As the founder and CEO of digital marketing agency Global Yodel Media Group, I’ve produced innovative campaigns for Fortune 500 companies and small businesses since 2011. Our agency produces programs that drive huge results for our clients and generate ROI that most traditional marketing can’t come even close to replicating.

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Over the years, we’ve learned many lessons through experience, some through hard fought battles and some through costly mistakes.  To save you time, effort and heartache, I’ve compiled a list of 18 secrets for success that we use every day in our agency’s fine-tuned Influencer Marketing formula. Here are the first three:

1. Understand Influence Marketing 101:

In marketing, there is always a new trendy buzz word and Influencer Marketing is the choice du jour.  Popular for a reason, if done right, Influencer Marketing can have unparalleled sales, growth and equity results for brands and generate unmatched ROI for marketing budgets.

To better understand the term as a whole, let’s look at the definitions of both influence and marketing separately.

Influence: The capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself. 

Marketing: The action or business of promoting and selling products or services. 

Influencer Marketing is simply the action of promoting and selling products or services through people (influencers) who have the capacity to have an effect on the character of a brand.

2. Understand your goals:

Vague goals generate vague results.  Therefore, create a crystal-clear outline of what you want to gain from your influencer marketing campaign or program.  Do you want to book more hotel rooms?  Build brand equity? Generate millions of organic social impressions?  Generate hundreds of thousands of articles of engagement?  Expand sales into a new country?  Create inspiring content?  Sell to a new audience?

Before designing and producing any campaign, or spending a dollar on marketing, it is extremely important (yet often overlooked) to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve from it and the audience to whom you need to market your product or service to achieve those goals.  I’ve agonizingly seen millions of dollars and tremendous amounts of time wasted because brands and their agencies weren’t clear on their marketing goals and to whom they were trying to engage.

3. Work with the right influencers:

No, just any influencer won’t do.  You need to source and work with influencers who match your brand’s target demographic, voice, style and category space.   You wouldn’t partner with a hip-hop influencer to promote a new indie rock album, would you?  You wouldn’t partner with an influencer who has never traveled to help an airline book more flights, would you?  Of course, not!  This may sound obvious, but I’ve seen countless brands and agencies completely miss the mark on this and waste countless dollars.

Before you engage with an influencer, do your research.  Who are they?  What do they like?  What do they post about?  Make sure they are a direct demographic match to your customer.

Want the free Influencer Marketing e-book? Subscribe to our newsletter to receive the coveted The 18 Secrets of Influencer Marketing absolutely free. We are only offering this for free to the first 50 subscribers so act now by entering your email below!