Influencer marketing has officially tipped into the mainstream. According to the latest “State of Social Report 2019” from Buffer, 37.2 percent of digital marketers invested in an influencer marketing campaign in 2018. That’s the good news. The bad news is that many digital marketers are still struggling to maximize their ROI from different influencer marketing campaigns. If you’re looking for ways to boost your ROI from influencer marketing, then keep reading…

Choose the right objective

There are various reasons why you might want to launch an influencer marketing campaign. The most common reason, of course, is simply to boost the brand awareness around your products and services. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but the savviest influencer marketing campaigns usually have a very definite target or objective.

When Bigelow Tea decided to run an influencer marketing campaign, for example, the company partnered with lifestyle influencers and bloggers who could help them get terms like “ice lemonade drink” to rank #1 on Google. The company then gave its influencers plenty of creative freedom on how to accomplish that goal, such as by posting recipes that they could post all over social media.

Choose the right influencers

If you’re not getting the most bang for your buck, it could be the case that you’re not partnering with the right influencers. The best influencers for your business are not necessarily A-list celebrities. Instead, the best influencers are authentic, knowledgeable individuals who are relevant for your industry or niche.

For example, national brand Sephora could easily choose a well-known celebrity or actress to promote its products; instead, Sephora partners with beauty bloggers who describe in great detail their latest makeup haul. These beauty bloggers can offer a more informed opinion about why a certain product works well for them. And they can also communicate the excitement of opening up a huge new haul of products.

Choose the right content format

There are plenty of different content formats that you can use with influencers. If you are simply looking for maximum brand awareness, then a social media takeover campaign might work. Or a contest or giveaway run by a top influencer might make sense. If you are looking for conversions, though, one of the most effective forms of content is the authentic, unbiased product review. If you are releasing a new tech gadget, for example, you might reach out to influential tech bloggers and see if they could do a product review for you.

The reason that these reviews help conversion rates is because they are so honest and authentic. That’s the difference between hiring a spokesperson or celebrity endorser and working with influencers – you are not giving them a script of what to say and you are not filtering their final creative work, and that means you also have to accept the different “pros” and “cons” that they might mention about your product.

Thus, the real secret to boosting your ROI from influencer marketing is simply having the courage to run a campaign based around authenticity. When you’ve chosen the right objective, the right influencers, and the right content format, then it can all come together like magic.