As influencer marketing becomes more and more commonplace, many techniques have separated themselves as the most effective ways to utilize influencer marketing on Instagram. When you have the attention of a large audience for a limited time, it’s important to maximize your ad content, or you risk wasting thousands of impressions.
After thousands of advertising campaigns on our network of over 10 million followers, we’re ready to pull back the curtain, and share what has worked the best out of all the winning campaigns. Whether it’s for building brand awareness, gaining followers, generating leads or making sales, we’ve gathered the most effective techniques in one article for you, so you don’t have to waste precious advertising dollars testing these methods yourself.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that these followers are on Instagram to enjoy themselves and be social. Your campaign needs to be engaging, fit in with the other content the audience enjoys, and it needs to be attention-grabbing. Your offer or value proposition needs to be enough to stop them from scrolling and take time out of their recreation to answer your call. Don’t be stingy — grant them your very best offers or risk being ignored.
Without further ado, this is the Advertiser’s Guide to Influencer Marketing:
For Branding and Awareness
What Works: Branded images of your products in context that the followers care about, high quality videos
What Doesn’t Work: Extremely salesy graphics, low-res or salesy video content
Examples: From high quality designs and videos showcasing your brand and its ambassadors, to relevant videos formatted to appear in the voice of the influencer’s account, these are a few great ways to get your brand out there.
For Gaining Followers
What Works: Strong giveaways featuring popular items & branded products, Follow to see more of something very interesting to the audience
What Doesn’t Work: Subtle tags or indirect calls to action, calls to action without clear benefit, lame duck giveaways
Examples: From giveaways requiring follows, to relevant value propositions, here are a couple examples of successful follower campaigns.
For Generating Leads & Downloads
What Works: “Free” items, giveaways or lead magnets
What Doesn’t Work: Unclear value propositions, boring freebies or lead magnets (these are millennials, after all)
Examples: Sports Manias uses free emojis as a lead magnet to generate downloads. Hoop Culture offers a giveaway to generate email leads.
For Making Sales
What Works: “Free” (just pay shipping & handling), low dollar tripwire offers, flash sales (40% or more)
What Doesn’t Work: High dollar items to cold audiences, Insignificant discounts (like 5-15%)
Examples: From discounted products (typically under $20) & percentage discounts (30% or more) to $1 & free (just pay $7-12 S&H) offers, these brands successfully acquire customers at scale, sometimes finding more success by connecting with customers & communicating in the voice of the account.
