“Marketing-induced consumer-to-consumer word of mouth generates more than twice the sales of paid advertising.” – McKinsey

Influencer marketing is the next big thing in advertising. With the surge of social media use in the past decade, more and more people are getting their information through social media as opposed to traditional forms of news outlets. Information travels rapidly and to a wider audience allowing you to maximize your reach for your brand and product.

Finding an influencer who can best suit your product and reach your desired audience is key. Influencers provide the trust that you can’t buy in normal advertising, allowing the viewers to actually pay attention instead of tuning them out.

Match content to the influencer.

Find an influencer who has a following that will appeal to your product/brand. While it may seem better to work with an influencer who has a large following, a smaller audience may be more dedicated and therefore receive more views. Aside from matching the content to the desired audience, find someone who actually enjoys your product/brand. By doing this, the influencer is more likely to promote the brand in a more valuable way. If the influencer enjoys it, their audience is more likely to enjoy it.

Communicate your expectations.

Don’t wait until it’s too late to tell your influencer what you want to get out of the campaign. Let them know your intended target audience, your expected ROI, timeframe, output, content, and what you hope to achieve at the end of the campaign to make sure you are on the same page. Letting the influencer know your expectations at the start will prevent any complications or miscommunications throughout the campaign.

Creativity: give them freedom.

Influencers are naturally creative people, otherwise they wouldn’t be where they are. Influencers know their following and know what they like and what they don’t like. Focus on giving suggestions rather than giving demands. People aren’t checking social media or blogs to see advertisements, so allowing the influencer to integrate the product into something they do daily is more likely to have a greater reach to their followers. You chose this influencer because you liked their style and content, changing that would be illogical. Give the influencer your idea and ask them how it fits into their content.

Build your relationship.

Don’t think of this as just a business transaction. It’s important to show interest in the influencer. They are more likely to be interested in working with you if you show interest in working with them. Focus on making it a symbiotic relationship. Do your research on the influencer and the kind of content that they produce and engage in their content. Not only will this benefit you in your current campaign with the influencer, but it will benefit you in the long-run by keeping your connection with them as well as building connections to other influencers they may know.

Track your results.

This allows you to see what worked and what didn’t and if the influencer you thought would be the best in promoting the product actually was the best choice. It’s important to compare numbers on how many people the influencer could reach versus how many people the influencer did reach, not only for the current campaign but for measures in the future. By tracking this you can also track the engagement; how many people took action and actually visited the site, bought the product, etc. Communicate this with your influencer and discuss how it worked or didn’t and how you can continue to work in the future.