How to (And How Not To) Run an Influencer Campaign

Written By Bhumish Sheth

Intro

Influencer marketing has become an acceptable investment for companies in a brief period. I recently listened to Jason Falls’ Influencer Discovery Podcast (which I strongly recommend), where Jason recommends researching influencers beyond what is offered by Influencer discovery tools.

This point intrigued me, and I wanted to know more about how I can discover more about influencers than just something presented to me by influencer discovery tools. The first step in this activity was developing a set of things I wished to know beyond the discovery tools. To find this, I had to take a step further back and start decoding what the current influencer discovery platforms are really giving me and then think of what more I need.

This podcast made me think about the different features of influencer discovery solutions. So here they are!

First, you have two types of influencer discovery solutions:

  • Some, where influencers register to be contacted. (e.g. starngage, creatorIQ etc)

  • Some which are pure discovery, i.e. an influencer search engine.

The first category is interesting if you want to build campaigns with a small set of professional influencers. The influencer will list the domain/vertical, the size of their audience, and a price. The relationship is purely transactional, and you don’t have to sell your value proposition to the influencer. Today they will write/publish for you, and tomorrow for your competitor.

The second category of solutions doesn’t enlist the influencers but discovers them on the open web (blogs, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook…). Even more, there are millions of them if we include nano and micro-influencers!

When I look at this entire scenario from a B2B marketers perspective, I see what the first category of discovery platforms offers me.

  • Name

  • Job title

  • Gender

  • Location

  • Platform

  • Follower count

  • Engagement rate/ Interaction rate

  • Demographic divisions (a few of them)

And if I take a step forward, what do I actually need from these influencers?

  • Their influence score (hiring them as influencers, need their score on how influential they can be?)

  • Relevance (Not everybody can influence people on every topic, what is the niche where they can influence the most)

Looking at all of these scenarios, I started believing that the second kind of influencer discovery platform was better than the first. I do not need influencers who are pure “advertising” for me, but I need influencers who would post content (short or long form) about my brand once they agree principally with my brand.

This gave me a reason, and I started digging deeper. Deeper to find what would you call these influencers who operate within a small closed community but are influential in that. They might not be champions at everything but are masters of their world, at least within a specific niche. They are highly capable of helping their small but significant audience make purchase decisions.

After multiple rounds of discussions with experts and team members, we came up with these 4 significant terms that embody these real influencers.

  • Ambassadors

  • Product evangelists

  • Micro-influencers

  • Content Partners

But one thing is for sure, if I am to run an influencer campaign, I wouldn't be doing it with 10 extremely macro/prominent size influencers with a significant following, but I would be happy to do it with

  • Ambassadors - People who would talk about the technology, talk about the problems my product can solve

  • Product evangelists - People who have either used my technology or are using the technology I make and are happy with it

  • Micro-influencers (People I can call on my next webinar) - People who might not have too many followers, but they have a great follower count within a niche and can influence the purchase decision-making of my actual target audience

  • Content partners (People who can write!) - People who understand the product I am building and are willing to produce content around it.

How to set KPIs for an influencer campaign (or, as discussed, let's call it the micro-influencer campaign):

Every micro-influencer campaign should be directed towards specific manageable KPIs.

  • Brand awareness - New people reached. If people did not know about the technology you sold, do they know now?

  • Brand recall - People remember your brand. Creating content that influences them and makes them at least remember your brand

  • Influence - How many people were influenced by the influencer

  • Decision influence - How influential were these influencers in influencing people’s(target audience’s) decision-making process

 

Some Last Hints

  • Go for Micro-Nano influencers instead of macro influencers who would be just advertising your product for the money

  • Find people in a specific niche and get them to produce content for you

  • Target a niche target audience, and measure influence as a success KPI

eCairn is software that can help you do all of this. You can try eCairn here. Here are some things that eCairn can create for you:

  • Create audience maps - eCairn can help you map your audience based on their interest, likes and dislikes.

  • Find micro-influencers within a niche - Find people who might be influencing a small set of people but are capable of influencing their purchase decisions.

  • Find the content topics you should use with your content partners - eCairn can help you identify content topics that will interest your target audience.

  • Connect with these micro-influencers at scale - With ecairn you can run one of the most effective influencer campaigns. Find 1000s of micro-influencers within your niche, get them to create content your audience loves and check their influence on the purchase decisions of your audience.

More Resources

Here are links to other articles on the same subject if you want to learn even more:

If you are interested in learning more about our software leave your info in the form below and we’ll get back to you shortly.

Bhumish Sheth
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