While there are distinctions between the B2B and B2C decision-making processes, digital influence remains a powerful tool for both. Influencers can bring your brand’s values and core messages to life and create stronger connections with your audience, moving your brand from supplier to ‘friend.’
B2B Versus B2C Influencer Marketing
Although the core principles of influencer marketing are almost the same for B2C and B2B, there are some differences that warrant a distinct B2B approach.
B2B sales processes are often more complex and require more information on both sides
The sales funnel consists of multiple, distinguished stages
Numerous people are typically involved in the decision-making process
The typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves six to 10 decision-makers
Building a trusting relationship with the vendor’s representative is much more important
1. B2B Influencer Marketing is Impactful for Business and Will Move the Needle
B2B influencers deliver credibility, focus, and purpose. Multiplying these key attributes delivers real impact for your business, making it an important addition to your toolkit.
Credibility: B2B content creators and thought leaders have recognized expertise in their field. Their opinions are highly valued by their peers.
Relevance: When a professional decides to follow a B2B influencer, there is usually a very high interest in that influencer’s content and opinions, so followers are attentive (often higher than B2C).
Focus: Their content is often very focused on a specific topic, with the aim of providing guidance to fellow professionals.
Reach: B2B influencers can connect with your target audience, particularly at crucial times when they’re actively seeking info about the solutions you offer.
Understanding the important role of content creators, the Amazon Web Services Heroes Program “recognizes a vibrant, worldwide group of AWS experts whose enthusiasm for knowledge-sharing has a real impact within the community.” As the Marketing Director at a serverless security startup, Kingfluencers’ writer Megan Bozman reached out to several Heroes, including Yan Cui and Forrest Brazeal, who participated in our podcast.
Named a LinkedIn Top Voice in 2020 and 2022, Zurich-based Selma Kuyas also works as a resume coach and LinkedIn learning instructor. Also based in Zurich, Bertrand Blancheton, currently works as Head of Marketing at Braavos Crypto Asset Management, and writes about the metaverse, Web 3.0, crypto, decentralized finance (DeFi), and NFTs, including participating in LinkedIn Audio.
B2B brand ambassadors bring a lot to the table, including a unique point of view that can resonate strongly with your target audience. Original thought leadership makes your brand more visible and more desirable, positively impacting your target customers’ decision-making process.
94% of B2B marketers who’ve tried influencer marketing feel it’s highly effective. Swiss B2B marketers indicate that B2B IM is higher on the agenda for 2023 than webinars (55%).
2. B2B Influencer Marketing Audiences are Highly Engaged
Marketers need to not only reach their target audience but engage so their messages are received and understood.
Professionals decide to follow a B2B influencer due to an interest in that person’s opinions, making followers very attentive. This increases the impact of B2B IM content, making it particularly effective. This is especially the case when the thought leader’s content is sought after as part of the research phase in a decision-making process. You can overcome even more difficulties by working with an agency. 9 out of 10 B2B companies prefer to let an agency manage their B2B IM efforts with a main focus being on content creation (55%).
3. B2B Influencer Marketing Integrates Very Well With Your Existing Marketing Initiatives
62% of Swiss B2B marketers say IM is high on the agenda for coming years, higher than webinars for example. 57% of marketers plan to fully integrate influencer relations into their activities by 2023.
B2B influencers are also relatively more likely to have in-person contact with their communities by speaking at conferences, trade shows, and local business and networking events. Their authentic professional credibility can help provide answers to your audience’s pain points and boost consideration and conversion.
B2B IM can even result in synergies, boosting other marketing initiatives such as SEO. You can repurpose content you’ve already created with various storytellers to amplify outcomes. For example, the content generated by influencers from IM campaignscan provide additional value with secondary or tertiary goals, such as increasing awareness.
IM content can enrich traditional content across various channels, such as owned communities or other advertising platforms such as webinars. Repurposing existing content enables you to achieve your goals while also saving money. 74% of B2B marketers agree that influencer marketing improves customer and prospect experience with the brand. Kingfluencers can help you tie it all together with a holistic approach.
4. B2B Influencer Marketing Can Generate Competitive Advantages
B2B IM may be on your agenda as a hypothetical future possibility, but now is a great time to start. As the leading full-service social influence agency in Switzerland, Kingfluencers has established the tools, processes, and resources to do B2B IM efficiently.
Partnering with influencers is a marketing tactic many of your competitors may not be leveraging yet. Getting started now can generate unique competitive advantages for early movers. Most B2B organizations (85% of respondents to a study with TopRank Marketing) are planning influencer marketing campaigns. Additionally, the professionals, platforms, tools, and processes for IM are already well-established, lowering barriers to entry for B2B brands. B2B brands should capitalize on this opportunity and take a page from the well-established B2C playbooks in order to achieve similar successes.
Kingfluencers Delivers a Hassle-Free, Full-Service Approach
Our services guide B2B IM in a synchronized way, from strategy to ongoing community management. We help you develop your true potential social influence, building on every element that defines the true impact of your brand and message. Contact us and we’ll take a holistic approach to develop your brand voice and give that voice a positive impact, generating digital influence that goes beyond (B2B) influencer marketing.
More than 85% of the Swiss population can be reached on social media and 40% follow influencers. Can they be influenced to make purchases through these channels? Our study on where and how Swiss consumers find inspiration and information about products and brands today, with an added focus on influencer marketing and the luxury industry, says yes.
Influencer and advocacy marketing can nowadays be identified as Influence Marketing producing the pinnacle of purchase decision drivers, electronic Word of Mouth or eWOM. eWOM is impacting consumers through recommendations that feel as relevant as those of a friend or an expert. It’s therefore no surprise that, according to our data, every third inspiration via a social media channel or influencer leads to a purchase in Switzerland.
We address the ongoing debate about authenticity and marketing power of influencers – do consumers trust them? Can they really sell products? We found that in the lifestyle and luxury sector, 78% of Swiss consumers who noticed paid influencer ads were inspired by them, and 40% stated they’ve made a purchase because of them. In other words, influencer marketing is a powerful form of marketing in Switzerland where authenticity and commercial opportunity co-exist.
In our Consumer Study Report about “The Power of Digital Influence”, you will find profound insights into online channels, platforms, and content creators that inspire Swiss consumers and act as key decision-making levers in the purchasing process.
If you have missed our exclusive summary of the study in our public webinar with marketing.ch, where key results and insights have been presented by our CEO Yoeri Callebaut and Chief Strategy & Digital Influence Officer Eric Amstein, you can find the full recording here.
Downloadable Content
Study Report
Free Consumer Study Report – The Power of Digital Influence: What inspires and influences Swiss consumers
Social media marketing is a great way to grow your business by targeting the right people. But it’s not always easy for an average person to do so. Here’s where social media agencies such as Kingfluencers come into play. These agencies are equipped with the right tools to market your brand effectively. This article covers the 50 best social media agencies across Europe.
Table of Contents
Social media agencies in Switzerland
Social media agencies in Germany
Social media agencies in Austria
Social media agencies in France
Social media agencies in Spain
Social media agencies in Italy
Social media agencies in Poland
Directory of Social Media Agencies in Europe
Are you looking to improve your brand image through good marketing? Is it important that your social media agency is local so they understand your audience, and you can have in-person meetings?
Everyone has different sets of requirements. Some are willing to spend a great amount on a media team whereas others would like to hire local freelancers for a cheaper alternative. You should ask yourself these questions and if you’re interested to know more about social media agencies in central Europe, here are the 50 best ones you can find!
How to choose the best social media agency
Choosing the right social media agency can be a life-changing choice for your brand. That’s why we’ve curated a checklist for you to look through when making such a decision.
Experience: You want someone who has an impressive client portfolio, success stories, and a few years of experience in the marketing industry.
Strategic resources: How specialized is the agency in your specific niche? Do you think that the strategies they offer are properly customized first?
Tools: An agency should be equipped with the latest tools such as good analytics, planning and scheduling tools, as well as design tools.
Communication: It’s key to ensure clear and effective communication regarding prices, plans, and expectations.
Agency culture: People are crucial. You should be able to get along and be understood by them.
Tracking and reporting: Agencies should constantly track statistical data and create reports to monitor progress.
Social Media Agencies in Switzerland
If you’re looking for a good social media agency in Switzerland, you’ll find many based in Zurich. We from Kingfluencers are one of the popular names with a big portfolio, also based in Zurich. Here are the top 9 social media agencies based in Switzerland.
We are the new creative digital company, where real people, creativity, and authentic stories are at the center of everything we do. Having been in business since 2016, we have worked with top brands across all sectors. We are a full-service digital storytelling agency with expertise in social media, influencer marketing, and performance marketing. Several exciting services are coming soon, so stay tuned!
R17 are “a performance marketing agency for entrepreneurs.” They specialize in paid advertising, creating images and videos in their own studio, and creating e-com applications. They are based in Herbrugg, Switzerland.
