Begin your influencer marketing journey with confidence. With Klear's comprehensive influencer marketing guide you'll learn what it takes to plan and launch a winning influencer campaign.
Introduction: What Is Influencer Marketing?
Get started with Klear's complete influencer marketing guide.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is a unique marketing channel that builds meaningful connections between you and your audience through authentic brand promotion. Authenticity is really the bread and butter of influencer marketing.
In influencer campaigns, your brand is connected to a highly engaged and trusting audience. The person bridging or facilitating this connection is the influencer. Successful influencer campaigns depend on successful collaborations. It’s all about identifying the right influencer that supports your brand’s goals and has a highly dedicated audience that subscribes to their values. It requires identifying your brand values and determining your target audience that you would like to reach through a campaign.
What is an Influencer?
Sure, you’ve heard of influencers. But do you really know what an influencer is? It’s not just for the Kardashian-Jenners of the world, the influencer space is a vast industry of creators who have generated important connections with their audience.
Size Doesn't Matter
There is a common misconception that the more followers a user has, the more influencer they are. We’re here to tell you that this isn’t true.
In fact, follower count and true reach have little to no correlation. This means that a large audience doesn't mean that a large number of users are exposed to a user’s content. This is where authenticity comes back into play. A large audience doesn’t always mean an authentic audience. With Influencer pods and other forms of fraudulent activity, it is critical that you have methods for identifying influencers with real and authentic audiences.
Audience Authenticity
We’ve been talking a lot about audience authenticity, so what does that actually mean?
Authenticity noun: the quality of being real or true
An authentic audience is an audience that is composed of real accounts (i.e. fake accounts) and will contribute real engagements (i.e. bot liking accounts). There are several methods for assessing the authenticity of an influencer’s account:
1. True Reach: An estimation of the number of views an influencer averages per post
2. Audience Safety Score: A metric for identifying fake profiles in an influencer’s network
3. Klear Influencer Score: A 1-100 score that represents how influential a user is on social networks
Micro-Influencers
A perfect example of the “size doesn’t matter argument” is micro-influencers. These influencers have a follower count of between 5K-30K, yet they are the most in-demand influencer in the industry.
Micro-influencers often specialized in a niche industry, and as such their audience is highly engaged. This makes micro-influencers a top choice. Though their audience is smaller, they often have the highest True Reach and engagement metrics and are the most cost-effective influencers.
Influencer Marketing ROI
Influencer marketing is extremely unique because it is the only marketing channel that offers brands the ability to target highly engaged audiences at cost-effective rates. According to soulmates.ai, influencer marketing is 10.5X more cost-effective than paid media. Meaning the ROI of influencer marketing far surpassed that of traditional marketing channels.
Collaborating with influencers is extremely cost-effective because they are service providers that offer multiple capabilities. They are the talent, the content creators, the content editors, and the content distributors. Influencers are the complete package.
In this influencer marketing guide, you go through the important steps of planning and managing an influencer marketing campaign. From identifying influencers to analyzing campaign impact, this guide will help you familiarize yourself with influencer marketing so you enter campaigns with confidence.
Chapter 1: Setting Campaign Goals
Learn how to set campaign goals and create aligned expectations for you and your stakeholders.
Setting Campaign Goals:
What Will Your Campaign Achieve?
Strategizing and careful planning is one of the most important stages of a campaign. It is when you determine the Why and What of your campaign. Why are you running a campaign, and what do you hope to accomplish? The first step of this is to identify your campaign goal(s). A campaign can have a single goal, or it can have multiple goals. Here are common outcomes brands hope to achieve when running an influencer marketing campaign:
Brand Awareness
A campaign with a brand awareness goal is aimed at familiarizing potential customers with your product. It will help you establish your brand as a clear player in your industry, and put you on the radar of an extended network. While there are no clear KPIs for quantifying brand awareness, making your brand synonymous with your industry is a true indicator of brand success.
Have you ever heard someone say, “Wow, I could use a Coke?” But, they don’t necessarily mean a Coca Cola, they just want a soda. This is because Coca Cola has such strong brand awareness that for many people it represents all soda.
