A Complete Guide to Instagram Influencer Marketing

Intro

Recent years have seen influencer marketing balloon into a billion-dollar space that has successfully established a name for itself when it comes to brilliant digital marketing strategies. Brands left, right, and centre, regardless of their size and scope, are actively incorporating content creators into their online marketing campaigns and brand awareness strategies.

When it comes to social media marketing, Instagram has emerged as a leading go-to platform, with recent digital marketing statistics backing this up. Reels, carousels, and Instagram stories are some of the most popularly and widely used content creation methods among most Instagram influencers.

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Why Instagram is the Most Ideal Platform for Influencer Digital Marketing

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When getting started with online marketing, one cannot help but wonder, why choose Instagram and not any other platform like Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, or YouTube? Well, while those other social media platforms are equally effective digital marketing tools, none of them can compare to Instagram, and more so in the influencer marketing space.

Instagram features over 2B active users on a monthly basis, making it an excellent choice for marketers seeking to reach a wide target audience. In truth, a platform like Facebook has a larger user base. However, Instagram users tend to engage more with the content presented to them, making it a better platform for brands to conduct successful marketing campaigns.

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When compared to influencer profiles across social media platforms, Instagram flaunts the highest rates of user engagement. Additionally, the highest percentage of leading posts on Instagram feature brand products.

This only further illustrates how Instagram's users respond to and interact with sponsored posts. Users on this platform don't seem to mind interacting with posts in which influencers promote products, making Instagram all the more appealing, especially to influencers.

What Exactly Does Instagram Influencer Marketing Entail?

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Instagram Influencer Marketing can be described as an online promotional or marketing strategy that is based on a special kind of partnership between social media content creators (whom we'll refer to as influencers for the rest of the article) and online brands, specifically on Instagram.

The concept is rather easy to comprehend; it's all about brands partnering up with influencers. Here, an influencer will promote the brand's products on their personal Instagram profiles, after which the brands compensate the influencers for these marketing efforts.

**Common Instagram Influencer Campaigns **

1. Sponsored Posts or Sponsored Content

These mostly come as #gifted posts. Most creators disclose such posts with a harsh tag such as #gifted if they got the product from the brands, they are marketing for free in exchange for the creators creating a post that promotes the brand or product. In most cases, these arrangements come with some additional compensation.

2. Affiliate Links

I'm sure you have come across a phrase like ‘link in bio’ in your numerous social media trips. This means that what you are looking at is an affiliate post. Instagram affiliate programs work when users click on a creator's affiliate link, thereby creating an interaction.

Upon conducting interaction tracking, and it is found that the click led to converts, the influencer gets a compensation.

3. Reposts and Branded Content

In most cases, brands tend to supplement their content with their Influencers Instagram posts. For instance, a firm could reshare their Influencer’s post or picture (one that promotes their product or brand) to its Instagram story feed as a strategy to push their brand further.

4. Contests

Here, brands give their products to Influencers for free. The Influencers then come up with giveaway contests in which their followers compete to win these gifts.

5. Reviews

A creator can create content or posts through which they review a particular brand's products. The trick here is honesty, as it promotes brand credibility with your target audience.

Influencers can take their reviews to the next level by incorporating real visuals. By using a tool like this collage maker, you can easily create eye-catching collages to accompany your reviews. Whether it's showcasing the product in action or presenting before-and-after results, visual content enhances the impact of your review, engaging your audience and effectively promoting the brand or product you're working with.

What Does it Take for One to be Considered an Instagram Influencer?

As the name suggests, influencers are content creators who have some level of influence ‘clout’ if you like, on their target audience. This is particularly so given that most Instagram consumers seek influencers for recommendations on the products they use.

More than a third of Instagram subscribers have ended up purchasing a particular product, having been inspired by an influencer’s post. In a nutshell, influencers are online content creators who have some power over consumers’ purchasing decisions.

Interestingly, you do not need to have millions of followers for you to be a successful Instagram Influencer. There are different levels of influencers on Instagram: \

• Nano Influencers (1,000 - 5,000 followers)
• Micro Influencers (5,000 - 100,000 followers)
• Macro Influencers (100,000 - 1 million followers)

While the most impact is felt from Macro Influencers, Micro Influencers and Nano Influencers too have some level of leverage to offer as well.

Key Benefits of Influencer Marketing on Instagram

Now that we know an array of Instagram Influencer Strategies, we want to establish whether investing in Instagram Influencer Marketing is worth the while. Well, fret not; here are the perks that come with it:

• Increased Social Sales

Instagram influencers present an online advertising platform that is far beyond conventional paid advertisements such as newspaper ads. With digital marketing, it is easy to make increased sales seeing as the post is highly likely to reach a wider audience.