Webstages focuses in particular on the topics of influencer and social media marketing and supports brands here with selective campaigns, as well as with the overall appearance and the entire coordination of marketing activities.
Hutter Consult are an established Swiss social media marketing agency. Offering a multitude of services across many platforms, they are liked for their professional work. They’ve worked with WEF, AXA, and Zeiss, among others.
Buzz Factory offer social media marketing, PPC advertising, and branding services. They are based in Vevey, Switzerland. Their portfolio boasts work for the World Health Organization and several small-to-mid-sized Swiss and international brands.
3z digital out of St. Gallen, Switzerland are specialists in paid digital advertising.
3z digital GmbH is a digital agency founded in St. Gallen, Switzerland in 2018 with about 10 professionals. They specialize in social media marketing and digital strategy services for small and mid-market businesses alike.
Operating out of Zurich, Highway 61 call themselves, “a top-rated world-class marketing and design agency.” They offer branding strategy, visual identity, design, social media strategy and management, digital marketing, and advertising. In the past, they have worked with clients such as Bono Pizza and Eat To Live.
The digital marketing agency xeit GmbH describes itself as a full-service online agency and advises on everything from consulting and creation to the implementation of digital marketing activities.
Founded by Yaël Meier and Jo Dietrich, the consulting and marketing agency specializes in generation z as a target group. Based in Vitznau, they offer TikTok Marketing alongside their gen z consulting service and help companies enter the Metaverse.
Social Media Agencies in Germany
German social media agencies are generally more pocket-friendly than Swiss companies but that doesn’t necessarily mean a compromise on quality. Some of the German agencies listed below have years of experience, impressive clientele, and get the job done professionally.
Monsoon call themselves, “a natural force like a monsoon” for your digital marketing needs. Based in Berlin, they have worked with German start-ups such as Mieter Engel and EinguterPlan.
Admiral Media offer a wide range of social media services. Their case studies include the companies TIER and kaufDA. Admiral Media are a German company working out of Spain.
MediaBoostr are a German digital performance marketing agency, but based out of Cyprus. They work mainly with fashion and luxury brands on paid social media advertising campaigns. MediaBoostr have worked with the brand tigha in the past.
KlickPiloten are an online marketing agency from Germany. They have worked with over 50 clients including Eberspächer, TÜV Süd, and Märklin. KlickPiloten are based out of Stuttgart, Germany.
An agency out of Düsseldorf, Digitalyze do branding, campaigns, and online marketing. Past projects include Woodpecker’s Roadhouse and USTA Soundsystem.
Elespacio are based in both Berlin and Barcelona (hence the Spanish name). They are an agency who combine marketing and creative strategies to make a complete social media marketing approach. Past clients include Concord and Zalando.
Ministry Group offer social media consultations to create better strategies. Based in Hamburg, they have worked with prestigious clients such as Hapag-Lloyd and Gillette.
Founded by Ayla Hourani in Hamburg, Aylab is a “rebelliously creative design agency” who also offer social media management, media creation, and community building. They have worked with big brands like Nivea, as well as many smaller local brands.
Adrenalinsky are a younger social media marketing agency who are working out of Cologne and Berlin. They have worked with many local brands and government initiatives.
Based in Berlin, TechStrive offer social media management among other services, and boast 15 years of experience in the sector. Past clients include mentora gymnasium and Freibeutler.
Social Media Agencies in Austria
For those who want a social media agency in Austria, we’ve listed several below. These agencies have had good feedback and impressive portfolios.
Limesoda are a social media agency with more than 50 employees in Wien, St. Pöten, and Linz. They offer social media marketing services and have worked with well-known clients such as Red Bull and Hofer.
AN Digital are a social media agency from Bregenz, Austria. They have worked with Schiess & Schiess and BBS AG, among others. Their social media services include analysis and research, setting up accounts, content creation, and marketing campaigns.
WICKIE. is an agency from Vorarlberg, Austria, who also offer social media services, for example building a social media strategy, creating relevant content, and interacting with the target audience, as well as regular reporting. Past clients include HEFEL Textil GmbH and Musikverein Gaissau.
The Ventury out of Vienna, Austria are helping small and big businesses with growth marketing strategies. They were founded in 2016 and have 46 employees. They have worked with Alfies and DasUmzugsTeam.
Loop are doing social media and performance marketing. They are an international agency with an office in Berlin. They frequently work with high-value brands such as Puma and Breitling.
Bacon & Bold’s specialty are marketing strategies centered around social media. They have offices in Linz as well as Vienna, Austria. Bacon & Bold were founded in 2016.
PR International are a PR agency from Vienna, Austria who also offer digital PR on social media. They have been in business since 1985 and are one of the most well-known agencies in Austria. Their clients include high-end brands like Louis Vuitton and Breitling.
Slopelift is a full service agency with an office in Vienna, Austria. They offer social media management and social media advertising for brands such as Porsche, Renault, and Miele.
Promo Masters is active in Salzburg and Vienna, and has been in business since 1999. Their 18-employee team does social media optimization, among other services. They have worked with many clients in industries ranging from tourism to medicine, law, finance, and web developement.
Aji Creative are a French agency who do web and mobile development. They create digital strategies, plan and design user interfaces, and more. They have worked with big corporations such as Disney in the past.
Rosbeef are a social media and design agency located in Paris, France. They are branding and design specialists and have worked with many big clients such as Adidas and Heineken.
Founded in 2018, Else & Bang has won several awards. The agency is based in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. Their approach is to identify brand strategy, carry out social media campaigns, and make use of influencers and ambassadors. Previous clients include Verizon and Allianz.
“Storyzee combines marketing consulting and multimedia production to support your brand’s storytelling on the web and social networks.” In the past, they have worked with ValueQuest and Exodon. Storyzee are based in Paris, France.
Social Media Agencies in Spain
One of the best social media agencies in Spain is Appetite Creative. Whilst there are many more options for Spanish social media agencies than listed here, we focus on the ones mentioned below.
Appetite Creative are a multinational agency with an office in Madrid, Spain. Not only do they offer social media marketing, but also branding and video production services. Recently they have created campaigns for Tommy Hilfiger and Heinz Ketchup, among many other high profile clients.
GOSO is a dedicated social media marketing agency offering Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn services with 37 full-time staff members located in Barcelona, Spain.
Elespacio are based in Barcelona. They are an agency who combine marketing and creative strategies to make a complete social media marketing strategy. Past clients include Concord and Zalando.
“We help you attract and conquer your customers through branding, web design and online advertising.” Wild Wild Web have worked with BBVA, Cartier, Santander, and Porsche. They are based out of Madrid, Spain.
Social Media Agencies in Italy
A few Italian social media marketing agencies are worth mentioning including Armando Testa, the largest Italian communication agency.
Americanoize are an influencer marketing and social media agency with an office in Milan, Italy. Brands they’ve worked with are Diesel and Adidas, among other big names.
Ekeria are offering SEO, SEM, social media, ADS, lead generation, content, website development, and ecommerce development. They’re working out of Milan, Italy, and have done social media campaigns for hotels and service companies.
Brandme are a personal branding agency. They are professionals in social media management and winners of the Top Italian Branding Agency Award on clutch.com. Brandme are based out of Rimini, Italy.
Founded in 2001, New Media Adv is “a structured digital agency specialized in performance digital advertising that uses refined, effective and measurable tools.” New Media Adv are located in Milan, Italy.
Based in both Torino and Milan, Italy, Armando Testa is the largest Italian communications group in the world. They’ve been around since 1946. While they are not specialized in social media marketing, they have done a campaign for “Cuki Cofresco,” an Italian food packaging and containers brand.
Social Media Agencies in Poland
Social media agencies in Poland are also gaining traction due to the recent increases in both influencers and brands in the country. If you’re looking for Poland based agencies, here is the list of some of the best social media marketing agencies based in Poland.
Virtual People is a marketing agency made up of specialists in different fields. They call themselves a “360 degree agency.” Services offered include social media marketing and advertising. They’ve worked with many clients, most prominently the multinational corporation Decathlon. Their office is in Szczecin, Poland.
Whites Agency out of Warsaw, Poland were founded over a decade ago, and offer “a strategic approach to social media” with “deep analysis of every action and effect.” They list brand communication strategies, influencer marketing, and social media management as part of their services. They’ve worked with well-known brands such as Tefal, Henkel, and Krups.
Neon Shake do digital marketing and branding. They build strategies and conduct comprehensive brand communication on social media based on consumer insights. “We create attractive content, cooperate with influencers, run contests, manage promotion budgets and report the results.” Based in Wroclaw, Poland, they’ve worked with clients such as Spotify, ASUS, and Western Union.
Tribe47 create social media campaigns for e-commerce, subscription, online education and B2B service businesses. Their office is located in Warsaw, Poland.
