There’s no question that the art of social influence provides major value to travel brands… but the challenge is fitting influencers into your overall marketing strategy.
If you’ve already decided to incorporate influencer marketing into your organization, you probably already have a budget, resources — or at least a person or agency to manage the program — and the start of a plan for testing your first campaigns. But you need to make sure that it doesn’t become siloed from the rest of your marketing strategy.
It starts with timing and goals.
First, take a look at what’s happening in your industry at the moment. Digital trends are rapidly changing, and the social space has a constant demand for compelling content.
Beyond this, consider the state of your overall marketing strategy and objectives. If you’re repositioning your brand or preparing for a new launch, it may be a good time to implement influencers into your marketing plan as amplification. If you’re simply refreshing a current strategy, influencers are a really great way to push the boundaries and strengthen your brand narrative.
Ultimately, you need to determine if influencers are appropriate to your strategy, and whether now is the right time. Don’t add influencer marketing into your brand strategy because you feel like you should, but because it’s the right move for your brand at this time. If you decide to move forward, set some goals.
Understanding what your marketing team is trying to accomplish in upcoming quarters is essential for planning an influencer campaign that is in line with your current creative strategies.
Defining these factors allows you to know which key performance indicators (impressions, engagement, etc.) matter most when implementing influencers into your company’s broader marketing strategy.
Every great marketing strategy includes measurable goals and outcomes. Take the time to set smart goals, determine key metrics, and build a plan for tracking success. And make sure that your influencer program goals ladder up to at least one of your overarching marketing goals. The influencer program shouldn’t be operating on its own; it must be working alongside the rest of the marketing organization to achieve company-wide goals.
Now that you have the framework in place, and alignment across the broader team, consider your brand values and audience.
Articulating your brand’s ethos and communicating it throughout your influencer marketing campaign will establish a seamless alignment between your overall marketing plan and content. To know who your message is for (and which influencers should deliver that message), research your target market profile — who they are, where they are, what they love, and what they don’t love. This information is key when shaping an influencer strategy that resonates with your audience and creates engaging dialogue.
These details likely already exist with your brand or product marketing teams. Use their profiles as a starting point, but understand that your various marketing teams may have slightly different audiences (or audience pain points) based on channel and campaign objectives. But remember that regardless of channel, tactic, and audience, your brand personality, key messages, tone, and values must be consistent across all channels. Also, be prepared to educate your influencers on the specifics of your brand so they can reflect it in their content.
One of the most significant parts of fitting influencers into your marketing strategy is determining the variety of online and offline avenues for collaboration. Analyze what’s on trend and what has been done within your space among other industry leaders, then focus on your own objectives and logistics.
Here are some ideas on exactly how to best activate with influencers:
Be sure to not operate in a silo and incorporate other teams into your influencer activations. For example, your social media team should be included with all content and events so they can help promote before, during, and after. Look for synchronicities with other teams for ways to maximize your marketing efforts and outcomes.
Once you’ve finally got your influencer marketing campaign off the ground, determining its success is absolutely essential to guiding (and improving) the strategy behind future activations. Measure performance based on the objectives you set from the start — but don’t forget to lend your attention to what the audience has to say!
Influencer marketing is all about engagement. As a collaborative and community-focused marketing tactic, refining your strategy so that it caters to your brand’s goals, as well as your audience’s interests, is the key to future success.
Want to develop an innovative influencer marketing strategy that seamlessly integrates into your current marketing initiatives? Steller can help.