Set up your campaign in 6 steps
1. Setup your campaign
The first step we start with is to select the brand for which you want to set up your campaign. Simply click on the logo of your brand and then on go next.
In the following overview, you can enter the title of the campaign and unsubscribe from the briefing. Provide a creative and catchy title to appeal to the influencers from the network. Be yourself and think a bit out of the box!
Example title: A campaign for a new face cream can be titled: 'Test the new face cream from brand X'. Or: 'Ready to make your skin glow like never before? Ready, set, glow!' A campaign often sticks better with a little creativity.
And then it's time to write the briefing. This can actually be seen as the frame of the campaign description in which the following parts come back:
- A friendly and inviting salutation
- A short introduction of your brand or company (when you set up the first campaign within Influentials).
- A brief description of the campaign assignments
- A friendly closing
Brief influencers succinctly
Use visuals to inspire them and don't use too much text. Of course, something has to be left to the imagination and you eventually use influencers because they have their own tone of voice, so make use of that too. You want to give them the space to use their creativity. Be careful not to brief influencers too tightly. You cannot ask them to copy a certain text or publish a stock photo.
For example, if you're a company that provides subscriptions to beauty boxes, it's nice to engage these kinds of girl bosses. Couple the busy fast-paced business life with the convenience of the new beauty products, delivered to your home every month, and you have a fantastic match that also plays in society. There are countless creative ways to ensure that you as a brand get the attention of people.
Then it's time to add the images to the campaign. Use good quality photos Try to excite your influencers with beautiful high-quality photos that really capture the atmosphere of the campaign. In addition, the photos also have a functional purpose: they clarify the intention of the campaign and sometimes a certain visual can say more than the entire briefing.
2. Platform and assignments
This is the part where you indicate which assignments belong to your social media campaign and in which week they should be carried out. In addition, you indicate where the content should refer to by adding appropriate hashtags (#) and mentions (@).
Choose the right campaign goal and channel
Each social media channel has its own function and its own target group. That is why it is important that you first map out the goal. Ask yourself: 'why do I want to run an influencer marketing campaign as a company?' That can be different things, such as:
- Generate brand awareness. Are you a new brand? Then it is often difficult to generate fame, because you do not yet have a large customer base. Relevant influencers can help to promote your brand.
Create interaction. You cannot find out what your customer thinks of your product or service via a banner or an ad. An influencer can ask her followers if they like your product and if they would buy it.
Launch a new product. By engaging an influencer offline, you reach a specific target group at your launch. This way the activation reaches the right group of people.
Promote your social media channels. Don't expect to generate millions of followers on your own channels by using influencers. You do get to the attention of the right people. And don't forget, you as a company are also an influencer. Provide fun content on your channels.
More website visitors. Because influencers have such a loyal group of followers, they are able to send more visitors to your website.
SEO and link building. Influencers can help you with your findability in Google. The more links they place in blog posts, the more relevant your site becomes to the search engine.
Do your research and discover what your message is, who you want to reach and which channel you will use for this. Below is an overview of which target group is active where. Because there are many differences online about demographic data per social media channel, an average has been used.
3. Select your influencers
In this fourth part of the campaign wizard, you first determine the categories. It is of course important that these fit the campaign. For example, a brand that sells protein ice cream will target influencers who fall within the categories of fit and food. In addition, you fill in the countries that your campaign is aimed at for countries. Then for which country you want to set up the campaign. This makes it possible to set up the campaign for both Belgium and the Netherlands!
Then it is time to adjust the desired mini- and maximum reach of the influencers and who can respond to the campaign. (For example, only female or male influencers).
Choose quality over quantity at the range
We often see that companies choose influencers with a lot of followers. But this does not mean that you also benefit from all those followers. Choose qualitative followers that are interesting to you and that fall into your target group. The rule here is: focus on impact and not on the number of followers. It is always about the engagement rate. This is the ratio of the number of likes and comments to the number of followers. You can easily calculate this by: (Likes + comments) / number of followers x 100%
Next, it is important that an influencer fits your brand. Do they have the same core values, way of communicating and does the content they create match your brand? Also check if an influencer is authentic and not saturated with sponsored content. This detracts from the quality of an influencer. Finally, always choose the right match. An influencer has to really suit you.
Finally, you choose the gender of the influencers who are allowed to sign up for your campaign.
4. Rewards
Provide the right reward. Many brands have doubts about the correct compensation of the influencer. This really depends on what you expect from them. They look at the duration of the collaboration, the number of posts on social media and whether they still need to be present offline. You have to imagine that it takes a lot of time for influencers to create quality content and build a valuable follower base. Influencers have invested a lot of time, love and energy in creating such a powerful account. This also makes it fair if they are rewarded for it. The formula: number of followers x €0.01 helps to arrive at fair compensation for the influencer.