Conclusion
With the increasing impact of social media on brands and businesses, there are thousands of options when it comes to social media agencies. This guide mentioned 50+ of those based in Central Europe which hold appropriate portfolios and qualifications to do their jobs. We hope that you have found this directory helpful in your search for the perfect social media agency.
It is worth noting that every business has different needs that can be catered to differently across social media agencies. So, reach out to a professional for the best advice on how to maximize results within your budget. If you consider hiring a Swiss-based social media agency, make sure to also check our website and learn about the social media marketing services that we offer.
Although the term “storytelling” is (over)used non-stop in marketing circles, it sometimes feels like a mythical creature many talk about but few ever really see. One thing we know is that stories work.
In our Ebook about Omnichannel Storytelling, you will find every important aspect to step up your storytelling game to connect even more with your audience.
Downloadable Content
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Connecting the Dots: Guide to Omnichannel Digital Storytelling for Brands
Click here to find out more about our influencer marketing and here for our social media services.
Okay, so you’ve chosen the right influencers to work with. That was a crucial first step and the necessary foundation for your campaign.
But obviously your job isn’t done yet.
What comes next determines whether your brand succeeds or fails with influencer marketing:
How you actually work with your influencers on your campaign.
Now you want to make sure that your collaboration with them will meet your expectations or even go above and beyond.
You can work together with your influencers to create something special – campaigns that bring massive reach and new growth to your brand.
Follow the three steps outlined in this guide and you’ll be well on your way to a highly successful collaboration with your influencers.
Let’s dive in.
Step #1: Establish a Measurable Framework for The Ultimate Win-Win Collaboration with Goals, Deadlines, & Compensation
The first step is to set the stage for successful work on your campaign with your influencers.
Build the framework in which the collaboration takes place. Create a great working relationship – which is vital for your campaign to go smoothly and the relationship to last long enough to get the results you’re after.
Set reasonable goals & expectations
Before any content is created, talk about which KPIs (key performance indicators) are important in the campaign, your goals for improving them, and how much content will have to be created to realistically achieve those goals.
Different KPIs for your collaboration could be:
Brand mentions
Engagement rates
Website traffic
Leads generated
Improved conversion rates
Sales
Financial ROI
Be realistic about predicting these outcomes. Base it on historical influencer marketing data, results from past campaigns your influencers have taken part in, and even competitor results.
You want to err on the side of being conservative in your predictions, so you’re not putting too much pressure on your influencers (and yourself), and are not setting yourself up for disappointment. If the campaign performs above expectation, that’s just an amazing bonus on top!
Have deadlines, but don’t rush your influencers
Establishing a timeframe for your campaign is important. It provides structure and incentivizes focused work. But a deadline should never be a threat to your influencers.
They need to know they have enough freedom to let their creative juices flow and create the best content they can for you. Putting them under added time pressure will not help that outcome – on the contrary, it can potentially prevent it.
Compensate your influencers well for working with you
How much and in which way (there are many) you’ll pay your influencers depends on numerous factors. For example, when charging per post, it’s usually between CHF200-1000 in today’s influencer marketing landscape.
There are other ways they can get paid:
A monthly salary for the duration of your campaign
A percentage of sales
Free products
A combination of these options
Whichever way you decide to pay your influencers, make sure it’s enough for them to actually feel incentivized – so they’re motivated to give their best when creating content for you and working with you in general.
Be open-minded: Let your influencers do what they do best
Influencers are more than just a number on their profile. Use the expertise and creativity that content creators are willing and able to bring to the table.
Yes, you do want to set expectations and brief them on your goals – but you also want to give them a good amount of creative freedom.
Sure, influencers are your vehicle for connecting to your audience (an effective one). But if you acknowledge their status as subject matter experts and authorities in their niche, they can contribute a lot of that expertise to your campaign. They can help you develop even more creative ideas – ideas that are specific to their audience (which they know inside and out), and are likely to hit the mark.
They’re uniquely qualified to help your brand be more creative, bringing fresh ideas no one else inside your organization may have thought of before.
Creative ideation can be done either independently by an influencer or together with you as the brand.
Influencer marketing has massive potential to sell complicated brands and experiences. If you think about the story you want to tell with your brand, influencers can offer you a targeted, personal, and credible voice to tell that story.
As mentioned, influencers know their community very well. Give them a precise briefing, but as much freedom as you can.
Resist the urge to simply tell them how to do their job. You might be able to pay them to say a specific slogan into the camera, but communities can be very harsh with content creators who do that. If they tell you that won’t work, listen to them. They may have a better idea in mind.
Create an influencer agreement (contract)
Creating an influencer contract is in the best interests of both you and the collaborating influencers. It clarifies all expectations for both sides so everybody knows what exactly will be part of the campaign. And having a contract in place will simply give both of you peace of mind. In case things don’t work out, or the other party does something unexpected, there will at least be potential legal recourse.
Here’s what you influencer agreement should include:
What type of content they’ll be asked to create
How many pieces of content will be created during the collaboration
Which metrics they should aim to hit (awareness, traffic, sales) – and how (mentioning your brand, linking to your website, showing your product)
What compensation they’ll receive in return – which amount, for which time frame, in how many payments
Asking them to adhere to FTC/GDPR guidelines and guard your brand safety
Confidentiality agreement about the terms of the contract and other details of the campaign
What constitutes a breach of contract
Creating the influencer contract is boring work – but should any problems arise during your campaign, you’ll be glad to have done it. In almost all cases, it’s not a good idea to just wing it when working with influencers.
Be someone they like working with
How do you achieve that, other than being a good person and a friendly higher-up?
Help your influencers do their work better and more easily, by sharing everything you can with them:
Relevant media (photos, videos, audio recordings, screenshots)
Create templates for some of the content formats
Consider building a media kit for the influencers to use with checklists, guidelines, examples, etc.
They’ll surely appreciate your help in this way and it’s bound to improve your working relationship … and speed up content creation.
Step #2: Build and Launch a Beautiful Campaign Together
Now that you’ve created the perfect framework for successfully collaborating with your influencers, it’s time to start working on your actual campaign.
Craft a campaign that’s guaranteed to make an impact on your audience, and be a win-win situation for both you and the influencers you’re working with.
Martina Klieber, Publicity Manager at Universal Pictures Switzerland put it this way: “Universal’s success shows that you can have great success when the influencer and community are a good match for your brand, and the influencer is excited about your brand and tells the story properly.”
Here’s how to do it:
Make sure to stay “on brand”
Stay consistent with your brand values. Influencer marketing, like all marketing initiatives, must be consistently aligned with your brand identity. While you should – as we’ve talked about above – leverage your brand advocates’ unique personality and creative ideas, they must not conflict with your key brand messages.
The content they put out for your campaign should fit what your brand stands for and the image your audience has formed of your brand in their heads. If the messages are too inventive, too different, too off-the-rails, it’ll go against the associations your fans have with your brand and might hurt your connection.
So, as long as you’re abundantly clear about what your brand identity and brand values are, and you determine that the messages put out during the campaign fit your identity and values, you can rest assured. Your influencer marketing efforts will only serve to strengthen your brand’s perception in the eyes of your fans – not damage it.
Be creative: experiment with different formats
Don’t assume you know which type of content will resonate with your audience. Instead, you could test and vary different attributes during your influencer collaboration – such as using multiple social media channels, hitting various themes, and creating different kinds of media.
While keeping in mind not to be too inventive as mentioned above, and staying consistent with your brand identity – allow yourself to step out of the box of bland, copycat content.
The goal should be to create fresh, organic content together with the influencers.
Vary your themes: Tailor the influencer content to current events, holidays, or popular leisure activities and trends
Hit different topics: Home or public life, hobbies, relationships, sports, celebrities
Change up the people: Have a mix of different influencers and brand advocates put out your messages
Finally, use several social media formats to make your campaign unique and engaging:
Go live
Live-streaming offers your audience a more personal experience with your creators and will create a more authentic connection.
Make IG stories
In IG stories, the influencers can be even more creative because stories don’t have to be as polished as your usual curated social media posts. This provides the opportunity to deliver your message in a different, more down-to-earth way.
Make longer-form videos
YouTube and IGTV are the ideal platforms for this. In a longer-form video, influencers can teach the audience how to use your product, show the impact of your services over a longer time period, or offer in-depth explanations of some of your brand features.
TikToks & Reels
The most popular form of modern social media content, these short-form videos can go viral if they are creative, done well, and hit a nerve.
Interactive polls
Polls are a way to gain insights from your audience and involve them more in your brand, instead of relying only on one-way communication. This shows your fans that you care about their opinion!
Forum posts
This is a more old-school option, but it’s still applicable in some niches. Forums often have a user base that’s incredibly dedicated to their topic of choice. If you manage to connect with them using well-made influencer content, you could win over some real power consumers to your brand.
Sponsored posts
Image or video posts that draw attention to and/or link to your brand are still effective – if the content is something that resonates with the audience.
