The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Influencer Marketing

In recent times, Facebook has faced numerous instances of negative attention. The year 2018 was predominantly occupied with managing the repercussions of the Cambridge Analytica Scandal. Additionally, the platform has encountered setbacks concerning data breaches and struggles to adhere to the newly implemented European data protection regulations. Alongside its sibling platform Instagram, Facebook has also grappled with the consequences arising from counterfeit accounts. You might wonder, therefore whether Facebook had a future. Do people still use it?

Does it still have a place in influencer marketing? Despite its recent troubles, Facebook is still coping admirably. There are many influencers on the network, helping brands market their products and creating excellent brand awareness.

Why Choose Facebook for Influencer Marketing?

In many ways, Instagram has grown to be the star of the Facebook stable of social media apps. Yet granddaddy Facebook still performs well. In the realm of social networking, Facebook may have lost its allure among teenagers, but it continues to reign supreme, commanding the social market with a staggering 2.32 billion active users by the close of 2018. This marked a remarkable 19% surge in user base from the previous year. Astonishingly, a whopping 66% of these users engage with their Facebook accounts on a daily basis, resulting in a substantial count of 1.52 billion daily active users as of December 2018. Facebook influencer marketing is an under-discussed topic compared to Instagram marketing. However, if your target audience predominantly uses Facebook, it’s only logical to focus your influencer marketing efforts on this platform. The Facebook network is well-established, boasting a plethora of influencers who have dedicated significant time to establish their names and reputations. According to the respondents to a 2018 survey by CPC Strategy, nearly 70% of them claimed they’re more likely to hear about new products, services, and events on Facebook than anywhere else.

How to Carry Out a Facebook Influencer Marketing Campaign?

If you’ve conducted influencer campaigns in the past, albeit on different platforms, harnessing influencers on Facebook doesn’t differ significantly from employing them on Instagram, Twitter, or even YouTube. It boils down to selecting the most suitable influencers for your target audience, within their preferred social network. As always, though, it’s essential to commence by establishing your goals.

Decide Your Influencer Marketing Campaign Goals, KPIs and Target Audience.

Step One should really occur before you consider which social network(s) you use for influencer marketing. Your entire campaign should be underpinned by your goals. However, it is possible that you are already acquainted with your target market and aware that they belong to the category of individuals who derive pleasure from engaging with their preferred Facebook influencers through reading, watching, and listening. In many ways, influencer marketing is an extension of content marketing – it is a way to expand your distribution of content far wider than you could achieve yourself. You either create content for influencers to share with their audiences or preferably, you set content parameters and let influencers create relevant content in their typical styles, so the content comes across as authentic to their audiences. Your goals are what you expect from your campaign. There is little point undertaking a campaign if you haven’t determined a clear purpose for it. You need to shape your entire campaign strategy around the goals you set. You also need to establish key performance indicators (KPIs), so you have some way of measuring your campaign goals as you proceed and can determine your campaign’s success or failure.

Some possible campaign goals you could consider:

• Brand awareness
• Increased sales
• Attracting a new market
• Growing your own social media followers (i.e., influencers refer their followers to your social pages)
• Customer retention

This stage is crucial for considering the target market of your campaign. It requires thoughtful contemplation regarding the audience you aim to engage with. For instance, if your goal is to enhance brand awareness, it is essential to identify the specific individuals or groups you hope will show interest in your campaign.

Where do they hang out, socially?

If you are aiming to increase sales, you presumably already know the types of people who buy your products, so again you should have a reasonable idea as to their preferred social platforms. If you’re trying to attract a new market, you really need to think carefully about who that new market will be. You could even draw up a customer persona representing your potential new clients. A vital part of this will again be the social networks they enjoy. Should the answers to your question suggest that the target market for your new influencer marketing campaign spends time on Facebook, then it makes sense to target Facebook influencers for your campaign.

Decide How You Intend to Organize Your Campaign

In the current moment, a multitude of pivotal choices awaits your discernment, their outcomes swayed by an amalgamation of factors encompassing your financial allocations, prior immersion in influencer marketing, and the extent of participation you aspire to bestow upon both yourself and your team within this intricate undertaking. Deliberations concerning fiscal reservoirs, domain expertise, and the coveted degree of hands-on involvement shall indubitably assume a momentous role in molding your subsequent decisions and formulating an array of strategies, propelling you steadfastly towards the horizon of progress. Some businesses prefer to merely pay a company to organize their influencer marketing for them, much as they may pay an advertising agency for their traditional advertising. At the other extreme, some firms prefer to do every step of the process in-house, often with an extremely minimal budget.

You have three main choices, although you don’t need to stick exclusively to one option.

