With articles touting the massive “gold rush” in influencer marketing, is it any surprise that everyone and their grandmother is looking to cash in?
We understand that influencer marketing is a hot button item right now, and with good reason; influencer campaigns provide insane results when managed properly.
“When managed properly” are the key words in that sentence.
Right now there are scads of agencies materializing out of thin air that claim to “specialize” in this practice. Or, worse yet, they simply tack it on to their existing services and figure they can “wing it,” more or less.
Here’s the skinny guys: Most of these firms have no idea what it takes to succeed with this method. Anyone who claims that influencer marketing is easy is, how do you say, full of it?
Don’t believe me? Let’s go ahead and examine what it takes to launch a successful campaign.
Managing Influencer Campaigns
For starters, in order for a campaign to be successful, you need to recruit influencers that align with your brand.
Easy, right? Just ask the 75% of marketers who state that their biggest challenges is identifying the right influencers for a campaign and they can tell you just how simple it is. (Here’s a tip: It’s not.)
Influencer identification is at the core of a successful campaign. Without the right influencers who actually resonate with a brand’s offerings, a campaign is doomed before it even begins.
Alright, say that you have found the right social media influencers for your marketing efforts. Great!
There’s just one problem; 59% of advertisers and communications professionals struggle to get an influencer’s attention.
And this just the very first step to getting a campaign up and running. Forget about the problems that come with crafting a resonant message, negotiating a fair price, ensuring that influencers uphold their end of the bargain, managing success metrics, pivoting when elements are not performing as well as expected, and other toils that come along with an influencer campaign. Sound easy yet?
Unless you want to look like this calm and collected gentleman, it is in your best interest to hire an agency with an extensive history of managing influencer campaigns.
But what about all of the awesome influencer marketing platforms that have helped linearize influencer identification and outreach?
These kinds of tools and service really are a lot of help when it comes to the aforementioned portions of assembling a campaign, but what many fail to realize is that these influencer platforms provide zero assistance in crafting a message that reaches the right audiences, social strategies that capture the right eyeballs, engagements tactics, campaign adjustments, and similar aspects to ensuring success.
This is why it is absolutely critical that brands partner with experienced and knowledgeable influencer marketing agencies that have developed successful campaigns in the past and know how to replicate that formula in future endeavors.
Okay, here comes our shameless plug. . .
The Fanatics Difference
If you have been following Fanatics Media, you know that we aren’t about the fluff and the sugar coating. We give you real information that delivers real results.
That said, Fanatics Media’s CEO, Mark Fidelman, quite literally wrote the book on using social media to generate monster ROIs in marketing. No, seriously. Go check it out.
And since influencers live in the social stratosphere, it is essential to understand the practices and tactics that are going to make an influencer marketing campaign successful.
Fanatics Media has been managing influencer marketing efforts for years. In that time, we have learned what works and what doesn’t in regards to identifying and connecting with influencers, social media amplifications strategies, keeping efforts on track, campaign measurement, and all of the other intricate inner workings of influencer marketing.
Over the course of the past 4 years, we have come to develop working relationships with influencers across all of the major social media networks and know how to collaborate with them to develop materials that engage audiences, drive conversions, and generate long term results.
Fanatics understands what it takes to optimize campaigns around a company’s goals and KPIs because we have done it many times over and achieved stellar results repeatedly. If you want to see this magic in action, just check out our case studies.
For all of our campaigns, we follow a 7 step process that all begins with finding out who your target audience is and what resonates most with them. From there, we work with brands to develop impactful messages that engage audiences and tap in to their desires and pain points.
We then use advanced identification tools, algorithms, and strategies to locate influencers who fit the bill. Then, we have crafty ways to reach these folks (assuming we aren’t already connected) and woo them into creating awesome and results-oriented content for our clients.
Once the campaign has been assembled, we create a big splash with the launch and manage the entire effort from end-to-end, monitoring all aspects to ensure profitability.
Throughout a campaign’s cycle we provide detailed reports surrounding the metrics that matter most to your brand and show you exactly how impactful our methods are.
If you end up employing a firm that is anything less than masters of their craft, you’re going to have a bad time. The Fanatic’s difference is simple: We didn’t jump on the influencer marketing bandwagon, we helped to define it. And we continue to be on the pulse of creativity and social expansion. If you want tangible results and monster ROIs, hit us up!