Guest blogs
If your brand appears on a high-authority blog in your niche, its authority will rub off on you – which could work wonders for how you’re perceived in the marketplace and prime readers to buy from you. Collaborating with the right kinds of influencers who can deliver this type of quality post is what will make this work for you.
Account takeovers
Have one of your influencers take over your company’s social media accounts for a day. This can be a really entertaining and bonding experience for your audience.
Contests
Contests are a great way to drive impressive engagement! Contests can mobilize the influencers’ followers from being mere content consumers to taking part in the story. As we all know, actively engaged prospects are much more likely to buy.
Launch a new product & unboxing videos
You can coordinate your influencer marketing campaign such that they will launch your new product for you in front of the eyes of their thousands of followers. One cool way to show off the products is to have them make a video of receiving the product, unboxing it, and starting to use it.
Run live events
Creating a live event that followers can take part in is a creative and very engaging way to educate people about your company, display services, and showcase features … but above all: Create a strong, loyal community around your brand – which is massively valuable.
Make your campaigns interactive – think about community engagement
Social influence marketing provides an agile, real-time communication channel with consumers. When doing influencer marketing, like social media in general, brands should engage with consumers and aim for effective two-way communication.
Too often brands push out a stream of content to their audiences without bothering to also listen. But interactive campaigns lead to increased engagement, brand advocacy and likability, as well as more conversions and better customer loyalty.
Social media provides brands with the unique opportunity to make campaigns interactive and collaborative. You can turn campaigns from brand monologues into conversations by encouraging participation and interaction, as well as incorporating user-generated
content.
What are some examples of interactive influencer content?
Challenges
Contests
Polls
Q&A sessions
Debates
For example, CoverGirl partnered with eight TikTok influencers to boost product awareness among Gen Z. The campaign encouraged audience interaction with the content by incorporating lip-syncing, one of the central engagement drivers on TikTok. The #CleanFreshHype branded campaign generated over 6.5B impressions and a 5.7% engagement rate.
Be authentic and forge emotional connections
A successful brand is one that’s able to truly connect with consumers and create a real relationship.
If you manage to create this connection, it will lead to people converting into customers. Customers who are loyal to you for the long term, and will even go out to advocate for your brand and your products or services.
The best way to stand out from the crowd and connect is with emotion, empathy, storytelling, and authenticity. People are craving authentic and real content as well as advice, and look for people and brands they believe in to provide this.
Authenticity is vital to connecting, and consumers notice it immediately.
As consumers strive for purpose, they seek out brands that demonstrate shared values. These values must be communicated clearly, while consistently remaining authentic. Additionally, brands can boost their emotional appeal by engaging in people-driven, creative storytelling and advertising that unlocks emotion.
Leverage your influencer campaigns to tell stories and you’ll give your brand a face people can relate to. You’ll create more emotional connections and make your social media presence much more appealing.
Step #3: Monitor your Campaigns, Improve ROI, Be Agile, & Know When to Stop
Track your performance – Manage your campaigns thoroughly
Successful collaboration means giving your brand advocates clear briefings at the start of your campaign and following up thoroughly. This is so you have a check on what influencers are actually doing for you. Does it match the brief? Does it meet your quality standards? Only then will it positively reinforce your brand.
With a distributed team of different influencers, mistakes can obviously happen. This is why you must monitor your campaign on an ongoing basis. The good news is that if you spot an error promptly, it can be corrected. The bad news is that you must invest the time to monitor if you want to spot errors promptly.
Improve ROI
Fortunately, it’s becoming increasingly easy to measure attribution of social media investments to accurately calculate your ROI. If you’re experimenting among multiple parameters, as recommended, you can then alter future campaigns by increasing investments in the most successful tactics – and thus improve your ROI.
You can also combine the power of influencer marketing with innovative campaign management technology. This can substantially increase the efficiency of your campaign and improve outcomes. Some influencer marketing platforms can accurately predict campaign outcomes such as estimated impressions, reach, engagement, interactions, and conversion, based on unique campaign parameters.
Stay agile
Armed with these metrics, don’t be afraid to make shifts if something is not working as it’s supposed to. Influencer marketing can be a very agile tool, and you should make use of that fact!
Be encouraged to pivot if you identify a direction that’s more fruitful than the current path.
Fortunately, the personality traits of influencers and the nature of social media, coupled with your campaign insights, will make it easy for you to course-correct and put your campaign on the path to greater success.
Know when to stop collaborating
After you’ve done all the work of identifying good influencers, setting expectations and guidelines, and signing a contract with the specifics, you’ve done all you can to eliminate the risk of your collaboration failing.
But, of course, things can always still go wrong, and a bad or fake influencer could reveal themselves only after you’ve hired them.
Stop your collaboration if:
Communication is continually poor
Their values turn out to be misaligned with yours
They’re not getting the results you wanted
If the relationship still seems salvageable, you can try to renegotiate.
If it is indeed hopeless, maybe it’s best to tell them, “Our goals don’t seem to be aligned. This isn’t working.” To maintain your brand’s reputation, always be kind in these situations. You could even offer the influencers in question a parting gift to soothe the disappointment or make them an affiliate (if it was just the scope of the campaign that didn’t work). Never just ignore them or react unprofessionally.
What to do after the event?
Again, be agile, revisit your campaign, and focus on the best way forward.
As mentioned, almost all of these incidents can be prevented by vetting and recruiting your influencers in the right way. And each of these little setbacks will teach you more about what to look out for in the future.
Conclusion
Now you know how you can make your next influencer collaboration a great success! Check out our other blog posts and some of our case studies for more influencer marketing content and inspiration for your next campaigns. We’re glad that you’ll be using the power of influencer marketing to take your brand to the next level!
We’re happy to help if you’d like to find out how to use influencer marketing most effectively for your brand.
Looking at the title of this guide, you might be thinking: trends come and go as fast as Instagram Stories. Why should my brand keep up with social media/influencer marketing trends?
As Facebook (now Meta) founder Mark Zuckerberg once said, “If we can figure out what the next big trends are, we’ll know what to focus on.” Predicting upcoming trends can be one of the most important factors in planning your next digital marketing campaigns. Kingfluencers experts and their content creators have selected the top 13 social media trends brands should pay attention to.
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13 Social Media & Influencer Marketing Trends to Look For Now
Click here to find out more about our influencer marketing and here for our social media services.
Influencer marketing is an important marketing strategy that continues to grow. It is no longer limited to a select few businesses or agencies, but has become a marketing channel accessible to all brands.
More brands recognize the power of influencer marketing and seek out influencers who can help them generate meaningful connections with their target audience.
That means more opportunities for influencers – for you – to make money!
If you’re looking to become an influencer, you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we’ll go over the steps of becoming an influencer one by one. Keep reading to begin your journey to becoming an influencer.
Table of Contents
Is becoming a social media influencer the right choice for you?
Ask these questions before you decide to become an influencer
How to get started as an influencer
How to brand yourself as an influencer
How to establish authority as an influencer
How to work as an influencer
How to grow and remain popular after you’ve become an influencer
How to get paid as an influencer
Conclusion
Is becoming a social media influencer the right choice for you?
Becoming a social media influencer sounds like a great career choice – let’s find out if it’s really the right one for you.
Are you excited about making a difference?
If you become an influencer, you have an opportunity to leave your imprint on the world. You decide which causes to support, be it sustainable brands or charitable businesses. You can use your influence to spread your positive values to the world.
Would you love to have a community of people who rally around you?
If you have no problem standing in the spotlight and taking responsibility for your loyal followers, becoming a professional influencer could be perfect for you.
Would you like the financial freedom of working for yourself?
To not be tied down by rigid work hours or office dress codes, or having to stay in one place all the time?
Becoming an influencer can allow you to turn something you are passionate about into a career, basically getting paid to make content about something you enjoy.
Sounds like a good plan! That’s the promise that becoming an influencer holds.
But…
Ask these questions before you decide to become an influencer
Of course, all these benefits do not simply appear because you’ve decided that you’re going to do this.
Understand that if you become an influencer, you are turning yourself into a business. If you are serious about earning the benefits, you have to be serious about the work, too!
So, before you start, please ask yourself the following questions:
Are you willing to do what it takes?
As an influencer, you’re going to have to do a lot of tasks:
Creating your strategy
Dressing up
Filming your content
Editing
Writing captions
Scheduling your content
Publishing
Engaging with your audience
Promoting and managing your brand
Networking and reaching out
and much more. All this will take you a lot of time!
Are you willing to make that investment?
Will you have the patience that’s required to grow your brand?
Again, it will take time to grow your followers and build up an empire – your piece of the web – as an influencer. That’s where you’ll need the patience to keep executing your strategy and keep publishing, even when your audience is not yet as big as you want it to be.
Do you have the passion and motivation to keep serving your audience?
If you want to be an influencer who is successful long-term, you need to find a way to stay motivated – you owe it to your followers.
You can do this if you have passion for the topic you’re making content about and you genuinely want to help and entertain the audience.
