An influencer marketing campaign will usually consist of these steps:

Plan

Firstly your campaign needs a clear, timed, plan. Initially, this will be based on other marketing activities already in place in your business, as well as any other company milestones which affect this activity and to which the influencer campaign will be tied.

This may well change once you’ve been through all of the following steps. Feel free to adapt this timeline to suit the creative ideas you develop, the influencers you choose to work with, and your objectives.

It is advisable to place this timeline in a collaborative workspace, e.g. Google Docs where your colleagues, clients, and collaborators can see a live version of what is happening.

Create

The next step is to develop your ideas for creatively engaging influencers in an effective campaign. There are a number of established formats for these campaigns.

Key Formats for your Campaign

Co-creation. Co-creation refers to a campaign in which you invite an influential social media user to collaborate in or contribute to a creative project, or your wider content output.

Online luxury fashion retailer Net A Porter took this approach with their Superstart campaign to launch a new product in their store. By forming a creative team out of a selection of global influencers, they were able to both create unique content and gain access to these influential Instagram users’ audiences.

Giveaway

Giveaway or voucher means providing an influencer with something of value which they can then offer to their audience. Often in the form of prize-led content or a unique voucher that followers can redeem against the brand’s products.

This is a common approach and can be seen in the campaign from NA-KD (link available at the bottom of this step) in which they provide a popular influencer with her own unique discount code.

Product Review

Product review is the most common but arguably least creative approach. It consists of sending a free product or free access to service to an influencer, requesting a review in the form of the type of content they’re known for sharing.

This type of campaign can and has been effective in cases where the brand has in some way made the product personalised or exclusive, or the ‘unboxing’ experience unique and noteworthy such as in this campaign by Huawei involving Unboxing Therapy on YouTube.

Influencer Takeover

Recent years have seen a growing trend for social media takeovers by influencers, whereby the brand’s social media account is handed over to them for a limited period, often 24 hours, to offer a different perspective and a fresh approach to content, as well as bringing in their audience to the brand. New York University’s campus in Sydney, Australia did just this to promote the reasons that its US-based students might want to study thereby showing the Australian experience through two NYU influencers’ takeover.

Influencers as Models

Some of the more modern fashion and beauty brands have found success with using influencers as models for their products. After all, for their audiences, the role models and celebrities of our day are social media influencers.

UK leisurewear brand Gymshark has enjoyed phenomenal success, in no small part to its influencer-first approach to social media content. Their entire social strategy is built around fitness influencers, who model their clothes in an authentic and compelling way.

Unique and Exclusive Experience

Given the extent to which the modern influencer is deluged with requests for all of the above, brands are increasingly aiming to deliver a truly unforgettable experience for influencers.

To cut through, many companies are offering these influential social media users truly unprecedented insight, collaboration, or access to their brand. Ultimately if it’s not special for the influencer, in all likelihood neither is their consequent output.

Chanel achieved this in 2016 with a successful campaign in which they brought a cohort of influencers into their France factory to each create their own unique version of the iconic Chanel No. 5. Luxury brands like this rarely open their doors in such a way, and when they do it has a true impact.

Join the discussion

Choose one or two of the approaches to developing an influencer campaign as described above, and find examples of existing social media campaigns which have followed the approach.