Influence in Action: A Blueprint to Launch Your Creator Marketing Campaign

In today's digital age, where attention spans are fleeting and consumer choices abound, the art of marketing has undergone a profound transformation. Traditional advertising methods are no longer sufficient to cut through the noise and connect with an audience, hence, influencer marketing.

If you are ready to take on the challenge, I'm glad you're here. As a Creator Account Manager with experience helping brands reach new audiences through influencers, I've gathered extensive knowledge on what makes a brand succeed and flop when pursuing this type of advertising. Throughout this article, I'll provide you with a clear blueprint that'll leave you well-equipped to launch your own internal influencer marketing campaign, one that captivates, resonates, and delivers results.

Table of Contents

• Craft Your Brand Image

• Define Priorities and KPIs

• Platform & Niche Selection

• Build a Creator Roster

• Craft Your Creative Brief

• Outreach

1. Craft Your Brand Image

Before diving into creator marketing, it's crucial to ensure that your brand accurately represents what you want your future customers to perceive, feel, and embrace. While some marketers question whether their product or service is a fit for creator advertisements, the reality often points to an insufficient understanding of the brand and how to align its offerings with the specific social media niches where potential customers reside.

You're about to present your brand in a new medium, using second-party advertisers (creators) who will convey what they understand your brand and product to be, not what it actually is. To have a well-defined brand book it's vital to clarify your brand's identity, positioning, and messaging, laying a strong foundation for your creator marketing journey.

This is a good starting point ⬇️

2. Define Priorities and KPIs

When it comes to working with influencers, the success measurements you set prior to beginning the campaign will define everything (truly, everything), from the budget you set, to the creators you can work with and the amount of customers you bring in. When taking a look at the KPIs that your current marketing methods are not fulfilling, choose between 2 to 3 quantifiable results that you're aiming for your creator marketing campaign to achieve. Here are a few examples of the KPIs and how to measure the results for each:

• Enhance brand awareness and reach ➡️ Cost Per Mille (CPM), brand engagement growth (likes, comments, UGC).

• Increase Sales or Registrations (Conversions) ➡️ Cost Per Acquisition (CPA).

• Drive traffic to brand's site ➡️ Cost per Click (CPC),Pay Per Click (PPC).

• Grow mailing list ➡️ self-explanatory.

• Audience Growth ➡️ Brand's online following.

3. Platform & Niche Selection

Once you have outlined your brand book and decided on your creator marketing goals, it's time to select the platform in which you want to promote your brand and discover the niches in which to invest.

Platform

This one is a tricky one. Admittedly, in my influencer marketing journey, I've specialized on YouTube creator ads. With that being said, I did work with a brand whose product wasn't suited to Youtube and embarked on a project to shift our approach to Twitch, succeeding in the targeting of their customer segments.

When choosing the platform in which you want to promote your product, I recommend running a SWOT analysis of your current social media presence and efforts. I know, sucks to hear it, but the goal of this analysis is to understand where you're investing the most time and money (if any) and if that's bringing the results you intend to.

Reminder: Strengths and Weaknesses are internal, and Opportunities and Threats are external.

• Strengths: When considering data within the strengths category, the emphasis should be placed on metrics where you are excelling, particularly if your performance surpasses that of your competitors.

• Weaknesses: Like with your strengths, begin by examining your own metrics and then evaluate your most recent results in light of past outcomes from social media campaigns or specific time frames. The results you get are not the weakness, so look deep into what caused the low ROI and ask yourself if influencer marketing could improve it.

• Opportunities: This step will require you to look at both the social media environment in which your product exists and identify your niche/industry news. Set up a social listening period to identify, for instance, if there's an uptick in discussions related to a particular keyword that relates to your product on TikTok and after assessment you can set up a 1-month creator ad campaign in the platform while the buzz lasts.

• Threats: It's crucial to grasp any forthcoming alterations to the social media platforms you operate in that could potentially disrupt your current efforts. For example, would the continuous algorithm changes on instagram support your investment in influencer marketing on the platform? Most likely, not.

As you assess the top influencer marketing platforms, it's also essential to explore the potential within your niches. I mention the simultaneous nature of this process because while your selection of a social media platform largely depends on your SWOT analysis, you mustn't overlook how the presence of your niche(s) on the platform influence the results.

Niches

In order to understand the online niches in which your product will have a higher chance to succeed, you must have a good understanding of 2 things:

1. Your customers

Choosing your niche is all about targeting. Deepening your target audience knowledge entails figuring out who they are in their core, i.e.: the content they watch in their free time, their interests and hobbies, why they would be interested in purchasing your product/subscribing to your service, the context in which they'd be more influenced to use your product or service, who their favorite content creators are, and the platform in which they spend the most time.

