Tools to run a successful influencer marketing campaign

It’s no surprise to learn that people are most influenced by those they trust.

Influencer marketing has boomed in the past year, with 47% of people aged 13-34 reporting that they’ve purchased something that an online celebrity has endorsed.

With Facebook’s recent change to its news feed, peer-to-peer endorsements are going to become ever more important. 75% of marketers anticipate spending more on influencer marketing in the year ahead, so it’s vital that brands know how to maximise ROI.

Find your influencers

Start by doing your research. Buzzsumo helps brands find relevant influencers in their niche, but, more importantly, analyses how influential they actually are by ranking them on reach, social authority, influence and engagement.

Marketers can search for people by topic or username, and then filter the results by the type of influencer that best matches their aim, whether that’s bloggers, companies or journalists.

Once a shortlist has been compiled, influencers can be followed to track what type of content and domains they share most. Outreach lists can be created within Buzzsumo, which helps to engage and build relationships.

Don’t forget micro-influencers

With follower numbers in the thousands or tens of thousands, micro-influencers are more trusted by their followers and therefore deliver much higher engagement rates than traditional influencers.

Networks such as Youzz connect brands to ‘real’ people who have influence over their peers. Using micro-influencers as brand advocates is a cost-effective way for businesses to get their product in front of a responsive, engaged audience.

Manage your campaign

According to a study by Mavrck, when users shared content featuring a brand on Facebook engagement was 6.9 times higher than when the brand themselves posted the content.

Last year, Facebook made changes to make collaboration between brands and influencers more effective and give brands more control.

Brands themselves now have the ability to boost a creator’s post and take advantage of Facebook’s in-built targeting and custom audience options to ensure they reach their target audience.

They can also choose which creators can tag them in a branded content post to ensure their partnerships are properly represented.

Branded content insights allow marketers to measure KPIs, including reach engagement, total spend and CPM, to help them assess their ROI.

Track your ROI

It’s crucial to be able to track and evaluate influencer marketing campaigns.The Social Insight Engine gives companies powerful insights into their audience and their decision-making processes.

Using a tool such as this allows brands to delve deeper into their target audience using demographic and psychographic data, which not only measures how many people have engaged but also who those people are and what makes them tick.

With influencer marketing showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon, using the right tools to identify the most influential people in your industry and creating a strategy to best reach their audience should be an essential part of any business’ marketing plan.

This blog was written by Joel Davis, co-founder of Mighty Social and a founding member of the DMA Social Media Council.