Influencer marketing has become a critical component in many companies’ marketing mix. As brands increase their budgets, they must decide on the best approach to manage this powerful channel in order to achieve optimal effect.
Many companies choose to collaborate with an influencer marketing agency while others choose to do it on their own, in-house. In this blog post we highlight some of the things that are important to keep in mind if you choose to manage your influencer marketing internally.
In-house influencer marketing
If you want to do influencer marketing in-house as opposed to hiring an influencer marketing agency, there are some things you need to keep in mind that will make-or-break your success. Here are four things you must do if you are going to be working with in-house influencer marketing:
1. Ensure the influencers reach your target group
As the number of influencers is growing rapidly, it is becoming more and more challenging for businesses to understand which ones to collaborate with in order to reach their exact target audience. Nano, micro and macro influencers – what is the best fit for your brand? To be able to properly navigate in the jungle of influencers, you need to define your target group and your influencer marketing goals right from the start – only then you can go searching for the most suitable profiles.
When evaluating different profiles, it is important to keep in mind that an influencer’s follower base does not necessarily reflect the profile itself – an influencer who is based in London and is in his thirties could have a follower base that mainly consists of women in their 20’s – living in another part of the world. Thus, if your target group is men in their thirties living in UK, there is a risk that you reach the wrong audience if you do not do a proper background check on the profile’s follower base – this must be a match with your specific target audience.
2. Allow the influencer to be the Creative Director
One of the keys to successful influencer marketing is to give the profiles that you collaborate with space to be creative. Let’s not forget, the influencer marketing business is a creative one – brands use influencers for their ability to communicate with their target group in a way the brand can not do by traditional means. Think of influencers as content creators – their job is literally to be creative with content and they know best how to engage with their followers – that is the reason why these people follow them. This does not mean you should not create a reasonable framework, but make sure it allows for creative freedom within certain boundaries. Followers are smart and they will notice if their favourite profile starts communicating in a new way, that does