Influencer marketing involves collaborating with an influential person to promote your product, service, or message. The retail sector has successfully used it for years; however, its use in the public sector, whilst effective, is still a relatively new phenomenon.

Influencer marketing can help local authorities:

• increase awareness: by expanding the reach of your campaigns beyond your existing followers
• reach the right people: by choosing the right influencer, you can effectively target the right people without needing to spend additional funds on boosted posts or advertising
• build trust: influencers have fostered relationships and built a level of trust and credibility with their followers
• enhance your content strategy: influencers can create engaging, authentic content that you wouldn’t be able to do yourself

But where do you start?

Some of the key elements of influencer marketing are:

• setting clearly defined objectives: what you want to achieve
• identifying your audience: who you are trying to reach and how they will benefit
• influencer mapping: identifying the right influencers – on the right platforms – to help you reach your target audience and achieve your goals
• creating a clear creative brief to ensure you get great content
• ensuring you have the proper legal agreements in place to ensure your activities are compliant
• designing the implementation plan which supports the strategy and clearly lays out the content against the objectives, audiences, as well as cadence and when they will share the content, who is responsible for posting the content and how you will measure each piece of content to achieve against your objectives
• establish how you are going to evaluate your campaign and define your inputs, outputs, outtakes and outcomes
• evaluate and optimise as you go.

Partnering with influencers who already have a profile and are commanding the attention of your target audience is a powerful way to reach and engage people from a trusted source.

How can Westco support you?

Talk to us about how we can help you motor with your influencer marketing. We provide:

• a free toolkit taking you through all the components of influencer marketing and what you need to consider
• walkthrough guides and templates, including a brief and contract, give you what you need to design and implement influencer marketing campaigns yourself
• training to guide you through the process with all the templates you need
• bespoke ROI-led social influencer campaigns done for you.

Find out more online, or get in touch by emailing hello@westcocommunications.com