2. Your platforms' niche(s) possibilities

Look at the relevant categories and sub-categories within every platform, even those you haven't considered advertising in yet, and study the amount of creators that reside within each of them. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Are there similarities in my target creators' choice of platforms?

• Is there a significantly bigger presence of creators in niche A rather than Niche B in my choice of platform(s)?

• How many sub-categories of my niche(s) can I find in each platform? i.e.: The beauty niche on YouTube is broken down in: un-boxing, skincare, make-up tutorials, storytelling GRWM, professional MUAs, vloggers, etc. which is much more than we could find within that niche in Twitch, for instance.

4. Build a Creator Roster

The criteria to choose the perfect mix of influencers varies depending on your set KPIs and budget, given that different creator sizes incur different costs, risks and results.

Here's a breakdown of the influencer categorization you will come across when curating your creator list. Based on my experience as a Creator Account Manager, I've kindly gifted you a list of pro's and con's of working with each creator sizes (you're welcome!).

A mistake most brands will commit when starting the influencer marketing journey is working with one to two size of creators only, to "reduce" the risk, but I'd argue that diversification and having a [healthy] mix of creator sizes can work best. For instance, you could split your first creator budget between 20% Macro & Mid-tier creators, 60% Micro creators and 20% Nano creators.

5. Craft Your Creative Brief

Developing a compelling creative brief for an influencer campaign is a crucial step in ensuring a successful partnership between your brand and the content creator. A well-crafted brief not only helps influencers understand your brand even before they decide to work with you and it can be the difference between losing or gaining an amazing creator for your roster, but also empowers them to create engaging content that resonates with their audience.

To learn more about the key elements your creative brief must include and those that it mustn't, check out this article where I outlined the step-by-step process to creating an effective and inviting creative brief.

6. Outreach

Last but definitely not least, we enter the outreach phase. Once you reach this stage in your influencer marketing journey, all of the previous steps must have been completed, otherwise, with no shadow of a doubt, your campaign will not perform at its best and the budget and time invested will not yield the results you seek. I've broken down the outreach process into four steps:

1. Contacting Creators:

• Social Media Platforms: You can use social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok for direct communication with creators. By crafting a quirky and efficient message you can stand out from the crowd and ensure your message reaches the creators directly. That being said, this is not the most efficient option when contacting large amounts of creators, and if the influencer you're trying to reach is too big, chances are, you won't get a response, because they don't thoroughly check their messages.

• Email: Creating a mailing list to connect with creators has many benefits. For larger creators, larger campaigns or those on platforms like YouTube or Twitch where it's not possible to message them, it's often best to contact them via email. This increases the chances of the creator or agent reading about your proposal, even if it takes a bit longer to receive an answer, by using a mailing service provider you can also set up automatic follow-ups.

2. Finding Creator Emails:

• While YouTube creators usually display their email addresses in their channels' "About" section, finding emails for creators on other platforms may require third-party websites. These include influencer databases, agency websites or Mturk - Amazon's service of crowd workers who can invest the time to research email addresses on your behalf.

3. Streamlining Outreach:

• For campaigns involving numerous creators (100 or more), consider automating the email outreach process using services like Mail-chimp or SendGrid. Although these come with a cost and a learning curve, they are extremely useful In making sure your email does not land on the spam folder of the receiving address (which is bound to happen if you send the emails individually). Additionally, they also provide useful insights into how many people actually opened your email, read it, or unsubscribed.

4. Crafting the Message:

• An effective outreach message is just as important, if not more important, than all of the steps that precede it. The following key elements should be included in your outreach, drawn from my personal experience in both successful and unsuccessful outreach campaigns.

  • Personalization: Address creators by their name and tailor your message to their content.

  • Introduction: Clearly state who you are and your brand.

  • Previous Collaborations: Mention any previous influencer collaborations or partnerships to build trust.

  • Creative Brief: Include a concise description of the campaign and its objectives.

  • Why You Want to Collaborate: Highlight specific reasons for wanting to work with each creator, such as referencing a video or project of theirs.

  • Engagement: Encourage interaction by asking a question, such as "Are you interested?" or "Would you agree your audience would be interested in hearing more about this product?" to prompt a response.

  • Call to Action (CTA): Always include a CTA, such as "If this sounds interesting, please send me an email, and I'll share more information with you."

A well-crafted outreach message tailored to the creator's interests and audience can significantly increase the likelihood of a positive response and successful collaboration.

In the dynamic world of influencer marketing, success hinges on a well-crafted brand image, clear priorities and KPIs, strategic platform and niche selection, a carefully curated creator roster, a compelling creative brief, and effective outreach. By following these essential steps, you can harness the power of influencers to not only promote your brand but also foster authentic connections with your target audience. Remember, influencer marketing is not just a strategy; it's an art that, when mastered, can truly elevate your brand in today's digital landscape.