Happy New Year! The last few years have been no walk in the park, especially for marketers. We’ve had to do more with less budget, promote products during supply chain issues, reach audiences who are less accessible, and more.
Now, as the world becomes slightly more stable, many of us are feeling the pressure to achieve new heights in 2023. Which, might make you feel like this:
Setting feasible and measurable goals for your influencer marketing program is tough, even in a good year. So, before you get started, check out these 5 resolutions that might spark some inspiration for your 2023 influencer marketing strategy.
5 Resolutions to Improve Your Influencer Marketing Strategy
The most common resolutions made year after year include getting fit or organized, learning something new, saving money, or investing more time in relationships. Here are some of those same resolutions, but reimagined for your influencer marketing strategy.
1. Make every dollar count to maximize your influencer marketing budget
A common personal New Year’s Resolution is to budget and save money. Some folks even go so far as to analyze last year’s budget and eliminate small, inefficient costs so they can maximize the power of their income. For example you might opt to cut out weekly $5 DoorDash deliveries so you can save up for bigger items, like a week long vacation to the Caribbean.
So, what if you thought about your influencer marketing budget in the same way?
Try auditing last year’s influencer marketing budget with the goal of finding the most inefficient costs from your program. What is your program’s equivalent to a $5 weekly DoorDash delivery? What is a “nice to have” that doesn’t necessarily deliver a ton of impact?
These types of inefficiencies could live anywhere, but a few could look like:
- Wasted product and shipping costs from sending gifts to influencers who weren't interested/never posted
- Paid influencer campaigns that didn’t perform as well as organic campaigns
- A handful of influencer partners that had low performance
What if you not only removed those inefficiencies from your budget but, even better, were able to reinvest those dollars into your most successful partnerships and initiatives from last year?
2. Spend more quality time (with your influencer relationships)
Also gracing the top of the list of most common resolutions is “spend more time with family friends”. So, what if you invested in your influencer relationships (focusing on the ones that act as loyal advocates for your brand) in the same way you do your personal relationships?
After all, these partners pour their time and energy into getting the right piece of content to tell the world about your amazing new product, or provide you with feedback from their community. Being authentic and showing that you will go the extra mile for them because you genuinely care can help your brand cut through the clutter and competition. Some ways you can show your appreciation for your partners are endless, but here are a few simple ideas:
- Celebrate their achievements or milestones. Whether it’s a birthday, a marriage, a baby or a follower goal, celebrating your partners is a surefire way to show your support and let them know you care. Take note when they mention upcoming milestones or search for when they have celebrated a birthday in the past so you can mark it on your calendar.
- Check-in on them. Did one of your partners just go through a rough patch? Is it a stressful season of life for them? Emails don’t only have to be sent when there’s an important business matter or transaction to be discussed.
- Make your virtual meetings feel more personal. Your partners likely spend a good amount of time in meetings when they’re not creating. Even if you’re just talking on Zoom there are ways to make meetings feel personal. Send them a gift card to their favorite coffee spot ahead of time or DoorDash their favorite lunch order. A little thought can go a long way!
- Listen. It’s important to take a moment to check in with your partners! Asking them for feedback and actioning on what they say is one of the best ways to build trust in the relationship. Remember that your partners are often speaking for their communities, so they are a great resource for understanding what your target audience thinks. For example, Walmart and P&G successfully incorporated this into their influencer marketing strategy when they launched a new Gen Z hair care product.
Tip: We have a whole article (and recorded event) about how to improve your influencer marketing program through strong relationships, if you’re interested in honing this skill!
3. Learn something new (that might make you a better influencer marketer)
How many times have you started the year with a goal to expand your knowledge? Learning a new skill or becoming an expert on a certain topic can definitely take time, but it’s a worthwhile goal for your career. After all, the best marketers are the ones who are continually learning and adapting — this is especially true in influencer marketing, where things change at a rapid pace!
Cue Traackr’s influencer marketing resources! Level up your knowledge of what’s happening in the influencer marketing space through Traackr’s plethora of resources:
- The Matter of Influence newsletter delivers a weekly resource to your inbox that can help you improve your influencer marketing strategy.
- The Beauty Leaderboard newsletter delivers in-depth analyses of successful beauty brand/influencer collaborations and insights on rising beauty trends.
- The State of Influence reports offer a top list of beauty brands in the US, UK, and France that have performed best amongst influencer generated content.
- The Influencer Marketing Impact reports (currently available in the US and UK), provide insights from survey data on how influencers, content, and social platforms have impacted consumer behavior.
Not only can these resources help you keep a pulse on the latest trends taking social by storm, but they can play a vital role in helping you find the right influencer partners, craft your briefs, organize your campaigns, expertly report on your influencer marketing program, and more.
4. Get out of your comfort zone (by partnering with new influencers)
While one of your resolutions may be to spend more time with friends and family, you might also push yourself out of your comfort zone by setting a goal of meeting new people. Why not think about your influencer network in a similar way?
Don’t get me wrong, activating your most loyal partners and advocates is always a good idea. But, there’s also something to be said for finding and partnering with new, up-and-coming influencers. Not only can they help bring a “freshness” to your influencer marketing program, they may allow your brand to tap into some audiences that you hadn’t been able to reach before.
Some further reading on how to find new influencers:
- 8 strategies to find impactful, brand safe influencers for your influencer marketing campaigns.
- A guide for finding influencers that make good affiliates for your influencer marketing program.
- A guide to help you find influencers for the social commerce campaigns in your influencer marketing program.
If you are a Traackr customer, you can easily find new partners talking about your brand, products, competitors, or industry topics. Here is an expert tip for getting tailored partner recommendations with Traackr:
- Go to your account settings to setup your influencer recommendation preferences
- Define your brand, competitor and industry keyword terms in your influencer recommendation settings
- Once your recommendation settings are saved, you and your team can see new relevant suggestions every time you visit Traackr’s discovery page.
- Once you’ve set up how to identify new potential partners you can add these influencers to groups. Whether you plan to partner with them for an upcoming seeding campaign or paid campaign, they’ll be easily accessible and ready to be activated.
My colleague, Eben Cooper, also wrote a fantastic article about how to find top performing influencers for your influencer marketing program. He covers topics like audience demographics and attributes, performance metrics, and keyword search strategies — all of which you can easily do in Traackr.
5. Get organized (by optimizing workflows)
You know what they say: a clean space inspires a clean mind! Many folks ring in the new year with a deep clean so they can start the new season with the right mindset.
The same rule can certainly apply to your mindset and space at work. Aligning your team’s workflows and getting organized can help you set the pace for success.
Traackr makes creating workflows and keeping your influencer partners organized across team members easy and efficient. A few of my favorite workflow tips could work for anyone, but are especially useful for folks that have access to Traackr:
- Align on a tagging structure to make filtering for influencers within your network easier and more efficient
- Create groups of your partners
- Setup reports you constantly can refer to
- Align on your influencer approval process
- Set benchmarks/create a checklist for influencer selection
- Outline and define your brand’s key metrics you plan to track to measure performance
If you’re curious to read a real life example of the power of organization, Colgate-Palmolive has a case study about how it improved its influencer marketing program by streamlining and organizing workflows. (The results were astounding — 40% reduction in campaign costs!)