Use an agency – there are many specialist influencer marketing agencies now to help businesses carry out their campaigns. We have profiled many of them here, and if you click on the dark blue icon, you can limit your search to those agencies that work with Facebook influencers. Each agency has its own specialty, so it is worth checking which one appears to fit your work model best.

Operate your Facebook influencer marketing campaign internally but use a platform as a tool to help simplify parts of the process, e.g., influencer discovery. We have extensively reviewed many influencer marketing platforms here. Check which ones provide the tools you want and list Facebook as one of their channels. Although the influencer marketing channels initially just provided an influencer discovery service, they now offer many more useful tools, such as relationship management, campaign management, an influencer marketplace, third-party analytics, and internet content amplification.

Run your campaign the traditional way, building up a series of Facebook influencers organically. While this is cheaper, it can be much more frustrating and time-consuming.

Carry Out Influencer Discovery

The way you do this will very much be affected by your earlier decision on how to organize your campaign. Effectively you have three options: Leave it to your agency to recommend suitable Facebook influencers (they may have an internal team of influencers, their own influencer discovery tool, or they may use one of the influencer platforms to help them find suitable influencers for your campaign). Use an influencer discovery platform to decide on the most suitable Facebook influencers to help you meet your influencer marketing goals Go onto Facebook yourself, and find the suitable influencers in your niche. Look at relevant pages. Join Facebook Groups in your field. Gradually build relationships with them, and in time sound them out about collaborating in some form of relationship. Employing search phrases or keywords on search engines can serve as a potent mechanism to unearth influencers who align with your objectives. However, exercising prudence in filtering the results is imperative to yield the most relevant outcomes. By strategically fine-tuning your filters, you can unveil a curated selection of influencers that perfectly align with your vision, catapulting your influencer marketing campaign to unprecedented heights of triumph. You will want to scrutinize potential influencers, even if you pay an agency to come up with suggestions.

The main things that you will want to know about each potential Facebook influencer are:

• Do they produce content that is relevant to your niche?
• Is their audience like the types of people you are hoping to attract?
• If you have created a customer persona, you need to analyze whether the influencer’s followers are like your customer persona.
• Does the influencer maintain a commendable engagement rate with their followers?
• Is there evidence that the influencer possesses the ability to create and deliver the types of content that align with your campaign objectives?

Reach Out to Your Potential Influencers

The approach you take to organize your campaign will greatly influence the next steps. In the case of partnering with an agency, there’s a possibility that they will handle the initial interaction with suitable influencers on your behalf. Alternatively, they will establish a convenient channel for you to directly reach out to influencers. It all depends on the specific arrangement you have made and the strategies employed. Some of the platforms also have systems to ease outreach to influencers. This is particularly so for those platforms that work with pre-vetted and signed-up influencers. Other platforms may not include a system for reaching out to influencers. However, they will most likely provide you with suitable contact addresses so you can sound them out yourself. If you have taken the organic route, you will have to take time first to build up a relationship with the Facebooker before you make any formal contact with them.

Sign up Suitable Facebook Influencers for Your Campaign and Begin Your Campaign

Once you have identified the influencers with whom you are most eager to collaborate and received positive indications of their willingness to work with you, the next step is to enroll them in your campaign. The procedure for doing so will again rely on the particular approach you have adopted for organizing your campaign. You will have little to do if you are working through an agency. Those platforms offering relationship management and campaign management tools will have systems in place to simplify this process for you. Ensure that your influencers are well-informed about your campaign goals and the methods you intend to employ for measuring their success. Seasoned influencers are typically accustomed to such requirements and should be capable of readily providing you with the necessary data as the campaign progresses. It is vital to establish clear communication channels and expectations with your influencers regarding the tracking and reporting of key metrics throughout the campaign.

Take Notice of Your Campaign Performance and Tweak Your Campaign as Needed

Never forget your campaign goals and keep a close eye on your recognized KPIs as the campaign progresses. Agencies and many platforms will provide you with the necessary data as your campaign progresses. Indeed, some of the platforms offer a plethora of data about virtually every aspect of the campaign. If you haven’t paid for influencer tools, then you may have to rely on influencer-supplied data. If your goals and related KPIs relate to your own Facebook page, then you will have access to detailed Facebook Analytics vis your page’s Facebook Insights section. This should show you the impact of your campaign on your reach and engagement rates. Similarly, if your goal relates to your company website, then you will be able to extract data from Google Analytics, to show whether the campaign is operating as intended.

Tactics to Help Your Facebook Influencer Campaigns

Encourage Your Influencers to Use Facebook Live

Facebook Live has proved to be a compelling way to attract a Facebook audience. People often suffer from FOMO – fear of missing out – and usually, take a keen interest in what their influencers broadcast. Facebook influencers can use Facebook Live to share their experiences of using your product. Indeed, they may even be able to use your product in a live setting if your product is suitable.

