Social media has quite become an integral part of everyone’s lives. From those who use it for entertainment or business improvement, social media is no longer a place of escape; it’s an area to boost popularity and brand awareness, and flash about a life everyone wishes they had.

From Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, as users, we are addicted to logging in, swiping through feeds, and calculating the number of likes, comments and shares collated over the past few days.

Because of this, the interaction levels on social media sites have skyrocketed, with the daily active users hitting 3.5 billion, equating to 45% of the entire global population. 

 ‘Daily active users hitting 3.5 billion, equating to 45% of the global population.’ 

Because of this, businesses everywhere have quickly jumped onto social media to promote new products, increase the audience base and create partnerships with other business users. Most specifically through the use of Instagram. 

1. What Is Instagram Influencer Marketing?

Instagram influencer marketing is a type of marketing done through endorsements. A business will select one, or a handful of high-quality Instagram accounts that have a substantial amount of followers and an influence on their fans, to promote either products, services or discounts too. 

This only works well if the chosen influencer has a collection of trusting followers who take their opinion very seriously enough to act upon it. It comes from years of social media used to build up a dedicated base.

But, with hard work, the account can quickly be picked up from the business and turned into an influencing profile to aid in the companies' growth online and in real life. 

Followers can quickly become potential customers if the correct influencer has been chosen. For example, 73% of marketers believe social media marketing benefits businesses. 

But, if anything, the social media influencer marketing process is rather extensive. A lot has to be taken into consideration to ensure that in doing this, the business increases traffic, audience and potential revenue. Otherwise, it would have all been done for nothing. 

Because of this, below, we will discuss the top 10 Instagram influencer marketing strategies. This way, any business can be confident that they are making the right choice using this method and gain the benefits of doing so. 

2. Know Your Audience Base

Before anything is composed, the business needs to know the audience base they want to target or increase its reach. Once this is clearly defined, it will be much easier to find the right Instagram influencer to fit the audience's needs.

It mainly works depending on what the business provides compared to the chosen audience's interests. There would be no reason to target a group of gamers if the brand sells children’s clothing. All of the details need to be taken into consideration. 

As well as interests, it would be important to account for age, possibly gender, lifestyle, work, and behaviors of the desired target audience, to be able to begin preparing campaign ideas that will suit everything about them. This way, it will be much easier to boost business popularity, as the audience will feel completely catered for. 

3. Finding Social Media Influencers

Like most strategies, the first steps into social media marketing are dedicated to research. In this case, the chosen platform is Instagram, so the approach will focus on finding the right demographic to begin expanding the business profile.

In the first phase of conducting research, look into the style of influencers the business is interested in. 

The Types of Influencers:

• High-rated celebrities: Will have a huge Instagram following, influence the fan's opinions and have the ability to produce quality content.
• Micro-influencers: Sticking to under 2000 followers, but a fan base that is dedicated to the account and enjoy the content being produced, the potential to grow is also there, tend to work independently. 
• Macro Influencer: Their sole job is to be a brand ambassador for businesses, implementing content into their account that has between 10K-100K followers, usually represented by an agency.

Along with this, the business must consider how easily accessible it would like its influencer to be. That of a micro-influencer will likely only have a few businesses in partnership and willing to accept a handful of free items to promote throughout their page.

Yet a Blogger or Celebrity is likely to do any promotion agreements through a management agency. While they may seem a little less flexible, if the business can compensate for the needs of this influencer, a larger fan base is much better for wanting to grow. 

4. How Much Should a Brand Pay an Influencer?

When knowing how much to pay the chosen type of influencer, the business first needs to decide on how large they are expecting the return on investment to be; will the chosen influencer hit the overall marketing goals? 

Depending on the size of the account will dictate how much the influencer will ask to be paid per piece of content created. The business then needs to consider this and comply accordingly, depending on what can be afforded.

A step in tackling this may be to compare different prices received from various influencer managers and then judge the value of each influencer. 

While it may be hard to predict the value of an influencer before the content is produced and engagements are made, it's a starting point for evaluating comparisons. 

According to a study conducted by Web FX, Instagram Influencers are asking for different prices in 2020 compared to the past. Those with worthy accounts ask for $10 per 1000 followers for a piece of content posted. However, it is still decided based on different factors for all accounts.

• The number of followers that account has
• Their level of engagement from the audience
• How well does their account fit with the business
• How many posts are being asked from the influencer
• What style of post is being asked 

Based upon these factors, sometimes the price can be negotiable if the reasons why a price has not been agreed upon are worthy enough. This way, a business may get a perfect influencer for a much cheaper price or find that too many demand high costs.

Once this has been revealed, the strategy can then be implemented, based on what budget is available, to make the most out of what is available.

5. Track The Outreach

When finding an influencer starts, the contacts and emails can quickly pile up, and with no real organization, it can become confusing who has been contacted, when and by whom. It’s much easier to lose opportunities through a lack of organization and being unprofessional. 

Because of this, developing a system to go through when outreaching potential influencers would be beneficial. Start by forming a document that addresses who on the team contacted them, the date, who was contacted, and any notes on following up or the current status of the conversation.

