Influencer Management - Everything You Need to Know
It’s a staple now for brands to market their products by collaborating with influencers. These business relationships can be hard to start and even harder to maintain. Influencers, at the end of the day, are people too and require management just like any regular business partner. That’s why influencer marketing managers exist. They oversee influencer campaigns, ensuring they run smoothly.
Influencer management plays a key part in fostering a positive relationship with influencers you work with. Having a positive relationship will guarantee further collaboration projects and reduce miscommunications or disagreements. You want to be able to work efficiently with your influencers and keep them happy. It’s important to research influencers to get an idea of their personality and price on platforms like Collabstr.
What is influencer management?
Influencer management involves building and nurturing your relationships with influencers. You have to cultivate a friendly and mutually-beneficial business relationship in order to produce high-quality results. Influencer management includes communicating with influencers, negotiating terms, creating and organizing marketing strategies, and briefing influencers on their duties.
Influencer management, which is also known as IRM (influencer relationship management), also aims to keep influencers happy to ensure they continue working with you. Influencers are constantly asked by brands to collaborate, so it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd. That’s why it’s important to keep the influencers you have for as long as possible.
Different Types of Influencers You Need to Know
Influencers are separated into different categories based on the size of their following. This essentially refers to their level of fame and influence. The type of influencer you should choose depends on your budget, target audience, and marketing goals.
There are four main types of influencers:
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Mega Influencers (over 1 million followers)
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Macro Influencers (500,000 to 1 million followers)
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Mid-tier Influencers (50,000 to 500,000)
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Micro Influencers (10,000 to 50,000 followers)
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Nano Influencers (1000 to 10,000 followers)
Why is influencer management important?
Influencer management is a crucial part of collaborating with influencers. Business relationships require a careful and strategic approach in order to improve work efficiency and produce desired results. Influencer relationship management also helps you prolong business partnerships, which can guarantee further marketing campaigns and a steady method of promotion. You can continue targeting influencer followings and receive positive exposure.
Strengthens Trust in Your Brand
The longer you partner with an influencer, the more trustworthy you will seem to their audience. You’ll become a part of the influencer’s image or brand. Followers will also find you more familiar and comforting, the more they’re exposed to you through influencer content.
Long-term influencer collaborations come with a sense of loyalty, which can come across as more authentic and personal than short-term relationships. Continuing to support each other shows that you have a positive and constructive partnership.
Increases Brand Awareness
Influencers often have a large following, so promoting to their audience will increase your brand awareness. When influencers mention a product or brand, followers are more likely to pay attention and remember that information. This is due to their personal interest in the influencer and their content.
Allows You to Reach Your Target Audience
You can target specific audiences through influencers who share your niche. For example, if your target audience is children, you can find an influencer who creates toy unboxings, such as Rhia. You can collaborate with the influencer to reach your target audience.
How To Effectively Manage Influencers
Crafting the perfect influencer management strategy is difficult, especially when working with different personalities. Every influencer is unique, so you should tailor your strategy based on their contract requirements, personal goals, and preferred forms of communication. You should also consider your own goals, budget, and requirements.
Step 1: Find an Influencer Management Agency
Find an influencer management agency or influencer agent to assist you in managing your marketing campaigns. These agencies help brands and influencers work efficiently together. For example, NeoReach provides marketing teams and strategies, and manages influencer campaigns.
Step 2: Set Your Budget and Goal
The first step towards effective influencer management is knowing your goals and limitations. You must be direct and confident when you communicate with influencers as it shows them that you’re trustworthy and reliable. Knowing what you want and being able to articulate that to influencers is a powerful way of building a relationship.
For example, set your own budget and lay out your main marketing goals. Then, relay that information to influencers in a kind but firm manner. Try to be as clear as possible to avoid any confusion. Use an influencer price calculator to get an idea of an influencer’s price and personality. Use this information to guide your conversation.
You can approach this conversation in a few different ways:
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We want to achieve X and X in this campaign.
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Based on our budget, this is what we can offer you.
