Influencer marketing is one of the most powerful communication tools available nowadays, and it renders the best results when used strategically in the long term. Why? Because consumers are more trusting of brands that they’ve known for a long time and with whom they’ve established a personal relationship. Little by little, the consumer is familiarized...
Influencer marketing is one of the most powerful communication tools available nowadays, and it renders the best results when used strategically in the long term. Why? Because consumers are more trusting of brands that they’ve known for a long time and with whom they’ve established a personal relationship. Little by little, the consumer is familiarized with the brand’s personality and always knows what to expect from it.
Planning a long-term strategy has nothing to do with one-shot collaborations or the sporadic sending of products. Indeed, for on-off collaborations there are no concrete objectives and the choice of influencers is often superficial. In this article, you’ll find the secrets that will guarantee the success of your long-term influencer marketing strategy.
1. Be prepared
A long term strategy will be impossible to implement without some preparation beforehand. To be able to launch consecutive campaigns and achieve global objectives at the end of the year, you’ll need to prepare a series of elements:
✅ Your objectives. This will be the first element to take into account when preparing your strategy. What pushes you to implement an influence strategy? What do you expect to achieve with this tool? Once you have clearly defined your objectives, you’ll be able to move on to the next step.
✅ The KPIs. When the time comes to evaluate the state of your brand after your influence efforts, it will be essential to have clear KPIs that you’ve been following from the start. Just after defining your objectives, you should choose the KPIs that will serve you to measure the success of your actions and your strategy.
✅ The campaign dates. In order to efficiently choose your influencers, prepare the packages, send the products, etc. it’s essential to know the date of the campaign with enough time: plan you campaigns by semester, monthly…
Granted, even though launching a creative campaign fast to profit from an event or a certain strong commercial period isn’t impossible, having prepared your global strategy beforehand will allow you more freedom as well as the ability to set up campaigns fast. Indeed, you’ll already have in mind the different global objectives you wish to achieve, a certain number of KPIs to observe, a list of pertinent influencers… The preparation won’t make your strategy more rigid, on the contrary, it’ll allow you more flexibility and innovation.
2. Strengthen your relationship with influencers
To launch a long term influencer strategy, you’ll need faithful collaborators that appreciate your brand, as well as your clients and audiences. These micro influencers can evolve into brand ambassadors, and they’ll speak up all throughout the year to talk about your brand, slowly creating a relationship between your brand and their community.
Nowadays, consumers are very distrustful of dishonest communications. That’s why it’s essential to have access to a pool of ambassadors: by hearing them frequently talk about your brand, consumers will be convinced of the honesty of their claims. Indeed, in spite of their mistrust of certain communication methods, 62% of consumers in France have already made a purchase after seeing the post of an influencer on social media, according to a study carried out by Hivency with more than 3,000 French consumers.
Micro influencers are the ideal profiles to build a strong, long-term relationship with. They’re mainly motivated by discovering new products and the fact of collaborating with their favorite brands. They aspire to become brand ambassadors and have long-term collaborations.
3. Choosing key dates throughout the year
Launching campaigns throughout the year can be difficult. To create a different campaign each month, you must be creative and find new ways of presenting your message.
Nowadays, the world of social media has a preference for campaigns that offer added value. Each campaign must put forth a message, aligned with the product and the brand. Furthermore, according to a study carried out by Hivency concerning the motivations of content creators, 62% of micro influencers choose the brands they’ll collaborate with according to their values. When they share a product with their audience, influencers have built the habit of sharing details of the brand’s history, values or engagement, to bring the brand closer to their community.
That’s why we advise to not just launch a campaign on any given day. It’s a lot more strategic to choose key dates from the calendar to truly optimize your strategy. Throughout the year, there are essential days during which we commemorate particular events or values. Profit from the days that are related, somehow, to your brand or values, to launch campaigns with micro influencers.
Hivency Tip: We recommend launching your influencer marketing campaign a month before strong commercial periods, to make sure all the selected influencers have received the products when the time comes.
4. Handling your stocks and having products ready to be shipped
A bad handling of stocks can be the root cause of a failed influence campaign. The product is a key element in the campaign: a brand must give importance to the products offered to its content creators, and the product must be interesting enough to incite their desire as well as that of their followers. A personalized offer will also allow the brand to build unique relationships with its ambassadors.
Moreover, a bad handling of stocks can delay the launch date or produce other unpleasant surprises… The result? The influence campaign that you’ve been so carefully preparing for your brand during months won’t be launched in the predicted date and the influencers with whom you’ve been honing a relationship for months will be let down, disappointed… The cost can be huge, in certain cases, content creators may decide to stop collaborating with you altogether.
To ensure an adequate handling of delivery and parcels without surprises, influencer platforms such as Hivency offer services of logistics. It’s also equally possible to trust a specialized logistics service such as Cubyn. A service that will save you, for instance, from having to draft contracts with multiple delivery services, and thanks to which you’ll still be able to monitor your operations at a distance thanks to its platform.
The human side above everything
Don’t forget that in influencer marketing, the human aspect will always prime above everything else. The most important thing is creating a real and sincere relationship between you and your influencers, so they can establish a positive relationship between your brand and their community. That’s why, the relationship with influencers is a crucial step to any strategy, and this is visible in every step of the way: even when sending out the products, it’s the perfect occasion to nurture this relationship. Write a small personalized message as a thank you, send a beautiful gift or deliver a small package to your influencers that will bring you even closer.
You’ve surely got it by now, a global influencer strategy has a multitude of particularities. Even though the road to properly establish a strategy will vary depending on the sector, the size of the enterprise and its needs… we’ve shared with you in this article the common steps to never forget as a brand. These recommendations will offer you the opportunity of carrying out your next campaigns successfully.
Photo credit : Buro Millenial via Pexels