How to make Influencer marketing efficient with data driven approach

How to make Influencer marketing efficient with data-driven approach

Nowadays, marketing agencies and large companies are increasingly recognizing the strategic value of influencer marketing (Source). Data from the Influencer Orchestration Network (ION) study shows that 49 percent of consumers admitted to relying on influencer recommendations when purchasing new products (Source). Given the effectiveness of a tool like this, using a data-driven approach can help you run more profitable, engaging, and targeted campaigns.

First of all, what is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing is when agencies or companies themselves establish a partnership with someone of considerable influence and number of followers on different social networking platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and Tik tok).

Influencers have captured the attention of their audience allowing them to establish trust and authority and ultimately making them a powerful tool to influence consumer actions and decisions.

Influencer marketing is successful if the influencers' language remains original without being varied by company commission. Variation in TOV (tone of voice) may not bring the desired results. Consumers want to see authentic posts and videos that can echo their fears, dreams and desires, and not filtered by the illusion of some advertising messages.
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There are five different ways you can implement your influencer marketing strategy:

#1 Publishing influencer content: in this case, a brand will actually host an influencer on its preferred media. For example, a shoe company may invite a fashion blogger to do a series of posts on their Instagram account. This helps companies attract and expose a new audience relevant to their products.

#2 Finding a Brand Ambassador: working with a Brand Ambassador means working with a known long-term influencer. He or she will have to agree to incorporate your brand's messages and products into their post for a set period of time, such as 6 months or a year. The benefits here are clear for both parties: influencers get a stable contract and income, while Brands can attract a steady stream of high-value customers and intent instead of short-lived results achieved during one-off campaigns.

#3 Leverage Affiliate Marketing: recruiting affiliate influencers can be the most efficient way to run a results-oriented affiliate marketing campaign. This is because influencers only get paid once fans convert through their designated affiliate link. A percentage of the conversions achieved will be recognized to the influencer. This means that brands will not spend money on campaigns unless they produce concrete sales and revenue.

#4 Creating Contests: another way to structure a partnership with influencers is to hold a contest or raffle. This type of partnership can offer the influencer a free sample of the product sold and a free sample to the first 5 followers to upload a creative post with the item. This not only creates brand awareness, but also a butterfly marketing effect as real users post their organic interactions with branded items, thus providing exposure to a wider audience.

#5 Sponsored content: this is the closest thing to a classic magazine ad or website banner. In this type of post, the influencer will post a photo of clear interaction with the company's product in their feed flanked by the words "sponsored," and a clear call to action that leads the consumer to a product page.

The data driven approach

The use of a data driven approach is a new modus operandi that has emerged in recent times. This method is based on using data for identifying the most targeted influencer for the brand's needs, for discovering new opportunities for profiling users with high interest in one's products, and for measuring the performance of an influencer marketing campaign.

Identifying new influencers

Most of the time, the real challenge of influencer marketing is to identify new and upcoming influencers to work with on a regular basis. There may only be a handful of "mega influencers" in a given niche, but there are hundreds of thousands of "micro-influencers." The key difference is the amount of followers a given influencer has. That said, micro-influencers tend to be cheaper to work with while still maintaining a more intimate relationship with their constituency.

The criteria for defining the best micro influencer for a given language are mainly:

• Number of followers
• Engagement Rate ( interactions/number of followers)
• Traffic levels, views, post engagement
• Niche over which they exert authority
• So that they can choose strategically positioned partners to achieve their brand goals.

Researching Current Trends

Another popular way to use data collection in the context of influencer marketing is to identify and track current trends. Suppose you own a fashion house/clothing company. You may want to collect users' current trends in sunglasses, hats, scarves and other accessories. This will not only help you decide which items to invest valuable designer and production time and resources in, but it will also help you figure out where to focus your marketing dollars. If, for example, you find that noise-canceling headphones this winter are a rising trend, you can scan Instagram, for example, and try to find an influencer who focuses on winter fashion and/or fashion accessories.

Performance measurement

Finally, it is necessary to define a priori what KPIs will be achieved when analyzing and verifying the performance of the executed campaign. It is necessary to define a method on how to measure the performance of influencer collaborations clearly:

• Defining clear and shared utm attributes.
• Attributing a unique discount code to the influencer.
• Monitoring micro kpi (ATC, CI, products visited, dwell time...)

As influencer marketing continues to grow as a profitable and effective marketing medium for audiences captivated by user-generated content, data collection technology enables companies to identify new opportunities to exploit, identify key industry players to partner with, and measure their effectiveness.

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