How to Integrate Paid Ads With Influencer Campaigns

How can you take your influencer campaign to the next level? You may want to include another angle, such as paid ads. Some of the best marketing campaigns integrate several elements, so potential customers start to see your brand in different places and from different angles.

There are many ways to layer marketing campaigns. Today, we’ll talk about one of those combinations: paid ads with influencer campaigns.

What Does It Mean to Have Paid Ads Integrated With Influencer Campaigns?

Before we get into the details about how and why you should combine an influencer campaign with paid ads, let’s break down those two elements and learn more about how each one works on its own.

An influencer campaign is about leveraging the influencing power of an internet celebrity or similar with a lot of followers and, as the name implies, “influence.” It’s a kind of word-of-mouth marketing using the fact that people trust the recommendations of others.

During your influencer campaign, the influencer posts about your product or service, sharing their review or recommendations on a blog, social media, or other platforms. This can be in return for free products or services or a fee.

Paid marketing campaigns consist of online ads, like pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns or social media ads. Paid ads are shown to people who search for keywords you include in your campaign or whose demographics you’ve decided to target. This also includes users interested in brands or organizations similar to yours or are otherwise part of your target audience.

To integrate paid ads with influencer campaigns, set up a series of ads showcasing the same products or services the influencer shares in their campaigns. In this way, you are showcasing your product from two sources, connecting with more people.

Think about it from the buyer’s perspective.

First, they see your brand from the influencer. It may be the first time they hear about your brand, but they could decide to learn more since they trust the influencer.

So, then, they may Google your company and read a blog entry. Or, they may see other mentions about your brand from that same influencer or other influencers they trust, giving you more credibility in their minds.

Examples of Paid Ads Integrated with Influencer Campaigns

Radha Beauty took a real-time, multi-personality approach to their integrated campaign. Working with Carusele, they partnered with several influencers who created social posts about the beauty brand.

The brand watched which posts were getting the most traffic, then promoted those posts using the platform sponsored ad options to audiences reflecting those posts’ followers’ demographics. Their web traffic exceeded their stated goals.

Schick Intuition used influencers to spread the news about their new razors. In addition to influencers sharing their experiences with the razors and a coupon code to push sales, the company integrated video bumper ads and other in-video ads. They reported an increase of 229 percent for ad recall and a purchase intent rise of 113 percent.

Kettle & Fire worked with influencers to create photographs of their products. Leveraging the talent of those influencers, they gained brand awareness as well as compelling images. They were also able to see how well those images performed and reuse them for Facebook ads.

Why You Should Integrate Your Influencer and Paid Ad Strategies

The most basic reason to integrate a paid ad campaign with your influencer campaign is to cover more ground. It allows people to see your brand more often in a shorter period. The more people see it, the more likely they are to buy.

Statistics vary regarding how many times people need to see an ad or other information about a product before they act on it. Some say it takes seven times, also known as the “Rule of 7.” Still, others say it takes 11 times.

No matter which number you believe, the reality is it’s always more than once.

Buyers aren’t likely to make a move while scrolling through their favorite social media app or catching up on a blog or video stream if seeing a brand for the first or second time. Even if the influencer campaign is engaging and persuasive, statistically speaking, the viewer will probably need to see your brand a few more times.

This is true even if the influencer talks about your product more than once. Most influencer campaigns aren’t prolific.

Paid ads, along with influencer posts, give you the chance to be in front of buyers again and again. This allows you to hit that magical number and potentially make sales.

It’s a timing question too. Think about how you catch up with your favorite influencers on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, or blog posts. You’re scrolling and consuming, probably for entertainment alone—you’re probably not shopping. You’re not very likely to stop watching a video to go to an online shop and purchase.

When are you primed to make a purchase? When you go shopping online. For many of us, that starts with a Google search. Before we order a gift for a loved one—or ourselves—we head to a search engine and type in what we’re looking for.

We rarely just type in a URL during our initial searches for items we’re shopping for. Instead, we type in the name of an item. This is the prime place for your ad to appear.

The influencer has already told your potential customer how great you are. Maybe a couple of times. Now the influencer’s fan goes to Google to look up a product in your industry, and there you are with a product they remember seeing.

Even if they didn’t click on the ad, perhaps they see your name next time they’re scrolling on social media, and their curiosity is now piqued enough to give you a click.

It’s also good to think about ad fatigue. To overcome it, users need to see something new. That’s where those paid ads come in. You can showcase much of the same information but in a slightly different way. Even just being an ad on a different platform may make enough of a difference.

If not, you can also try a different approach to your message. Maybe you share more about your product. Maybe you can show it in different styles, flavors, or other variations than the influencer did. The goal is to get the viewer interested in checking out this brand they’ve heard about.

Who should best represent your brand? Influencers who hold your brand’s values and are invested in using and sharing products like yours.

You can use a tool such as Upfluence or, after digging through social media, reach out directly. Once you know where and when they’ll be sharing your products, you can build your plans around theirs.

Choose Where Paid Ads Should Go

Placing your ads on the same platforms as the influencer improves people’s chances of seeing your brand more than once. You may also want to think about keyword-driven ads, such as Google ads, to increase your target market’s views. You can target people searching for your influencer as well.

Set the Time Frame

To get the most out of this multichannel approach, you may want to set time parameters reflecting your influencer campaign. This is about reaching the same viewers with your ad, so working within a similar time frame helps assure that.

Design and Press Go

In the copy and images of your paid ad campaign, you should reflect a lot of what viewers have already seen before to remind them of your brand. You can introduce a new facet of your brand but stay recognizable to those who have seen your brand with the influencer already via similar messaging, product types, and even brand colors.

When Should You Use This Strategy?

The short answer to when you should combine an influencer campaign with paid marketing is when you need to get the word out in a short amount of time.

Below, you can find suggestions about when some of these timely campaigns could be.

Seasonal Products

If a holiday, season, or other deadline drives your sales, integrated marketing campaigns can help you reach a wider audience quickly. This is great for seasonal items intended for use during a specific period. By showing up in influencer posts and ads, you can paint a picture of being everywhere and being the hot item everyone is talking about this year. Influencers may even show what the product looks like in their homes—so if, for instance, you sell Christmas ornaments, they may show them on their trees.

New Launches

Another good time to think about using multiple campaigns simultaneously is when you launch a new product or service. Getting the word out through various streams can help build brand awareness and provide constant exposure to get people excited about giving you a try.

Jumping on Trends

Much like seasonal products, trendy products have deadlines, albeit abstract ones. Eventually, the trend will dissipate or evolve. If you’re trying to ride the wave of a cultural phenomenon or something happening in society at large, running marketing campaigns while these things are happening may help drive more eyes to your product and let you leverage the popularity while it lasts.

Leveraging a Spokesperson Opportunity

Even if you don’t feel pressed against time, sometimes putting some paid advertising behind an influencer campaign just makes sense. If you have an exciting opportunity with an influencer, you may want to put money and effort behind it to spread the word and leverage that spotlight.

Conclusion

Integrating paid ads with influencer campaigns can help you get the most of the investment you are making in working with that influencer.

By leveraging a multi-channel marketing approach, you can reach more people, more often, with your brand message, increasing the chances and number of conversions. It’s not the only way to get those conversions, but it may be a fruitful one, taking advantage of great content already being created about your brand.

Who is your dream influencer for your next marketing campaign?

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