The way to make influencer marketing deliver an increasingly positive return on investment is to break away from the idea of campaigns and move into the idea of a continuous presence.
Most marketers delving into influencer marketing want to test the channel with a couple of influencers, and rightly so.
It is important to establish an optimal working process through best practices and trial and error.
If results are green, then generally campaigns are commissioned – a number of videos by several different influencers over a defined short period of time, for example a month.
Again, this is wise to try and iron out a few of the kinks in the process and develop a fully fledged influencer strategy.
But the mistake that is regularly made is to consider this the end of the influencer marketing funnel.
There is a further stage, past campaigns, namely a continuous presence in front of your target customers through influencers.
That is, to do away with the idea of a defined amount of time but to have branded content continuously being produced and distributed, measuring the success on the results of each individual content and an accumulation of your history.
To move into this stage it helps to have an armful of influences you have used in the past, who you can rely on to deliver your planned return on investment.
Partner with them to produce branded content for you, maybe a mention every month and a dedicated video every three months, for instance.
At the same time, you need to be continually on the look out for new talent to try partnering with.
Keep on top of which relevant influencers for you are growing on your chosen social media platform, engage them as soon as they seem to be a good bet for you – it will be easier to convince them to work with you if you already have some knowledge of their content and channel.
Some of these influencers will work out good for your bottom line, some might not work out so well – keep the ones who deliver.
With this approach, you will have an army of influencers ready to deliver scheduled branded content without a time-limited campaign structure and this army will continually be refreshed and optimized as new creators are tested.
