How Influencer Marketing Managers Can Stay Efficient & Competitive

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Over the last three years, spending in the influencer marketing industry in the United States has increased by over 100%. As more and more businesses realize the value of creator content, the demand for influencers vis-à-vis their managers are bound to soar in times to come. It is expected that marketers in the US are preparing to spend more than $4 billion on influencer marketing in 2022. Such phenomenal growth has proved that influencer marketing is more than a fad.

In 2021, the global influencer market was valued at $13.8 billion. Such a vast yet developing industry demands professionalism, thoughtful approaches, and expertise from influencer marketing managers.

As one such manager, you can expect many challenges, from managing the campaign to finding ways to save time while effectively meeting your targets.

Here, we will take a quick look at the three key ways to ensure efficiency in your day-to-day activities. Let’s dive in.

#1 Streamlining Influencer Marketing Content

A major part of your marketing campaign would rely on how you build the content around the influencers’ brand image and manage the same. Driving efficiency through content would mean repurposing content, aligning the ideas with sponsors, and creating content around an event that remains relevant to the followers.

A. Content Repurposing

You can extend the life of a campaign and increase the return on investment from influencer marketing by repurposing Influencer-Generated Content (IGC) (similar to UGC). Repurposing influencer material shouldn’t be a last-minute addition to your influencer campaign. In fact, it should remain at the core of your influencers’ marketing strategy.

Your influencer marketing material may be repurposed to make it more effective for your campaign. This means you can create a blog, use the content in snippets as a series of Instagram Stories, upload the key talking points on Spotify, etc.

You can run such content as a sponsored post to reach a larger audience. For instance, you can leverage influencer videos for Instagram ads and TikTok ads. Make sure to talk to your top influencers about how you plan to repurpose their content while building your campaign.

Also, consider using your influencer content in your marketing emails.

Most influencer connections begin on social media, but it doesn’t mean that the followers’ interaction remains limited to a few channels. As an influencer’s marketing manager, you can use emails to repurpose the content and send it to a different bunch of users.

You can use influencers’ quotes, video bytes, and images on social platforms over an email. This way, you create authenticity in the connection between influencers and readers as a part of this strategy.

It is always good to get the most out of your influencer connections. Include permission material from influencers in your promotional mailings.

B. Keep Up With Events

Your content calendar should involve predictable updates and events. For instance, any prospective product launch can be planned with well-defined content activities for the month.

Along the same lines, be mindful of the virtual events your brand has scheduled for the next quarter. Look for ways to further align and integrate the influencer marketing that you’re already doing into the virtual event plan your company has in place.

C. Stay Aligned With Post Sponsors

All stakeholders for sponsored post content should be on the same page, and you should be ready with the required assets. E.g., images, product delivery, story ideas for posts, etc.

#2 Leverage Automation Tools for Influencer Marketing

Social media automation tools help you stay in sync with your calendars. Automation can alleviate the burden of your day-to-day social media activities like drafting, editing, and sharing your content.

Online tools for managing your social media accounts, such as scheduling posts, reposting old ones, and curating new ones, all in one place, can simplify your life as an influencer marketing manager.

You can consider using some of the below-mentioned tools for the automation part.

A. Task Management Software

Similar to project management in IT companies, influencer managers collaborate with video, photography, and content teams. You can use tools like Trello, Basecamp, etc., and any digital asset management (DAM) tools to move tasks in a streamlined manner that ensures efficiency. If your team is new to such tools, consider using a digital adoption platform like Applearn to help your team better adopt these tools and quickly make the most of them.

A major part of your campaign would rely on how you build the content around the influencers’ brand image and manage the same.

Driving efficiency through content would mean repurposing content, aligning the ideas with sponsors, and creating content around an event that remains relevant to the followers.