Provide Giveaways Your Influencers Can Use in Contests Everybody loves to receive something free. Facebook competitions can be very effective at gaining peoples’ attention, particularly if you have selected the right influencers, whose fans will value your product.

Competitions are particularly effective at bringing your product before a new audience. The audience happily engages with a contest because they can see something in it for them.

Just ensure that you provide a relevant prize for the competition. You don’t want people entering the contest, purely for the prize, who would not otherwise be interested in your product. Learn how to leverage the network to achieve your campaign goals effectively.

The Resilience of Facebook in Influencer Marketing

Facebook has traversed a tumultuous path, confronting a myriad of challenges, notably encompassing the notorious Cambridge Analytica Scandal, unsettling data breaches, and the arduous task of adhering to the regulatory framework stipulated by European data protection rules. In a similar vein, its sibling platform, Instagram, has grappled with the repercussions arising from the prevalence of counterfeit accounts. However, Facebook continues to thrive in the influencer marketing landscape, showcasing its resilience. With a substantial number of influencers and a massive user base, it remains an excellent choice for brands seeking to enhance product visibility and create brand awareness.

The Advantages of Choosing Facebook for Influencer Marketing

While Instagram has emerged as a prominent social media app under the Facebook umbrella, the original platform still maintains its performance. While the younger generation may not accord Facebook the status of their primary social network anymore, it undeniably retains an unparalleled grip on the market, flaunting a staggering count of over 2.32 billion active users by the conclusion of 2018, which signifies a remarkable 19% surge in comparison to the previous year. Moreover, a staggering 66% of these users engage with their Facebook accounts on a daily basis, with a recorded tally of 1.52 billion active daily users as of December 2018. Despite Facebook’s overshadowed presence in influencer marketing discussions, the platform remains relevant for brands targeting Facebook’s user demographic. Benefitting from its firmly entrenched network, influencers have been afforded ample opportunity to cultivate their reputation and amass a loyal following, rendering Facebook an invaluable platform for forging collaborative partnerships. In fact, a survey conducted by CPC Strategy in 2018 unveiled that nearly 70% of respondents expressed a heightened propensity to stumble upon novel products, services, and events through Facebook, surpassing other platforms in terms of discovery potential.

Conducting an Effective Facebook Influencer Marketing Campaign

To execute a successful influencer marketing campaign on Facebook, the process shares similarities with campaigns on other platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube. The key lies in selecting the most suitable influencers for your target audience within their preferred social network. However, before embarking on this journey, setting clear goals is essential.

Define Campaign Goals, KPIs, and Target Audience

Defining campaign goals should precede the choice of social network for influencer marketing. Your goals will serve as the foundation for the entire campaign, shaping your strategy accordingly. Understanding your target market and their preference for consuming content is crucial. Influencer marketing serves as an extension of content marketing, providing an opportunity to expand content distribution beyond your reach. You can either create content for influencers to share or allow them to generate authentic content that aligns with their audience’s interests.

Consider the following potential campaign goals:

• Brand awareness
• Increased sales
• Attracting a new market
• Growing your social media followers through influencer referrals
• Customer retention
• Determining your target market for the campaign is equally important. For instance, if you aim to build brand awareness, identifying the specific audience likely to be interested in your campaign is crucial.

Discovering their preferred social platforms, where they spend their time, will aid in decision-making. Should your research indicate that your target market is present on Facebook, it becomes evident that targeting Facebook influencers is a logical step.

Choose an Organizational Approach for Your Campaign

Selecting an organizational approach for your campaign depends on factors such as your budget, influencer marketing experience, and desired level of involvement. Here are three primary choices, but you can adopt a combination as well: Engage an Agency: Many specialized influencer marketing agencies assist businesses in executing campaigns. Research agencies that collaborate with Facebook influencers to find the one that best aligns with your work model. Utilize an Influencer Marketing Platform: Manage your Facebook influencer marketing campaign internally using an influencer marketing platform. These platforms simplify tasks such as influencer discovery and relationship management. Ensure the platform offers tools for Facebook campaigns along with other useful features like campaign management, an influencer marketplace, and analytics. Build an Organic Campaign: If budget constraints are a concern, consider cultivating relationships with Facebook influencers organically. This approach requires time and effort but can be cost-effective.

Discover the Right Influencers

The method for influencer discovery depends on your chosen campaign organization approach. Consider the following options: Agency Recommendations: If you opt for an agency, they may suggest suitable Facebook influencers using their internal team or influencer discovery tools. Influencer Discovery Platforms: Utilize influencer discovery platforms to identify relevant Facebook influencers who can help you achieve your campaign goals. Personal Search: Engage in manual research by exploring Facebook, relevant pages, and joining Groups in your industry. Gradually establish relationships with influencers and discuss potential collaborations. Use keywords to filter search results effectively.

