Crafting campaigns may get your creative juices flowing, but without focusing on results for your next sure-to-be-award-winning campaign, you’re not likely to improve your company’s bottom line. So, how can you maximize creativity while adhering to strategy and following a process?

This post, designed to help you create results-driven influencer marketing campaigns, is the third in our “Comprehensive Guide to Influencer Marketing” 6-part series in which we discuss the 6 Things you Must do Before Developing an Influencer Marketing Plan, 4 Steps to Creating an Influencer Marketing Strategy, 6 Influencer Marketing Campaign Management Best Practices, How to Successfully Manage Influencers, 11 Influencer Marketing Tactics to Rock Your Campaigns.

5 Critical Components in Creating Results-Driven Influencer Marketing Campaigns

These five steps give you a basic framework that, if worked within, will give you a great likelihood of creating campaigns that achieve measurable goals. The good news? Many steps allow for flexibility and creativity in brainstorming the perfect ideas to meet your objectives.

Tip! Look at these five steps (this framework) as a blank canvas—a tool to help you achieve your goals. At the same time, think of them as a blank slate on which to showcase your best and most creative work.

1. Create campaign goals.

At the outset of each campaign, answer the questions: “What will success look like on this campaign? How will we measure it?”

Let’s say you are working on a campaign to promote pet-friendly travel. The “Fido Flies to Finland” campaign is focused on traveling on planes with furry friends. In line with our model, you’d add a measurable success statement as follows: “Drive 700K impressions across five social media channels and 1MM video views on YouTube to the Fido Flies to Finland campaign.”

Combine that statement with the previous goal and it looks like this: “Increase awareness of pet-friendly travel content on blogs and YouTube from 1.2MM to 3MM impressions and views by December 31, 2017. Specifically, drive 700K impressions across five social media channels and 1MM video views on YouTube to the Fido Flies to Finland campaign.”

2. Choose campaign tactics.

After drilling down your goals, you are ready to brainstorm tactics. Here is a list of common influencer marketing tactics:
  • Affiliate marketing
  • Ambassador programs
  • Blog postsConference and/or retreat sponsorship
  • Creative assets for marketing purposes (rights to professional photography or videos, content, etc.)
  • Demos (cooking demos, DIY workshops, photography classes, etc.)
  • Display advertisinge
  • Newsletter campaigns (dedicated blasts or features in weekly or monthly publications)
  • Facebook Live broadcasts
  • Live events (in home, at corporate headquarters, on location, etc.)
  • Live stories (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat)
  • Podcasts
  • Ratings and reviews on a brand’s website
  • Recipes
  • Satellite media tours or other spokesperson opportunities
  • Social media campaigns (one or a combination of targeted or amplification campaigns on Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitter, and/or YouTube, etc.)
  • Twitter PartiesVideos
Tip! Once you have identified your success statements and tactics, refer back to your campaign and/or influencer algorithm or success criteria. Couple all of that with your creativity and voila! You’re well on your way to developing an award-winning campaign, or at a minimum, one that drives measurable results and improves your company’s bottom line. What’s not to love about that?

3. Identify campaign, consumer, and influencer criteria.

Identifying campaign criteria includes answers to these questions:
a. What is the makeup of the consumer we are trying to reach through influencer marketing?
  • Age
  • Education level
  • Ethnic background
  • Gender
  • Geographic location
  • Household income
  • Marital status
  • Parental status (has children or not and what ages)
  • Primary language spoken
  • Spending or other habits
  • Other

b. What tactics, including platforms and content type, most reach this demographic?
c. What are best practices when targeting this demographic through influencer marketing?
d. What are tactics to steer clear of?
e. What influencer criteria that would best reach this demographic if different than the list above?
f. What campaign criteria needs to be considered?

4. Determine campaign assets.

Based on your goals, tactics, and criteria, ask yourself these questions to determine whether you should develop campaign assets:
  • Do you want influencers to share our content or produce their own?
  • If we want influencers to share our content, what do we need to develop or provide (e.g., a brand hashtag, display advertising, a GIF, large amounts of copy, short messaging points, a trackable link, photography, product, video, etc.)?
  • What resources and budget does the creative asset development require?

5. Create a Scope of Work.

Create and provide each internal and/or external team member (not the influencers) with a Scope of Work (SOW), spelling out the details of the campaign, including:
  • The campaign’s objective and company goal(s) it will meet
  • The anticipated measurable results
  • The budget
  • The inclusions
  • Brief overview of the brand messaging
  • Details (e.g., how influencers will be compensated, special instructions, etc.)
  • What will be included in the wrap-up report and when it will be delivered
  • Campaign timeline (See below.)
Tip! Front loading by including as much agreed-upon detail as possible in the SOW will lead to a more streamlined execution phase and less rework.

Next Steps

Now that you have created a campaign using these 6 steps, it’s time to manage it. Check out these posts in our series to learn more:

Not sure where to start? Let’s talk! Partnering with a professional influencer network, such as Mom It Forward Media, yields many benefits. We’ll meet with you to discuss your ideas, goals, and objectives. From there, we’ll develop a campaign that will meet (and hopefully surpass) your objectives. Does that sound like a plan? Contact us at jyl@momitforward.com to get started.

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