Social media marketing is no easy fit. But with the right approach, you can achieve your goals. Instagram influencer marketing has quickly become a powerful way to gain followers on Instagram and to market products and services on the platforms.
What is Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing where brands or businesses pay individuals with large audiences and engagement to promote their products and services. These individuals are called influencers because they can influence their audience into doing what they want.
Social media influencer marketing started with celebrities endorsing the products and services of different businesses. However, in a recent turn of events, more and more people have created a niche for themselves and taken up the role of Influencers without charging as high as most celebrities do.
Influencer marketing is a great way to reach the right audience and drive organic traffic to your website or social media page quickly. Over the past few years, influencer marketing has become a common practice and has recorded exponential growth.
In fact, between 2019 to 2022, the percentage of US marketers adopting this form of marketing grew from 54.4% to 72.5%.
On the other hand, studies have shown that Instagram is the most widely used and will continue on that trend until 2025.
Types of Instagram Influencers
When we talk about Instagram influencers, we think about top celebrities with millions of followers. However, this is only sometimes the case. There are different categories of Instagram influencers based on how many followers they have.
Nano Influencers
Nano influencers have a few thousand followers, usually between 10,000 and fewer.
Micro-Influencers
Micro-influencers have followers ranging between 10,000 and 100,000 on Instagram.
Macro Influencers
Macro influencers on Instagram have a larger audience than nano and micro-influencer and can record up to 1 million followers.
Mega Influencers
Mega influencers have millions of followers on Instagram and other social media platforms. For instance, the famous TikTok influencer Khaby Lame has about 80m followers on Instagram.
How To Get Instagram Influencer Marketing Right
Do you want to try out social media influencer marketing but don’t know where to begin? Here are some tips to help you get started.
1. Set Your Goal
Reaching a larger target audience should be your topmost priority when using influencer marketing. Of course, there will always be something to sell to your audience. You can do that after gaining their trust.
Keep your goals simple and measurable, so you can determine how effective your influencer marketing strategy is.
2. Understand Your Audience
Instagram has over 1 billion active monthly users, made up of people who come online for different purposes. Therefore, not everyone will be your audience. Your goals, objectives, product, and services will help you define your audience.
To further understand your audience, you can create a persona of who they are while considering factors such as their economic class, marital status, gender, age, likes, dislikes, and many more.
After creating, a close-lookalike audience, create also a persona of the type of influencer you wish to have on your team.
3. Find The Right Instagram Influencer
When you decide to use Instagram influencer programs, one vital step to take is finding the right influencers. There are millions of influencers on Instagram with varying sizes of followers and under separate niches. Finding the best fit for your business will require some active measures.
You can compile a list of prospective influencers and observe their activities and engagement in order to make an informed decision. There are several helpful tools for finding Instagram influencers such as Post for Rent, Upfluence, Influence.co, HyperAuditor, Aspire (formerly AspireIQ), Dovetale, Tweetdeck, and more.
If you are a small or medium-scale business, working with mega influencers, the likes of Leo Messi, Khaby Lame, The Kardashians, The Rock, and others may be beyond your budget. The cost for Instagram influencers often depends on who they are and how much their followers trust them.
Micro and macro influencers on Instagram can get you the result you desire. Just pick out the influencers within your niche and reach out to them.
4. Reach Out To The Influencer and Form a Partnership
Once you have decided which influencer you believe is the best fit for your business, the next step is to reach out to them. You can reach out to the influencer via direct messaging on social media or the email address displayed on their profile bio.
Typically, contacting influencers through emails is faster and more professional. So I suggest you take this route than the former.
However, before reaching out, develop a content brief stating the type of content you need and the aesthetics you expect. You can do this by creating a moodboard with tools like Collato, HolaBrief, Design Pilot, and more.
That does not mean you should take away creative freedom from the influencer. Give your influencer the freedom to tap into their creative juice on each project in order to deliver the best result.
5. Discuss terms of payment and Rate
When it comes to paying influencers, there are many factors to consider. They may include the size of the audience, the status of the influencer (celebrity or not), and the type of content you want. Keep in mind that they will mostly be rendering multiple services from content creation to promotion, and whatnot.
After considering all these variables, then you can come to a reasonable decision about what you intend to pay and negotiate accordingly. Moving forward, one other thing to address is the terms of payment. Do you pay upfront, by installment, or at the end of the project? It is vital to get these right from the get-go to prevent avoidable issues from coming up in the near future.
6. Measure Your Results
When setting up your influencer campaign, it is good practice to put in place measurable metrics so you can see what is working and what is not. You can assign affiliate links to each influencer and track the impact they have on your page. A tool like Bitly helps you create unique links for each influencer or affiliate.
As you measure your results, focus on vital metrics like click-through rates, lead conversion, page traffic, and more. Comments and likes are not all that important as they add no real value to your business.
Conclusion
Now that you know what Instagram influencer marketing is all about and how to get it right. You can begin to utilize it for better social media marketing. If you need help getting your business out there, we can help you reach your goals.
