In today’s digital age, social media has gone beyond personal use. Brands are now using social platforms to connect with their target audience and one of the most effective marketing tools is the influencer campaign.
Business Insider estimates that by 2022, brands will spend up to $15 billion on influencer campaigns. Our rapidly growing Digital BizCom division has been at the forefront of this trend for several years and recently completed yet another successful influencer campaign with East Coast staple, Friendly’s, capitalizing on the launch of their limited-time Fan Favorites menu.
Despite the growing popularity of such campaigns, a lot of confusion remains about what it takes to create a successful campaign. Here are the most important make-or-break steps in designing an influencer campaign that will deliver the results you want.
Set clear goals
The first step in executing a successful influencer campaign is understanding setting specific, measurable goals.
In the Friendly’s case, for example, we worked with their marketing team to identify how many million impressions would qualify as a success and we set a goal of generating that many impressions across their target consumer markets.
To hit our goal, we knew that a top priority would be to find influencers along the East Coast with large followings and high engagement rates. Since the focus of the campaign was to promote Friendly’s Fan Favorites menu and the brand’s online ordering option in order to drive customers to try these new menu items, we made it an objective to focus our search on two types of influencers:
- foodies that could capture mouth-watering photos and videos of the new menu items, and
- lifestyle and mommy bloggers that would tie back to Friendly’s family-oriented brand.
This criteria gave us a good basis to start finding influencers.
Find the right influencers
Once you have clear campaign goals and objectives, the next step is to find the right influencers. With nearly everyone claiming to be an influencer these days, it is crucial to find influencers that fit your brand while also making sure they can provide quality UGC (User-Generated Content) for future use. Authenticity is another key factor you must consider when choosing influencers.
One of the great benefits of working with such a well-established brand, like Friendly’s, was the memories and personal connections many of the influencers had with the brand. Some had been going to Friendly’s since they were kids and others regularly took their families for an ice cream treat. These elements of nostalgia helped capture the Friendly’s brand perfectly.
After creating a master list of potential influencers from our research, we began the process of selecting our preferred influencers based on factors such as location, audience demographics, following, engagement, and of course, cost. We selected seven influencers, finalized specifics of the campaign with each, and then it was a matter of reviewing their content and tracking interactions with their followers as posts were shared.
Measure the results
By the end of the campaign, we had far exceeded our goal for impressions and engagement thanks to social media and blog posts delivering our message to millions of potential customers. Not only did our efforts exceed our goals for the campaign, but we also received great UGC for Friendly’s to use on their own social platforms beyond the campaign.
As an agency based in Texas and Chicago, the only drawback of this campaign was our inability to actually sample the delicious food we helped promote! Our team was drooling over all the photos shared across the East Coast.
Are you looking for a way to capitalize on the many digital tools now available to help your brand stand out? Contact us at sarah@bizcompr.com to find out more about how Digital BizCom can take your digital marketing to the next level.
Click here to find out more about Digital BizCom’s influencer campaign services.
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