As a business owner, chances are marketing, advertising, and public relations aren't your forte. Despite this, as business owners, marketing duties often fall into your lap. This can be confusing, overwhelming, and downright difficult to cut through the noise on everything you "should" be doing to market yourself and your business. Between handling all of your day-to-day business operations, many owners find themselves learning things like web management, social media management, and graphic design to create promotional materials and spread the word about your business, services, or products. Last week, we posted an article about how to use outsourcing to your benefit and Reasons Why (And Why Not) To Work with a Marketing Agency. This week we will provide some insight and education into what exactly a brand campaign is and if running one would benefit your specific business, service, product, or industry niche.

a to do list to wake up, make coffee, drink coffee, make more coffee

When business owners take marketing into their own hands while not being well-versed in what strategies and tactics work best for their specific business, service, product, or industry niche, it has the potential to be fruitless and frustrating for all parties involved, including the owner themselves, their employees, and their customer. Many different facets fall below the umbrella term "marketing," some are more easily handled by less well-versed marketers than others. For example, as a business owner, you may find yourself excelling at making promotional posts using templates on websites like Canva, or you may have had success on Instagram or Tiktok making reels and learning how to batch content yourself. It is incredible that we live in a time where being in control of your own marketing has been made easy. Using Youtube tutorials, apps, and online programs, it's definitely doable to DIY your marketing plan.

Despite all of this, some tasks take a certain "je ne sais quoi" or an expert's touch to ensure that it goes smoothly and has a clear-cut return on investment (ROI) for the business. One of these things is brand campaigns. Here at The Social Strategy, we've noticed that some of our clients in the past have tried to spearhead brand campaigns with influencers they've met themselves. While this is possible, many come to us after finding that they've been less than successful or are having difficulty telling if their campaign moved the needle for their goals. This article will explain precisely what a brand marketing campaign is and if one would benefit your business.

First off, what is a brand campaign?

A brand campaign is a strategic plan to promote a business, product, or service that accurately reflects the company's values by employing influencers, brand ambassadors, or content creators to promote your brand to their audience using the most relevant channels. The goal of a brand campaign is to create a connection with customers and increase brand awareness and loyalty. A campaign is run for a predetermined amount of time, and the success is measured by Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) chosen before the campaign's launch.

man drinking dunkin iced coffee — **Chris Thompson** @supdaily

Now that we have that out of the way, I’m sure you’re wondering if you need one for YOUR business.

The truth is a well-thought-out and executed brand campaign would be beneficial for any business. Despite this, it really depends on your current goals if a brand campaign with an influencer would be helpful to you right now. If your number one goal is customer retention, a brand campaign isn't the most critical tactic for you to employ. If you aim to reach new customers or create trust with a new demographic, the answer is YES- a brand campaign would help you reach new people and build trust with them simultaneously. If you have any of the goals listed below, it's time to start thinking about starting a brand campaign with an influencer or ambassador!

Increase Brand Awareness / Visibility
Reach a New Audience and Convert Them into Customers
Increase Customer Loyalty and Trust
Differentiate Your Business from Competitors
Maximize Marketing Budget
Increase Engagement on Socials

Oh, what was that? Those are some of your top 2023 business goals?? Then it's definitely time to start thinking about running a brand campaign. When done correctly, influencer brand campaigns help everything mentioned above. Campaigns require careful thought and planning to: pick an influencer that will get your products and services in front of your target audience, create KPIs, choose which channels to use, etc. Campaigns must be carefully calculated to ensure ROI. If you're wondering Why Influencer Marketing is Important, we review this in another article you can read here. We go into detail about the benefits of influencer marketing, but we will highlight some of the main points here using the example goals from above.

Increase Brand Awareness / Visibility
- Influencers and content creators have audiences that know and trust them. Each influencer has a niche or a segmented population of social media users. This allows you to define your target audience, create a customer persona, and find an influencer whose niche fits that persona type. The influencer is already interacting with your intended audience. This means that when they begin promoting your product, it will be to people we know will like it!
Reach a New Audience and Convert Them into Customers
- If your goal is sales conversions, an influencer brand campaign helps because the audience has already built a rapport with the influencer you are partnering with. This means they trust that influencer to provide them with recommendations and products that they will like using. This leads to a direct increase in sales for you if the campaign is done properly.
Increase Customer Loyalty and Trust
- A potential customer may have heard of your product but is unsure of its efficacy. When employing influencers to show or talk about their experience using your product or service, the audience hears (or sees) directly from someone who uses and likes the product. That gives a lot more weight to the recommendation, leading to stronger loyalty and trust between you and the new potential customer. It's said that a potential customer needs to see or hear your message 7 times before a sale is made because they are slowly building trust with you! Influencer marketing helps strengthen the relationship more quickly because the recommendation is from someone outside the business.
Differentiate Your Business from Competitors
- Brand campaigns with creators help differentiate your business from competitors because of the real-world display of your product or service and direct recommendation. If a potential customer is trying to decide between you and your competitor and then they go on Instagram and see that someone they follow said your product is amazing, their choice becomes much more apparent.
Maximize Marketing Budget
- Influencer brand campaigns can be much more cost-effective than traditional advertising methods. This is because influencers have a built-in audience of followers who trust and respect their opinion. When influencers promote a product or service, their followers are more likely to take action and make a purchase. It can also be cheaper than other forms of marketing since businesses don't need to pay for expensive ad space or produce costly content. It's as simple as providing the influencer or content creator with your product or service; they take it from there!
Increase Engagement on Socials
- By leveraging the reach and influence of influential people in your industry, you can create content that resonates with a broader audience and encourages people to engage with your brand online. While running a brand campaign, you choose specific KPIs such as follower count increase or how many people end up on a landing page you created for the campaign. You can also see how many more users interacted with your page and content, even if they didn't follow you yet or if you had more web visits than you usually would. Influencers create a more personal connection between you and their audience. They tag your page, and this will lead to more engagement. Another way to increase social engagement is to have the influencer participate in a giveaway that prompts their followers to follow your business on social media.

Here is one of our influencers @fitdadceo

Brand campaign creation and management is one aspect of marketing that we suggest working with a professional on. By working with an agency, they take the guesswork out of running a profitable brand campaign. There is significantly less trial and error. An agency can write up a strategic plan to ensure you see a ROI, define your target audience, create a customer persona, match you with the best influencer for your goals, set and measure KPIs, and give you a written report detailing the success of the campaign! In addition to this, they also act as a middle ground between you and the influencer you decide to work with. This removes any chance for awkwardness or difficulty when deciding on compensation. They make sure you are paying a fair market price and not being taken advantage of for what you will receive in exchange for the content the influencer provides. When working with an agency, they provide guidance on how to best leverage influencer relationships to increase brand awareness and drive sales, making it easier to reach your goals in a timely manner.

Next week, we will be posting an article about How to Measure the Success of Brand Campaigns, so be on the lookout for it if you're curious about how exactly we decide how successful a brand campaign has been through its duration! In the meantime, if you're itching to get started planning your own brand campaign, we are here to help. The Social Strategy offers personalized brand campaign creation and management!

More About Influencer Marketing:

What is a Brand Campaign and Do I Need One for My Business?

How to Measure the Success of Brand Campaigns

Reasons Why (And Why Not) To Work with an Influencer Marketing Agency