Influencer Marketing
6
MIN READ
Great marketing is always data and goals driven. Considering the fact that marketers - even the best ones - trial-and-error their way into great results, nothing can be more critical than knowing how and what kind of goals one should set before launching a community influencer marketing program.
"Without setting clear marketing goals, you’re basically directionless – and working to achieve vanity metrics that don’t necessarily help you achieve your overall business objectives." - Smart Insights
Influencer marketing works differently than other marketing tactics because you're working with "civilian" creators as brand partners. Community influencer marketing is even more unique since these creators exercise specialized content skills that drive deeper connections with audience segments.
Are Community Influencer Marketing and Influencer Marketing the Same Thing?
In nearly every case, community influencers are the most likely to deliver the best ROI. Why? Because their audience is dedicated, enthusiastic, and trusts that creator completely. - 4 Ways Community Influencer Marketing is Different From Influencer Marketing
No, these two strategies are not the same (though there is considerable overlap). Many influencers are - for all intents and purposes - celebrities and cannot build the same quality of relationships that community influencers can. Here are four reasons why this is true.
- Community influencer audiences are typically much smaller than social media celebrities and mega influencers.
- Community influencers trend toward niche interest groups.
- Community influencers feel more connected to their followers, and their followers feel connected to each other.
- Community influencers usually care more about authentic content than working with brands.
As you collaborate with your team and creators to set goals and KPIs, understanding what your community influencers bring to the table will set you up for success.
What Community Influencers Do for Brands
Many brands partner with community influencers to get their products in front of their target audiences. This is because community influencers know how to connect with their fans in a way that an ad never could.
Increasing Brand Awareness
The best way to increase brand awareness is through word-of-mouth. When a community influencer recommends your product, people trust them and will want to learn more.
Community influencers also have an established audience who will listen when they recommend your product. This can help you reach new audiences without having to spend any money on ads or expensive PR initiatives.
Boosting Web Traffic
Once creator followers are interested to learn more, they will click on whatever links that creator shares. This drives web traffic to your site, improving user data and your SEO.
Building Positive User-generated Content
Creators also encourage positive user-generated content through their posts. Fans get involved by engaging those posts and adding their own positive UGC in the form of comments and shares.
User-generated content improves your brand awareness, web traffic, and earned media value. Each of these things move consumers through your marketing funnel faster and build long-term Community Commerce.
Source: Ametys
Growing a Brand's Online Audience
The first step to growing your brand is getting people to know and love it. This means that you have to build a strong online presence, and community influencers are great at creating powerful social proof for your brand.
Brands are leveraging creators to increase their follower counts, email lists, SMS lists, online subscribers, and more.
Increasing Conversions and Sales
Sales goals are the most common brand objectives when partnering with community influencers.
Community influencers can create content that generates leads and converts them into sales more efficiently than traditional marketing strategies. Their product recommendations feel more authentic and come from outside your brand.
Additionally, community influencers have a direct line to their audience and can use it to promote special announcements from your brand. They can share deals with their followers, distribute coupons for your products, and even demonstrate product best practices to improve the customer experience.
Driving Repeat Purchases
If you’re looking to drive repeat purchases, community influencers can keep your brand front-of-mind for your ideal customers.
In the face of rising costs and consumer ad avoidance, your customer lifetime value (LTV) is critical to sustainable growth.
Source: Patriot
By focusing your community influencer campaigns on customer retention, you can increase the average order size and reduce costs associated with acquiring new customers.
Mobilizing Brand Communities
Community influencer are professional community leaders. In fact, they can be your brand community leaders if you equip them well.
That means listening carefully to the audience's needs, investing in tools and safe spaces to interact, and incentivizing activity participation. Brand communities make great referral sources, driving authentic word-of-mouth among members of your target audience.
Improve Product Design and Customer Experience
You can improve product design and customer experience by being a part of the conversation - and community influencers are your "in."
Creator partners can help you know for certain what customers like and don't like about your products, services, and brand. You can also identify opportunities to better address the needs of your target audience.
Setting Campaign Goals - What You Need to Know
When setting influencer marketing campaign goals, there are a few things you need to keep in mind.
First, you need to make sure your campaign aligns with your overall marketing strategy.