Site Traffic
Many influencer campaigns are targeted to bring more website traffic. This is a very realistic goal, as influencer audiences are highly engaged. Generating traffic from this network is relatively easy. But, it is important to determine how traffic will be measured. For example, this would require having a bitly link that all influencers will use, that can be easily tracked.
Conversions
If you’re running an eCommerce campaign and you would like to boost sales through your influencers, then your goals should be conversions. Many influencer campaigns are used to generate sales and customers. Similar to a campaign targeting Site Traffic, it is important to have a method for tracking influencer conversions as well as incentivizing sales. One great way to boost sales and track conversions is through Coupon Codes.
Who Is your Campaign Targeting:
What demographic are you reaching
One of the key benefits of influencer marketing is the ability to target niche audiences. When planning your influencer marketing campaign it is important to understand who you would like to connect with. Here are some questions to ask that can help you determine your audience:
Audience Age
Audience Gender
Audience Language
Audience Interests
Audience Values
Once you have determined the audience you would like to target, these parameters can be used to identify influencers with a matching audience.
Is your campaign for a specific region
Another critical element of identifying your influencer audience is the location. It is important to understand that the location of an influencer does not necessarily indicate the location of an influencer’s audience. If you’re aiming to target users in a specific region, check an influencer’s demographics to ensure they align with your goals.
Brand Values:
Why brand values are important
Brand values are the beliefs your company stands for. They could be beliefs that are incorporated into your product. For example, TOMS shoes donate a pair of shoes to a child in need with every purchase. Or, they are social values that are reflective of your community. Customers have become more aware and sensitive to brand ethics, having strong brand values helps drive decision making and compassion from potential customers.
How to identify influencer values
An influencer is also a brand. As such they too have values that identify them amongst their competitors. Influencers are often explicit with their values, so reviewing past content is a great way to get to know them better. Or, perhaps review past collaborations to ensure that an influencer has not collaborated with a brand that contradicts your brand values.
There are also methods to check an influencer’s values using AI. Klear lets you set safety keywords to ensure your influencer has not used explicit language that would contradict your values.
Identifying influencer values is extremely important. First, it is a testament to the importance of your brand values. And, it avoids any online controversies that can result in a lack of faith from your audience.
Why consumers care about values
We are currently in the age of Conscious consumerism. A conscious consumer is someone whose buying practices and decision making is driven by environmental, economic, and social impact.
Here are some values consumers tend to look for when making a purchase:
Fair Trade: Brand that supports a fair-trade cycle over profit
Give-Backs: Brands that donate to a charity or a marginalized group with every purchase
Inclusivity: Brand that is inclusive and empowering in their advertising
Activism: Brands that support important social issues
Diversity: Brands that are diverse in marketing and employment
Chapter 2: Discovering and Vetting Influencers
Learn how to identify and vet potential partners
Identifying Influencers
Identifying influencers whose audience aligns with campaign goals Once you have identified your influencer marketing strategy (refer to chapter 1 for a refresher), it’s time to identify influencers that support your goals. This means discovering influencers with audience demographics that support the network you are trying to target, and whose values align with your brand values.
This stage is best supported by a sophisticated influencer marketing technology that enables influencer demographic vetting and content portfolio review. Klear’s influencer discovery tool lets you set specific search filters such as audience location, influencer, and audience gender, audience age, influencer category, or use specific hashtags to guide your influencer discovery.
Performance Metrics:
What Are Performance Metrics
After identifying influencers that support your campaign goals, it is essential to review the influencers Performance metrics. Performance metrics are data-driven indicators that let you determine how effective an influencer collaboration will be.
True Reach
True Reach is one of the most important performance metrics. It measures an influencer’s exposure potential, by identifying the average number of users who view a piece of content.
Engagement
Engagement is similar to True Reach, but rather than identifying the number of views a post gets. This metric helps you determine the strength of your influencer’s network and allows you to set realistic expectations for your campaign.
Klear Influencer Score
To help make the Influencer vetting process easier, we have established a special AI-powered score to quantify Influence. The Klear Influencer Score is a 0-100 score that rates how influential a user is based on a variety of criteria.
Influencer Safety:
What is an Inauthentic Audience
An influence with an inauthentic audience could mean several things.
