Undoubtedly, the pandemic has accelerated the growth of the influencer marketing landscape across the globe, with more and more brands, irrespective of their size and target audience, having increased their budgets manifolds to reach out to their consumers using this method. Going by the trends over the last couple of years, it has become known that influencer marketing is here to stay, at least in the near future, and might overshadow other popular marketing tools and techniques. But the success of any influencer marketing campaign depends on how meticulously the campaign has been designed. Many factors decide the positive outcome of the campaign. If the campaign’s strategy is not well thought out in advance, the brand may find the whole exercise futile in the future. This blog will discuss the top 5 influencer marketing campaigns that every brand should try to get the best out of their marketing activity.
Sponsored Posts
Sponsored posts are the most popular and common campaign type brands rely heavily on while undertaking their influencer marketing journey. Sponsored posts work well for brands when their objective is to sell their product, launch new products, increase brand recognition and create quality content around the brand and its products. Brands understand that even if they have made high-quality content, there are chances that it may fail to attract giant eyeballs and reach the potential target audience effectively without an influencer with a significant following and high engagement posting them on their social media channels. So, for sponsored posts, brands pay influencers to create promotional social media content to promote their goods and services. To create an effective sponsored post, brands should explicitly explain to the content creator the goals and objectives of the campaign, the kind of content they are looking for, timelines for the delivery, the do’s and don’ts, brand guidelines, and content production instructions. This will give the influencers a clear idea of what they are expected to deliver and make it easier for them to execute.
Product Seeding and Unboxing
Influencer product seeding or product gifting is a concept where a brand sends out free products to a carefully selected group of influencers to make them try the products and post about the item on their social media channels in front of their large following. In other words, the brands send out these free products to the influencers to generate word-of-mouth referrals and get genuine, relatable organic content that resonates well with the followers of the content creator. The content can be a product review, product unboxing video, or a blog post. For many brands who are undertaking the influencer marketing journey, product seeding is often the first step towards the endeavor as it is cost-efficient and highly effective at the same time. But just like any other marketing strategy, it is imperative to chalk out the plan meticulously to see significant gains from your product-seeding campaigns. Brands should carefully select the influencers whose followers resonate well with their products, should work on packaging and personalization, send the best-suited products, and look to form long-term partnerships with the creators to create a successful product seeding campaign.
Also Read: Best practices for hiring an influencer to promote your brand
Host Giveaways
Host giveaway is again a popular influencer marketing campaign technique where the brands supply the influencers with products they can give to their followers in return for social actions for the brand like comments, likes, shares, and retweets about their products. This campaign type is popular because it is simple to execute, offers high returns on investments to brands, and works nicely to improve the creator’s following. In addition, hosting giveaways brings a high amount of guaranteed growth for the brands with benefits like product awareness and effectively pushing the potential customers to buy your products. Moreover, for influencers, giveaways provide an excellent opportunity to offer value to their followers, keep their audiences engaged with their channels, and acquire new followers in the process. This campaign type can undoubtedly boost the brand’s online presence, but it works best when brands run giveaways with a mix of other influencer campaign types simultaneously.
Affiliate Marketing
Social media influencers have millions of followers who diligently track all their social media posts and follow them for tips and advice. What makes influencer marketing so successful is the connection between the influencer and their followers and the content they create, which is genuine and relatable. Hence, leveraging social media influencers for the affiliate marketing campaign is a great option. Many brands and advertisers usually rope in social media influencers and provide them with unique coupon codes or links they can share with their followers, increasing brand conversion rates. When a sale happens through the link provided by the influencer, they get paid as per the agreement. This method helps both brands and creators as the former can generate better sales because of the influencer’s influencer, and the latter gets paid for each sale they have driven for the brand. Furthermore, creating unique coupon codes for each influencer also helps track their performance while benefitting the brands with additional purchases.
Brand Ambassador
A brand ambassador campaign is where brands work with one or multiple influencers for more extended periods, making them the face of the brand and creating brand loyalty amongst their followers. While selecting an influencer for the brand ambassador campaign, brand marketers should look for an influencer who can be associated with the brand in the long run, not just a one-off case. Building trust between the brand and influencer is the key. When the brand builds trust with the influencer, it shows in the quality of the content, which has a deeper connection with the audience. Also, when an influencer promotes a product over a more extended period, their audience is likelier to become brand loyal. Another benefit of a long-term partnership is that the influencer and brand can help both leverage the popularity of each other to its full potential.
We have discussed the most popular types of influencer marketing campaigns that brands can explore while charting their strategies. While all these campaigns cater to the specific goals and objectives of the brands, it is for the marketers to decide whether they want to take a single campaign approach or use multiple campaign types to address different goals and reach wider audiences.
