Influencers are trusted by the people that follow them. This simple fact is the reason why influencer marketing is the most effective marketing tool today. These trusted messengers are in the perfect position to recommend products. It's easy to see why more marketers are turning to influencer marketing each year.

Let's take some time to break down the 6 steps involved in creating a successful influencer marketing campaign.

Step 1: Develop the concept of your influencer campaign

Your strategy depends on what you want to achieve. Do you want to increase social media engagement? Do you want to increase the sales of a product?

Clearly defined goals are the foundation of your strategy and will make the process much easier. Just remember not to get too excited and set a lot of goals. For your first campaign, it is best to set one targeted goal and build from there. Once your goal is set, determine the KPIs you will use to measure the success of the campaign.

Step 2: Identify the influencers that fit your brand and goals

This may seem difficult but it isn't. The goal you set in Step 1 will help you narrow your focus when selecting social media influencers. If you want to maximize reach, then aim for influencers with larger audiences. If sales and conversion are your main targets, then focus on influencers creating content in a relevant niche.

Find influencers by searching for keywords or hashtags related to your brand on the platform you are targeting. Keyword searches will reveal the most popular influencers posting relevant content. Make a shortlist of the people that resonate the most with your brand's message and goals. Those are the people you will focus on for the next steps.

Step 3: Verify that your influencers are authentic

Fake influencers. Yes, unfortunately they do exist. We have put together another post to help you figure out exactly how to spot fake influencers, but here are the key points. Always check their profile. You are looking specifically at the quality of content and audience engagement for each influencer. You want to work with someone that has high quality content and an active audience that is liking and commenting on their posts.

Taking a little time to manually check the profiles will save you from potentially wasting money and time on someone whose entire audience is fake.

Step 4: Contact and negotiate prices

Many influencers interested in working with brands have their email listed in the bio section of their profiles. If they don't have an email listed, then send a private message that gets to the point quickly. Your message to them should include a brief of the campaign and what you expect from them (how many posts, which platforms, etc).

If they agree to work with you, ask for their analytics. This is technically part of the verification process in Step 3. You want to see for yourself the kind of engagement they are getting and their exact demographic data to be sure they are reaching out to the audience you need to target.

If everything goes well, negotiate the price for creating and delivering the content. 50% of payment is upfront and the rest is sent after the content is uploaded. Another of our blog post provides more details on how to determine the price of influencer content.

Step 5: Manage distribution of influencer content

This is the most exciting part. The contract is signed and it is time for the content to go up. Stay in contact with your influencer partners to confirm when the posts have been uploaded. Also monitor the kind of feedback your post is getting. If something doesn't work well, you need to work together with the influencer to address this problem.

Step 6: Measure your influencer marketing ROI

Remember that goal you set up in the beginning of this process? Now it's time to see how the campaign met that goal. Look at the relevant KPIs and see what the numbers tell you. Hopefully it all went well and you've had amazing success.

Get a more detailed info here on measuring influencer marketing ROI.