How do you align your influencer and advocate strategy with your overall marketing and communication goals?

1 Define your objectives

Before you start looking for influencers and advocates, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your strategy. Do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, drive sales, or improve customer retention? How will you measure your success? What are your key performance indicators (KPIs)? Having specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) objectives will help you align your influencer and advocate strategy with your overall marketing and communication goals.

2 Identify your target audience

Your influencer and advocate strategy should be tailored to your target audience. Who are they? What are their pain points, needs, interests, and preferences? Where do they hang out online? What kind of content do they consume and share? How do they make buying decisions? By understanding your target audience, you can find the right influencers and advocates who can connect with them, influence them, and inspire them to take action.

3 Choose your platforms and channels

Depending on your objectives and target audience, you may want to leverage different platforms and channels for your influencer and advocate strategy. For example, if you want to reach a younger demographic, you may want to focus on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. If you want to target professionals or B2B customers, you may want to use LinkedIn, Twitter, or podcasts. You also need to consider the format and tone of your content, whether it is video, blog, podcast, webinar, or social media post.

4 Find and engage your influencers and advocates

Once you have defined your objectives, target audience, and platforms, you can start looking for influencers and advocates who can help you achieve your goals. Influencers are people who have a large and engaged following on social media or other channels, and who can sway their audience's opinions and behaviors. Advocates are people who already love your brand, product, or service, and who can spread positive word-of-mouth and referrals. You can use tools like BuzzSumo, Traackr, or Upfluence to find relevant influencers, or look for existing customers, employees, or partners who can be your advocates. You need to engage your influencers and advocates in a meaningful and authentic way, by building relationships, offering value, and respecting their creative freedom.

5 Track and optimize your results

The last step of aligning your influencer and advocate strategy with your overall marketing and communication goals is to track and optimize your results. You need to monitor and measure the performance of your campaigns, using the KPIs you defined earlier. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Hootsuite, or Sprout Social to track metrics like reach, impressions, engagement, clicks, conversions, or revenue. You also need to analyze the feedback and sentiment of your audience, using tools like Mention, Brandwatch, or Talkwalker. Based on your data and insights, you can optimize your strategy by adjusting your objectives, audience, platforms, influencers, advocates, or content.

6 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?