Influencers in marketing and sales – How to ensure successful collaboration with influencers

Influencer marketing is a growing business worth billions: Today, more than 75% of all brand marketers use influencers in marketing campaigns, and budgets continue to increase (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2022). Therefore, it is important to find a strategic entry point and create a system that benefits customers, influencers, and companies. This article demonstrates what is particularly important in your collaboration with influencers and what a good influencer management tool must do to best support you in all marketing processes.

Key points

• Influencer marketing can help companies gain a foothold in social media faster and easier.
• Behind every successful collaboration with influencers is a good organization. Additionally, companies use influencer management tools that handle networking, campaign planning and success analysis.
• Influencer relationship management is an essential part of successful collaborations.

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The importance of influencer marketing and its benefits for companies

Using influencers in marketing and sales provides countless benefits, especially against the background of social commerce development. Lead generation on social platforms requires strong customer loyalty – and this is where influencers come into play. Because they are, to put it simply, the personal level between you as a company and your end customers on social media.

Collaborating with influencers provides the following benefits to you:

• Increased reach through the influencer’s popularity/leverage;
• Authentic content;
• Increased brand awareness;
• A higher level of engagement;
• Stronger customer relationships;
• Development of new channels.

So, how do you organize your collaboration with influencers efficiently? Think of influencers as customers – and use the right influencer management tool to set up the joint effort.

What the best influencer management tools can do

Having the right influencer management tool is the key to entry into influencer marketing. While the focus and functions of these tools may vary, influencer management software fundamentally performs the following tasks: You look for the right influencer using its database function and network with suitable candidates. You design the influencer journey based on the customer journey, for example, with a customer experience platform such as BSI, and create an influencer activity portfolio. You manage and evaluate your campaigns and closely monitor their success through reporting.

Clean reporting has a top priority in influencer management. It is the only way to assess the performance of influencer campaigns and understand, for example, which influencer has used her discount code to market to what customer and how much revenue was generated in the process. Therefore, efficient, perfectly customized influencer management benefits all parties involved: end customers, influencers, their audience and finally, the company.

A practical example for using influencers in marketing: The influencer campaign process

Tim is a customer at your shoe store. In a fashion influencer’s Instagram story in his city, he discovered dress shoes you sell at your store. Now, Tim wants to use the influencer’s discount code to buy the shoes from you.

What all had to happen before Tim redeemed the code with you? A typical campaign process looks like this:

1. Target and target group definition: You determine a specific marketing goal for your campaign, for example, a higher conversion rate for dress shoes, and define the audience you want to reach.
2. Setting the KPIs: You specify your campaign success factors and KPIs, such as the number of story views or the use of discount codes.
3. Campaign strategy and idea: You select a suitable strategy, for example, a story campaign, and develop a creative idea to promote its content (which is shoes).
4. Influencer selection: You determine suitable influencers that fit your target group and brand.
5. Influencer request: You contact the influencers and send instructions about the campaign with all important key data, including format, content, hashtags, links and wording.
6. Campaign launch: If collaboration comes about, the influencer receives the product (the shoes) and the discount code and starts the campaign at a specified time.
7. Success measurement: KPI analysis and reporting are performed entirely via the influencer management tool, which allows you to see automatically how successful the campaign is.

Collaborating with influencers – What to pay attention to

Finally, we have some practical, brief implementation tips for working with influencers:

• While an influencer’s reach is not critical, the fit between the influencer and your brand is important (Onalytica, 2020).
• Influencers are customers, too: Respond to their requests and offer attractive quid pro quos.
• The clearer and more detailed the instructions, the less time is needed for coordinating the process.
• Give influencers enough freedom to create content. They should always have room for their own style.
• An influencer management tool facilitates the communication and coordination of the various activities.

Conclusion: The key to successful influencer marketing is its management

Influencer marketing is an indispensable part of today’s social media era. It increases the reach, facilitates targeted engagement and strengthens the bond between customers and companies. However, it takes sophisticated influencer management to manage collaborations and campaigns efficiently. The good news is that the entire process is easier than expected with a suitable software solution.