An Influencer has fake followers that were purchased but offer no engagements or genuine exposure
An Influencer is a member of a Pods. An influencer Pod is a forum or group where individuals follow each other’s accounts and will exchange likes for likes. Pods are dangerous because it may appear as if an influencer is generating engagement, but these engagements are not coming from a genuine network.
An influencer has purchased an engagement-bot, which automatically comments and likes content, but does not offer genuine engagements.
Is your influencer’s audience real?
After vetting an influencer’s performance metrics, you’ll probably have a good understanding of the authenticity of their audience. As mentioned before the size of an influencer’s audience is not the most important factor, but rather the quality of the audience.
There are some good indicators of an inauthentic audience. Just as there are strong True Reach metrics, influencers with a larger following by low True Reach and Engagement metrics could possibly have fake followers. Another important thing to be aware of is the demographics of an influencer. For example, if a large portion of an influencer’s audience is from a country that seems very random it would be wise to do a further investigation.
How to check for fake followers and engagement bots
While you can use some of the clues we’ve suggested to vet your influencer’s audience authenticity, it is meticulous work and sometimes small indicators can go overlooked. For this reason, Klear’s AI technology can easily identify influencers with an inauthentic audience using hundreds of parameters our data science team has researched and set. This enables you to easily review an influencer's audience authenticity and enter new partnerships with confidence.
Value Alignment Assessment:
Why Should You Perform an Influencer Value Assessment?
Influencer Marketing is different from traditional marketing channels. You have a third party connect your brand to an audience, and act as an ambassador. When collaborating with an influencer you are publicly saying that you trust and endorse their values. That’s why it is important to ensure that an influencer has never made public statements or engaged in past collaborations that contradict your brand values.
Review Past Collaborations
Check all of the past collaborations your influencer has engaged in to ensure that they have no past partnerships that would be harmful to your brand's image. For example, if your brand is publicly supportive of strict gun control legislation, it might not be in your best interest to partner with an influencer that has endorsed the NRA.
Check For Malicious Keywords
Past collaborations are not the only way to identify an influencer’s values. Use an influencer marketing tool to set safety keywords. This will allow you to get the full picture of your influencer’s online persona, and avoid a messy scandal.
Safety Keywords should align with your brand values. For example, an organization with a strong pro-LGBTQ+ agenda would perhaps flag words that are derogatory to gay and trans people.
Chapter 3: Collaborating With Influencers
Build lasting relationships with your influencers through successful collaboration.
Influencer Marketing Campaign Brief:
What is an influencer marketing brief
Once you have discovered and vetted potential influencers it’s time to begin collaborating. Successful collaborations are built on a foundation of trust, and this usually requires aligned expectations from both parties. An influencer marketing brief is a perfect resource for smooth collaboration.
An influencer marketing brief clearly outlines campaign objectives, expectations, guidelines, and deliverables to any potential influencers you’ll be working with. It’s one of the best ways to ensure that your influencer and brand goals are aligned and that your influencer marketing campaigns are a success.
Why is an influencer marketing brief important
Unlike a contract, an influencer marketing brief is purely about the creative goals of the campaign. Having a transparent document outlining campaign goals is crucial for building long-term, lasting relationships. Additionally, this document can be shared internally. Allowing for full synchronicity between you and your teammates.
Influencer Agreement:
What is an Influencer Agreement
Now, it’s time to get practical. While an influencer brief was the conceptual and creative guideline for your campaign, an influencer agreement outlines the legal and regulatory framework of your relationship. Not only will it list the responsibilities of the brand and the influencer, but it provides the ability to set full control on an option to review content before it goes live.
What should be in an influencer agreement
While influencer agreements are unique for each campaign, there are certain elements that should be retained in all agreements.
A standard influencer agreement should include the following:
Names & Date
Purpose of Agreement
Timeline
Campaign Deliverables
Payment Terms
Content Exclusivity
Regulations & Compliance
Non-Competition Clause & Confidentiality
Cancelation
Signatures
Signing Influencer Agreements
It is imperative that you and your influencers have an easy method for signing agreements so you can begin collaborating. Influencer campaigns can be bi-coastal or international partnerships, so you are most likely not going to be sitting in the same room with your influencers. For this reason, e-signatures can be an easy option.
