Strategy for Data Analysis and Insights Mining
Point 11) Can you analyze data and find insights?
Most of these influencers are not going to be data experts. They can share a few details with you related to how many people liked, or commented on that promotional post.
But you will definitely be needing more information than that. As all this data will help you figure out how your post performed, how the audience has received the message, and how can you make it better?
If you don’t have a data analyst or a marketing team in your company who can read and analyze this data for you, find some insights from this data and help you in making better decisions next time, then partnering with an influencer marketing agency can be beneficial and you can questions them about every doubt you might have.
Influencer Marketing Strategy for Managing Influencers
Point 12) Do you have time to manage many influencers on a regular basis by yourself?
Many companies need to work with a lot of influencers on a regular basis. In that case, managing influencers and nurturing the relationship with them will require a lot of time and energy.
If you think you can manage researching influencers, reaching out to them, negotiating the price with them, creating the content together, analyzing the data so often, and more all by yourself, then that’s okay.
But if you think you don’t either have the time or any interest in the near future to build an influencer marketing team at your own company, then you can outsource all this work to a digital agency specializing in influencers and let your influencer marketing agency find answers to all questions.
These are the 12 important questions to answer when you start working on your influencer marketing strategy. If the majority of the answers show that you will be needing some outside help, it’s time to partner with an influencer marketing agency.
Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure: Learn From Mistakes Others Make
The secret to success in business isn’t doing what other successful people have done; it’s by avoiding the mistakes made by businesses that have failed. Instead of repeating their mistakes, now we can learn from them and best ensure business growth and commercial success.
17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail brings the cautionary tales of mistakes made by many businesses that ultimately led to their failure and which other businesses should avoid at all costs if they plan to survive and grow. Get your copy.
Gaining popularity:
