Experiments with Influencer Marketing : Top 7 Learnings

Although the term influencer marketing is currently generating buzz, businesses have long utilised it as a strategy of using people with ‘social influence’ to spread the word and gain credibility for their product or service.?

Now, Instagram influencers are the most popular. However, since the early days of the internet, bloggers and later YouTube vloggers have been enlisted to promote, collaborate, and create content for brands.

Influencer marketing today has become a necessary strategy for most brands today. This I believe has happened due to two reasons?

• Instagram is becoming an increasingly competitive space, making it very challenging for brands to gain organic reach?
• Ads are getting more expense, especially if you are targeting tier 1 urban audience.?

That said, there is still a scarcity of good resources on influencer marketing on the internet. When I executed my first campaign in 2022, information and the ecosystem were almost nonexistent.? In my initial campaign for Desh Keyboard, I had to spend hours scrolling social media to find influencers,? manually calculate average engagement rates and rely on 3-4 Excel sheets to track their outreach. It was a very laborious process.?

Fast forward to 2024, and I'm delighted to witness the growth of the ecosystem. There are multiple influencer marketing platforms and automation tools available today. These tools can assist in finding influencers, determining average engagement rates, automating outreach, and managing campaigns.

So, here are a few learnings on Influencer Marketing?

1. Micro, Macro, or Nano Influencers?

Choosing the type of influencer depends on your campaign goal and budget. Is your goal direct product sales or brand awareness? What’s your total budget? Are you doing a free giveaway or paying influencers to promote your brand???

The sweet spot for maximum ROI is micro-influencers, those with around 20k-50k followers experiencing rapid growth, say an engagement rate of around 10%.

2. Leverage your Community

During the promotions for Bloom in Green Festival, we identified Nano influencers within our follower community—individuals with followers ranging from 10-20k. They were not only excited and aware of the brand but also willing to promote it in return for discounted festival tickets. Their promotions were authentic and required minimal push from us. So choosing influencers within your community is a great strategy if you are an already popular brand.?

3. Go for Long-Term Collaborations

One-time posts from influencers might be hit-or-miss. I got the best ROI for long-term collaborations, involving a series of stories and posts over at least one month.

4. Lookout for Genuine Promotions

Engagement rate is a major factor in choosing an influencer. But when evaluating influencers, don’t just look at their average engagement rate, consider their engagement rate for sponsored videos as well. Assess whether they are genuinely promoting the product or merely mentioning it for the sake of it.

5. Build a Connection with the Influencer?

Influencer marketing is about finding that brand-influencer fit. Would the certain ‘influencer personality’ like your brand? Will followers believe it if they sell it?

Communicate your brand clearly and build that connection with the influencer. Then go on to inspire them to create authentic and creative content that will bring the impact needed for your brand.?

6. Tracking ROI

How I wish more influencers work on an affiliate basis and take percentage cuts from the sale! But sadly, most influencers don't function that way. And it makes sense as influencers bring in the value of brand awareness as well. Tracking the ROI from a campaign is thus tricky. Here are three methods that can help?

???- Coupon Code: Ask influencers to promote customized coupon codes and measure their usage during the campaign period.

???- Brand Search: Examine how many searches your brand received on the day the influencer gave a shoutout.

???- Use Impulze.ai : This tool connects to influencers' profiles, allowing you to view post views and engagement rates without depending on the influencer to send the data. This brings more transparency to the process.?

7. Influencer Pricing

Determining influencer pricing remains the trickiest aspect of influencer marketing. I've observed influencers in the same domain, with similar engagement rates and followers, quoting prices with over 5X differences. Would love it if somebody built a database of influencer pricing or an influencer price calculator would be highly beneficial.

I'd also like to mention the tool Quoraz , which has a substantial Indian database.

Hey, I'm Greeshma, a growth marketing professional. I can help your brand acquire leads and customers quickly. DM me, let's talk!