How to run a successful influencer campaign in 2024
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This blog forms the latest in our Comms Bootcamp series, giving you the tools, insights and techniques you need to get your marketing communications in shape and build a lean, mean, PR machine! For more posts in this series, visit our Comms Bootcamp page.
Running a successful influencer campaign
Whether on TikTok, YouTube or Instagram, influencers wield significant power. They can elevate your brand’s presence and credibility with just one post…or tear it down in another.
For today’s comms pros, the influencer economy is hugely complex and requires careful navigation to avoid missteps - that’s where Wildfire comes in.
With years of experience running successful influencer campaigns for some of the most prolific consumer tech brands, Megan Hill reveals her top tips for working with influencers and getting the best out of your budget.
Do I need an influencer campaign?
As the influencer economy continues to grow in power, there’s a temptation to push more budget towards influencer campaigns. While they certainly have their place, I’d say you need to look carefully at your objectives to decide if influencer activity aligns with what you want to achieve.
If you are looking to raise general brand awareness or drive traffic to a website, then influencers could be a really good avenue to achieve these objectives.
But while influencers can absolutely cover technical detail of a product, don’t expect your average lifestyle influencer to be able to deep dive into tech.
Ultimately, having a clear objective is essential to any campaign as everything from influencer selection to post content flows out from here.
How can I find tech influencers for my brand?
Whatever the focus of your campaign, choosing the right influencers to work with is step one on the road to success. But don’t let the figures fool you. Follower count and reach—although important—are not the most important consideration here.
The key is to choose influencers whose interests align with your brand.
Look for those who have expressed interest in your products or whose content resonates with your brand values. This not only increases the likelihood of a successful partnership, it also lends credibility to the campaign because your sponsored content will fit more organically with the influencer’s own posts.
When looking for the right influencers good old-fashioned Google can help, but this can take a long time and the lists you tend to find are generic and not regularly updated. Instead, I recommend using an influencer marketing platform (Klear does a great one and it’s integrated with popular comms tool, Meltwater).
Should I use an influencer platform?
Using an influencer marketing platform will allow you to search by topics, like ‘technology’ or ‘parenting’, to shorten your list of potential collaborators. You can then search to a more granular level, so if you were looking for someone who does headphone reviews you can search their content from the last month to a year and see whether this product is something they review regularly on their channel.
This filtering is a very important step in narrowing your list to only those who are interested in your product and relevant to your brand — just because someone does tech reviews, doesn’t mean they review all tech.
Influencer marketing platforms can also track which companies influencers have worked with recently, saving you the hassle of reaching out just to find out they have an ongoing contract with a competing brand.
Of course, these platforms can only help you shorten your list to the best possible people. You still need to go through their recent content, bios and other platforms to get a sense of whether they align well with your brand and what you stand for.
Don’t over-rely on reach when filtering. Of course, you want the influencers you choose to have significant fan bases, but you also want that fan base to interact with your content. Relevance is key. Having an influencer with millions of followers post about something totally out of sync with their normal content will not generate the positive brand awareness you want — in fact, it could do the opposite.
What is the best way to contact influencers in 2024?
Once you’ve selected the influencers you feel are right for the campaign, it’s time to see if the feeling is mutual.
Most will have email addresses for themselves or their agent in their social media bios or in their link tree — using the details direct from their social media/link tree is the best way to know you are reaching out to the right person.
When it comes to the initial approach, one big mistake people tend to make is sending a full brief straight away. You certainly want to be clear what your campaign is, the objectives you have in mind, and the kind of content you are looking for. But to send a full brief is presumptuous — you don’t even know if the influencer is keen to work with you yet.
Instead, use your initial outreach to explain why you feel the influencer is a good fit. Highlight certain pieces of their content that grabbed your attention or talk about why you like their style.
You also need to be clear about the content you want them to create — are you looking for a YouTube review, a creative reel, a TikTok piece to camera?
This personalised approach helps the influencer, or their agent, discern if this campaign is something they want to pursue.
It’s also key to take a collaborative approach, even if you have set content in mind. Let them know you are not just open to their ideas, but that you actively want them. They know best what works for their audience, and their advice should always be listened to.
