Wondering how influencers can add value to an event? Here’s some great advice on maximizing ROI when collaborating with micro-influencers or social media influencers on a hybrid or virtual event.
Influencer marketing has become a popular part of many brands’ marketing strategies for both virtual and hybrid events, and for good reason.
Recent studies show that 80% of online marketers have found that influencer marketing is effective. Stats highlight how influencer marketing campaigns can set an event apart and attract an even larger audience. A business can more than double or triple its reach by association.
But how does a successful collaboration come about? What’s needed to make a collaboration authentic and original rather than forced and fake?
Let’s find out.
1. Identifying a target audience
It’s absolutely essential that a brand knows who their target audience is for any marketing campaign they embark on. With influencer marketing, it’s important to ensure that you are as specific as possible, because that will impact every decision made for the rest of the campaign. You should have a fairly set target audience in general for your business. However, you can narrow this down to the people you know are going to be attending your event, especially micro – influencers who can create a bigger impact.
Creating audience personas is very helpful in this case. You can start to see real people who will be attending and work out how best to address them with your influencer campaign. This will help you with planning your event in general, too.
2. Choosing an influencer that aligns with the brand
Once you know who you are talking to, you need to work out who will be doing the talking. This is a critical step. You need to have the right influencer on board if you want to get the best results for your campaign. The temptation is usually going to be to go for someone famous and with as many followers as you can afford. This isn’t always the best way to go.
You need to consider who your audience is going to respond to and who will interact with them in an authentic way. Sometimes, a nano or micro-influencer with an engaged niche following will give you more bang for your buck.
You want to pick an influencer who is relevant to your brand, has a big enough reach to make the campaign worth your while, and resonates with your target audience so that you get engagement.
3. Creating a clear agreement
Having a contract with your influencer will save everyone a lot of headaches once the campaign kicks off. You need to set out the rules—
In this agreement, layout the general tone and voice that you use for marketing, as well as who your defined target audience is for the campaign. Also, look at which social channels you want to use and the types of content you want the influencer to post.
Finally, look at the timeline of your event and decide if the influencer should be posting in the buildup to the event, during the event, and afterwards.
4. Outlining content creation expectations
This is an expansion of the agreement you should set up with your influencer. It covers the content expectations in detail. The idea is to ensure that the influencer creates content that suits your brand but is still authentic to their brand. You want it to feel like a natural fit that this person is promoting your brand.
It’s best to work with the influencer to decide what content fits their different platforms and how they like to make content for their audience. You’ll end up with something that feels authentic and resonates with the audience.
It’s all right for the brand to dictate the number of posts and provide some strong guidelines for how to market your event. However, you need to also hand over control of the campaign to the influencer and let them work with their audience in order to get the best results. It’s always good to keep an open line of communication with the influencer without trying to micromanage them.
6. Building up pre-event buzz
Even if you’ve only engaged the influencer to be at the event and promote it live, you can get some influence from them beforehand. On your social platforms, make sure that you tag them and talk about how the influencer is part of the festivities. You can also include in your agreement that the influencer posts a few times in the build-up to the event. Even if it’s just reposting or sharing your posts.
7. Cementing a cross-platform promotional strategy
When deciding which platforms you want to use for the campaign, you need to look at how you will spread the message across those platforms. This also includes how you are going to promote the campaign on your platforms as well as on the influencer’s platforms. You should also look at how you can include user generated content in your campaign.
If you’re not sure about how to integrate ideas or concepts into your site or social platforms, creating mockups can help you to get a better feel for how your content fits together.
8. Setting goals for pre and post-event engagement
Social media engagement for an event isn’t just about the duration of the event itself. You need to capitalize on the excitement leading up to the event and the wind-down afterwards.
By prolonging the lifespan of the event, you can get more engagement and increase your brand awareness through your influencer campaign. This is why it’s always a good idea to include pre-and post-event content in your contract with the influencer.
It’s also important to realize that the engagement will look different from what you get during the event. You need to set realistic goals for those three different times so that you can track if the influencer campaign is giving you what you need from it.
Influencers are good for business
If you’re planning on hosting a virtual or hybrid event, it’s clear that a well thought out carefully planned collaboration with social media influencers will pay off.
An authentic collaboration adds new value to a brand and reaches an otherwise untapped audience.
Want to see how Airmeet can help make your next event a success? Book a demo now.
