Nowadays, it’s an undeniable fact that influencer marketing is a must-have for brands ! 

Over the past few years, there has been a significant increase in collaborations with influencers, especially with micro and nano influencers. These content creators with “smaller” communities enjoy higher engagement rates, which increase the interest of brands.

They are authentic creators and maintain a very close relationship with their followers, which enables them to influence them in a meaningful way. 

Whether your aim it is to generate visibility or sales, these “small” players have successfully demonstrated how effective it is to work with them. The data proves it and brands are increasingly encouraged to make use of them.

Indeed, 62% of these influencers take into account a brand’s values before deciding to collaborate with them, which is exactly what makes them such trustworthy and valuable partners. Followers are aware of micro influencer’s priorities, which is why they readily trust them when they promote a product. 

However, despite believing whole-heartedly in their effectiveness, some professionals struggle to understand how to carry out micro influencer campaigns. 

For those of you that count yourselves in these group, rest easy! In today’s article we’re going to give you the key to success when launching a micro influence campaign.

Preliminary stages of micro influence

You’re determined: you will launch a micro influence campaign! 

Before you get started, however, it’s important that you do your homework and carry out a few essential steps. 

Defining the objectives of your micro influence campaign

As with any marketing action, it is essential to define the objectives you want to achieve in advance. Knowing your objectives will help you establish your strategy correctly before launching it. 

The five most common objectives when establishing an influencer marketing strategy are the following: 

• Generating engagement with a brand’s content
• Generating consideration of the products or services
• Increasing or boosting the number of sales
• Increasing the public awareness of a brand
• Improving the image of the brand, tweaking it, refreshing it, etc. 

Do you have a clear objective in mind? Which is it that you aim to achieve? Boosting your sales or developing a reputation? You must have a clear and concise answer to all these questions before launching your campaign!

Understanding your persona

Another essential point in the preliminary phase of setting up your campaign is to determine your buyer persona, that is, the type of profile you want to target. 

In defining your persona you’ll get to know and understand your target: what their needs and interests are, what channel is best for communicating with them, what is their preferred social network… 

This step is crucial because if you choose to communicate a network your target isn’t present in, your campaign will have achieved nothing! Take your time to do your research and understand the environment and channel where you can best reach your desired public.

Furthermore, knowing your target audience in depth will give you insights into the kind of influencer profile you should work with!

KPIs of your micro influence campaign

The last step in the initial phase will be selecting your KPI’s. The Key Performance Indicators will allow you to track the performance of your campaign. It’s vital that they’re set up well before the launch of your campaign: otherwise, you won’t have a track record of your starting up and will be lost when trying to evaluate the impact of your actions. 

The best known and most widely used KPIs in influence marketing are: engagement rate, earned media value and reach.

However, there are many more that can be very useful when measuring the progress of your campaign! 

Setting up and launching your micro influence campaign

Once the “preliminary” phase has been completed, you’re ready to prepare and finally launch your micro influence campaign !

Creating a brief  for your micro influencers 

The first step in the process of launching your campaign is creating your campaign brief. 

What exactly is a campaign brief? It’s a sort of introductory letter for the influencers that gives them the key points to be aware of during the campaign. A brief should explain the aim of the campaign, how it will be carried out, the description of the product or services they will be trying and an explanation of the kind of content you expect in return. 

Make sure that your brief is clear and attractive! Striking the perfect balance between providing enough guidelines while leaving room for the influencer’s creativity is essential.

Many collaborations with micro influencers are rewarded with free products instead of payment. If this is your case, keep this in mind and don’t be too demanding. The level of demand should be consistent with the compensation the content creator will receive.

According to Hivency Influencer Study 2020, for 77% of influencers, being a content creator is a passion or a hobby and 87% of them request a campaign when the product fits the type of content they share with their followers.

Therefore, if your brief is too restrictive and hinders their creativity, you run the risk of not finding influencers for your campaign.

Here is a list of do’s and don’ts when writing the perfect brief! 

Do:

• Use a friendly tone with the content creators: be friendly with them and use smileys.
• Write a short and clear brief: 4 or 5 instructions maximum.
• Choose a title that highlights the main information of the campaign.
• Add a short introduction to explain the context.
• Propose examples of campaign visuals (e.g. a bright photo…) and specify what is, for you, a visual that aligns with your brand.

Don’t:

• Omit specifying the endowment for the content creator.
• Forget adding an attractive visual to ensure participation in the campaign.
• Ask to use too much # (the overuse of # kills the #).
• Add guidelines that limit the creativity of the influencers too much.
• Set deadlines that are short and impossible to meet, creators need time to prepare content.

Identifying your micro influencers

The time has come to identify the content creators you will be working with. 

Find the influencers that fit you, review their profiles and metrics and propose them to work with you. It is important to know the community of your potential content creators to determine if they correspond to your target. Knowing their interests and their level of engagement with the influencer is vital! 

If you rely on a influencer platform such as Hivency, this process will be much quicker thanks to a matching system that helps you  identify the right influencers for your brand. You will also be able to analyse their profiles before collaborating with them.

Unfortunately, fake followers are still a thing, so you need to make sure you don’t collaborate with profiles full of them. Thanks to Fame Check you will be able to know the quality of the influencers’ audiences and how their followers are distributed  as well as their engagement rate. 

Delivering the product to your micro influencers

You have already selected the profiles for your micro influencer marketing campaign. Now you can send your product or explain how to redeem the service you proposed to them. 

Take care of every detail of this step, as it will be the first real contact between the influencer and your brand and it will determine its experience.

First impressions always matter!

Keep in mind the importance of product endowment. Indeed, some brands do not realise the amount of work influencers do and offer products that aren’t compensation enough.

As we explained during the briefing stage, consistency must be the key to a marketing campaign with micro influencers. Your level of demand towards the creator must be in harmony with the value of the product or service you offer. 

Hivency’s tip: don’t hesitate to get in touch with influencers at this step to make sure they have received the product or to solve any kind of doubt they might have. 

Publications and results of your campaign

Once the campaign is launched, you will start to see the published content and you will be able to measure the impact of your campaign with micro influencers.

Analyse the data as the publications arrive. Don’t hesitate to give your feedback to the influencers and thank them for their collaboration. 

Check that the actions have met the objectives you set by reviewing the previously selected KPIs. 

Why not share the content created by the influencers on your social networks? It is a great way to enhance the content of other digital channels as well.

This can also be the perfect opportunity to identify your best performing content creators and strengthen your relationship with them so that they become ambassadors for your brand with whom you can collaborate on a regular basis throughout the year. 

 Now you have all the keys to launch your influencer marketing campaign and make it a success. What are you waiting for?