Finally, use this initial outreach to get an idea of pricing. My advice would be to request a media pack so you can see if the budgets align before going any further.
How much do influencers charge in 2024?
Pay can be a contentious issue when it comes to influencers because costs can fluctuate widely. Ultimately, influencers and agents charge based on what they believe their worth is to you.
With that in mind, my core piece of advice would be don’t underestimate the influencer economy. What I mean by this is don’t forget the fact that influencing is often someone’s full time job — making content takes time and energy and it isn’t something anyone should be expected to do for free or virtually no pay.
There have been far too many brands called out for asking for a weeks’ worth of work for a few hundred pounds — or worse still, in exchange for a product with a value of less than £50. Don’t be one of them.
That isn’t to say that working on a gifted basis is not possible but be realistic about the value of the product you are willing to send. That’s not just the product price but the value it may hold to the influencer and what you are asking for in return. If you wouldn’t do a weeks-worth of work in exchange for a new moisturiser, don’t ask someone else to.
There is often the possibility to negotiate and if you have selected the influencers well then they are more likely to be flexible with costs (as hopefully they want to work with you too) — but be sensible. If an influencer tells you that one post costs £10k and you have £2.5k to spend, move on and adapt your expectations on the level of influencer you can afford.
How do I write a brief for an influencer?
Once you have your influencers interested in your campaign and you know that you are roughly aligned in terms of budget, it’s time to send over the full brief.
The brief gives the overall picture to the influencer and can be a huge factor in the success of your campaign. A clear brief will result in good content that reaches your objectives. A bad brief can leave you with content that doesn’t hit the mark.
Briefs can be sent over email or discussed on a call. If you have a clear outline as to what you want for the campaign (specific storyboard for content for example) then email is fine.
If you want to work more collaboratively with the influencer in terms of giving them free reign over what the content looks like, then a call gives you more opportunity for collaboration - just make sure you follow up with a written brief afterwards to confirm what you’ve discussed.
Whichever approach you take, a brief should include: a campaign overview including the aims and audience; the deliverables expected; the anticipated cost; any key messages you want them to promote; product specifications they need to know or communicate to their audience; and finally, the timescale.
Should I create a contract for influencers?
The most important thing is there needs to be some kind of written agreement of the deliverables, cost and timescale. It may be that you are happy to just have this on email rather than draw up a more official contract.
But if you are taking the email route, make sure you are very specific. Don’t just rely on a friendly email chain as evidence that an agreement was made. Send another email outlining all of the details and specifically ask the agent or influencer to agree to the terms in writing in their response.
Of course, email communication doesn’t cover you legally to the level a contract would, so if you’re working with influencers regularly I recommend having your own template drawn up by a lawyer and then change the particulars for each influencer.
Some agents will have their own standard contract that they want you to use. If so, be sure to check there aren’t any stipulations on you that you aren’t expecting. For example, a demand to pay for props or provide insurance. If you’re working with someone else’s contract always read it carefully and have your legal department check it too.
How can I measure the success of an influencer relations campaign?
There are lots of factors at play when it comes to influencer campaigns - from reach to engagement, brand awareness to message penetration - and success of your campaign can be measured in a multitude of ways.
But ultimately, a campaign is successful if it meets your objectives. So, if you wanted to drive brand awareness, look at achieving a high reach with your target audience. If you wanted message penetration, you’d want to analyse the comments section and see how many people resonated with the message. If you were looking for website traffic, measure trackable links in posts and how many click-throughs you achieved.
Influencer management platforms can also help you capture and report on influencer campaigns, as well as finding and contacting influencers. Some of my favourites for ease of use and level of insight are Klear, Traackr, and CreatorIQ.
Or, if you are not ready to invest in monthly fee quite yet, there are some platforms that allow you to use a credit system. A great example is InfluencerMarketing. AI, which will let you find influencers using their search credit system, giving you a good idea of core stats like demographics, reach and engagement without a standing financial commitment.
What else can you tell me about influencer campaigns?
Plenty, but why cram it into a blog post when we could set up a call?
If you’re interested in running an influencer campaign for your client and are looking for a strategic, creative PR agency to boost your results, set up a call with us today.