You’re heading into the new year and probably thinking, what can I do to boost my sales in 2021? If you haven’t considered an influencer marketing campaign before, then I can guarantee that this year is your time to do so!
With 3.5 billion social media users worldwide by the end of 2020, and this number constantly on the rise, it’s no wonder that businesses have found influencer marketing to be so successful. So, let’s take a look at how you can benefit from working with influencers in 2021.
Think about your goals
The first thing you’ll need to do is think about your goals. Before diving into a campaign and contacting influencers, you should understand what you want to achieve from working with them.
1. Think about the type of campaign that you will need.
Do you want to hire influencers to promote a singular product? Or are you aiming to increase general brand recognition? This is a key determinant for your campaign needs.
If you are interested in gaining brand awareness, then you should consider building a trusted partnership with an influencer that can work with you for a prolonged period of time. However, if you are just wanting to promote a singular product release, you may want to create a short deal with an influencer that is perfectly suited to that one product.
2. Think about the timing of your campaign.
Timing can be crucial for campaign success. If your product is suited to a particular season or if you have a sale coming up, then definitely take this into account. Customers are much more likely to be attracted to influencer content if they are promoting a discounted product. Although you may want to create a long-term collaboration, think about when is best for promotional content to be posted in accordance with sales.
3. Think about your target audience.
Next, you need to consider the audience that you’re wanting to attract. You can lose out on a huge number of potential customers by hiring an influencer with a totally different audience to that of your brand. Think about your brands current audience and the customers that you wish to target for this campaign. Then, you can find influencers with followers that represent this.
Finding the right influencers
Once you have your goals clearly set out, you should consider how to find influencers that can work well with you. So, you have established your target audience, but how will you be able to analyse their audience? Consider using an influencer marketing platform like Heepsy. Here, you can search for over 7 million influencers worldwide, with data on follower growth rate, audience insights like age and gender, and audience authenticity metrics.
You’ll want to think about your budget. Do you want to work with nano influencers, who often take product alone as a payment method? Or do you want to work with a macro influencer who will often charge a high monetary fee? With Heepsy, you can search for both!
Platform and Content
Next up, you’ll want to consider the types of content that can be posted on each social media platform. Depending on the target audience that you have established, this will determine the social media platform that you use. Although Facebook is still currently the most used platform, Instagram and YouTube are more popular for the use of influencer marketing. Of course, it’s important to note that there are emerging platforms, like Tik Tok being a great example from 2020.
When planning your campaign, you should look into the different media types and decide what type of content would be best for your hired influencer to post. If your product requires an in-depth review, a tutorial, unboxing, or similar video content, then YouTube influencers could be for you. However, Instagram has done several upgrades to now include IGTV and IG Live, which are both great for this type of content too. This works well for a one-off campaign like an upcoming product release. Video content is more expensive than photos – another reason why it is often used for a specific product.
In a long-term collaboration, Instagram influencers often promote through posts and stories. This is a cheaper alternative to video content, but still offers great value. A contract could include regular stories and posts such as giveaways, before and after looks, tips to style a product, or other content that does not require lengthy videos.
Tik Tok
If you feel like YouTube and Instagram aren’t ticking all the boxes, then you may want to consider working with TikTok influencers. The platform became popular in 2019, and has risen to become the most downloaded app of 2020. Marketers have discovered TikTok as being a great platform for promotional content, being a sort of in-between photo and video platform. It allows for short videos, the majority of which are 15 seconds long, although you can record up to 60 seconds. We have seen TikTok stars promoting all different types of products within this time limit, even McDonald’s have managed to hire some of the most popular Tik Tokers!
McDonald’s have hired Tik Tok influencers with over a million followers to generally promote the brand and new releases. However, unintentionally, McDonalds have now got hashtags on TikTok which are going viral with many different users that are not necessarily influencers. For example, #mcdonaldshack has been used to show ‘hacks’ to improve your McDonalds experience, and #mcdonaldschallenge, where users are trying to wrap as many burgers as they can in a short time frame.
On the other hand, Calvin Klein have taken a more traditional approach with TikTok, using their ever popular hashtag #mycalvins. As well as hiring TikTok influencers to make videos using this hashtag, the company has seen a great spread of millions of users showing off their Calvin Klein products to it as well. This shows the importance of hashtags and how learning about the top hashtags and how to create your own, you can gain an incredible amount of brand awareness worldwide.
Conclusion
To sum up, we can see how an influencer marketing campaign can really boost your sales in 2021 and most importantly – improve brand awareness.
As more and more people are taking to social media, your competitors will be doing the same. So don’t miss out, and get started on your campaign today!