Ask yourself: Is that you?
What will it take for you to make enough money to be able to make this a full time gig, or at least a solid side hustle?
Be realistic and set a sensible goal – and you won’t be caught off-guard later when the numbers don’t match what you were hoping for right away.
(This is if you have several thousand engaged followers who love you, and you manage to connect with brands who feel that your content is a good fit.)
Now you can do the math and see how much work it would take to make the income that you’re aiming for. Of course, as you grow your reach and your authority, you will be able to command higher rates.
What type of influencer do you want to be? Nano, Micro, Macro, or Mega?
In influencer marketing, bigger isn’t always better.
Brands are starting to see the value of smaller influencers – they have higher engagement and the trust of their followers.
This means that even as a smaller influencer, you will be able to get brand deals that make you good money.
“The findings of four experimental studies show that micro-influencers (those who have 10,000 to 100,000 followers) are more persuasive than mega-influencers (those who have more than 1 million followers) because endorsements by micro-influencers (versus mega-influencers) bestow higher perceptions of authenticity on the endorsed brand, which ‘rubs off’ from the perceptions regarding influencer authenticity.” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00913367.2021.1980470
The different sizes of influencer you could become are:
Nano-influencer: Under 5k followers. This is where you will probably start out. Examples: Debora Sarai in the DIY and home niche. Alenis Lima in the beauty/fashion and lifestyle niche.
Micro-influencer: 5k-100k followers. Examples: Adela Smajic in the Beauty/fashion, lifestyle and travel niche. Alayah Pilgrim in the sports, health and fitness niche. Carlo Janka in the sports, outdoors and family niche.
Macro-influencer: 100k-1m followers. As your following grows, more opportunities will come in, but it will also take more time and effort to manage your brand. Examples: Kevin Lütolf in the fashion and technology niche. Zoë Pastelle in the fashion and entertainment niche. Zeki aka Zekisworld in the comedy and automotive niche.
Mega-influencer: Over 1 million followers.
These are typically actors, musicians, and other A-list celebrities.
Your content might never get you into this category (and maybe you don’t even want that), but if you do, hey, good luck! Also, you might make up to $1 million per sponsored post!
Have you answered these questions to clarify what lies ahead on your path to becoming an influencer on social media?
Then you’re ready to get started!
We’ve created this roadmap to help you on your way, and to get you to the point where you can call this your job! Maybe you’ll even end up working with us in the future. Let’s dive into your journey.
How to get started as an influencer
Find your niche
We recommend that when you start your career on social media, you pick a niche. It makes sense to narrow down quite a bit.
What does that mean?
Especially in the beginning, you want to be known for your work in a specific space. That way, your audience will associate you with this space as you post more about it.
People are more likely to follow you if they know what to expect from your content.
Focus and fine-tune your niche, and it will be much easier to grow your followers and be seen as an expert in that niche.
Now, what niche should you pick?
Passion & Knowledge
If you have an existing passion – maybe even a good level of experience and skill – you could pick that to give yourself a head start and be more motivated to create content around that niche.
Popularity and Monetizability
From a business standpoint, it makes sense to find a niche that is trending or at least growing steadily and in which brands are willing to spend money to advertise.
We have compiled ten of the most popular and profitable social media niches for you below:
1. Technology
2. Fashion
3. Health & Fitness
4. Food & Cooking
5. Business & Making Money
6. Lifestyle
7. Beauty
8. Parenting
9. Pets
10. Travel
Find the one that aligns with your interests and knowledge, is popular and monetizable, and has an audience that you could engage with long term.
Choose the right platform to start
Which platform should you become an influencer on?
We recommend you start on just one platform – preferably the one where your audience spends the most time – so that you can focus and grow your following most effectively.
Of course, you can expand your business later and join multiple other platforms!
Try to understand who your audience is first:
Which age group are you targeting with your influencing campaign?
What’s their average income level?
What’s their gender, percentage-wise?
What’s their family situation?
What are their hobbies and interests?
Which circles and communities are they in?
The answers to these will guide you towards the platform you could start out on. As an example, if you’re in the knitting niche, you could start posting on Pinterest. If you’re a gamer, start a Twitch account. Model trains, Facebook. Etc. This information changes over time, and there are many factors to consider in selecting the right platform.
Following is a quick snapshot of which platforms make the most sense for you to be on as an influencer, depending on your niche:
Facebook: Widest adoption among all demographics, but is trending older, and a wealthier audience. Good for niches that have a middle-aged audience.
Twitter: Good for more intellectual niches such as writing, business, and self-improvement.
LinkedIn: The #1 platform if you want to become an influencer in the world of business and money making.
Pinterest: Mostly female audience. Perfect for arts & crafts, among others.
Instagram: A very visual platform that is perfect for many niches, including fashion, travel, food, and pets. The audience is slightly younger.
TikTok: Has the youngest audience. But the platform is now also becoming more interesting for older generations. Best if you are focused on your specific audience, and you are able to capitalize on trends.
Prepare your profile
After you’ve picked your niche and the platform you’re going to start out on, you’ll need to create and optimize your social media profile.
Switch to a business account
If you want to be an influencer, you should upgrade to a business account because it gives you a lot more possibilities – namely for analytics and monetization. You can create a business account in the profile settings of most networks, such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
Create a fantastic bio
When someone visits your profile, the first thing they see is your bio. You want to make sure you’re making a great first impression!
Your biography should explain your narrative in a compelling way. It should also include all relevant information about you, such as your full name, address, phone number, and areas of expertise.
Add a profile pic and banner/cover photo
You should also include a profile photo and a cover photo, as these are crucial components of your own brand identification.
People frequently recognize a social network profile by its profile photo, so choose one carefully. Also, make sure your face is visible, and the photo is high quality.
How to brand yourself as an influencer
What is your influencer personality? You should be able to pin-point the qualities and characteristics that set you apart from others in your niche on social media. People like to follow someone who has a strong and interesting personality.
It doesn’t mean you have to invent a new personality for yourself.
Ideally, you authentically express what’s interesting and special about you. Of course, with social media, you will want to emphasize the most compelling aspects of your personality, but you should never be fake.
Simply go more into what already makes you special naturally.
Your personal brand
You also want to be thinking about creating your personal brand. This means you take your influencer personality and your angle on content and turn it into a recognizable brand.
How do you create your personal brand and make it stand out?
Convey a similar vibe with images and videos: They are created in a similar way, use the same filters etc.
Purposely use your own, consistent color scheme in your profile and your marketing materials.
Have your own way of talking and addressing your followers in your content and captions – brand tone is consistent
Have a special name for your followers
Create a logo and slogan that people recognize instantly
And most importantly, your personal brand is telling a story – one that is compelling and resonates with the audience.
Here’s what Antonella Patitucci, Actress, Presenter, Coach and Content Creator, had to say about how important it is that you tell stories as an influencer:
“The value is in telling your own story and putting emotion behind it. Give the product a face so people can relate. Share your unique story and opinion. A product alone is a picture, but with you and your story, it’s like a movie.” We couldn’t agree more. So start telling a unique story, and you will start creating a strong personal brand for yourself that people will want to follow.
How to establish authority as an influencer
You’ve picked your niche, you’ve thought about your branding… now it’s time to build your expertise! Your goal should be to become an authority on the topic you’re making content on. You want your audience to look up to you, trust what you’re saying about the topic, and follow your recommendations.
How are you going to build your authority?
Study your niche
Start by researching everything that’s out there on your niche on the internet to get a good overview of what you’re going to make content about. Subscribe to relevant podcasts. Read any available books and print publications around the topic.
Establish your web presence
In addition to your social media profile, consider setting up your own website as well. This will give you another chance to advertise your personal brand and show off your portfolio. It’s a signal that you are a professional and will give you even more authority as an influencer.
Start networking in your industry
Go to conferences. Reach out to other influencers in your niche. Communicate, find peers and mentors, and collaborate with others. Not only will this make you an insider with even more knowledge about your niche, it will also increase your status
How to work when you’re an influencer
Now, how do you go about your daily work as an influencer? How do you know what to post, when to post it, and how often to post?
To keep up with creating content and to make sure that you have an awesome social media profile that keeps growing, we recommend that you first create a content strategy.
Your content strategy
First, establish a posting schedule. Decide how often you’re going to post in order to keep your followers engaged – while not burning yourself out. Keep in mind how much time creating just one social media post can take!
Then, decide on the types of content you’re going to be posting regularly. This can, and maybe should, be different types of posts on different days. Depending on the platform, you have the choice between:
Videos (short-form, long-form, stories)
Pictures
Audio
Infographics
Text
Finally, the content topic: What topics are you going to cover? What angle are you going to take with your content? Note all these things down in your strategy document. Now you know exactly what to post each week.
Study your analytics
Executing on the publishing strategy you just created is a great start – but it’s not everything. You should also learn from each post you make. Do this by studying your analytics. With a business account, you will have access to those statistics.