B. Social Post Automation

Driving productivity in your everyday task requires adopting automation tools to simplify posting. Once you have a content calendar ready, you can use tools like Agorapulse to schedule content posting and reposting on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

C. Chatbots

It is not new for influencers to use chatbots as a part of their marketing strategy. Integrating a chatbot on social media channels helps generate leads, deal with the influx of inquiries, gather audience data, and connect with followers around the clock.

#3 Measure ROI Effectively with the Right Tools and Metrics

Identifying the right metrics to measure the effectiveness of a marketing campaign is essential to making data-informed choices. Setting defined objectives is the first stage in influencer marketing management. The only way to ensure that your marketing effort is focused on what is working is to set specific targets.

Here are some quick ways to implement and measure your ROI with the right tools and metrics.

Set SMART Influencer Marketing Campaign Goals

You may use SMART goals to achieve your long-term media goals, determine your most pressing media needs, and set deadlines for completing your yearly, quarterly, or monthly targets.

Here, your goals should be:

Specific (e.g., gain followers from this post),
Measurable (e.g. 500 followers),
Attainable (e.g. number of post likes. Don’t aim for a number too ambitious such as 3X your average post engagement),
Relevant (increasing the number of relevant followers, not bots), and;
Timely (Gain 500 followers within 3 weeks).

Define and Measure Your Influencer Marketing KPIs

Your brand’s and influencers’ social presence can be effectively enhanced by identifying and achieving Key Performance Indicators. Your KPIs should have a clear set of objectives and deadlines, similar to setting SMART goals as just discussed.

Here are some KPIs that you can track and measure to ensure campaign effectiveness, especially if you aren’t using robust influencer software like Tiddle.io.

A. Followers

When running an influencer marketing campaign, keep track of the number of new followers. Before the campaign begins, you should keep a tab on your followers to confirm that your new followers are from the campaign and not the other source. This approach will also help you compare the number of followers your influencers had before and after the campaign to see how much growth your collaboration achieved for them. You can use this influencer analysis tool to get started.

B. Impressions

It’s important to know how often your sponsored post has been seen on the various social media networks you use for influencers. Brand awareness may be measured by looking at your brand’s visibility to your influencer’s audience.

Moreover, comprehensive impressions provide you with useful information about the reach of your content among various influencers, allowing you to collaborate with other influencers for the next campaigns. You can also use this true view impressions calculator to measure the effectiveness of all the campaigns.

C. Campaign/branded hashtags

In addition to your influencer’s name, branded hashtags may involve a slogan, promo code, or a tagline from a particular campaign. Your campaign’s engagement in terms of user-generated content and reposts may be monitored by concentrating on your branded hashtags usage.

In addition, this makes it simple to gather user-generated content from people who participate in influencers’ posts, share content, and respond to polls.

Leverage Social ROI Tools for Influencer Marketing

Followers and impressions are great, but what you really need to be able to measure, and prove, is the return on your investment, and that means traffic and sales through your website.

You will need to have Google Analytics set up with proper eCommerce and goal tracking configured so that GA knows when you’ve made a sale and what that sale is worth. Then, using Agorapulse, either yourself or your influencer can post links to social media that are 100% trackable and attributable.

Agorapulse integrates with Google Analytics and tracks every link that’s shared through the system, even in direct messages on platforms like Facebook and Instagram where dark social is typically, well, dark. Whenever your influencer drives traffic and sales through the links they’re sharing, Agorapulse will surface that data in reports for you, demonstrating which platforms, which profiles, and even which posts, are driving revenue. Learn more about how to prove social ROI with Agorapulse.

Use Agorapulse to track 100% of the links shred in your influencer marketing campaigns to report on ROI.

Over to you

2022 is about strong collaborations between businesses and influencers to create meaningful content. As an influencer marketing manager, you have to streamline certain aspects of your job, as mentioned above. This means paving the way for innovative collaborations, redefining your influencers’ brand, and leveraging content that drives growth.

Now is the time to go beyond conventional forms of advertising and use collaborations amongst influencers to engage viewers. Like other forms of marketing, your influencer marketing plan is essential for both your brand’s and the influencers’ success.