How to Run an Instagram Influencer Campaign

By Stefano Mongardi
Published October 6, 2015

Do you want to generate leads from Instagram?

Have you considered reaching out to influencers?

An influencer campaign is an effective way to promote your business and generate leads by leveraging the audience of another Instagram account.

In this article you'll discover how to run an influencer campaign on Instagram.

Discover how to run an Instagram influencer campaign.

The first thing to do is to identify potential Instagram influencers and reach out to them.

Identify Influencers

Take your time exploring Instagram pages that are related to your business and whose followers align with your target audience. You can simply go to the Explore tab and search by keyword to find potential candidates.

Once you've found an interesting account, look at the suggested accounts that appear next to the account's Follow button.

Find influencer prospects by looking at the Suggest accounts for any user.

Make a list of at least 10 accounts you want to target, focusing on ones with more than 100,000 followers. The more substantial the account's follower base, the more successful your campaign is likely to be.

However, don't look only at the number of followers that an account has, because that doesn't tell the whole story. Look at the posts' engagement (the number of likes and comments) and make sure there's a good balance.

Contact Influencers

After you've compiled a list of influencers, it's time to reach out to them. You want to ask if they would consider adding a link to your landing page to their bio.

Instagram pages that are open to advertising opportunities typically make it easy for you to contact them. In their bios they will provide an email address and often a Kik contact name as well. (Kik is a messaging app commonly used by the Instagram community.)

Influencers who are open to advertising opportunities include contact info in their profile. Reach out to these influencers to see if they're open to advertising your product or service.

Once you have their contact information, it's time to craft the message you're going to send to influencers. Explain that you're looking to promote your Instagram account and business, and want to know if they're open to advertising opportunities. If they are, you'd like them to send you a quote.

You'll get different types of quotes, based on the number of followers for the account, its engagement and the industry. Prices may also vary depending on whether the account is personal or branded.

Try to negotiate on pricing. You're not dealing with Instagram directly, so pricing can be tailored based on your profile and situation. Some Instagram accounts earn over $10,000 a month, so don't be shy about negotiating on prices.

Keep in mind that if you're a small business, you may want to reach out to smaller accounts first. Then if you see a nice return, you can move on to larger accounts for future influencer campaigns.

If you contact a personal Instagram account with over 500,000 followers, the account owner might not be the one who replies to you. Instead, you may hear from an agency or a manager who is acting on their behalf.

After you have a list of influencers who've agreed to work with you, you need to create a landing page for your campaign. The landing page should be a simple web page and include an opt-in form. You want to drive traffic from Instagram to your landing page and invite visitors to provide their contact information. To do that, you'll need to provide a free offer to incentivize them.

On your landing page, offer users an incentive to give you their contact information.

The offer can be a free guide, report, lesson, ebook or webinar in exchange for something from users. Because you want to generate leads, ask your visitors to provide their email address. Remember that the more valuable the information you offer, the more likely people will appreciate and remember your business.

The goal of your landing page is not to sell but to attract new leads. To catch the attention of Instagram users, the page needs to be clear, concise and engaging. It's also important that the page is responsive since most of your traffic will come from mobile devices.

After you choose an influencer, you'll need to deliver your promotional materials for the campaign.

Because your goal is to drive traffic to your landing page, here are the materials you'll need to send to the account promoting your business:

Provide a caption with a strong call to action. Invite the influencer's followers to check out your link in the influencer's bio.Submit a picture of the product or a quote. (You can use a call to action here.)Share the link to your landing page. Edit the link with a link tracker so you can monitor the clicks and the return on investment (ROI) of each influencer campaign you run. Give your partners everything they need to promote your link.

After you provide these three elements, the influencer will publish your post and add your link to their bio. The account's followers can then start engaging with your ad.

Paid Mentions

Another way to leverage your relationship with influencers on Instagram is the paid shout out (or mention).

In exchange for a fee, influencers will mention you to drive their followers to your account.

When your Instagram account is on target with the accounts that mention you, you'll attract more followers, and ultimately get more traffic to the landing page you link to in your bio.

Conclusion

Instagram now has over 300 million users, many of them Millennials. If you want to generate new leads from the platform, you don't need to have tons of followers or even have an Instagram account. With an Instagram influencer campaign, all you need is a simple landing page and a minimal budget to invest.

What do you think? Have you reached out to Instagram influencers to promote your business? Which influencers have you worked with? What were the results of your campaigns? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Tips for running an Instagram influencer campaign.

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My name is Stefano Mongardi, I'm a marketer, blogger and web entrepreneur. I help people and businesses find new ways to market their products and ideas in the online jungle! You can find me on TheWebMate! Other posts by Stefano Mongardi »

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Original source: How to Run an Instagram Influencer Campaign.
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