• Cost Effectiveness

Brand ambassadorship, online collaborations, and product gifting, are all cost-effective strategies as compared to conversion-based digital campaigns. The biggest question among brands is whether it is worth investing in paid ads or not.

The beauty with Instagram Influencer Marketing strategies is the fact that brands can make price estimates of their promotions’ reach even before they start working with a particular influencer. A creator's followership and engagement rate can help you predict the reach you are likely to get if you use them as your brand ambassadors.

• Greater Exposure and Target Reach

Working with an Instagram Influencer, more so one with numerous followers, is highly advantageous as it increases the chances of more engagement with your product. An influencer will boost your brand's exposure, seeing as your product will be introduced to a larger target audience.

• Flaunting your Products in Real-Time

Instagram influencers have a way of bringing your products or brand to life. There is beauty in working with a content creator; this is where the ‘creative’ aspect of ‘online content creation’ comes alive.

A skilled influencer, for instance, would understand the relevant scenarios to your products, your audience’s preferences, your product's value proposition, and more. Tapping into Influencers’ skillsets unlocks tons of new ways to help you make sales.

• Brand Humanisation

This basically gives your brand or product a face, ultimately enhancing authenticity. An influencer can add that much needed human touch to your brand through real life engagements with your target audience.

The Cost Implication of Instagram Influencer Marketing

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Your budget is controlled majorly by the type of content creator you want to work with. It goes without saying that Macro Influencers would be pricier to work with compared to Nano and Micro Influencers.

The rates commonly charged are:

• $10 to 100 per post for Nano Influencers
• $100 to 5,000 per post for Micro Influencers
• $5,000 to 10,000 per post for Macro Influencers

As is expected, celebrity Influencers can charge anything in the range of hundreds of thousands to millions.

Key Benefits of Influencer Marketing on Instagram

Get Invited to Some Amazing Shindigs

As you amass your follower count, you will notice that your event calendar can fill up quite quickly. Whether it's attending the best New Year's Eve parties in Wasington, DC or little known underground events in LA, being an influence definitely has it's perks. But, don't forget influencers know they aren't just being invited for their charm and wit - they understand and often overstate their worth! Thus, it's important to judge your events and experiences with some fresh eyes. If it's something that could create amazing content, you could round up influencers who are hungry to keep adding posts and the momentum going. On the other hand, if it is something that is not that exciting, you need to find other ways to make influencer marketing work for you cost effectively (hey - maybe offer a few key influencers a free dinner or bottle service to get them there)!

Building your Instagram Influencer Marketing Strategy

Putting together a successful Instagram Influencer Marketing campaign requires a lot of work. However, here are some basics to help you kick start your journey seamlessly:

1. Lay Down your Campaign Goals

Pinpointing your specific goals helps you get a clear picture of exactly what you hope to achieve through your preferred Instagram Influencer Marketing campaign.

You could be looking to:

• Generate more sales
• Increase your brand's awareness
• Achieve new market penetration
• Retain your existing customer base
• Engage your online community
• Establish a library of user-generated content
• Increase your social media followership

2. Work with Products that are Best Suited for Instagram

While digital marketing seems to cut across the board, there is a reality check with Instagram Influencer Marketing; not all products can be promoted on Instagram. With Instagram, visually striking and appealing products tend to do better than any other products. It is for this reason that businesses in the fitness, fashion, and beauty niches do so well on this platform.

3. Maximize on User Engagement

In most cases, people tend to assume that huge followership directly translates to more user engagement. If your Influencers' posts come off as spammy, or ones that really don't convey the message that some effort was put in to create the post, then users are likely to just scroll down, ignoring the post. The trick here is to balance brand promotion and user engagement.

4. Influencer Vetting

Before you work with a particular influencer, be sure to vet them. You want to present your brand for what it is without compromising on your Influencers' creative space. Be sure to establish whether or not the influencer’s target audience is suited for the product you'd like to promote; otherwise, your brand could end up being quite irrelevant to them.

Measuring the Return on Investment (ROI)

As is expected, how you measure ROI on this front is highly dependent on the particular goals you have set for your digital marketing strategy.

Common metrics that you could track include:

• Views
• Shares
• Comments
• Conversions/ Sales
• Frequency of Promo Code Usage
• Overall Reach
• Followers

If your goal is sales generation, then the metrics you need to focus on are promo codes, revenue, and conversions. If you intend on increasing brand awareness, then shares, views and reach would be more ideal metrics to consider.

In Conclusion

With the prevalence of Instagram Influencer Marketing, its impact as an effective marketing strategy cannot be downplayed. While there is no denying that there is a lot of legwork that goes into the successful adoption of a brilliant strategy, at the end of the day, the efforts are all worthwhile.