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This is our campaign budget. Does this sound reasonable?
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How much can you offer for X amount?
Step 3: Decide on the Terms
After discussing your budget and goals, it’s time to decide on more specific terms for the contract. Contract negotiations are very important in influencer management as it can make or break a business relationship. You have to consider the other party’s requirements as well as your own.
Show that you’re flexible and willing to compromise. It will make you more approachable to influencers. They want to work with someone who’s easy to communicate with. When discussing contract terms, pay attention to the influencer’s mood. You want them to be satisfied with the contract to increase the chances of forming a long-term relationship.
Step 4: Have an Onboarding Process
An important step in influencer relationship management is making sure they’re familiar with your brand and know about their duties. Companies usually adopt an onboarding process to help with this transition. An onboarding process involves directing influencers on what to do, providing training or tools, having a good campaign brief, using contracts, checking up on them, and more.
Showing this much attention and care will leave a good impression on influencers. Everyone appreciates being looked after. It can also help influencers feel more comfortable with your brand and employees.
Step 5: Collaborate With Your Influencer to Develop Effective Content
Influencers have to be careful about what kind of content they make since they have fans to consider. Their audience has certain expectations about the type of content they’ll receive, so influencers won’t want to do campaigns that differ too much from their usual content.
When discussing marketing campaigns, make sure they fit with the influencer’s existing content. You should also think about their audience demographic and how to appeal to them. Work with the influencer on your campaign ideas as they know their audience best, you can use tools like the TikTok ads library for inspiration. Involving the influencer in these important discussions will help build a sense of teamwork and friendship.
Step 6: Have a Tracking System
Effective influencer management involves keeping influencers on task. Implement a tracking system and use it to regularly monitor an influencer’s progress, work efficiency, content, and performance. It’s your job to correct them when they make mistakes and resolve any misunderstandings that may occur. You should be strategic about these conversations to avoid offending or upsetting the influencer.
Set some metrics to measure performance against, and use them to gauge how well an influencer is doing.
Metrics can include:
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Views
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Likes
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Shares
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Website Traffic
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ROI or Return on Investment
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Brand Awareness
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Sales
You can also use the tracking system to keep track of your spendings to make sure you’re within budget. Create your own tracking system or use a tracking software to help you monitor influencers.
Step 7: Compensate Them Fairly
If your brand greatly increases in profit due to influencer marketing, you should compensate influencers by increasing their pay or giving them a bonus. Rewarding influencers is an important part of making them feel valued and appreciated. It also motivates them to continue working with you.
Don’t be afraid of changing your budget as it’s never set in stone. Reassess your budget at regular intervals to see if you can afford to compensate influencers, or whether to start cutting back.
Best Practices for Managing Influencers
Influencer management is a complex process and can be easy to mess up. Dealing with human relationships is one of the hardest parts of marketing as each person requires a unique approach. Management practices can differ depending on the situation and people involved.
However, there are some overall best practices that apply to any influencer:
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Use an Onboarding Process to Guide Influencers
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View influencers as Your Equals (they are business partners, not employees)
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Involve Influencers in Campaign Discussions
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Give Influencers Creative Liberty
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Offer Compensation/Rewards
These practices lay the foundation for a positive and friendly business partnership. You should prioritize friendly communication, respect, and reliability.
Conclusion
Influencer management is a key part of forming friendly business relationships with influencers. It involves managing communications, negotiations, tracking progress, resolving disagreements, and more. Influencer management can help prolong business partnerships and guarantee future marketing campaigns. Influencers receive many offers to collaborate, so it’s hard for brands to get chosen. IRM is essential for convincing influencers to work with you.
Good communication is the foundation of effective influencer management, especially when you first reach out to an influencer. Doing in-depth research on an influencer beforehand can help inform you on how to best approach them in conversation.
If you’re looking to step up your influencer marketing campaign, you’re in the right place. We at Collabstr help to connect businesses with influencers in their niche constantly, increasing brand awareness and audience reach. Take a look at our prices and post your influencer marketing campaign today!
