Author
Halle North
In today's digital landscape, influencer marketing is a game-changer for connecting with target audiences. As a seasoned Social Media Marketing & PR Agency with extensive influencer collaboration experience, we'll explore the world of influencer marketing and the tricks we utilize here at PREM to ensure successful influencer marketing campaigns for our clients!
Our Influencer Experience
Having worked across diverse industries, our agency has gained valuable insight on how to build strategic partnerships, communicate and negotiate deliverables with influencers and their teams, create contracts, briefs and monitor analytics to measure the success of each campaign.
We are currently working alongside the California Olive Oil Council to host a series of cookalong events with foodie influencers and home chefs to help promote and increase awareness of their extra virgin olive oils.
Other brands and clients we have worked with in the influencer marketing world include:
- Ike’s Love & Sandwiches to promote his new Logan Webb sandwich collab
- Evanelle Vineyards to promote their Boots N Booze & Night at the Vineyards events
- Quesadilla Gorilla to promote their SLO location
Now let’s dive into our process a little bit…
First Steps:
The most essential part of influencer marketing is staying organized. This form of marketing can be overwhelming if you’ve never had experience working with influencers before, especially if you are working with multiple similar to what we are currently doing with our clients. Let’s focus a little bit closer on one of our clients: The California Olive Oil Council (COOC) is a prominent organization dedicated to promoting and educating about California-produced extra virgin olive oil. They offer valuable education on olive oil's health benefits, guidance on selecting high-quality olive oil, and provide a trusted COOC Seal as a guarantee of quality and authenticity. The COOC also engages in marketing and outreach efforts to raise awareness and conducts sensory courses to help consumers and retailers identify extra virgin-grade oils.
After that quick overview. Let’s get into the details.
First and foremost, learn your client’s budget, their target audience and what type of niche they are interested in reaching. This will allow you to determine which influencers would be good to partner with in terms of their reach, engagement rate, following and audience demographic.
With the COOC, we are looking for foodie influencers and home chefs who already have experience in the cooking world and create content specifically for others interested in recreating their recipes. Because they want to focus on the Sonoma/Napa Valley area for an event venue, we began researching for influencers who fit this niche in this specific area. It would not make sense for us to reach out to someone who conducts food reviews in the SLO county area since this is not the niche our client is looking for.
Note that before you begin searching for influencers it is crucial to set KPIs (key performance indicators) with your client to measure the success of your event campaign. KPIs will change based on your client's goals. With the COOC, our client is looking to increase brand awareness in the home chef community, so our KPIs consist of hitting a targeted number of reach and follows to their account after hosting these cookalong events and having our influencers post to their own social platforms to their targeted audience.
Contacting Influencers
Once you’ve set these goals and learned more about the wants/needs of your client and their targeted audience, now is the time to dive into finding and contacting influencers. Who you contact and reach out to will also vary depending on your campaign budget. The higher the follower count, the higher the price will be on various pieces of content. For example, because IG’s algorithm prioritizes reels, a reel will cost more than a carousel budget for most influencers.
There are various types of influencers based on their follower count:
Nano - 1k-10k
Micro - 10k-100k
Macro - 100k - 500k
Mega - 500k - 2M
All-Star - Over 2M
Not all influencers will have the same pricing for their content. For example, one influencer with 90k may charge $5,000 for a reel while another with the same amount of followers may charge $4,500 instead. Keep in mind that when discussing deliverables and pricing, there is always room for negotiation but be respectful of their work and pricing. PREM has found success in honesty and transparency when it comes to negotiating these two items. More often than not, influencers are willing to have a conversation and work with your set budget if it’s reasonable.
Once deliverables and pricing are set, the next step is to create a contract to have both parties sign to ensure deliverables, pricing, payment and due dates for content are set. This is another crucial part of influencer marketing that protects both your client and the influencer's work.
Setting Influencers Up For Success:
Following contract signing it’s time to get to work! For the COOC, our selected influencers attend a cookalong event that involves them cooking alongside one another and a professional chef to create dishes that use the COOC’s seal-certified extra virgin olive oil as the highlight of each dish. Our team gets to attend these events, grab BTS content for the client and for each influencer before they head home and begin creating their own content.
Each attendee is given some of our oils to use in their content since we want to highlight the use of our oils in their recipes. Make sure you set your influencers up for success by shipping products or inviting them to your business (depending on your deliverables and goals) so they can taste your food, show off your business, etc. in the content they create.
Proofing Content & Going Live:
We highly recommend adding to your contract a clause regarding proofing content before it goes live on your selected influencers' feed. This will ensure that the content they’ve created is within brand guidelines and speaks true to your brand's goals. Set a clear due date for when content is to be sent in and reviewed. Noting again to STAY ORGANIZED! Setting due dates for contract signing, content reviewing, and submitting metrics is key to a successful campaign.
Once reviewed, send your content live! Let the influencer know they’ve got the okay to post and be sure to follow up with them when it’s time to check out performance of their content. With the COOC we ask each influencer to send in their deliverables metrics 30 days after the post goes out which gives the content ample time to gain some traction. Check out this collaboration we did with @tiffoods for the COOC following our cookalong event!
Sharing Campaign Metrics With Your Client
Congratulations! You’ve made it through an influencer marketing campaign and now it’s time to share your findings with the client.
At PREM, we like to put together a presentation that reiterates to the client what our goals were, who our target audience was, the influencers used for the campaign and if we met our KPIs. A presentation is a great way to share all of your campaign’s information in an organized, professional manner for your client to easily review.
Conclusion
Through strategic collaboration, clear communication, consistent organization and performance tracking, our agency has helped brands authentically connect with their target audience. While challenges persist, the benefits make influencer marketing an indispensable tool for brands in the digital landscape. As this field evolves, we're committed to leveraging our expertise to navigate it and achieve your marketing objectives.
Interested in dipping your toes into the world of influencer marketing, but don’t know where to start? Contact us and we can help!
