Influencer Marketing Lead Generation

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:

• What is Influencer Marketing Lead Generation?
• Who is Influencer Marketing for?
• Benefits of Influencer Lead Generation
• How Does Influencer Lead Gen Marketing Work?
• How to Identify the Right Influencers for Your Brand?
• Best Practices for Working with Influencers to Generate Leads?
• Measuring the Success of Your Influencer Lead Gen Campaign
• Integrating Influencer Lead Gen into Your Overall Strategy
• The Future of Influencer Lead Gen

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:

• Shorter lead-to-conversion cycles
• Lower customer acquisition costs

It’s a win-win proposition for all – brands, influencers, and their audiences.  

What better way to build trust? The numbers prove it:

• 61% of consumers find information from a ‘person like me’ credible.
• 58% of consumers trust brand technical experts (internal influencers)
• 63% trust influencer recommendations more than branded messages

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.

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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:

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1. Close the trust gap:

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.

2. Not too saturated:

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.

3. Light(er) on the pocket:

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.

4. Engage hard-to-reach user groups:

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.

5. Does influencer marketing increase sales?

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.

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As a lead generation strategy, an effective influencer marketing strategy should work across the funnel. 

Influencers can help:

• Build brand awareness & drive traffic

• Generate and nurture leads to conversion

• Retain customers

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
• Identifying the right influencer
• Content production
• Capturing and nurturing leads
• Converting them into customers

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.

How to identify the right influencers for your brand?

1. Develop an influencer persona

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.

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2. Focus on engagement, not audience size
   

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:

• Ask around in your network or team
• Use influencer marketing platforms (check if they use third-party data though)

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3. Review their existing content:

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.

4 best practices for working with influencers to generate leads

1. Set clear goals for influencer marketing:

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.

2. Provide a clear creative brief

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.

3. Content creation and distribution

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, 

• Unboxing videos, or branded hashtags   - top of the funnel
• Product reviews – bottom of the funnel

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.

4. Think long term

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.  

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ROI is the ultimate goal of any marketing strategy,  

Influencer marketing lead generation is no different. 

To measure influencer campaigns:

• Start with benchmarking current performance
• Set the right KPIs
• Put in place real-time reporting.

1. Influencer marketing KPIs

These may vary from brand to brand. Here are some key ones:

• Number of impressions: the number of people exposed to a campaign
• Click-through rate: the number of clicks, or views depending on the type of content
• Conversion rate: the number of downloads, opt-ins or sign-ups
• CPM: cost per thousand clicks
• CPI: cost per impression
• CPC: cost per click
• Website traffic: the number of unique visitors to your website

2. Analyse actual performance:

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.

3. Set up a reporting structure:

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:

• Overall campaign results:

Posts, engagement rate, impression rate, conversion, etc.

• Cost-effectiveness: 

This could be cost per post, cost per engagement, cost per lead, etc.

• Content insights: 

Trending posts, CTAs, etc.

• Influencer performance: 

This will reveal the relative strengths and weaknesses of each influencer.

• Channel performance: 

This can help improve budget allocation for various channels.

Integrating Influencer Lead Generation into your overall strategy

Influencer marketing is not a stand-alone strategy. It must be viewed as a part of the whole. Start by:

1. Aligning objectives, and KPIs:

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.

2. Plan integrated, cross-channel campaigns

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.

3. Find the right attribution model:

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.

4. Capture leads and sync influencer lead generation with CRM

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.

5. Focus on the best-performing influencers

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.

The Future of Influencer Lead Generation

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. 

How do I set up forms for Influencer Marketing Lead Generation?

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.

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