Influencer marketing is a powerful way to reach your target audience, build trust, and increase conversions. But it can also be costly and time-consuming, especially if you have a limited budget and resources. How can you make the most of your influencer marketing efforts without breaking the bank? Here are some tips to help you optimize your reach and ROI.
Before you start looking for influencers, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your campaign. Do you want to raise awareness, generate leads, drive sales, or something else? Your goals will help you determine your budget, metrics, and strategy. For example, if you want to boost brand awareness, you might focus on reaching a large and relevant audience with engaging content. If you want to generate leads, you might offer incentives or discounts to encourage sign-ups or referrals.
OK close your eyes and picture this: YOU yes YOU are the maestro of a budget-friendly influencer marketing symphony. You spark a blunt, stand up and start conducting thorough research to find micro-influencers whose bangin’ tunes resonate with your audience. Don’t just think outside the box, chuck that box in the recycling (You won’t be needing it) – go on to consider unconventional influencers like pets and every marmite person out there! The sweetest melodies, licks and loops come from the smallest stages. Unleash your creativity and make your limited budget rock out with its cock out ! ??
With a limited budget, I'd focus on micro-influencers who have highly engaged niche audiences relevant to my brand. Leveraging their authenticity and smaller follower count, we can negotiate more affordable rates while still reaching a highly targeted audience. Also, I'd prioritize partnerships with influencers open to bartering or affiliate arrangements to stretch our budget further and maximize reach within our target demographics.
If you're on a limited budget, you need to identify ONE goal you'd like to achieve with an influencer campaign. It's essential you identify where in your overall marketing strategy this campaign will fit and where in the customer journey you will be reaching your audience with this campaign. With a limited budget, you'll want to focus on brand awareness most likely and track metrics like impressions, CPM and engagement rate.
The next step is to find influencers who align with your brand, goals, and audience. You don't need to work with celebrities or mega-influencers who charge high fees and may not have a loyal or engaged following. Instead, you can look for micro-influencers or nano-influencers who have smaller but more niche and passionate audiences. These influencers are more likely to have authentic relationships with their followers, higher engagement rates, and lower costs. You can use tools like BuzzSumo, Upfluence, or AspireIQ to search for influencers based on keywords, topics, location, and other criteria.
The most obvious thing in my mind is for you to become the influence marketer for your own brand and then for others. This becomes the big pivot to huge success.
I saw statistics that showed the highest amount of engagement came from influencers who had up to 100k followers. So don't focus on big influencers, focus on ones that have a strong voice and have a lot of interaction with their audience (genuine interaction).
Depending on how limited your budget is, you'll want to look to micro-influencers OR even consider content creators vs influencers depending on your goals. With content creators, their following is not usually significant and the purpose of using them is typically to source well-crafted UGC content that you can then use in paid ads for the brand. Content creators typically have skills and experience in putting together better content than the average influencer. This can be extremely cost effective and if you have someone skilled in running paid ads, you can reach your goals quickly with this tactic. People on social want to see ads that showcase people like them in a socially native content format, not overly produced, product shots.
Once you have identified potential influencers, you need to reach out to them and propose a collaboration that benefits both parties. You can offer them compensation, free products, discounts, exposure, or other perks in exchange for their promotion of your brand. You also need to communicate your expectations, guidelines, and deliverables clearly and respectfully. For example, you can specify the type, frequency, and duration of content you want them to create, the hashtags, links, or tags you want them to use, and the metrics you want them to track and report.
One of the advantages of working with influencers is that they can create high-quality and original content for your brand. You can leverage this content to extend your reach and influence beyond their platforms. You can repurpose and amplify their content by sharing it on your own social media channels, website, blog, email, or ads. You can also encourage your followers, customers, or employees to share it with their networks. This way, you can increase your brand awareness, credibility, and social proof.
You can repurpose the content into different formats, such as testimonials on your website or engaging posts for your email newsletters, and even boost its visibility further by using it in your paid advertising campaigns. Encouraging your community to share this influencer-generated content can significantly increase your brand awareness, credibility, and social proof, making the most of your influencer marketing efforts with a limited budget. Working with Influencers on platforms like Instagram and sharing their high-quality content across various channels, including YouTube, your brand's social media, and website, is a smart strategy to amplify your reach in limited budget and a social media manager knows very well how to do that!
The last step is to measure and optimize the results of your influencer marketing campaign. You need to track and analyze the data that reflects your goals and KPIs. For example, you can monitor the reach, impressions, views, clicks, likes, comments, shares, conversions, or revenue generated by your campaign. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Instagram Insights, or influencer marketing platforms to collect and visualize the data. You can also ask for feedback from your influencers and your audience to improve your campaign. You can use the insights to identify what works and what doesn't, and adjust your budget, strategy, and tactics accordingly.
Don't be afraid to think outside the box when you're working with a limited budget. The use of content creators instead of influencers can help you generate exceptionally UGC content that can be used in your paid social strategy on various social platforms to effectively reach your KPIs.