How can you create a client-focused influencer marketing strategy?

Understanding your client's objectives is the most important step of any marketing campaign, whether influencer or not. Ultimately, having a clear, pre-defined discovery call to gather client objectives will set your campaigns up for success. Without a clearly-defined discovery process, you may not fully grasp all client objectives and the campaign can start off on the wrong foot.

One of the ways you can maximise the chances of a successful client / agency briefing, on influencer marketing, or any other type of marketing, is to play back your understanding of the brief to your client. The briefing process is an opportunity to bring two groups of people who are thinking about the business from very different POV's together. The more alignment between both parties the higher chance of success. As an agency, show the client what you took from their briefing, that may be in the form of your internal briefing or a detailed note. Whatever it is get that signed off. Then you can all move forward with confidence. Having been both client and agency side this double checking helps both parties a lot.

I'd add that influencers who have a following or engagement rate that is moving in the right direction is really important too. You can benefit hugely by working with an influencer who's following increases during their time partnering with you. Meaning they are actually likely to bring in more eyeballs/engagements to your partnership by the end than they were at the beginning. Obviously working with an influencer who has a decreasing audience or engagement metrics will simply mean you get less than you paid for. Discovery tools are useful to help you identify these trends with influencers' content.

Utilizing an influencer marketing tool to vet potential influencers is typically well worth the cost, due to the time and effort these tools save. Ensuring that the influencers audience is relevant to your client and their goals, as well as their geographic reach, are two of the most important characteristics to vet for these campaigns. Additionally, making sure the influencers align with your client's goals.

Crafting a client-centric influencer marketing strategy necessitates understanding their goals, carefully selecting relevant influencers, establishing clear expectations, monitoring and measuring campaign progress, and fostering ongoing relationships with influencers. Transparency, flexibility, creativity, and patience are crucial throughout the process. By following these guidelines, you can effectively align influencer marketing efforts with client objectives and achieve desired outcomes.

Negotiation is a vital step in the influencer marketing process, and making data-backed decisions can help you create leverage in this step of the process. Ensuring you have audience, engagement and geographic data for the influencer can help you negotiate a fair, data-based scope.

Always be clear and upfront about everything so that the content creator is clear on expectations. It saves time and misunderstanding later down the line. Influencers are committed and good at what they do, which is why you're interested in working with them. But an unclear brief can be very frustrating and waste their time and yours. Make sure you are really clear on requirements, get it agreed and have a good process for content development.

Campaign results and KPI's are super important for all activity. Agree a framework of what you intend to track and ensure it's aligned with everyone's expectations. It should either be in, or relate to, your original brief so everyone is aligned. If you present KPI's beyond what was expected, then ensure they are adding value and illuminating the conversation about current performance or perhaps emerging trends.

Influencers are people, not media inventory, and so relationship management is key. You need to have finely attuned talent management skills on your team to ensure influencer marketing delivers what it needs to. Flexibility is key to successful influencer talent management and delivery. So long as everyone involved is clear on the brief and the desired outcomes, the routes you take to deliver the results should be flexible. I've seen outcomes improve because a client is flexible to an influencer's change of plan, which has then resulted in stronger content off the back of it. And yes, if you've got a good relationship with creator talent that's invaluable, and can lead to a long term partnership that benefits both parties.

In shaping a client-focused influencer marketing strategy, start by deeply understanding your client's brand and target audience. Use this insight to identify influencers who align with the client's demographic and share similar values and aesthetics. Emphasize flexible collaboration with influencers, allowing for adjustments that can lead to more authentic and resonant content. Measure the campaign's success through both quantitative metrics like engagement and conversions, and qualitative feedback. Maintain open, adaptive communication with both influencers and clients throughout the campaign to optimize outcomes and strengthen relationships.