Celebrity spokespeople have existed since ancient Rome, when popular gladiators were paid to endorse products like olive oil. The same is true of people who are “famous for being famous,” a peculiar class of stardom which likewise dates back to antiquity. But influencers are a relatively modern concept, uniquely combining the two previous categories in a totally new way.

Through social media, almost anyone can rise to influencer status – and command big bucks for promoting brands to their millions of devoted followers. That’s why Lemonlight asked several of our favorite influencer marketing experts: “What is your number one tip for creating a successful influencer marketing campaign?”

1. Metrics Still Matter

I believe that a successful influencer marketing campaign requires the ability to measure concrete results. Advertisers are gradually moving away from pay-per-post and pay-per-engagement models, and are looking for new alternatives to combine influencer marketing with performance marketing. For example at KashKlik we have a unique pay-per-click model, in which the influencer is paid according to his/her ability to drive real traffic to the advertiser’s landing page.

Hayim Makabee
CEO at KashKlik

2. Integration is Essential

Social advertising should be just one part of your integrated marketing strategy. While influencer marketing is an authentic route to reach your audience, you still need to pre-define your business goals to ensure success. Two common goals are brand awareness (getting your message or product out there and in front of the right targeted segments) and revenue/sales (affiliate marketing, distributing discount codes, flash sale promotions, contests, giveaways, etc.) Then measure, measure, measure to make sure it’s all working. 

Adrian Land
Founder at Considerable Influence 

3. Stay Collaborative

My #1 tip for running a successful influencer marketing campaign may seem obvious, but it’s something I’ve noticed most brands tend to forget: Collaborate. Like really collaborate. Instead of asking your influencers to create content based off of a very specific brief, with you dictating their caption, allow them to get creative and insert their own ideas. At the end of the day, influencers know what will speak to their audience, so give them the authority to relate to your brand in their own way. 

Michelle Jun
Sr Account Manager at BrandBacker

4. Re-use and Repurpose

Always repurpose your content. All too often brands will invest in influencer marketing content, then leave that content alone on the creator’s feed. It’s such a waste! Brands should be coming up with an amplification strategy to follow their campaigns. If you plan to extend the impact of those high-quality, influencer-created assets, you can boost your return on investment.

Aaron Brooks
Co-Founder at Vamp

5. Identify Real Influence

My #1 tip for running a successful influencer marketing campaign is to identify the real influencers. Even if your promoted content is amazing,  influencers won’t bring your brand any substantial awareness or clicks without a strong community base. This is why it’s crucial to read the comments under their photos and videos before entering a partnership, in order to identify if their community is actively engaged – or check out their Stories to see how many followers are actually interacting with your influencer in an organic and authentic way.

Alessandro Bogliari
Co-Founder & CEO at The Influencer Marketing Factory

6. Know Your Audience

The better you know your audience, the easier it’ll be to find the perfect influencer for their wants, needs, and interests. To do so, start by creating a “customer persona” –  a representation of your brand’s ideal customer based on market research and data about your existing base. What are their average ages? Their geographic regions? Their hobbies and jobs?  Then, once you have figured out your persona, you can start searching for the influencer that best fits it. 

Dennis Doerfl
Co-Founder & CEO at Fourstarzz Media

7. Define Your KPI’s

The best influencer marketing campaigns are built on a foundation of 3-5 key performance indicators (KPI’s) that dictate your brand’s terms of success and set clear expectations for your entire team. For example, if an e-commerce team is trying to optimize for sales during an influencer campaign, their main KPI is sales, but their downstream KPI’s could be views, follows, and influencer engagement rate.  By simply defining your most valuable metrics, you can reverse engineer the process and optimize your influencer campaign for success.

Mike Schmidt
Co-Founder at Dovetale

8. Utilize Your Culture

Activating around major cultural moments, such as Glastonbury Festival, is one way brands can maximize the impact and reach of their content to hit their desired KPIs. For example, Amazon had a clear objective of increasing video views online, so when Alex Mann joined Dave on stage at Glastonbury, we saw an opportunity to activate around a special cultural moment. By Wednesday, we had Alex in our office recording with Amazon Alexa to create a reactive campaign. To date, this content has driven 1.3m views on Alex’s channels, with a CPV of £0.0077. What made this campaign successful was the way we used creative content that reacted to a culturally relevant moment to deliver our set objectives. Simple, right?

Harry Hugo
Co-Founder at The Goat Agency 

BONUS TIPS

We had such excellent feedback from our first round of questioning that we also decided to ask: “What are the benefits and suggestions you have for implementing video in your influencer marketing campaign?“ These were just two of our responses:

1. Choose Your Content

Video is the preferred form of media for Gen Z, who have contributed enormously to the rise of video-first platforms like YouTube and TikTok. Adopting a strong video strategy will help us win over this generation, while also helping us connect to younger Millennials, whose attention spans continues to shrink as the years go by. But knowing exactly what kind of video to choose is just as important to your marketing strategy. Longer-form content is preferred for educational and information purposes, while our audiences are moving towards bite-sized content for entertainment purposes. My recipe for generating a lasting impression usually consists of repeated, shareable, bite-sized content to book your table in a viewer’s brain, before moving on to longer-form video over time. 

Oddie Randa
COO at Gushcloud 

2. Quality Counts

If you are looking to generate deeper engagement with followers, video posts are your best option. While video posts tend to get fewer likes than image posts, they encourage more meaningful interactions, like when your followers share their thoughts in the comment section. They are also better overall at creating a storytelling experience than images, but that is only when the two posts are of equivalent quality. It’s important to remember that a high-quality image is still better than a mediocre video.  Also, your video should be optimized for mobile, as in this day and age, audiences prefer to consume their content on-the-go.

Wei Sian Soh
Associate Marketing Manager at Kobe