In this day and age, working with influencers is an inevitable part of destination marketing. Whether you’re trying to grow your organic social presence or run a paid media campaign that will make a splash, the right influencers can help take your marketing tactics to the next level.
When working with travel influencers for destination marketing initiatives, there are some best practices to consider to maximize their effectiveness and mitigate risks. Make sure to keep these best practices in mind next time you’re creating and running an influencer marketing campaign.
1. Set influencer campaign goals
Start by defining specific objectives for the influencer campaign. Clear objectives will provide focus, help measure success, and guide how to optimize the campaign while it’s running.
These defined goals also serve as a framework to ensure that your influencer program generates meaningful and measurable results that contribute to overall marketing and business objectives (more on that in the next section).
Here are a few examples of goals for a destination marketing influencer campaign:
- Increasing destination awareness
- Grow your social following
- Drive website traffic
- Raise awareness about a specific event
- Promote specific attractions or experiences
- Showcase partners or local businesses
- Reach a specific audience or niche
- Generate bookings for hotels or attractions
2. Identify KPIs
Once you have your campaign goals in place, you’ll want to drill down and identify some key performance indicators.
We all know that conversions are not always a straightforward metric for tourism destinations. That’s why it’s especially important to define specific KPIs for your work with influencers. The best time to determine your KPIs? As soon as possible. That’s because these objectives should help guide every aspect of your campaign, including selecting the influencer you’ll be working with.
Here are some KPIs you may want to consider.
- Reach and impressions: Measure the total reach and impressions generated by the influencer’s content. This indicates your campaign’s potential exposure and visibility to the influencer’s audience.
- Engagement metrics: Look at engagement metrics such as likes, comments, shares, and saves on social media posts or blog articles. These are high-value engagements and signal the content is worth taking action. Higher engagement rates suggest that the content resonated well with the audience and generated meaningful interactions.
- Clickthrough rate (CTR): Analyze the CTR on links or call-to-action buttons included in the influencer’s content. This measures the percentage of people who clicked on the provided links, indicating their interest in learning more or taking the desired actions.
- Website traffic: Monitor the increase in website traffic during the influencer campaign period. Track the number of unique visitors, page views, and time spent on site to gauge the effectiveness for driving traffic and engaging visitors.
Make sure to check your performance throughout the partnership, so you can make optimizations and ensure you’re on track toward your goals.
3. Get everything in writing
One challenge of working with influencers is that every new partner comes to the table with their own expectations, processes, and collaboration style. While some aspects can be templated and carried over, each influencer partnership is unique in its own way.
That’s why it’s crucial to make sure expectations and deliverables are documented in advance. This ensures that both parties are aligned with the partnership and that everyone is accountable. There are a few different ways to work with influencers and creators, so it’s crucial to thoroughly outline the nature of the agreement.
Here’s a handy checklist to review an agreement against before sending it to an influencer to sign.
Is the influencer creating original content or licensing existing content for advertising?
What are the delivery dates for the assets?
How many rounds of feedback and edits will there be?
Who retains ownership of the content created for the partnership?
Make sure to leave room for edits in your time frame if you’re commissioning original content. If you’re licensing existing content for ads, consider adding a note to extend the licensing agreement for an additional time period depending on the performance of the creative.
4. Let influencers hold the creative reins
When it comes to influencers, the best partnerships give the creator the creative freedom to make the best content possible for their audience.
That’s because influencers know their community best — it’s the reason you’re hiring them! But brands tend to exert too much creative control over the campaign content, which can lead to an end product that feels inauthentic. And audiences can smell inauthenticity a mile away.
If you’ve picked a properly vetted influencer who aligns with your brand, you should be able to give them the creative leeway needed to create something unique. Content that fits the vibe and style of their platform will resonate better with their community than something that feels like an ad.
The campaign brief should cover the basics that influencers should include in their final deliverable, like any campaign hashtags, brand tags, or important partners. Besides that, let them have some fun and see what they come up with!
5. How to find the right influencer
Finding the right influencers can be overwhelming. When you’re deciding who to work with, it’s important to consider your audience, goals, KPIs, and brand values. Here are a few key things to keep in mind when evaluating potential influencers:
- Have they been to your destination before? If not, you can provide them with a “must-see” itinerary that could create a blueprint for potential first-time visitors. If so, consider reintroducing them to your destination with new restaurants, new attractions, and other hidden gems that would appeal to potential repeat visitors.
- Who is the influencer’s audience? Does the audience align with your current audience? Or do they reach a demographic you’d like to connect with more?
- What is the influencer’s platform? Not every influencer thrives on every channel. Consider where they have built their community, whether that’s TikTok, Instagram, or elsewhere, and whether your intended message will resonate.
- What are their values? What type of image is this influencer putting out there? What values are they portraying? While you might consider going out on a limb with an influencer who doesn’t quite match your brand aesthetic or tone, you’ll want to make sure your core values are aligned.
While big-name or national influencers can make a splash, don’t forget about local micro-influencers and creators. These creators offer a “boots-on-the-ground” authentic perspective on your destination. Consider licensing some of their existing content to infuse fresh creative into your marketing. You can even create custom content with these partners to fill gaps you may have in your content or asset library.
One more critical step: don’t skip an initial meeting. No matter how large or small your partnership will be, it’s crucial to take time to carefully vet influencers with a phone call, Zoom, or in-person meeting to assess their professionality and vibe in a way you can’t always tell via digital channels alone.
The bottom line: Influencer marketing isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Being able to confidently set up, execute, and track the success of your influencer campaigns will continue to be an imperative for destinations large and small. Still looking for guidance? Our creative and media teams can help you coordinate an influencer campaign with real impact.