Each week, look at how your posts have performed.
How many people saw your post?
How much did they engage with it?
How many likes did it get?
If it was a sponsored post, did it resonate with people?
What could you do to make even better content next time?
How to grow and remain popular after you’ve become an influencer
Apart from your short-term strategy, be prepared to stay on top of the game in the long term.
How do you do that?
Nurture your community. Do this by running special campaigns, like challenges, surveys, and giveaways; fun initiatives that keep your audience on their toes and excited about hearing from you.
Know your audience intimately. Keep studying your followers. What are their goals? Their deepest desires? What makes them tick? Know all this… then try to satisfy those desires with your content!
Stay ahead of trends. If you always keep your personal brand relevant to the times, you won’t have to worry about people becoming bored with your content and unfollowing. On the contrary, you will keep them engaged with fresh stuff and your following will only keep growing!
Always engage & be present. You should treat your followers like your tribe, maybe even like a second family. This means you’ll always be there to reply to their comments, answer their questions and offer support.
“It’s easy to get blinded by vanity metrics such as big numbers of views and followers. It’s not about the number of followers you have. What matters is the quality of the connection you make with your audience.” – Marvin Sangines, Personal Branding Advisor at Kingfluencers
How to get paid as an influencer
We saved the most exciting part for last:
How you’re going to get paid and hopefully at some point make a full-time income as a social media influencer!
In most cases, this will mean that you’re going to be working with brands and promoting their products in your content.
How are you going to find those brands?
The first option is to make a list of brands you would like to work with. Then research their marketing department and email them about working together.
The other option is to apply to an influencer marketing agency, who usually has a large network of brands they work with. They’ll take on the work of contacting the brands that are the right fit for you. This should be at no cost to you, because the agency will get paid by them and not you. It’s a good option if you want to spare yourself the extra stress of having to find and pitch brands, on top of all the other tasks you have to do as an influencer.
How many followers do you need to start getting paid?
This differs, depending on your niche and other factors. We usually advise you to build your brand to at least 2500 followers and then apply for your first brand deals.
Let’s do it!
Is being an influencer worth it? We say absolutely yes – now that you know what goes into becoming one and how to do it, you can decide if it’s for you. Keep in mind that getting results is a process that takes time and effort. As a result, you shouldn’t expect to become a social media influencer overnight. However, if you continue to follow these guidelines, you will be able to become an influencer and earn money doing it.
So, you’ve decided to use influencer marketing to grow your business, and you want the support of an agency. Influencer marketing is a wise choice. 89% of companies say their ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels.
The right agency will certainly be able to get you impressive results with influencer marketing. Now in 2022, there are numerous agencies to choose from. All of them are promising to be the perfect fit for you. Many claim they can help you achieve your goals – guaranteed!
Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Not every agency is equally professional and effective. Even some that are excellent still might not be a good fit for your business, for different reasons.
Influencer Marketing Agency Red Flags
No brand wants to work with a service provider that isn’t capable of getting beneficial results. You obviously don’t want to risk launching campaigns not backed by a proven process, with a high risk of failure.
If an agency is focused more on their own revenue streams than understanding your business’ unique situation and needs, the campaigns they run for you might fall flat.
Another issue to consider is chemistry. If the process of collaborating with the agency is unpleasant and filled with friction, you can end up very frustrated. You want to be working with humans who are open, who care, and who you can talk to and contact with your concerns at any time.
Likewise, you don’t want to end up working with someone who doesn’t use the latest technology and is unable to capture all the analytics that are required for running effective social media marketing campaigns.
After all, when you hire an influencer marketing agency, you are making an investment that’s supposed to pay off – you don’t want to be burning money and time on something that ends up being ineffective. Learn more about effective influencer marketing campaigns here. It’s worth putting the work in up front to evaluate influencer marketing agencies, so you can pick exactly the right fit out of the high-quality agencies out there.
We have created this guide to help you in that process, so you can make the right choice and experience the amazing results that influencer marketing can create for your business, while avoiding pitfalls.
Let’s dive in.
1. Get clear on what exactly you need from them
If you know what you are looking for, the chance of finding it increases significantly. This saying holds true for influencer marketing agencies too!
Every influencer marketing agency has different specialties, budget, and project size requirements. This is exactly why you should know your marketing goals and the goals you want to achieve together with the agency.
Once you have defined your goals, you can evaluate agencies through that framework, see how well they fulfill your criteria, and rank them accordingly.
The right agency will also be able to show you exactly how they are going to help you achieve your goals and do so convincingly. Find tips from Universal how to make influencer marketing work here.
2. Get to know their team
You can learn more about a company’s team by visiting the team section on agency websites, and viewing agency staff on LinkedIn.
During the consultation, you can ask who exactly would be working on your project.
Do they have the experience? And the ‘people skills’?
Look for team members who have relevant experience in running the types of influencer marketing campaigns you will be requesting. The goal here is to find an agency whose team is both qualified and pleasant to work with – this includes the human aspect of the relationship.
3. Examine their process
Now, you want to have a deeper look at exactly how the influencer marketing agency you’re looking conducts their work. Their approach to any new project will tell you a lot about how successful they will be once they’re working for your brand.
How do influencer marketing agencies evaluate a project?
Find out how the agency treats any new customer’s project. Look for signs that you will get a strategy that’s not cookie-cutter, but uniquely tailored to your brand. A good agency is supposed to be very creative in adapting their process to you in a way that makes sense.
How are agencies kept accountable?
An important piece of information to know is if the agency has senior professionals supervise your project. It’s fine if some newer people are going to also work on your campaign – as long as they are being checked by those with more experience. At Kingfluencers, every client is supported by at least one senior professional, with over five years of experience in social media and influencer marketing, to balance the diligent efforts of our newer marketers.
When and for how long are agencies available to you each week?
Also, you want them to be available and accountable to you directly. This means you can reach them easily and there’s always space in their schedule to discuss matters with you. At Kingfluencers, we respond to client emails within the same or the next day, the latest.
Are agencies readily sharing this info with you? Will they be able to make their process work for your needs?
If an agency is being very opaque about what working with them looks like, that could be a red flag. It probably means they will – in spite of their promises – not be able to take your unique needs into account and craft a strategy that will actually get you the results.
4. Study their strategies
The best influencer marketing agencies use strategies that work.
What does that mean?
Are they planning for the long term?
Yes, a one-off influencer marketing initiative can be impactful. But the best agencies also specialize in running long-term campaigns that get your brand to the next level, and make sure it stays there sustainably. Obviously this depends on your goals and budget.
But brand strategists who have experience creating more comprehensive strategies are always at least considering the long-term impact of any campaign they’re involved in, which is definitely a plus.
Do they consider the big picture, or is your campaign going to be working in isolation?
Influencer marketing should not be a stand-alone measure. Social media touchpoints should lead to specific actions taken in the context of your campaign.
A holistic, or integrated, approach is key and vastly superior to isolated strategies.
Does the influencer marketing agency in question commit to combining different outlets and marketing strategies in order to serve you best, or is there no mention of such an approach? Read about Kingfluencers focus on holistic, omnichannel storytelling.
Are they creative, hip to trends, and versatile in their tactics?
Influencer marketing is evolving quickly. New trends are popping up all the time. Anyone playing in this field must be highly creative and adaptive. The best agencies show they can capitalize on these trends, and are always finding the right kinds of messages and campaigns that fit the times. Constant reinvention is the name of the game in influencer marketing.
You can gauge which agency possesses these qualities by reading their marketing materials and looking into their history and portfolio. For example, the best influencer marketing agencies are creating influencer partnerships that are even more interactive and collaborative than typical social media content – they are encouraging the audience to participate in new and fun ways.
Are they using the power of storytelling to full effect?
Again, you can tell by looking at how an influencer marketing agency talks about what they do. Do they grasp the vital importance of good, creative storytelling? Effective influencer marketing evokes the right emotions and creates a special connection with the audience, which is best done through telling captivating stories. In order to do that, the content produced for you must be both creative and authentic – not feeling disingenuous in the slightest. The right influencer marketing agency is doing just that, and creating a precious opportunity for your brand to be connected with an engaged audience, leading to the result that you came for.
5. Screen their technology
What is their campaign management like?
Starting a campaign for you is one thing – managing it successfully is another. Check out how the agency in question is going to handle managing your project. If they are doing it right, they will be using sophisticated technology in order to keep up with and manage your influencer campaign.
They should have the latest technologies and best practices at their fingertips. Digital marketing agencies need to be familiar with the latest software, because tools such as Upfluence, Modash or Creator IQ, for example, are useful to achieve faster results through deep insights. At Kingfluencers, we have our own developed tools with which we can simplify our work, because we do everything within the system, from influencer research and sourcing, to campaign reporting and beyond predicting ROI. Thanks to the advantage that our system is based on data truth – e.g., through creating automated briefings and analysis – both, influencers and clients, share and get insights, so every process and crucial step is happening within our system based on the included real-time data.