Under the heading 'Financial reward' you need to enter the amount you want to offer the influencers. Please note that there is an additional fee that is calculated at the last minute. The amount of the fee is determined depending on your subscription. Please contact your customer success manager for more information. Here you also have the option to add the extra fee, for example, the product or service (+ the value) that the influencers will receive.
If you want to work with smaller influencers, you can think of offering a 'barter deal'. You give a gift card, product, service or hotel stay in exchange for creating content. Keep in mind that if you do this, it must be pro-rata. This means that if a product costs 5 euros, you still have to expand it with other products to make it attractive to influencers. At Influentials we generally use a product value of at least 100 euros for barter deals.
In the next step, indicate how many influencers you want to collaborate with. Please note that you cannot start the campaign with more influencers than indicated. If you want to start the campaign with fewer influencers, that's no problem. As a tip, you can increase the number of influencers in a barter deal than intended. This way you always know for sure that you can work with everyone and you avoid disappointment!
5. Details & agreements
In step 5, indicate who within your team is responsible for the campaign. He or she will receive all notifications for the campaign. For example, think of when an influencer has sent a message, the campaign is live or content is being loaded.
Add your conditions to the agreement!
The agreement contains all campaign requirements and conditions. You should think of a non-competition clause during the campaign and that, for example, it is not allowed to remove the content after the collaboration. You can read in the agreement which (basic) rules have been drawn up, but as a company, you can add additional agreements to the contract yourself. For example, consider the names of direct competitors or specify the hashtags that should be used in the campaign.
Influencers within Influentials are obliged to read and accept the agreement before a collaboration can take place. When you click on 'send agreements' as a brand, selected influencers will be notified and must read and sign it, as shown below.
With this double opt-in feature we have built in more security for both influencers and brands: both parties have a contract to fall back on when agreements are violated and can waive the compensation or in the case of the influencer in this way: ensure that they receive the agreed compensation.
Publish the campaign on the marketplace
When you have completed all the steps of the campaign wizard and your campaign is ready, publish it to the Influentials marketplace. By reviewing the campaign, you let Influentials know that your campaign is ready for the final check. Please note: the campaign must always be approved by the Influentials team before publication. We check the campaign for spelling errors, correct briefing and assignments, etc. It will be approved within 48 hours and put online on the marketplace.
Measuring is knowing
When a campaign is over and the content has been posted, it's time to measure the results. These results are made transparent on the 'results' page and can actually be read at a glance.
- Posts: The total number of posts made for this campaign.
Engagement: the total number of likes + comments / total number of followers. A campaign can be considered successful when the engagement falls between 2-3%. Above this percentage, we speak of very successful and when this percentage exceeds 20%, we can say that a campaign has gone viral.
Followers: The total number of followers reached by the campaign.
Impressions calculated: The estimated value of the total number of views of the content.
Likes: The total number of likes given to the content of the campaign.
Comments: The total number of comments given for the content of the campaign.
In addition, there are ways in which you as a company can measure extra data, such as the traffic generated by a certain influencer on your website. This can be done in the following ways:
Unique code. This allows you to see how many purchases have been made based on a unique code. Usually influencers give away a discount. If a follower then uses that unique code in a webshop, they benefit from it. At the same time, you can see which influencer generates the most sales.
Traceable link. You can use this for an Instagram Story and a blog post. Generate a unique link via, for example, Google Shortener or Bitly and see how many people clicked on the link and where these people come from. Please note, only influencers with 10,000 followers can add a link to a Story. This is what Instagram calls a 'swipe-up.
Don't forget: you are also an influencer!
This is something many companies forget. The first thing an influencer will do when they receive an application to collaborate is, check out the company's Instagram account. Why? Influencers think it's cool when companies have a lot of followers. This makes them more eager to work with you. The moment you have a lot of followers, you can push them on your own Instagram account. This results in more prestige and often a growth of followers.
So take your social media channels seriously, especially Instagram if your target audience is visual. Present yourself as you would at a trade fair: you are your own business card. So be active on social media, provide a good feed and biography and repost content from influencers who have something to say about your company. Switch to a company profile. This gives you more insights and allows you to learn from the data.
If you're missing some inspiration, take an Instagram journey of discovery and see what your competitors are doing. What do they do well and what can you learn from them? It helps to create an Instagram Brand Guide. This allows you to show colleagues what you want to work towards and at the same time keep your focus on yourself. So be consistent when posting and always use the same filter for a good feed. There are tools like Planoly where you can schedule your Instagram content and compose your feed, so you know in advance whether it looks good.
With these tips & tricks, we hope to help you set up your (first) campaign. If, despite this information, you still have doubts about something or would you simply like some extra advice about the campaign? Ring the bell with the Influentials team!
Customer Success Manager: Layla le Bleu
Email: layla@influentials.com