Influencer marketing continues to be one of the clearest growing trends in marketing and social media.
When talking about influencer marketing, it is usually really big influencers you think of right away, but the trend is towards more and more companies targeting smaller influencers.
Regardless of the size of companies and influencers, it is important to have a clear plan for the collaboration: what will it look like, what is the goal, what expectations are there and how are the goals followed up? In this post, we go over what an influencer marketing plan might look like.
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Different types of influencers
There are several different types of influencers, which work in different ways and which are different in size.
Depending on how they work and how big they are, they may be suitable for different companies and different occasions. Here we have divided influencers into four different groups, to make it a little clearer.
Nano influencers: under 3000 in range
Rarely have collaborations been made with this group of influencers.
However, there is a lot to gain from making content, products and sites divisible for this target audience. Especially the younger target group preferably goes to their friends for tasting and buying advice.
Micro influencers: 3,000-10,000 in range
A micro influencer is often good at creating engaging content in an area of interest and is seen by his followers as a person with good taste in that area. The relationship between the followers and the influencer is friendly and the influencer therefore has a relatively large influence on the followers’ buying decisions.
Since the number of followers is quite manageable, the influencer is usually able to maintain a high level of commitment to his account.
Macro influencers: 10,000-100,000 in range
The followers have a common area of interest with the influencer and follow them for inspiration, tips and advice in the same area. The higher the number of followers the more work it is for the influencer to keep the engagement at a high level.
The relationship between the influencer and the followers therefore varies within this segment, but most often the influencer has a great influence in many people’s purchasing decisions.
Mega influencers: 100,000+ in range
This is the influencer category with the greatest reach. Followers rarely follow the account for advice and tips in a specific area, but the influencer is often known for something else and followers follow him rather like an idol or icon.
For a brand with high brand awareness, this is a way to reach a large mass.
How do you design a good collaboration?
It is good to set a clear plan before you start looking for influencers and decide more about your collaboration. Here are some good points to include in your influencer plan:
Type of collaboration
Each collaboration is unique and should be tailored based on goals, purpose, influencers and interest groups.
There are many ways to collaborate, ranging from the influencer to testing a product or service and telling them about it, to creating a competition to increase engagement in a particular area.
It is important to have the right expectations, dialogue and strategy before contacting an ambassador. You can choose to work with a few or with many different ones.
Scope of cooperation
We recommend working long term with influencer marketing. It is difficult to achieve any effect with few and small efforts. Here you might create a plan for six months to a year with different activities that are then followed up.
It will take a while for the ambassador’s network to get to know your brand and become curious enough to move on to the next step. If the brand is well established with the target group, or if you have worked with the same influencer before, it can also work with shorter collaborations.
Nurture the relationship
When you have an ambassador or influencer for the brand, it is important to build and nurture the relationship.
To feedback in time, follow up on statistics regardless of results and inquire about for example birthdays or other major events that can affect. The better the relationship between an ambassador and the company, the better the cooperation and the result will be.
The effect and result of the collaboration
Depending on the type of collaboration you do and how well established the brand is already with the target group, the results may look different. In general, however, one should not expect to return their investment directly. Influencer marketing is rather brand-building partnerships that lead to long-term conversions.
Laws and regulations for influencer marketing
In recent years, there has been a lot of attention around advertising collaborations that bloggers and influencers do. The Marketing Act prohibits so-called hidden marketing, which often appears in the form of advertising collaborations on social media that are not labeled as just collaborations.
There are some laws and regulations that are important to keep in mind when working with influencer marketing. If you have control of these you will not have unpleasant surprises during or after the collaboration:
Promotional Labeling
A follower or reader must understand at first glance that a post or blog post contains sponsored content. This should be ensured by being clearly marked at the beginning of the post, e.g. with the text “in collaboration with [company name]”.
It is the company or client that bears the main responsibility for a post advertising brand clearly, although the influencer also has a responsibility when designing and publishing the content.
PR or pronounced cooperation?
It is perfectly okay to hand out product samples to people without any penalties – it’s called PR. The important thing is that the sample does not come with any requirement for consideration, such as writing a post, following an account or commenting on a picture.
You can thus send samples of samples unconditionally, and hopefully the influencer will appreciate your products so much that they themselves will spread posts with your product.
