Run measurable influencer marketing that drives leads and sales. Provide unique, trackable forms for every influencer in your camapign.
Influencer marketing ticks nearly every box on a marketer’s checklist in a cookieless world.
It’s affordable, has a wide reach, and is arguably the best native advertising strategy there is.
And most importantly, it drives offline purchases too.
But can influencer marketing fast-track lead generation for your brand?
42% of marketers use it for that very purpose.
And that’s saying something.
Follow these steps and see for yourself.
In this guide, we’ll talk about:
Let’s get started!
With the rise of Influencer Marketing, brands are always looking for more ways to measure success, track results, and understand the return that they're getting from their influencer campaigns.
Influencer marketing lead generation uses compelling content made by talented creators to tap highly-engaged audiences.
Influencers connect brands to people with high purchase intent.
For brands, that means:
It’s a win-win proposition for all – brands, influencers, and their audiences.
What better way to build trust? The numbers prove it:
Influencer marketing is an easy-to-scale lead generation channel.
It’s ideal for brands that want to target niche segments of the market.
It can drive full-funnel lead generation, lead nurturing, and retention.
The key is creating the right workflows for collecting, tracking, and retargeting leads.
Some debate on whether influencer marketing is for startups.
Others might insist influencer marketing is for enterprise businesses.
But, there’s plenty of evidence that it works for both and across B2C and B2B companies if executed strategically. Some examples:
Justin Tse’s viral video on Notion productivity tips and tricks resonated with business owners.
NewPro worked with Suzanne ‘Bug Lady’ Evans on a highly successful guide on plant pest control.
It helped the company build credibility in the industry.
Of course, there are differences in approach between B2B and B2C but that's true for any lead generation strategy.
Is influencer marketing effective or is it just a passing fad?
That’s a fair question to ask given the risks involved.
Here are some undeniable benefits:
It’s getting harder for brands to build trust with consumers.
With influencers, brands can leverage personal relationships to close the trust gap, generate qualified leads and drive sales.
Influencer marketing can also help with retention strategies.
Influencer marketing is less saturated compared to search.
It offers a great way for brands to cut through the clutter and beat banner blindness.
The right influencer can help brands shorten the discovery stage of the buyer journey.
Pound for pound, you can get more out of influencer marketing than other strategies.
Payments can be upfront or performance-based - such as the number of leads or sales generated.
You can even repurpose the content if the agreement allows for it.
Influencer marketing is not just for Gen Z or Millennials. Baby boomers and older generations consume influencer content too.
The key to generating quality leads is a clear and compelling value proposition and choosing the right influencers.
If you have a niche target audience, finding an influencer in your niche can be a very effective strategy.
Increasing sales and revenue is the ultimate objective and so it is crucial to know if influencer marketing actually leads to revenue? The data certainly says so.
🚀 Influencer marketing can deliver 11% more returns compared to traditional marketing.
As a lead generation strategy, an effective influencer marketing strategy should work across the funnel.
Influencers can help:
The key is to map the customer journey and identify the touch points where it would be most effective.
An influencer marketing campaign can have up to 5 phases:
Defining campaign objectives is easy.
Draw from Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) and customer journey mapping to define your goal.
Tailor your influencer strategy to those touchpoints based on the objectives.
Knowledge is power. With an influencer persona, you can pinpoint the exact qualities you need, including reach, audience, and background.
You may even find an internal influencer thanks to the clarity it provides.
Some brands nowadays prefer micro-influencers (<50,000 followers) with higher engagement scores.
They are a better bet for targeting niche segments and driving conversion.
Wondering where to find influencers for your brand? You can:
An influencer platform can help you shortlist candidates.
But a manual review is a must.
Visit their social media accounts, check for quality content, and read user comments.
You can calculate their engagement/lead generation rate to offer fair compensation.
Be sure to ask if the influencer has an existing non-compete agreement.
Start with defining campaign goals and mapping the buyer journey.
It makes it easy to identify the right objectives.
Some examples are lead conversion rate, Click Through Rate (CTR), views, Return on Investment (ROI), etc (more on this later!).
