1 . Define goal

In order to find suitable influencers and address the right users, companies must first define what they want to achieve with their campaign. This can be for example

• Brand Awareness
• Reach

• Leads / Conversions / Sales

• Product usage / content production

• Search engine optimization (OffPage SEO)

be. Companies do not have to commit themselves to one goal. Typically, an Influencer Marketing campaign can have multiple goals at once.

2. Determine target group

Who do companies want to reach? Who are potential customers, how can they ideally be reached? Before companies start looking for the right publisher(s), they should determine their target group. They can do this, for example, by creating buyer personas that represent their ideal customers.

3. Define the form of Influencer Marketing

Once the campaign objective and target group have been defined, companies should choose a form of influencer marketing. Basically, there are three forms of influencer marketing:

Influencer Advertising: With Influencer Advertising, companies only buy the reach of an influencer. This can make particular sense if they have already designed proven campaign material and want to play this out to the widest possible audience.

Influencer Marketing: Influencer Marketing is a marketing method that allows companies to leverage not only the reach of publishers, but also their popularity and authenticity. They want to motivate users to make purchases or increase brand awareness, especially through the credibility of influencers.

Influencer Relations: With Influencer Relations, companies do not just run a single campaign with an influencer. Instead, they build a long-term relationship with the influencer. For example, companies can regularly send new products to the influencer and he or she can decide whether to mention them in their articles.

4. Choosing the right influencers

Choosing the right influencers is one of the factors that determine how successful a campaign can be. Important criteria are among others

• the range,
• the relevance of the topic and
• the interaction in the accounts of the influencers.

Companies do not always have to choose the influencer with the widest reach. In many areas, collaboration with micro-influencers in particular can bring far greater success. Although these have a smaller range, they do have a

• very high commitment,
• are opinion leaders who reach a specific group of people,
• have a certain expert status,
• great attachment to their followers,
• often produce more lasting effects than Macro Influencer an
• have a higher like-rate than influencers with higher numbers of followers.

An additional plus: in most cases the costs of a Micro Influencer are significantly lower than those of a Macro Influencer.

With the choice of influencers, the question of where their target group is particularly present and active should also always be clarified.

5. Define method

Once the campaign goal, target group and influencers have been defined, companies should define how they want to present their content to users. They can do this, for example, via

• a product test,
• a product placement,
• an Unboxing Event and
• the provision of a discount code

to be done.

6. Create publisher briefing

Companies now have a clear framework for how they want to approach their influencer campaign. In order for the influencer to realize their goals and ideas as desired, they must create a detailed and easy-to-understand publisher briefing. It is not enough to provide the influencer with a simple press release. Companies should design a clear and structured briefing that includes concrete specifications regarding length, content, topic focus, "Dos" and "Don'ts". How exactly this is done is explained in our article "Detailed Guide: 8 steps to the perfect publisher briefing".

7. Evaluate the success of the campaign

Once the influencer campaign is over, companies should evaluate the collaboration with the publishers. Pre-defined KPIs are helpful in this respect, as they show at a glance how much the campaign has been worthwhile. Leading questions can be, for example:

• How many new customers could the campaign generate?
• How many downstream effects - new content was created?
• How many likes, shares and comments did the influencer receive for his contributions?

• How many people visited the landing page?

By answering these questions, companies also show how and where they can optimize their next campaign. Is it worthwhile to revise the content? Was the target group defined precisely enough? Were the influencers suitable for the campaign?