In discussions about influencer marketing, the terms often get mixed up. One of them is strategy.For example, a long-term Ambassador agreement with an influencer is often mistaken for strategic influencer marketing. This is not necessarily strategic, but only a long-term commitment to work together with the influencer.An influencer strategy is a long-term plan derived from a company's marketing strategy that focuses on how the company does successful influencer marketing that supports business goals. This is how the brand being advertised stands out from its competitors. Its goal is to steer the company's influencer marketing to long-term and interactive content production together with influencers. Like the marketing strategy, the influencer strategy is rooted in the company's business strategy.There are many similarities in the content and the influencer strategy and it’s worthwhile to utilize them side by side. The latter is defined by that it’s mainly done in the channels of the influencer. However, one should not put the influencer strategy in its own silo. At its best, influencer marketing will blend into the company's other marketing communications and improve influence.
An influencer strategy takes a stand on:
1. Why does a company do influencer marketing?
An influencer strategy defines the role of influencer marketing as part of a company's marketing communications and defines its goals for influencer marketing.
2. Who does the company do influencer marketing for?
An influencer strategy mirrors the target groups defined by the company in the marketing strategy and helps to prioritize them in terms of investment.
3. What themes does influencer content address?
Once the target groups for influencer marketing have been defined, one can create different themes and topics for them and start to produce the actual content.
4. How is influencer marketing done?
Marketing on influencer channels is now more popular than ever. In order to get its message across through influencers as effectively as possible, the company needs special expertise in both campaign planning and implementation. Therefore, an important part of an influencer strategy is to determine how the company conducts influencer marketing and who is responsible for creating and implementing it, so that the company's strategic goals are met.An advertiser basically has three options to do this: train the current staff to do influencer marketing, hire experts to the company, or outsource influencer marketing to a specialist partner. Once resourcing is clear, the company can begin to define how to design, buy, produce, distribute and measure influencer marketing.If creating an influencer strategy is of current interest to you, check out our Strategic Solutions service here and contact us!Joona Haatainen