Find a tool that supports your agreement signing needs. Klear enables a hassle-free sending and signing of contracts with Klear Connect, our internal communication and collaboration portal.
Content Approval:
The benefits of a content approval stage
Having a content approval requirement with your influencer ensures that no content goes live without your final okay. It’s as simple as that. You can determine how many rounds of edits content can go through. And, it also allows your influencer to receive valuable feedback and learn more about your aesthetic.
Not only is content approval great for facilitating collaboration between you and your influencers, but it also allows you to get an overview of your campaign before it goes live. Especially when working on a campaign with multiple influencers, content approval will ensure that all content is cohesive and that your campaign goals are being achieved.
How does content approval work
Running a content approval stage is relatively easy. First, determine how many reviews stages your content can go through (2 stages are often the industry standard). Then set deliverable dates for the review submissions.
Compensations:
What is the correct method of compensation
One of the most important stages of collaboration is compensation. It is not only important that you compensate influencers fairly and equally, but that all compensations are delivered in a timely manner.
There are many methods of compensation. It is important to determine which is best for your brand-influencer relationship:
1. Pay-per-Post
2. Long-Term Sponsorships
3. Freebies
4. Discounts
How to determine influencer rates
Many marketers find influencer rates to be one of the most challenging stages of the campaign. So if you’re overwhelmed, you’re not alone. Often influencer rates are established through negotiations, but as the industry grows benchmark rates are being established.
To help make this process smoother we have created an influencer rate card to help guide your budgeting.
How to process multiple influencer payment
Working with influencers is like working with freelancers. You are paying smaller rates that finance departments are often equipped to process, and deadlines are usually dependent on your accountant’s schedule. This can make processing influencer payments challenging.
As you enter your influencer journey, it is important to talk with your finance team and understand any roadblocks you may encounter with payments. If you are working with international influencers, keep in mind that you will be processing payments in multiple currencies and be subject to various tax regulations.
Many brands opt to use an influencer payment provider to facilitate their payment needs. Klear Pay enables the direct transfer of funds in over 90 currencies and in the payment format that best serves you. We suggest doing some pre-campaign research and finding a service that best supports your team.
Chapter 4: Influencer Marketing Loyalty Program
Identify and collaborate with influential customers
What is an Influencer Loyalty Program:
Influencers vs. Customer Ambassadors
Like most great things, ambassadors come in many different forms. We've been speaking previously about influencers, who are influencer social media users that promote your brand. Now, we will speak about Customer Ambassadors, which are influencers that already exist within your customer base.
This unique collaboration harnesses and blends two amazing factors for success. You and individuals with strong social media influence and you have someone that is already dedicated to and appreciated your product. This means you already have someone who loves your product, and they just need to share their passion for your brand with their strong network. These types of programs would be considered influencer loyalty programs.
How to Identify Influential Customers:
Collect customer’s social details during sign-up or payment
Identifying influential customers is the first stage of running a successful influencer loyalty program. This means having a stage in your customer journey, be it at the purchase page or an integrated pop-up, that collects customers' social media credentials. This field should explain to customers why you are asking for their details, and collect a relevant social media handle. For example, if your main channel is Instagram, then it would make sense to ask for your customer’s Instagram @handle.
Once you begin collecting your customers' social media details, it is important to have a data-driven vetting process to identify those with strong social influence. This typically requires using an influencer technology to review a customer's True Reach, engagement metrics, and audience demographics. All of which will paint a detailed picture of your customers' social media strengths, and help you identify the most relevant customers to collaborate with.
Coupon Codes
What is a Coupon Code?
Coupon Codes, or Promo Codes, are a series of characters (letters, numbers, and symbols) used to generate a discount on an eCommerce site. Coupon codes are a great way to generate sales and get customers interested. Many brands have their brand ambassadors share coupon codes with their network as a method for incentivizing sales.
Why Should You Use Coupon Codes During Loyalty Programs
One of the great benefits of coupon codes is that they can be personalized, which gives customers a true understanding of the value of your brand ambassadors. This means that your coupon code can include your influencer’s name or signifying details, which can really help to incentivize their dedicated followers. Additionally, when tracked properly, coupon codes offer extremely valuable conversion data which can help for successful budgeting of future collaborations.
