BEING A BRAND INFLUENCER

Definition:
A brand influencer is an individual who leverages his/her social media prowess to authentically engage and connect audiences and brands—meaning a social media influencer partners with a brand to create sponsored content. In today’s consumer-driven landscape, it’s increasingly more common for advertisers to tap brand influencers in order to achieve marketing objectives.

In the age of social media, consumers are no longer solely at the mercy of blatant, unnatural, and suspicious advertising. Instead, consumers have taken to social media to build vast networks of peers whose opinions they trust, value, and share. Whereas brands used to dictate what they were in the eyes of consumers, consumers are the ones driving the advertising process This colossal shift in power from brands to consumers has led brands to adopt new strategies that harness this resounding word-of-mouth model—influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing roots advertising in the hands of credible, authentic, and relatable individuals with a powerful social media presence otherwise known as influencers. Since social media influencers succeed where traditional ads fail, brands derive measurable value from working with them. Brand influencers act as extensions of brands, lending their voices and opinions on products, services, or topics to the social sphere. More importantly, brand influencers have established trust with their organically grown social followings. That is to say, brand influencers haven’t bought fake followers or feigned influencer status.

Why Brands Partner With Social Media Influencers

With consumers in the driver’s seat and social media as the roads on which they drive, traditional advertising has taken a back seat. This has made room for a robust influencer marketing strategy, equipped with the longevity that traditional advertising simply can’t attain. As more brands work to build their presence on social media (Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, etc.), the relationship between brands and influencers becomes more cemented.

Take, for instance, Instagram, where more than 25 million businesses are actively maintaining their profile. On top of managing their accounts internally, these businesses are on track to invest $2 billion in Instagram influencer marketing in 2019. One only needs to search “#ad” or “#sponsored” in Instagram’s discovery tool to uncover how many Instagram users are pairing up with brands to promote their products or services without the bias of brand advertising. It’s why 70% of marketers strongly agreed influencer marketing budgets would increase in 2019, and why 65% of brands actually plan to increase spending.
The Benefits Of Brand Influencers

Overall, brand influencers offer the following benefits:

New Audiences
By tapping into the social followings of multiple well-networked influencers, brands can reach new audiences that they otherwise wouldn’t gain exposure to. This also ensures that their brand messaging reaches audiences preconditioned to accept and respect the influencers’ views (so long as they are genuine).

Trust & Credibility
Influencers have earned their followings, so they’ve already established trust with their audience. This is a reflection of consumers’ trust in influencers’ opinions, meaning influencer branded content resonates better.

Brand Synergy
When working with brand influencers, the collaboration should be genuine and synergistic. This means brand influencers maintain quality content and authentic relationships with their followers.

Creative Flair
Influencers let their creativity run wild when producing branded content, allowing brands to step away from their own potentially biased messaging. Creative freedom lends itself well to more native style advertising, meaning influencer content is less disruptive and more natural. It also presents unique perspectives around your brand and keeps your brand messaging from becoming stale.

Relevance
As many influencers fall into niche categories (e.g. fitness, fashion, family), the brands they decide to partner with will often align with or relate to their interests. Therefore, audiences will be exposed to new brands that are relevant—not just arbitrary ones.
How To Work With Brand Influencers

Many top brands have dedicated influencer marketing agencies or in-house influencer programs that identify appropriate influencers to partner with either for one-off campaigns or long-term relationships. Depending on the brand’s marketing goals, brand influencer partnerships will look different. Above all else, it’s important to connect with the desired influencers and ensure alignment between both parties. Without these elements, partnerships have no basis and will not generate the desired results.

In order to partner with brand influencers, follow these steps:

Set Goals & Think About How Brand Influencers Will Help Achieve Them
As with any marketing campaign, you must define goals. Are you trying to reach new audiences? Expand awareness on a particular channel? Drive traffic to your site? Create social engagement? Generate conversions? Whether brand awareness or direct response, make sure your brand sets specific key performance indicators (KPIs) for better campaign measurement. Then, you should consider how working with brand influencers will facilitate reaching these goals.

Design Brand Influencer Campaign Plan
Based on the goals you set, it’s time to craft the blueprint of your influencer campaign. Since you haven’t found a set of influencers yet, this step should represent the ideal structure for executing your influencer marketing objectives. How many influencers do you want to partner with? How much budget can you allocate? What channels do you want to gain exposure on? How long will the campaign last? What’s the unique value proposition, or the core message influencers should emphasize? Once you’ve designed the detailed outline for your campaign, you can move on to finding brand influencers.

Identify & Research Brand Influencers
With specific goals and a campaign plan, searching for brand influencers should be relatively simple. If you’ve determined Instagram is the main social media channel, you can narrow your search and target Instagram influencers that would best fit your campaign needs.

Beyond just identifying influencers, you should research them to understand their interests, areas of expertise, previous brand partnerships, target audience, reach, engagement rate, and more. Just because an influencer’s social profile seems to fit the mold doesn’t mean they’re qualified for your campaign. Do your due diligence and find the right influencers.

Connect With Brand Influencers
Before even reaching out, your brand should follow influencers’ social channels and engage with their content. Next, reach out to influencers in order to connect with them. Cold outreach doesn’t have to be impersonal or flat. Email influencers a concise message, offering campaign details and asking them questions about their goals and experience. As correspondence progresses, it’s important to communicate goals and expectations, as well as negotiate the terms of the partnership. Ultimately, find ways to connect and work together in a mutually beneficial relationship.

Launch & Measure Brand Influencer Campaign
Once you’ve gained a roster of brand influencers, it’s time to launch your brand influencer campaign. As each brand influencer publishes sponsored content, track the performance with your original campaign goals and KPIs in mind. 

Did brand influencer #1 generate the engagement you expected? 

Did brand influencer #2 drive enough qualified traffic to your site to convert? 

Did brand influencer #3 garner positive sentiment in the comments section? 

Continue evaluating the various metrics to piece together how each influencer performed as individuals and as a group. Gathering all these insights is crucial to measuring ROI so you can optimize for future campaigns.