How do you integrate influencer marketing with other channels and strategies in your marketing mix?

1 Define your objectives and KPIs

Before you begin your influencer marketing and advocacy campaigns, it is essential to define your objectives and key performance indicators \(KPIs\). What are you hoping to accomplish with these strategies? How will you measure your success and ROI? How do they fit into your overall marketing goals and strategy? Common objectives and KPIs for influencer marketing and advocacy include brand awareness, such as reach, impressions, mentions, engagement, sentiment, share of voice, and brand recall. Lead generation objectives include clicks, referrals, traffic, downloads, sign-ups, and subscriptions. Conversion objectives include sales, revenue, and orders. Lastly, loyalty objectives include retention, repeat purchases, referrals, reviews, ratings, and testimonials. To ensure success, it is important to consider these objectives and KPIs when planning and executing your campaigns.

2 Identify and engage your influencers and advocates

The next step in your journey is to identify and engage with influencers and advocates. Influencers are people who have a large and devoted following on social media, blogs, podcasts, or other platforms, and who can influence the opinions and behaviors of their audience. Advocates, on the other hand, are people who already have a positive relationship with your brand, such as customers, employees, or partners, and who can spread the word about your brand to their networks. To identify and engage with these influencers and advocates, you need to research your target audience and niche to find out who they follow, trust, and listen to, as well as their pain points, needs, preferences, and interests. Additionally, you need to segment and prioritize your influencers and advocates based on their relevance, reach, resonance, and relationship with your brand, and focus on the ones who can deliver the most value and impact for your objectives. Furthermore, you should reach out and build relationships with your influencers and advocates through their preferred channels, offer them value and incentives, and show them appreciation and recognition. Avoid being pushy, spammy, or transactional, and aim for long-term collaboration and mutual benefit. Finally, co-create and distribute content with your influencers and advocates that showcases your brand, products, or services, and resonates with their audience. Provide them with guidelines, resources, and support, but also allow them to use their own voice, style, and creativity. Distribute the content across multiple channels and platforms, and optimize it for SEO, social media, and mobile.

3 Monitor and optimize your performance

To ensure optimal performance, it is essential to monitor and optimize your results. This involves tracking and analyzing data and metrics to evaluate your ROI, identify areas of improvement, and uncover opportunities for growth. To do this, you should set up and use tools and platforms such as Google Analytics, social media analytics, and influencer marketing platforms. Additionally, you should compare and benchmark your results against your objectives, KPIs, and industry standards. Furthermore, testing and experimenting with different variables, such as influencers, content, channels, and formats, can help you determine what works best. Finally, learning from successes and failures and using insights and feedback to improve your strategy and tactics will help you scale and grow your influencer marketing and advocacy efforts.

4 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?