How to Track Coupon Code Conversions
Conversions are one of the leading KPIs for an influencer loyalty program. It is important to have a technology that can measure the conversions generated by a specific influencer, to understand if your ROI is justifiable. Klear supports this process with a tracking pixel that can be added onto any more multiple pages within your website. The pixel will automatically recognize any conversion generated from your influencer campaign and aggregate all data to a comprehensive campaign report.
Compensation:
Influencers vs. Customer Ambassadors
Compensating customer ambassadors can be different than the traditional compensation methods used with influencers. Because your ambassadors are customers, it means they enjoy and benefit from your brand. This means that there can often be more creative, and meaningful modes of compensation.
Methods of Compensation
Below are several examples of compensation methods that brands tend to use with customer ambassadors.
Discounts: Offer your customer ambassador a discount on products in exchange for participating in your campaign. Determine the discount amount that best fits your partnership.
Free Products: Offer your customer ambassador free products in exchange for collaborating. This compensation method is great because you already know that these influencers love and use your products.
Pre-Release Sample: Send you customer ambassador sample products before they are released. This way you can get feedback from loyal and important customers, and show them how much you value your partnerships.
Chapter 5: Measuring Campaign Success
Use data-driven metrics to analyze the impact of your campaign.
Importance of Analyzing Campaign Impact:
Identifying Areas of Success
Before your campaign is live, it is important to identify success indicators. These are metrics that will be used to measure the impact of your campaign and influencer collaborations. Your campaign KPIs are dependent on the goals of your campaign. For example, if your goal is sales, a relevant KPI would be conversions. Or, if your campaign goal is brand exposure, Content Impressions would help understand how much exposure your campaign got.
Identifying Areas of Improvement
Setting success metrics also is helpful for understanding how your influencer marketing strategy is improving and what areas need further attention. If you have noticed past campaigns lacking in specific areas, set this as a KPI for future campaigns so you use data to assess how your strategy is improving.
Evaluate budget for future campaigns
Data-driven KPI assessment is extremely helpful when budgeting for future campaigns. By evaluating the granular impact of a specific influencer you can assess how your spending is affecting campaign results. Additionally, by identifying influencers with strong ROI, you can understand which performance metrics should be emphasized when vetting future partners.
Aggregating Content:
Why campaigns use #hashtags
Hashtags come hand in hand with influencer marketing campaigns. They are great for creating catchphrases that are synonymous and memorable to your campaign. And, useful for identifying all campaign-related content in order to aggregate and measure.
Manually aggregating content vs. automatic aggregation
In order to measure the impact of your campaign, you must aggregate all of the relevant campaign content. There is a method of manually aggregating content. Which required manually screenshotting and saving all content, and can be very time-consuming. Alternatively, you can use influencer marketing technology to automatically aggregate your content.
With Klear, you can track your campaign by adding the relevant influencers and setting a relevant #hashtag, keyword, or @mention, and any content using the set parameter will be automatically aggregated and analyzed.
Aggregating time-sensitive content (Instagram Stories)
If your campaign includes multiple content formats, including time-sensitive content such as Instagram Stories, it’s important to have a strategic method for tracking and aggregating. As Instagram Stories will disappear after 24 hours, it can be easy to miss the content, especially if you are collaborating with multiple influencers. Klear’s sophisticated technology will automatically save all relevant campaign data, including Instagram Stories. So, even if the content is not live, you can still view it on Klear and review the performance metrics.
Campaign Reporting:
What is an Influencer Campaign Report?
An Influencer campaign report is a data-driven aggregation of a campaign’s content that offers macro and granular insights into the performance of the campaign. It is common to create campaign reports at the end of a campaign to review a campaign’s impact and to share successes with relevant stakeholders.
Klear automatically aggregates all campaign content into a campaign report which breaks down a campaign’s impact by the individual influencer. All reports can be downloaded as a PDF or an editable Google Slide.
What should be in a campaign report
A campaign report should include all the content that appeared in your campaign across all mediums. In order to measure the content, the report should include relevant metrics that align with the goals of your campaign. All of Klear’s campaign reports include Impressions generated by the campaign and individual influencers, as well as the Estimated Media Value of the campaign and individual posts.