Evaluate potential influencers based on the following criteria:

• Relevance of their content to your niche
• Alignment of their audience with your target market
• Engagement rate with their followers
• Ability to create and deliver the desired content for your campaign
• Establish Contact with Potential Influencers.
• Contacting influencers depends on your campaign organization approach. Agencies can facilitate initial contact, and some influencer marketing platforms provide outreach systems. If you’ve taken the organic route, focus on building relationships before making any formal contact.

Onboard Influencers and Launch Your Campaign

Once you’ve identified the influencers you wish to collaborate with and received positive indications of their interest, it’s time to sign them up for your campaign. Agencies or influencer marketing platforms streamline this process, making it convenient for all parties involved. Ensure that your influencers are aware of your campaign goals and understand how success will be measured. Experienced influencers can readily provide the necessary data throughout the campaign.

Monitor Campaign Performance and Optimize as Required

Stay mindful of your campaign goals and monitor the identified key performance indicators (KPIs) as the campaign progresses. Agencies and many platforms offer comprehensive data on various aspects of your campaign.

If you lack access to paid influencer tools, rely on influencer-supplied data. Use Facebook Analytics to gauge the impact of your campaign on reach and engagement rates on your Facebook page. For website-related goals, leverage Google Analytics to assess the intended outcomes of the campaign.

Effective Tactics for Facebook Influencer Campaigns

1. Leverage Facebook Live: Encourage influencers to utilize Facebook Live, as it captures the interest of audiences who fear missing out on unique experiences. Influencers can showcase their product experiences through live broadcasts, providing a more interactive and engaging approach.

2. Implement Giveaways: Utilize giveaways and contests to captivate your audience’s attention. People love receiving free items, and contests can effectively introduce your product to a new audience. Ensure that the prize aligns with your product and resonates with potential customers. By employing these strategies and making the most of Facebook’s extensive user base, your influencer marketing campaign can achieve remarkable results. Remember to adapt your tactics as needed, learn from campaign data, and optimize accordingly.

3. Encourage Influencer-Generated Content: Tap into the creativity of influencers and allow them to create content that resonates with their audience while aligning with your campaign goals. Authentic content produced by influencers holds significant value as it establishes a genuine connection with their followers.

4. Foster Engagement and Collaboration: Motivate influencers to actively engage with their audience by promptly responding to comments, posing thought-provoking questions, and fostering a palpable sense of community. Furthermore, the synergy achieved through collaborations among influencers can significantly magnify the reach and efficacy of your campaign, as cross-promotion endeavors expose your brand to untapped audiences, propelling your influence to new horizons.

5. Leverage Influencer-User Generated Content: Encourage influencers to encourage their followers to generate user-generated content (UGC) related to your brand. UGC not only strengthens the connection between the audience and the influencer but also provides valuable social proof for your brand.

6. Measure and Analyze Results: Continuously monitor the performance of your campaign by analyzing key metrics and KPIs. Harnessing the Potential of Platforms: Embrace the power of Facebook Insights and Google Analytics, two invaluable tools that furnish you with indispensable data to evaluate the efficacy of your influencer marketing endeavors. Utilize these profound insights to meticulously refine your strategies and make astute, data-driven decisions that resonate with your target audience, propelling your campaign towards resounding success.

7. Build Long-term Relationships: Consider establishing long-term relationships with influencers who have proven to be effective in promoting your brand. By nurturing ongoing partnerships, you can benefit from consistent brand advocacy and deepen the influencer’s understanding of your products or services.

 Conclusion

Amidst the trials and tribulations confronted by Facebook, its eminence as an influential platform for influencer marketing perseveres. Endowed with an expansive user base and a well-established nexus of influencers, Facebook presents unparalleled prospects to connect with and captivate your coveted audience. Through an astute approach, delineated objectives, and judicious selection of influencers, you can harness the latent potential of Facebook to conceive impactful influencer marketing campaigns. Maintain adaptability, incessantly gauge performance, and diligently refine your strategies to extract the utmost efficacy from your endeavors in Facebook influencer marketing. Remember, the crux of triumph on Facebook lies in selecting influencers who seamlessly harmonize with your brand ethos and profoundly resonate with your target demographic. With meticulous planning, seamless execution, and an unwavering focus on nurturing profound connections, your influencer marketing crusade shall thrive on the sprawling domain of the world’s most colossal social network. Now is the opportune moment to harness the prodigious might of Facebook and unlock the boundless potential of influencer marketing for your esteemed brand.