How to Maximize Your Influencer Marketing Strategies

If you’ve been using influencer marketing for a while now, you know that it’s a highly lucrative opportunity.

From being worth $9.8 billion in 2020, this particular field is expected to grow to $1.38 billion during this year alone.

Moreover, a report from Business Insider highlights how 68% of companies with 100 or more employees will be using influencer marketing this year.

Undoubtedly, however, the B2C market is oversaturated.

There’s even a phenomenon called “influencer fatigue” circulating, where social media users are starting to grow weary of repetitive influencer content.

Fortunately, there are many things you can do to revitalize your influencer marketing strategies.

Below are some of them.

First, Let’s Define Influencer Fatigue

A primarily American phenomenon, influencer fatigue is the result of the oversaturation of consumer goods being promoted on social media.

The reason for the fatigue is not only the plethora of consumer products being promoted, but many influencers have surrendered control of their social media feeds to the companies sponsoring them.

The result is predictable since consumers are savvy and can detect inauthentic content and naturally will turn away from it.

When influencers allow this, their content loses its genuine nature and becomes nothing more than an advertisement. It defeats the purpose of being an influencer and the power of influencer marketing.

The following are some strategies to counteract this effect and revitalize your campaigns.

Here’s what you can do to turn things around.

Consider Contacting a Consultant

If you’re short on time or money, you may not be able to do the meticulous research needed to find influencers perfect for your brand.

With a consultant, however, you can leverage their expertise, network, and resources to do the heavy lifting for you. They can generate influencer lists, handle the outreach, and set up a strategy for your campaign.

Your team can also get a quick education on how it works so they are equipped to handle the next campaign on their own.

For this, 551 Media LLC is the perfect choice, as we have packaged products designed to fit your budget and needs:

Quick Start is for companies who want to use influencers but don’t have the bandwidth to handle it so we do all the work for you. With Quick Start, you’ll get content your buyers’ value from three vetted influencers. We also give you all the tools and tactics you need to repurpose the content for your own marketing.

Teams that need to learn influencer marketing quickly should take advantage of our Impact Intensives. Over the course of a single week, we train your team on all aspects of influencer marketing.

They will walk away with the tactics and strategies needed to manage influencer marketing in-house without the need for an outside agency.

Prioritize Relevancy over Reach

However, if your marketing team is reaching out to influencers on their own, make sure they’re not partnering with people solely based on their follower count.

As this piece by CNBC shows, many influencers with large followings actually buy their way to fame with fake followers from websites like Famoid.com.

That being said, taking on influencers with relatively smaller followings will be worth it, as long as the influencer you have in mind reaches your target demographic or has expertise in a related field, such as makeup artists for makeup brands.

And don’t limit yourself to geographically relevant influencers, either. As long as the influencer appeals to markets that have access to your products or services, you’ll be optimizing customer conversion rates — and possibly at a cheaper rate, as well.

Do a Thorough Background Check

Once you find an influencer that you feel will be a perfect fit for your brand, make sure to conduct a thorough background check.

Doing so will ensure that an influencer’s past misconduct regarding over-posting sponsored content on their feeds won’t tarnish your business’ reputation.

More importantly, though, take these checks as a good opportunity to see how effective an influencer’s past collaborations have been.

If they’ve delivered results before, they’ll be a good investment for sure.

Conduct Test Runs

When looking for the right influencer, it’s always good to keep your options open.

With too many good options, though, it may be difficult to make a final decision.

That’s why it might be good to conduct a “test run,” so to speak, to see how your collaboration with particular influencers will perform on the field.

You can start by testing the waters on Instagram, the most popular social media platform among influencers. Instagram analytics can tell you which posts garnered the most engagement over time, helping you choose which candidates to continue working with.

You don’t even need to restrict yourself to one final choice: if your resources allow it, working with multiple influencers can promote your brand over a wider audience.

Prioritize Authenticity

With influencer fatigue now firmly established in consumers’ minds, it’s best to make product placement as natural as possible.

That said, instead of micromanaging your influencers, allow them the creative freedom to introduce your products or services in their own way using their own voice.

According to Forbes, this lends an authenticity that makes the ad more effective, as consumers will find it more trustworthy – and this is the entire point of influencer marketing.

In fact, if they do product reviews and other “genuine takes” on YouTube and other platforms, it will only increase the trust in your brand and product.

Track Your Progress

Finally, don’t forget to track the progress of ongoing campaigns meticulously.

Make the most out of social media analytics software to catch points for improvement in real-time.

Tweak your strategies accordingly, and push each campaign to its fullest potential.

Need help?

We can help your company select the right mix of influencers, build a strategy and create a campaign the impacts your ICPs. 

Contact me to find out more.

This article was written by Rebecca Jordan
Exclusively for theinfluencemarketer.com