How to Create a Successful Instagram Influencer Marketing Strategy

Instagram influencer marketing is an effective modern way to promote products and services, advertise brands and companies. It is based on interacting with the target audience through influencers — bloggers, creators, streamers, famous people and other personalities who have an audience on a social network. A properly developed strategy can significantly increase the outreach of your advertising, as well as the percentage of conversions to targeted actions on your website, social network or mobile app.
When should you choose Instagram for Influencer Marketing?
Today Instagram is one of the most popular social networks. Instagram influencer marketing is a common choice among brands from various niches: this is due to the wide socio-demographic outreach of the audience, so that potential buyers can be found for any product or service. At the same time, cooperation with the right influencers lets you accurately adapt to the target audience for the optimal budget. Thus, by choosing the right influencer on this social network, you can:
- increase sales of a product or service;
- increase brand recognition;
- reach a new audience and quickly gain its loyalty;
- find new partners for cooperation or funding.
The engagement rate on Instagram is 3.21, which is higher than that of other social networks. Users comment, rate and share content that piques their interest — this is a good way to increase the product's audience outreach for brands.
Why Instagram Influencer Marketing Works
Instagram influencer marketing is one of the most effective types of social media advertising right now. This is due to the following indicators:
- Large audience. More than 1 billion active users of the social network and a huge number of influencers with different target audiences and prices for advertising content.
- User’s activity. KISSmetrics research shows that about 70% of users search for or follow the Instagram pages of brands whose products or services they use.
- Fast results. Influencers' content is viewed by thousands of people at once. It lets you achieve fast conversions.
- Confidence. Followers trust Instagram influencers more than regular ads from other sources.
Influencers create original content that lets generate an unobtrusive advertising of brands. Choosing the right marketing influencers helps you reach your target audience faster than any other type of advertising. For example, a computer influencer can effectively advertise an IT company, a football player — sports shoes, a famous photographer — a photography technique.
An advertisement for a clothing brand by the famous football player Neymar Jr.
What is the right way to work with influencers on Instagram
The primary goal is to define advertising goals and budget. This will determine which type of influencer is right for your business. The following types of Instagram influencers are divided into the categories:
- Mega-Influencers. They have over 1 million subscribers. This is the smallest category on Instagram. The price of advertising posts for such influencers is high, often with no well-defined average limit. Collaborating with such mega-influencers allows you to reach a wide audience and increase brand recognition.
Mega-Influencer example
- Macro-influencers. They have from 40 thousand to 1 million subscribers. The average price of an ad post for such influencers is usually in the $ 300-400 range. Just like mega-influencers, macro-influencers are effective when the key task of the brand is not only to increase sales, but also to convey the marketing message to a wide audience and increase brand recognition.
Macro-influencer example
- Micro-influencers. They have from 1000 to 40 thousand subscribers and make up the largest category — about a third of all channels on Instagram. The average ad post price for these influencers is $ 120, which allows brands to operate on a small ad budget. With the right choice of micro-influencer, advertising can become an effective leverage for increasing sales.
Micro-influencer example
Before start working with an Instagram influencer, check out their current data:
- influencers biography;
- subscribers’ demographic and geographic data;
- tone of voice and values of subscribers — your potential target audience;
- subscriber engagement rate;
- the level of interaction with the content and its quality, which are comments and recommendations. Explore how the influencer communicates with the audience.
Once you've chosen an influencer to collaborate with, provide them with:
- information about the company, product or promoted service;
- recommendations and the general direction in which he or she will promote the product.
Influencers are usually offered the freedom of creativity and are not given specific terms of reference. They independently choose the tone and style of the content.
What makes your influencer marketing campaign successful?
Here are the basic rules for creating a successful influencer marketing campaign:
- Clearly defined goals. They determine what needs to be achieved — increase sales and brand recognition, increase the number of followers on the official account, expand outreach, and so on. Clear goals allow you to assess the success of the company, make adjustments in the process of work.
- Find the right influencers from among the passionate people who are related to the product or service. So that an influencer doesn't have to do routine work and create boring content that won’t work.
The success of a company is assessed by summing the costs spent on advertising content and their conversion into customers / subscribers. This allows you to calculate the final price of each involved person’s work. The optimal result is the one whose value of each customer is three times the cost of attracting him, but it depends on a particular business.
How do you create an influencer marketing strategy for Instagram?
Before creating a strategy, determine your influencer marketing goals and advertising budget — it affects the number of influencers and their audience outreach that are supposed to work with you. After that:
- Make a shortlist of potential influencers. Do page research, explore your target audience and their engagement on the page.
- Get in touch with potential influencers or their managers.
- Develop a marketing campaign. At the same time, it is necessary to take into account the number of influential persons, the cost of their services. Based on the statistics of the account, estimate the approximate result of their potential work.
- Communicate with the influencer, make adjustments to the work-process, if necessary.
What online tools and services may help
For the initial analysis, Instagram business accounts have access to additional tools — Insights. They let you know when subscribers are most active and see the most popular page content. Instagram stores statistics for 60 days. The influencer can be asked for up-to-date statistics in the form of screenshots with the following information:
- the number of people who have unsubscribed from the page and new subscribers;
- audience outreach;
- popular publications and stories;
- number of interactions with the profile: likes and comments.
The BuzzGuru service will soon open up expanded options for working with Instagram. The platform will provide a user with in-depth account statistics, profile analysis and performance evaluation, and many other features. Write to us by e-mail support@buzzguru.com and we will inform you when the functionality appears on the BuzzGuru service. You may also arrange a call with our expert.
Conclusion
Instagram is one of the modern platforms that serves as an effective tool for a business to promote its products or services. Successful influencer marketing on this social network brings high conversions and new customers. However, the wrong approach to strategy can lead to suboptimal spending of the marketing budget and poor results of advertising campaigns.
As you develop your influencer strategy, use reliable services to help you choose the right influencers to collaborate with.