Instagram is the best network for influencer marketing.
You can use it to reach people who aren’t following you and generate more sales and followers. It is very similar to running paid ads. The main differences are that it is cheaper and the audience is already warmed up as the influencers are regularly posting content and interacting with their followers.
But influencer marketing won’t drive stellar results just because you pump money into it. To get the most out of influencer marketing, you need to use the right techniques. Therefore, to help you out, I have shared my top tips for getting the most out of Instagram influencer marketing below…
Always start with a strategy:
As with every type of marketing, influencer marketing needs a strategy too. You need to decide how many influencers you will be working with, whether they will be micro or macro-influencers, how many posts the influencers’ will be publishing, type of posts they will be publishing (stories, in-feed or IGTV), etc.
Following a planned approach will help you set a budget and predict revenues from your strategy.
Only work with the most relevant influencers:
One of the mistakes, people make with influencer marketing is that they try to go with influencers for superficial reasons such as the number of followers they have, the amount of engagement they drive, or how much they charge. These metrics matter, but what matters even more to your business is relevance. You will be more likely to drive sales from your influencer marketing strategy if you get Instagram shoutouts from influencers with the most relevant followers.
They will have followers who will want to buy your products. So, pay attention to relevance first and then look at the other metrics. A good example is this partnership between Penny and Woolworths.
They worked with Penny because they wanted to promote a food product and this influencer mainly publishes posts related to food.
Analyze influencer’s posts and your posts:
Before you decide on what to post you need to conduct some research to figure out what type of content will get you the result you are looking for. For this, you should analyze the influencer’s past Instagram posts and your past posts to see which content drove the most engagement and sales.
The combination of the data from both accounts will help you come up with content ideas that work.
For best results use a combination of stories, in-feed posts, and live videos to get the message across.
Craft the perfect post:
Make sure you work with the influencer to craft the perfect post. First, come up with a video or a photo that the influencer’s followers want to see. Then write a captivating caption. Use your copywriting skills here. You need to describe the product’s benefits and then end with a call to action.
You also need to tag your account as you need to make it easy for people to find your product. This will also get you some followers.
If the influencer allows it you can share the link to the landing page in the bio. If the influencer has more than 10,000 followers, you might want to get them to share a link through Stories as this will take them directly to the landing page.
Source: Instagram
Also, make sure you include hashtags in both in-feed posts and captions as they can improve engagement. You should add more than 11 hashtags as more hashtags get you more engagement. Also, use the #sponsored or #ad hashtags as you need to comply with FTC’s guidelines.
You also need to ensure you schedule the Instagram post to go out at the best time.
Combine influencer marketing with ads:
Instagram actually has a branded content option. This option lets influencers turn any posts they publish into a branded post. They can also tag the brand they are working with, in the post. A branded content post looks like the below one with your brand name at the top.
Brand posts also give the brand the option to turn the organic post into an ad.
This is a nice way to drive more eyeballs towards the post and boost exposure. But only make the posts that perform best into ads. If the posts don’t do well organically, they will probably fail as ads too.
Track performance:
Make sure you constantly monitor the performance of your influencers’ posts. This will give you a better idea about the type of posts you should be publishing on your account and the accounts of your influencers.
It will also help you see which influencers are driving the best results. You can select these few and give them long term contracts or work with them for your next campaign if you don’t want anything long term.
Conclusion:
These are the 6 top ways to get the most out of influencer marketing. Make sure you begin implementing them today to generate sales, followers, and engagement.
SME Paid Under