You also need to be clear on who your target audience is. If you're trying to reach millennials, but your influencers are all baby boomers, it's going to be hard for them to connect with their audience and get their message across effectively.
Establishing your ideal customer profile and influencer personas are critical to finding the right influencer communities.
Source: Spotlight Conductor
The third thing you should keep in mind when setting influencer marketing campaign goals is that they should be realistic—you want something that's achievable for both parties involved so that everyone feels like they've got something out of it.
Next, you should think about the social channels and types of content that are going to put your brand's best foot forward. In most cases, you'll want a certain kind of visual content and vibe that fits your brand's DNA.
Once you've established these foundational decisions, you'll be in a better position to set the right community influencer goals and KPIs.
What are the Right Community Influencer Marketing Goals for Your Brand?
Examining the top community influencer marketing strengths...
- Increasing Brand Awareness
- Boosting Web Traffic
- Building Positive User-generated Content
- Growing a Brand's Online Audience
- Increasing Conversions and Sales
- Driving Repeat Purchases
- Mobilizing Brand Communities
- Improve Product Design and Customer Experience
...it's now time to select a couple (at least one, no more than three) goals that you want your community influencer program to achieve. As you do this, you'll want to keep a few things in mind.
Identify Your Buyer's Journey
Your best customers usually take a similar journey from first touch to final sale. Leveraging basic web analytics and eCommerce tools can help you find how your customers find you, what messages most resonate with them, and which products they're likely to buy (or buy together). It's a mistake to think that your community influencers are going to do all your marketing and sales for you. Rather, you want to deploy them to increase results along the most critical points of your marketing funnel.
Refer to Your Overall Marketing Goals
Your community influencer program is a part of your greater marketing mix. That means that your campaign goals must support the company's greater marketing plan.
Consider Inventory
If you're a DTC brand selling a physical product, taking inventory into account is critical. You may not be in the best position to push high sales if you're struggling with supply chain issues. But your community influencers are still valuable to helping you grow your online audience and brand awareness.
Assigning KPIs to Your Campaign Goals
Source: Smart Insights
After choosing 1-3 community influencer objectives, it's time to break down each goal into KPIs. These KPIs should be specific, measurable, and have a target date (or number of days/weeks/months).
Achieve #% increase in web traffic by [date].
Sell # of X products by [date].
Get # Instagram followers by [date].
As you set your KPIs, make sure you have the tools you need to track the right metrics, as well as a process for reporting performance metrics to key team members (including your creator partners).
How Do You Communicate Your Goals to Your Community Influencers?
Whether reporting to a supervisor and investors or managing a marketing team, keeping these goals and KPIs to yourself will make it difficult for you to get buy in and support from your brand.
Source: Pinterest
The best community influencer campaigns involve multiple people, including influencer marketing managers, social media managers, content managers, and creators. You may even want your head of product involved to guide your community influencers on product case uses or to get involved if the product malfunctions while the influencer is making content.
It's not necessary for you to share every KPI and metric with every team member. But you should keep the right people in the loop and be ready to supply performance reports as necessary to demonstrate that your community influencer campaign is working.
How Your Campaign Goals Impact Future Campaigns
What Should You Do If You Miss Your Community Influencer Marketing Goals?
It's not uncommon for your influencer campaigns to fall short, especially if this is your and the influencer's first time working together. When (not if) this happens, consider the following possibilities and involve the creator in the conversation.
- Your goals may have been unattainable
- The content wasn't clear or compelling
- The calls-to-action or offers weren't clear or compelling
- The creator's audience is not your audience
While not every brand-creator collaboration is meant to be, a few tweaks to the next campaign can sometimes do the trick. But if you feel you need to "break up" with the influencer, do so professionally and don't be afraid to demonstrate how the campaign failed to meet your set goals and KPIs.
What Should You Do If You Achieve Your Community Influencer Marketing Goals?
It's always a great feeling to meet your marketing goals after any campaign. When this happens, find ways to reinvest additional resources into that creator, channel, campaign, etc.
Even after achieving success, never stop refining your tactics. A mindset of continuous improvement let's you raise your standards and do even more to take your brand to the next level.
In Conclusion
Community influencers have incredible advantages over their celebrity and macro influencer counterparts. As you plan your next campaign, take a moment to organize your goals, set clear KPIs, and communicate those expectations to all members of your team.
