Influencer marketing is a well-known, and perhaps, mature channel for many content marketers.
Unfortunately, though, a significant swath of marketers is not leveraging influencers in the marketing mix. This is ill-advised because studies show that every dollar invested in influencer marketing returns $6.50 in value.
For many marketers who use influencer marketing there seems to be a gap in understanding of what influencer marketing constitutes. Some believe it is a roundup post featuring industry experts and their insights. Others believe it’s an all-encompassing marketing strategy with a refined goal and many prudent tactics.
Which is it? It can be all of them at the same time. However, which path a marketer chooses can have a significant impact on marketing metrics, and, ultimately, the bottom line.
In this post, I help you make sense of two influencer marketing tactics – the roundup blog post and the influencer-authored blog post. They’re based on my case study of NewPro Containers, which featured influencer marketing as its marketing strategy (not a one-off tactic) and tracked its performance all the way to see a 35% increase in year-over-year revenue in 2017.
I’ve created simple-to-implement checklists to help in the execution of your owned media side of influencer marketing. They give the steps to use earned and paid media promotion, too. Using earned and paid media to promote influencer content helps influencers feel more confident in the value of their work. This added validation can keep them coming back to contribute more.
These checklists aren’t comprehensive to a full influencer marketing strategy; instead they cover two of the most valuable tactics:
The influencer roundup post is often the quickest win in the tactical quiver. It’s simple in concept: Feature the thoughts of several industry influencers in a blog post or some other form of content to drive earned media traffic and brand awareness. The steps listed in the checklist mirror the ones taken in the NewPro Container project, a shining example of what success looks like in a campaign. Following these steps will give you the best chance for success.
A blog contributor program should be familiar to content marketers. Building a blog by an industry community requires sustained and constant efforts but produces some of the biggest value in influencer marketing. This approach can be quite fruitful for a brand because each contributor has an audience and a vested interest in their content being successful. In addition, such authors can bring prestige and credibility to the brand’s content.
The award-winning publication, Relevance, which I helped co-found, was created on these ideas. The checklist below outlines how to recruit industry influencers to write original content for a publication or blog.
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Checklist orientation
One row of each checklist consists of each step’s deliverable, tasks associated with the deliverable, who owns it, and due date. The column consists of each individual deliverable required to execute that tactic.
These checklists, which are produced from the successful case study, offer three major value propositions for marketers:
It’s also important to note what these checklists are not – a one-size-fits-all proposition. They’re meant to be the starting point for success across most industries. The purpose is to know the steps that need to be done, when they’re due, and who’s responsible for them. Remember, the goal is to replicate proven models and constructs…