Sharing Campaign Report
Campaign reports are meant to highlight your campaign performance, so they should be digestible, easy on the eye, and easy to share. Sharing a report is extremely important because it lets all the relevant decision-makers understand the success of your campaign. Whether you’re an agency sharing a campaign report with clients, or a brand sharing your work with the rest of your team, having a data-driven method to highlight success will provide confidence in our stakeholders and help build lasting relationships.
Chapter 6: Competitive Research
Learn how to evaluate your competitor's influencer strategy.
Why Perform Competitive Research:
Understand Your Industry and Competition
A great influencer marketing strategy is dependent on a holistic approach. This means not only understanding your brand strategy but the strategy of our competitors and the expectations of your industry. By performing competitor research you can learn about important influencers, demographics, and values that are important to your industry. And, you can evaluate successful campaigns of your competitors that can provide inspiration for your own strategy.
Identify Areas of Opportunity
Another great advantage of competitive research is identifying untapped areas that provide an opportunity that offers an opportunity for your brand. For example, if a majority of competitors are heavily targeting a specific age demographic, you can focus on a different demographic where there is less competition.
How To Perform a Competitive Assessment:
Review Competitor Collaborations
An important stage in a competitor assessment is reviewing the influencers the brand has collaborated with. Past collaborations can tell you many things about your competitor. Review an influencer’s performance metrics to see what criteria your competitor sets for collaboration. Or, perhaps review the audience demographics of your competitor’s influencers, and understand who they are targeting through their campaign.
Review Your Influencer's Past Collaborations
Look at the brands your influencer has collaborated with to identify other brands that have found success with the same partnership. Take a further look into these brands' strategies and learn if they are leveraging partnerships in a way you’re not.
Klear makes it easy to review an influencer's past collaborations with a comprehensive influencer content portfolio. Our brand portfolio feature aggregates all branded content that an influencer has posted. The content can then be filtered by time range, by a specific brand, or by sponsorship.
Identify Competitor Values
During your competitor assessment, identify a campaign run by your competitor. When reviewing your competitor’s campaign and partners, identify important values that are conveyed through their marketing initiative. Determine if these are common values that are expressed through your industry, and understand how you fit into the discourse.
Chapter 7: Create an Influencer Market Plan
Outline your goals and strategy for all upcoming campaigns.
Influencer Marketing Plan:
What is an Influencer Marketing Plan
An influencer marketing plan is a perfect resource for setting brand goals. It will help you determine how to benchmark against your competitors, set relevant KPIs, and nurture all influencer relationships. Influencer marketing plans should be created annually and used as a method for creating aligned expectations between you and your stakeholders.
How to Make an Influencer Marketing Plan
Writing an influencer marketing plan requires setting your goals and expectations for your upcoming influencer marketing campaigns.
1. Spend
What is your estimated Influencer Marketing budget for the upcoming year?
[$25,000]
2. Campaign Output
How many campaigns do you expect to produce?
[5]
3. Influencer Relations
How many influencers do you expect to collaborate with per/campaign and annually?
[10/campaign]
4. Values
What brand values will be promoted through your campaigns
[sustainability, environmentalism]
5. Target Audience
What are the target demographics you are trying to reach?
[Gen Z, UK, Female]
6. Platforms and Content Formats
Which social media platform and content formats are you looking to optimize?
[TikTok and Instagram Live]
7. Goals
What is the objective of the campaign, what are you trying to achieve?
[Brand Awareness]
8. Vetting Metric
What metrics will you use to identify potential collaborators?
[Audience demographics, TikTok engagements, Past collaborations]
9. Campaign KPIs
How will you measure the impact of your campaigns?
[Impressions]
Share Your Influencer Marketing Plan:
Once your influencer marketing plan is finalized, share your goals with your team and stakeholders. Having a conscience document that outlines your plan will establish trust, transparency, and aligned expectation. All of which are the foundation for a successful influencer marketing strategy.
Get Started on Your Influencer Journey:
Now that you’ve learned the basics of influencer marketing and you’ve created your influencer marketing plan it’s time to get started with your first campaign. Klear is here to support you during every stage of your influencer marketing experience, from influencer discovery to campaign measure. Schedule a call with one of our influencer marketing experts and learn how Klear can support your brand goals.
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