This way, an influencer will not be spoken to twice by different team members, which can ultimately turn them away from working with the brand. 

6. Compose A Campaign Brief

For the strategy to work, the business needs to be clear with the Instagram influencer on the campaign and goal expectations. In doing this, the influencer will know how much dedication needs to go into the content they are implementing.

Whether the brand wants to sell a particular product, raise brand awareness, boost downloads of their app or share a new discount, the influencer needs to know, so they can act accordingly and produce the right style pieces that will allow their audience to act in these ways. 

As well as this, while scripting can quite quickly become untrusting to an audience base, it is important for the influencer to know exactly what needs to be stated and when ensuring no important information is left out of the campaign.

Particularly for Instagram, it has been suggested to stick to 2 messaging points at a maximum. This way, the content won’t feel forced, but it will also be informative enough to get a reaction from the audience. 

7. Choose The Style Of Marketing

Once the chosen goals are clear for both parties, it is important to decide next what marketing campaign will be performed that will work to accomplish the final goals. 

While the influencer will be paid for their time and content production, a handful of other methods available can be added to the mix or used as a different approach for each influencer involved in the campaign.

These options include:

• Gifting: giving the influencer free products to test and discuss on their social channels.
• Social media mentions: using a business or influencer to mention the company and repost content.
• Influencer takeovers: giving an influencer the social business accounts for a period to post on.
• Brand ambassadors: creating relationships with brand fans to promote the products, content or services in return for offers, gifts or being a brand feature.
• Affiliates: giving the influencer a unique code for their followers to use that allows them to build up a commission

Adding these into the campaign strategy allows the influencer to have some flexibility in the content they are producing, to cater it specifically to their audience base. The customization features will allow a strategy to be devised that works well for all parties involved. 

8. Offer Discounts To Those Who Follow

One thing shoppers love the most is saving money. So, why not throw this as an incentive to the followers who have been dedicated to the account, are taking part in engagements and are overall loyal audience members? 

Simply offer those who follow a personalized discount only for them, and this way, those who find out may result in following the account too, saving money and also keeping up with any future news of this kind.

It has been suggested by Media Post that a returning customer is likely to spend 67% more on their next transaction, due to the marketing efforts boosting loyalty and business trust. 

 ‘Suggested by Media Post, a returning customer is likely to spend 67% more on their next transaction.’

Use the influencer's account to spread awareness and convert their followers into businesses with a simple saving code that can easily persuade them to stick around. 

9. Maintain Transparency

A rapid way to lose any potential build on the audience, and in some cases, an audience base already maintained, is by a business coming across as misleading.

Surprisingly, a handful of laws need to be abided by when proposing different marketing campaigns on social media, with several influencers having to disclose the nature of their brand partnerships to ensure everyone is kept happy and that there is complete business transparency.

As well as this, most Instagram users are smart enough to realize the moments when they are being misled by understanding the difference between a personal recommendation from an influencer to the audience or a paid advertisement.

Many do not agree with the ads and will refuse to follow this sort of content, knowing that it doesn't have the audience's best interest at heart. This being said, it would be important to bear in mind these feelings when developing campaign content to ensure that it performs with those watching it in mind. 

The simplest way to remain transparent is to address all accompanying features of a piece of content. If a post is sponsored and the influencer is getting paid, address this in the tags with an 'a simple ‘paid sponsorship’ comment that all the audience can see.

If a product is free, say the post is based on a gifted product. With these features, the audience can decide how they react to the content. This will also ensure that the business stays trusted and relied on. 

10. Set Up Conversion Tracking

Before the campaign goes live, it would be beneficial for the business to set up a method of analysis to see how well the content is performing. The focus should be on how to track the KPIs. For example, the change in traffic levels, brand mentions, purchases and signups.

Some of the most popular methods of tracking company analytics are as follows.

Google Analytics

This platform allows the user to record the performance of a piece of content through levels of traffic sent to it or how people have reacted outside of the content through this software on a high-quality workstation. For example, clicking through to the business site or a potential partnering link attached to the content. 

Hashtags

By having a campaign-assigned hashtag, the business can track just how well it performs by its impact on social media accounts. For example, if there have been any interactions with the phrase, retweets or comments with the mention of the hashtag, all working to increase the awareness of the campaign. 

11. The Future of Instagram Influencer Marketing

A lot can be suggested about Instagram influencer marketing and whether or not we will be seeing it in the future through the screens on our phones. That being said, it is clear that with a compatible strategy, a business can boost its popularity tenfold, quickly reaping the benefits from traffic, revenue and sales increases.

While on some levels, using an Instagram influencer can make business authenticity questionable in some users' eyes, there is no reason why it should not be done and done well.

The potential Instagram influencer marketing holds certainly the best in the business; with online users growing every day, this is the easiest way to get many people to see 1 piece of content.

Following, the suggested strategies above will provide the business with a quality marketing strategy through an Instagram Influencer.

It will ensure the company stays well lit against the millions of other pages, well reacted to and optimized, and finally ensure that the brand name remains positive against all the possible reasons why influencer marketing can hinder its popularity. 

Follow our steps; there is no reason why an influencer marketing strategy cannot work for your business. 

Author: Jasmine Nash