Are they performance driven?
This means they are paying attention to and tracking the correct metrics – and have processes and strategies in place to learn from these analytics and use their learnings to adjust and improve your initiative.
Familiarity with other third-party data sources and creative tools is also helpful. Ultimately, this helps your brand gain more popularity through better campaigns – both in terms of creativity and effectiveness.
6. Learn about their network of influencers
Technology, team, and tactics aside, what can really make or break your influencer marketing campaign is what kind of influencers you end up working with.
Here’s how you can evaluate whether they will be able to connect you with the best people for the job, or whether there is a chance they’ll leave you with a mismatch that’ll end up hurting your marketing efforts:
How large of a network do they have?
While this does not directly ensure the quality of those contacts, a decent-sized network at least means that the agency has put in the work of creating many connections and has been working in this field for a good amount of time already. If the network they are working with isn’t large, they won’t have as many choices of influencers to find exactly the right ones for you.
Are all the influencers carefully vetted? What’s their vetting process like?
It’s true, people trust influencers – but only those who have shown to actually be deserving of their trust. It’s the agency’s job to filter for influencers with integrity and who are not just out to make a quick buck while carelessly disrespecting their audience and the brands they represent.
A good influencer marketing agency will take the time to get to know each and every one of their content creators. They might accomplish that task with personal onboardings, influencer trainings, and co-creation workshops. That way they’ll make sure to connect you only with quality, committed, and authentic people to represent your brand.
Will they be able to pick the right type of influencer for the job?
Do they have access to nano-, micro- and macro-influencers and can they offer the type of channel that is right for your goals? For example, while nano- and micro-influencers have a much smaller following, they are able to create a much closer connection between your brand and their community, because they are highly trusted and their audience engagement is typically much higher.
When an influencer and their following are a great fit for your brand, you have the chance to create amazing content that leads to extraordinary results.
How do they ensure quality control and accountability for their influencers?
This requires functional working relationships with their network, as well as processes for managing the workflow. See if you can find out about their process for ensuring influencer accountability.
7. Review their portfolio & skills
The influencer marketing agency you hire should have the skills you need to achieve your goals, whether it’s generating more quality leads, increasing online sales, increasing store visits, or getting more website visitors.
Do they demonstrate a deep understanding of the relevant platforms and what good content looks like?
The only way to get results is to hire an agency that has mastered the art of creating engaging and targeted influencer marketing campaigns.
You can make sure this is the case by checking out the content they’ve produced in the past.
8. Check their social proof
The best way for you to check if the agency is reputable and gets results is to look at their history and portfolio of past work. Finished work, after all, is the best demonstration of skills – far superior to any marketing promises.
Do they have a high-caliber, diverse portfolio?
The portfolio is the ideal way for the agency to showcase their best work. This will help you get an idea of what type of work they do and what type of clients they select.
What do their testimonials say?
Over 90% of clients look at testimonials before hiring an agency. Social proof is therefore an effective tactic for agencies to convert prospects into buyers. If you can’t find any testimonials on websites, it likely means:
The company may not have any previous customers
They are not the experts they claim to be
Good testimonials indicate that future customers may have a similar experience. Plus, agencies with happy clients shouldn’t have a hard time getting testimonials.
Be aware that testimonials on online review sites are easy to fake. Look for testimonials of past clients prominently featured on the agency’s website – they can’t afford to fake those!
Social proofs like testimonials and previous client reviews can be a great way to gain insight into an influencer agency’s work ethic.
Another great way to further vet an agency and ensure good collaboration is to get an idea of the agency’s past customers. Get in touch with them and ask them about their experience working with the agency. In addition to helping you choose the right agency, these discussions could also give you insight into best practices to copy.
9. Discuss their prices
Finally, be sure to discuss prices and deliverables. This is the final piece of information that will tell you if an influencer agency can give you what you are looking for, in the right way, and at the right price.
It’s crucial to find the target groups that are most likely to be interested in your offer in order to keep the advertising costs per new customer as low as possible and thus win the most new customers for your budget.
Will they be able to align with your expectations regarding budget and deliverables?
Conclusion
Starting influencer marketing in your business can be a daunting task. If you don’t first get to really know the influencer marketing agency you’re going to work with, your efforts could end up being in vain and losses could occur.
It pays to hire the best, most experienced influencer marketing experts to help you achieve your goals. You need someone who can create exciting influencer campaigns and deliver them accurately to convert your audience into customers.
To keep up in a dynamic field like social media marketing and successfully work with third parties influencers, it’s best to work with an agency with proven expertise.
We can only estimate how many influencers there are today – it’s probably somewhere between 3.2 and 37.8 MILLION.
And it’s safe to say that only a tiny fraction of them will be exactly right for your brand and your campaign.
Then how do you separate the wheat from the chaff? How do you find those influencers who can help propel your business forward?
It’s important to answer this question. While we firmly believe in the power of this booming branch of marketing – and the data proves it – we do acknowledge that a lot can go wrong in influencer marketing as well.
So, we created this guide to help you avoid common pitfalls and hire exactly the right influencers for the job. We want you to create awareness for your brand, grow your business, and create great experiences for your fans with influencer marketing – reliably and safely.
You do this by choosing the best influencers to represent you.
Here’s how to do it, step-by-step.
To Find the Right Influencers, Do These 3 Important Steps First
If you want to find the best influencer for your campaign, you have to build your foundation properly first. This will help you clarify what kind of influencer (or influencers) you are actually looking for.
Not all campaigns must have the same goal. Each campaign can aim to achieve different metrics, and each can feed into different parts of your brand’s funnel.
The main goals that businesses usually have for their influencer marketing efforts are:
Improve the general visibility of your brand and create awareness
Gain social media followers and boost engagement
Generate leads for your business
Increase traffic to your company website or/and build backlinks
Conversions, such as email sign-ups
Improve your brand’s reputation
Generate revenue and social selling
Determining your main goals is an important prerequisite to developing a strategy for your campaign. It will then be much easier for you to pick the influencers who best fit into that strategy.
2. Determine your target platforms & campaign formats
Establishing goals in step one will help you determine which platforms make the most sense for you to have influencers make content for. This step will help you find those influencers who are most aligned with your planned campaign – because they’re naturals at the platform you’ll be using.
Here’s a quick breakdown of which type of audience you will find on each of the social media platforms:
TikTok: Particularly popular with Gen Z (other age groups are definitely on the rise though)
Instagram: A high percentage of Millenials are on IG
Facebook: Great if you want to target the older, wealthier Gen X population
The right influencer for your campaign will already be successful on the platform you’re targeting. If your brand appeals to a wider, more diverse audience, it might make sense to seek influencers who are active on multiple platforms – or hire one for each.
Also consider how you’d like to collaborate with and incentivize your chosen influencers. There are many ways of working with an influencer. Let’s look at a few different ones:
The influencer becomes an affiliate marketer for your brand, often combined with giving out discount codes to their followers
They host giveaways of your products for their audience
They present products that you’ve given them for free
They make their usual posts advertised as “sponsored by” your brand
They take over your company’s account for a day
They enter into a long-term contract with you and become ambassadors for your brand
The right kind of influencer will be able to accommodate you in the exact formats you choose.
3. Establish your messages & themes
Next, get clear on what kinds of messages you want to send in your influencer campaign and what themes they will fall under.
We divide these into four different content pillars which will make your messaging diverse and impactful.
The Brand Pillar
Your brand is the focus. This pillar has content that revolves around your brand, whether the posts are high level, informative, funny, or inspirational.
The Product Pillar
This type of content features a specific product – or line of products – such as a fashion brand’s new spring line. This could be done in an interactive Q&A or tutorial, for example.
The Experience Pillar
This is where you highlight people experiencing your brand, such as influencers shopping in the store or cooking with your cookware.
The Moment Pillar
Celebrating special dates, from birthdays to holidays and anniversaries. You could feature a virtual and/or physical Easter egg hunt, or show influencers receiving customized birthday packages.
You need someone who can make these messages and themes come to life in the way that you want – and once you’re crystal clear on them, you’re much more likely to pick the right influencer for the job!
Now that you know your strategy for your campaign that the influencer must be able to carry out…
Let’s dive into relevancy: How much does the influencer align with the niche and the topics surrounding your brand?
How to Pick the Most Relevant Influencers for Your Campaign
To do this, it’s helpful if you’ve already created your ideal influencer persona: The perfect person who would be the best fit for your audience and your campaign.
They:
Are of the right age to fit your target audience
Possess the correct kind and amount of knowledge around your brand’s niche
Are the right size for your budget and for maximum impact
Have the right personality and level of charisma for what you want to communicate
Dress and behave in ways that fit your brand
Make content that’s already in line with your brand values
In short, they should represent your brand identity very well – as if they were a natural part of it!
How to Guarantee That You’ll Find the Best Influencers
As vital as the issue of how relevant the influencer is to your brand, is the question: Do they have authority? Both online and in your company’s niche.
