Influencer Marketing 2021: Strategies + Examples

Influencing marketing is such a big deal at the moment. According to a Statista reportpublished in February 2021, the influencer marketing market has nearly doubled in two years. But what exactly is influencer marketing, and how can it help your brand grow?

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Influencer marketing involves getting popular people on social media to rave about your products. In this article, we discuss effective influencer marketing strategies and some examples of mind-blowing influencer campaigns.

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What Is Influencer Marketing?

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Influencer marketing is one of the fastest ways to increase brand awareness online. It's a branch of marketing that leverages the influence of popular people/content creators on social media by getting them to showcase your brand.

If you execute influencer marketing using the right strategies, you will expand your reach, build a positive reputation, and of course, increase your sales and revenue.

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How it Works

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Influencer marketing is kind of similar to word-of-mouth marketing. Someone whose recommendations you trust tells you about their good experience with a product, and you decide to purchase that product.

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Meanwhile, you don't need to get Rihanna or an A-list celebrity to promote your new lipstick before you get desired results. You need a content creator with influence in their niche and get them to use their fame to promote your brand. This can range from a yogist with a thousand followers, a makeup artist with ten thousand, to celebrities like the Kardashians with millions of followers.

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People trust these influencers' voices and influence marketing works by paying the influencer to endorse your product. Payment can range from cash to discount or free samples of your product, depending on your agreement with the influencers.

Influencing Marketing Strategies

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According to a recent study,80% of marketers find influencing marketing effectively. With such outstanding results, it's evident that influencer marketing isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Here are 6 effective strategies to get you started with influencer marketing and get your brand to a wider audience.

1. Set a Goal

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Every good strategy begins with a set goal. There are several goals you can have when getting into influencer marketing. Some common goals you may want to consider include;

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- Make sales:to increase the purchase of one or more of your product/services

- Build brand awareness:get more people to know about your brand and what you offer

- Attract a target market:get the attention of specific demography to your brand

- Increase engagement: get more people to like, share or comment on your online content

- Generate leads:get more people to sign up for lead offers

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Start by figuring out your brand's needs —perhaps you need more leads or want to sell a newly-launched product —then outline your goals based on how you want to solve your needs.

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2. Identify Your Audience

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The general goal of every influencer marketing campaign is to reach out to a broader audience, and to do this; you need to know who you are trying to influence. Therefore, after setting a goal, try to define and identify your target audience.

This means you need to determine your audience's persona, understand their qualities and purchasing behaviors. This will make it easy to know the type of campaign that will fit the audience and make it easy to get a matching influencer they can resonate with.

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3. Find The Right Platform

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There are different influencer marketing channels where you can start your influencer marketing campaign. Instagram happens to be the most popular, with over 67% of brands using it; other strategic channels for influencing marketing include;

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- Twitter

- TikTok

- YouTube

- Facebook

- Snapchat

- Blog

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If you are just starting, it is recommended to focus on one platform first and then expand to other platforms later, based on your needs.

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4. Find The Right Influencers You Want To Work With

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When it comes to influencing, you don't work with any brand influencer because they have a large following. You want someone to help you generate a high ROI and get your products to your target audience.

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Research is the number one step to finding influencers that work for you. You can do your research on the platform of your choice or use influencer-finding tools. For instance, if you’re searching for Youtube influencers, you can research using vling, one of the best analytical tools to find top influencers in your industry. During this research, try to look out for: 

- An individual with a decent amount of following, ranging from hundreds to thousands

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- One that is in your industry or posts something similar to what you offer. For instance, if you want to promote a new lipstick, then you should be looking for a popular makeup artist or someone who regularly posts about makeup

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- Someone who has worked with similar brands to you.

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- Also, check their engagement level and see if they are legit. This means you have to search for their page and see their comments, follower count, likes, and engagement.

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Meanwhile, it's important to note that many brands work with more than one influencer at a time.

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5. Pick The Right Influencer Marketing Campaign

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There are different types of campaigns in influencer marketing, and they either involve paying an influencer to promote your brand, share your content on their page, or a mix of both; some powerful influencer marketing strategies to try out include

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- Gifting: Give an influencer a free product in exchange for an honest review

- Mentions: Getting an influencer to share your post or mention your brand in their post

- Giveaways and Vouchers: Offering a special offer or contest and asking an influencer to share with their audience

- Discount: Giving an influencer a discount code that they can offer and promote to their audience

- Sponsored Post: Paying an influencer to feature content about your brand on their blog or social media pages

- Ambassador: Paying an influencer to become the face of your brand wherein they feature your brand and promote your product or services for an agreed period.

- Takeover: This involves letting an influencer take control of your social media account, usually the live video option, so that they can interact with their audience via your page.

While creating your goals, try to determine which campaign will be best for your brand and audience.

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6. Track and Analyze

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When you create goals and start your relationship with an influencer, it is crucial to have set indicators to help you monitor/analyze the effectiveness of your strategy. For example, if your goal is to get more engagement on your posts, you need to follow up with engagement metrics through the number of shares, likes, comments, page views, traffic website, etc.

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Track the performance of your campaigns, find out what works and what doesn't, and use the result to guide your next campaign strategy.

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Influencing Marketing Examples

Taking a look at what worked for other brands can be very helpful. While copying another brand's campaign isn't advisable, understanding the strategies they deployed can provide an insight on how to go about your campaign. Here are 3 examples of killer influencer marketing;

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Dunkin' Donuts on National Donut Day

Dunkin Donuts partnered with Collab on National Donut Day by announcing the special offers across the different stores. Collab selected 8 popular lifestyle influencers to take over the official Snapchat account of the company to create and share teaser content about the special offer in their cities. This takeover ran for almost 24 hours across three time zones, covering all the cities across the USA.

Result: The influencers were able to drive their large audience to Dunkin Donuts stores. The campaign reached 3 million audiences, 40,000 engagements, and Dunkin Donuts gained 10 times more followers on their account than their monthly average followers.

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McDonald's X Travis Scott (#cactusjack)

McDonald's teamed up with hip hop star Travis Scott to promote his favorite McDonald's meal. His favorite menu was a Quarter Pounder with bacon and salad, medium fries with barbecue sauce, and a medium Sprite. To make this campaign work, McDonald's and Travis Scott ran a merch line under the name Cactus Jack. The merchandise illustrated the rapper's favorite meal; a nugget body pillow, egg McMuffin-branded boxers, bugger tie, Always Had A ThingFor Sweets hoodie, denim shorts, and more.

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Result: Travis Scott, with 73 million followers on Instagram, was able to amplify McDonald's, and there was a lot of hype on social media about the collaboration and the merch. By the second half of the month the campaign started, Cactus Jack received over 426 million impressions and 124.5k posts.

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Next Games' The Walking Dead Mobile App

Next Games went extra creative with the release of the Walking Dead game as they teamed up with popular Youtubers like Lele Pons, Anwar Jibawi, Grant Thompson, and Hannah Stocking to create a viral campaign. For the campaign, they created a viral 4-minall-star campaign featuring themes from the game, and each YouTuber published the videos on their channels.

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Result: The campaign achieved over 23 million organic video views across YouTube, with three of the videos ranking in the top 10 of YouTube's global trending leaderboard.

Ready to Expand Your Brand's Influence?

Influencer marketing is no doubt a trend to watch out for. If you wish to get into influencer marketing and work with top influencers or YouTubers in your industry, get in touch with Vlingtoday. We offer tools and services that help manage your brand, analyze your audience, display your ads and connect with influencers that fit your brand. Click herefor the complete details of what Vling offers.

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