In turn, KPIs inform the offer and content strategy for the influencers you may have in mind.
A well-structured creative brief can save you time and money.
It’s a great way to set expectations while letting influencers do their best work.
Include details like timelines, deliverables, Call To Actions (CTA), etc.
Influencers need to be given creative freedom for creating authentic content.
A well-written brief sets healthy boundaries in this regard.
Before starting to create content:
Ask the influencer for advice on the best format, frequency, and creative concepts for your brand.
Align each content piece based on the stage of the campaign.
For example,
Explain how you capture, track, and attribute lead generation to revenue.
Ask for insights on trending topics they might have and share any other relevant information they might need.
Try to show influencers how associating with you can help them achieve their own goals.
This will help build a long-term relationship that benefits you both.
Consider incremental pricing and other incentives to make it financially worthwhile for them.
ROI is the ultimate goal of any marketing strategy,
Influencer marketing lead generation is no different.
To measure influencer campaigns:
These may vary from brand to brand. Here are some key ones:
Next, compare your performance against the KPI benchmarks.
Remember to look at the big picture when analysing influencer campaigns.
Compare multiple metrics and see how they add up.
You’ll be able to spot opportunities and optimise your campaign strategy.
A standardised process for data collection and reporting can improve decision-making.
Some best practices:
Divide the performance data into five categories for easy analysis:
Posts, engagement rate, impression rate, conversion, etc.
This could be cost per post, cost per engagement, cost per lead, etc.
Trending posts, CTAs, etc.
This will reveal the relative strengths and weaknesses of each influencer.
This can help improve budget allocation for various channels.
Influencer marketing is not a stand-alone strategy. It must be viewed as a part of the whole. Start by:
Influencer marketing lead generation KPIs must align with other campaigns, especially at the top of the funnel.
These could be reach, engagement, website visitors, etc.
Aligning objectives and KPIs will help improve pipeline visibility, segmentation, and targeting.
Share reporting data with influencers regularly so their content is consistent and relevant.
Momentum is everything in the world of marketing. Influencers can rapidly scale content production for you.
So don’t run one-off campaigns from time to time.
Loop them into other channels like website or email.
As outsiders looking in, influencers can provide excellent ideas for cross-channel campaigns.
Tracking leads to conversion is critical to determine marketing ROI.
Attribution can reveal the relative contribution of two or more influencers to revenue.
Choosing the right attribution model can take a fair amount of trial and error.
But Google Analytics 4 and automated UTM codes offer interesting possibilities in the days ahead.
Capturing and importing social media leads manually into CRM is not just inefficient.
The lost engagement opportunities affect ROI.
The solution: smart lead forms that automate lead capture.
With Driftrock Smart Forms, you can create unique data capture forms for all your influencers, giving them a clear destination to direct their audience to, and making it easy to track performance.
Using the Driftrock platform, you can track which influencers drive the best return, as well as easily pass the captured data into your CRM platform in real time.
The forms can track leads to conversion across channels and generate granular insights.
Tracking influencer performance can help you identify the best-performing ones.
One way to do so is a reporting dashboard that automatically pulls data from across the funnel.
This allows you to optimise strategy and marketing spend.
The key is a plug-and-play tracking tool that can keep up with changing business needs.
Who wouldn’t want to be on the right side of the law on first-party data collection?
The pace of change is accelerating and you must test your assumptions about available alternatives.
Influencer marketing can help you fight for and win your customers’ attention while staying compliant.
The key is context and relevance in everything you do. Be it designing and syncing lead capture forms or strategising campaigns around data.
Driftrock makes it easy to increase and track the ROI from your influencer marketing campaigns.
To set up an Influencer Marketing Lead Generation campaign, all you have to do is create unique Driftrock Smart Forms in your Driftrock account.
Once the forms have been created, set up a lead sync between the forms and your CRM system.
When you share the forms with the influencers, data will be automatically captured and passed onto your CRM.
To learn more, Sign Up or Book a Demo.
Driftrock's integrations push lead data, pull audience records & pull conversion data.