Pick an authority in their field and your campaign will have a great impact. But if you fail to vet their authority first, you can run into all sorts of potential problems.
How do you pick the most authoritative influencers?
By taking the following steps, you can rest assured you’ve made a good choice working with this person and your campaign will be successful.
They have a quality audience
A quality audience is committed to the creator – they engage readily with each of their posts, and their content is a part of their life that they take quite seriously! Also, a quality audience is not composed of people who are just there for entertainment and would never support the influencer financially … but they’re actually in a position to buy the products that he or she might recommend, and would do so happily.
Social media manager Jason Francis, of Social Media Samurai, says that “Quality trumps all. I know people with 30,000 followers struggling to raise $500 in a GoFundMe campaign, while people with 2,000 to 3,000 followers can move and influence them to the tune of $25,000.”
They make quality content
In today’s day and age on social media, it’s not enough to only post selfies with some meaningless text. A “sponsored post” shouldn’t consist of just a random shout-out to your brand or the mindless placement of your product.
In fact, it’s quite the opposite – the best influencers are consistently creating content that’s captivating, creative, and authentic.
What does this mean?
It means they care enough about their audience to craft pieces of media and messages that really resonate. The content hits on their followers’ dreams and desires, addresses things they’ve recently had on their minds often, it can even shock, fascinate, and pull them out of boredom or sadness.
Making creative content means finding new connections, inventing new ways to get a message across, combining different forms of media, and injecting novelty by collaborating with different people in their niche.
Above all, they have to stay authentic while doing it. Their loyal followers want to feel like they’re “one of them” – that they’re a close, trusted friend. A good influencer will achieve this by speaking in a common tone of voice, keeping their content relatable, caring about and engaging with the audience, and generally staying humble in spite of their success, fame, and status.
How do you vet these things?
First of all, you can obviously check out their social media profiles and study the posts they’ve been publishing so far.
Secondly, see if they have a media kit available that shows off their best work and gives a good impression of both the “vibe” and the quality of their content.
Their influence is real
Fake followers are a real problem on social media. What good is it if the influencer you’re working with has 100k followers, but most of them have been bought from some shady service? Not much good at all, apart from having a nice big number in their profile.
Yes, social media outlets have been cracking down on these things, but fake followers are still common on all platforms.
How do you spot fake followers?
1. Manually go through their list of followers
Potential red flags you should look for are profiles with weird or unrealistic-sounding names, many profiles that are not followed by anyone, and profiles with no user image or something that looks like a stock photo.
Additionally, if the majority of their followers appear to be from non-English-speaking countries, although their content is English, that might be a sign that the followers are not real.
2. Check the engagement on their posts
A real engagement rate for social media is between 2-3.5%. So if you see a profile with an audience of 100k, but their engagement is consistently low, their followers may have been bought. They should realistically be getting thousands of likes per post and hundreds of comments.
3. Use a tool to check for fake followers
In addition to doing the “common sense check” we outlined above, you can use one of many influencer credibility tools such as grin.co, inbeat.co, and modash.io to let a fraud-finding algorithm confirm what you’ve observed by looking through their profiles yourself.
Their reputation and background are flawless
You want to carefully vet the influencer’s background. Make sure they’ve had no reputation-destroying scandals, shady business connections, or even a criminal history.
A simple way to do this is to search for “influencer name + scandal,” “name + controversy,” or “name + convicted” on Google.
Could they be damaging to your brand?
Do they have business dealings that might interfere with your campaign or potentially damage your brand’s reputation?
Obviously, these things are unacceptable and any sign of these issues will quickly make you rule out ever working with that particular influencer.
Ideally you’ll want to find someone whose ethics and values are impeccable – in line with your brand.
Where to Find the Right Influencers – Platforms & Tools
Look for influencers in-house and among your fans
Most likely, many of your employees are already publicly advocating for your brand. You should look to channel and grow that enthusiasm! After all, who better to showcase what your brand stands for and be the credible faces of it than the people who built it?
Also, your leadership team is part of the face of your brand. Their role as social influencers is becoming increasingly important. One way to help senior executives successfully pick up this role is through personal branding.
Finally, your consumers can become a form of influencers as well. User-generated content (UGC) from brand fans and advocates can be very valuable and boost community engagement.
Each of these groups can be powerful brand advocates, but when combined effectively, the result is synergistic, delivering a massive impact.
Manually search on web platforms
Who’s already interacting with your brand?
Some of your top followers might have sizable, related audiences themselves. If they’re already liking, commenting on, and sharing your brand’s posts, they might be a perfect fit for a collaboration. If you see your brand mentioned without it being sponsored content, that’s a great initial sign!
Think about your industry’s icons
It could be a good idea to check out the most well-known influential people in your niche – yes, they’re more expensive to work with than others, but they also have the biggest reach and authority.
Set up a Google Alert
It’s possible to create an alert in Google so that anytime your brand, a topic related to your niche, or the industry in general is mentioned, you get notified. This is a valuable option for finding those people who are immersed in your field, are always talking about it, and are ‘hip’ to the latest trends. These might be influencers you’d want to work with.
Hashtags
By searching hashtags on different social media platforms, especially Instagram, you can find people in your niche and those who are already working as influencers.
Do this by searching trending hashtags, hashtags about aspects of your field, and hashtags like #sponsored or #ad that tell you someone is working with brands.
Speakers at events
Usually, the most influential and authoritative people in your industry are paid to speak at industry events. Become familiar with the speakers on the list at conventions and other events and see who you could imagine working with for an influencer marketing campaign.
Look for blogs and niche authority sites
Search for websites and blogs that are written by influencers in your niche. Do this by typing in keywords related to your brand into Google and adding the word “blog.” There are also tools that automate this task, as we’ll address later.
Followers of other brands in your space
By doing a bit of competitive analysis, you can also find good influencers for your brand. Check out who is most engaged on other brand’s profiles and who has a good audience themselves. These influencers show they are invested in and proactive about marketing – which will be great if they’re working with you!
Find influencers with a similar audience as you
If you know your target audience, you know what other topics they’re interested in and which influencers in those niches they follow. For example, if your company sells popcorn, your audience might be interested in other related things, like watching movies. It might make sense to partner up with influencers in the movie space, so you can reach your audience in another sphere.
Set up a contact page for prospective influencers on your company’s website
If any influencers are browsing your website, they will see that you’re open to working with them and contact you. You just need to create the page on your site and provide a contact form – and they’ll do the outreach themselves!
Browse LinkedIn
Some influencers also have active LinkedIn profiles. To find them, look for the job description of “content creator.”
Search forums in your niche
In some niches, there are good online forums where the latest in your industry is being discussed. Look for those people who are constantly discussing and providing value, and who seem to have authority and influence within the community. Reach out to those people to become part of your influencer marketing campaign.
If you’ve gone the manual route and are not yet satisfied with your results – or if you’d rather not do all that work yourself – there are two other ways to find the right influencers for your campaign:
You can use influencer-finding tools or hire an influencer marketing agency.
Influencity is an “Influencer Relationship Management” tool. It allows you to find, analyze, and organize influencers, as well as manage campaigns and forecast and measure the results of those campaigns.
Post For Rent call themselves the “one-stop-shop for influencer marketing.” Their services include influencer search, an influencer marketplace, the NEXT business manager, and managed service.
With Hype Auditor, you get influencer analytics, influencer discovery, campaign management, media plans, trends and rankings, and analysis of competitors and the market landscape on social media.
Created for finding influencers specifically on Twitter, Followerwonk lets you connect with those authoritative power users on the platform. It can not only search Twitter bios globally, but also analyze and compare accounts to find the right influencers.
Respona lets you find bloggers who are active in your niche. They will monitor for brand and competitor mentions and automate your influencer outreach.
Hire an influencer marketing agency
If this whole process of finding influencers, vetting them, and reaching out is something you’d rather not do yourself right now – influencer marketing agencies do all of it for you.
A good influencer marketing agency will have:
A built-up network and database of relevant and trustworthy influencers
A streamlined process for collaborating with brands and influencers
A creative eye for which campaigns will have the most impact
Proven experience with effective storytelling
Seamless campaign management
The expertise and tools to properly analyze campaign metrics
An impressive portfolio and positive testimonials from past clients
An influencer marketing strategy tailored to your demands and your budget
Obviously, working with an agency will cost more than doing the work yourself. On the other hand, you are free to focus on other tasks in your business and can trust that their proven process will give you a good return on your investment in your influencer marketing campaign.
Conclusion
There you have it: Your guide to finding the right influencers for your campaign this year. If you follow the steps outlined above, we are confident that you will be able to use the proven power of influencer marketing to bring measurable growth to your business.
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Download our FREE STUDY REPORT about WHAT INSPIRES AND INFLUENCES SWISS CONSUMERS now!
Simply add your email address below to get all insights into our newest consumer study.
