From Likes to Leads: How we mastered Influencer Marketing (2/2)

In the earlier post, I talked about the process of finding the right influencer and ways to look at maximizing the return on investment for your influencer campaign. In this post, I will conclude on how we solved the challenges around influencer and campaign matchmaking, our successful content collaboration efforts, and the implementation of our performance tracking mechanisms. Let’s dive in!

?? Matching the right influencer to the right campaign ??

Understanding the demographics of your target audience is fundamental in order to get success in influencer marketing. This involves gathering detailed information about the influencer's channel and then deciding if it is worthwhile to collaborate. Here are a few things to remember:

Define your campaign objective: Think through on what you want to drive (TOFU: brand awareness, MOFU: Signups, BOFU: Revenue) from this campaign. This will help you set the right expectations with the team as well. Based on my experience, influencers can be divided into 7 broad categories (nano influencers need to be divided into 2 sub-categories because of the high volume). It looks something like this:

• If the objective is lead generation, it is best to stick to the last four segments. Based on my experience, the cost of user acquisition shoots up very fast when working with the Mega and Super Elite influencers (ofcourse, there are exceptions). Use Mega and Super Elite influencers if you are planning to build awareness and authority but don’t expect very good lead generation.
• The CTR spectrum tends to broaden when we go down the segments. This occurs because with a more targeted audience, there's a higher likelihood of extracting greater value from campaigns. We've encountered instances where CTR % reached as high as 40%! However, in such scenarios, the total views might be limited to a few thousand, resulting in comparatively lower revenue or a smaller number of paying customers from these influencers. Nevertheless, these figures are sufficient to yield a return on investment.

Understand the influencers’ channel: Request the influencer to share the following screenshot from their creator dashboard. This will give you insights on the audience demographics.

Check the videos on the channel to understand the following:

• What is the average views from the last 6 videos? It is highly likely that your collaboration video will also get similar views.
• Check the kind of content being created. It should resonate with the brand. Remember the audience is coming to the channel with some objective (be it education or entertainment). They will not register your message if doesn’t resonate with their feelings.
• Remember that video posts are not the only place to advertise your products/services. In the case of YouTube, you have the Head banner on the channel (good option), an option to post in the community section (not that great but not bad either), and make the video a “Featured Video” (extremely good option).

?? Expectation management between the brand and the influencer ??

We all want a win-win situation when we enter into a partnership. The influencer wants regular business and on-time payments from the brand, while you want ROI and adherence to brand guidelines. So a well-defined agreement and a good communication channel between the brand and influencer is super important.?

In my experience, dividing the influencer marketing team into separate hunting and farming teams isn't recommended. It's more effective to have the team member responsible for onboarding the influencer also act as the point of contact (POC) in the long term. This person should oversee everything from content creation to ensuring timely delivery and making on-time payments. The POC should also assess the performance of both the content and the channel, deciding whether to continue collaborating with the influencer in the future.

To ensure proper content is created in a timely fashion, certain guidelines should be set beforehand:

• Setup a content calendar with the influencer. Fix the dates when you want the content to go live. Fix the number of dedicated and integrated videos that you want to do with them and the commercials for the same.
• Give a brief about what you want the influencer to say in the video every time and well in advance. If you are doing a 90 second integration video, keep the content crisp and to the point. You can explain things in more detail in a dedicated video.?
• Try to keep the integration within the first 25% of the full video or in the first 4 minutes (whichever is earlier). The audience drop-off is higher after that.
• It's best if you can keep the integration in a staggered manner across the video. Talk about the collaboration in the beginning, then bring in the main integration later in the video.?
• The creator should spell out things properly and not make errors (I have seen most influencers spell the brand incorrectly). They should clearly provide the user to click on a link to go check out your platform after the video ends. Most of this content is watched on mobile, so links should be placed in video description and/or mentioned in the comments section (pinned). It is the responsibility of the brand POC to ensure these things are maintained.
• Support the influencers with assets around the brand, such as app walkthrough videos, gifs, static posters, etc. These will help the creator in making content faster. However, don’t force the creator to do everything, rather work with them on this. Creators know best what their audience wants so they also provide very useful suggestions.
• The POC should always check the content before the creator posts it on their channel. If there are minor edits, inform the creator to get them corrected. Check once again when the video is live to see if the links are working fine. Also, help increase the reach by sharing it in your network.

?? Accurately measuring the metrics and ROI from the campaign ??

Accurately measuring the performance of every channel, and every content will allow you to scale operations and invest in this channel in a correct manner. It was our data-driven decision-making which allowed us to scale this channel from a monthly spend of Rs. 12 lakhs to a peak monthly spend of Rs. 3.35 crores! Here’s how we did it:

Set clear objectives and define KPIs for each objective: I have seen influencer marketing teams focus on views, engagement and shares to judge campaign efficacy. Sure that helps for generating brand awareness. But for driving users and revenue, you need a growth engine. In that case, the top of the funnel for influencer marketing channel will largely look like this (Views to signups):

Each leg of the funnel can be measured allowing you to take decisions accordingly. We used the following tools for measuring our channel performance:

• UTM link builder: We used Rebrandly. Very good as it allows you to tag every video individually and gives you insights into where the audience is coming from.
• Mixpanel/Metabase: Very good tools to have. Having Mixpanel allows you to track where the audience is coming from (when complemented with any UTM link builder) and what the audience is doing on the platform. Mixpanel will help you create a detailed analysis of audience quality from every channel, content performance across different influencer sets, and many more. If you have a limited budget, then Metabase is a good option.

• Google Sheets: Extremely versatile for daily reporting purposes. Most of your work is done by Mixpanel, Metabase and Rebrandly. Just download the CSV and upload it on Google Sheets to make your reports. Here’s one example of a report that we used on a daily basis to check overall performance:

In conclusion, building a successful influencer marketing team and running campaigns which give good ROI will require in-depth planning, a genuine partnership between brands and influencers, and a data-driven approach to running the channel.?

Stay adaptive, be open to feedback (check what the audience is saying in the comments section of the videos), and continuously evaluate your campaigns to refine your approach. Remember, influencer marketing is not just about numbers; it's about building authentic connections and trust with your audience.

With these principles in mind, your influencer marketing efforts are poised for success, driving brand awareness, customer engagement, and ultimately, business growth.