Let me answer this question in several parts, so you can draw your own conclusions. And as in CREA. we love to speak with simple words because there is no need to use fancy words to be a great marketer, we hope you understand it easily and quickly.
What exactly is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is when you pay, with a product or money, a person who can influence people through social media platforms, and that person will talk about your product or service with an objective in mind. These objectives can be such as creating brand awareness or improving sales. Influencers will almost always be the ones in charge of creating the appropriate content, and uploading it to the selected platform, it can be Instagram, Tik Tok, or YouTube, among others. The good thing about influencer marketing is that you can measure how many results your strategy had. For example, you can know how many new followers you gain or how many sales you generated. This, in simple words, is influencer marketing and is a part of creating awareness and increasing sales, what we call in CREA. performance marketing.
How has the industry developed?
Influencer marketing started as an informal job, which gradually gained immense power. When social media started, we were completely unaware of the power it was going to have in advertising and marketing but looking back it is now easy to understand why it is one of the most powerful tools in marketing today. Well, I’ll put it this way, whom do you believe more? Someone that you admire, that you follow, that you share their values and want their lifestyle? or a commercial that you feel that all they do is try to sell you products, even what you don’t need? Brands began to realize this and began to take advantage of the voice and power that these people were gaining in the minds of their users. Step by step, and just in this last year the industry began to formalize, it went from being an informal job where a person received certain money for posting to an industry that is valued at 16.4 billion dollars, and that day by day more companies formalize the work of connecting influencers with brands.
¿How to select the perfect Influencer?
Remember something and never forget it, it doesn’t matter if a person has 100K, 500k, 1M followers, if these followers are not aligned to the values of your brand, you will not reach your objectives. Here are some tips when hiring an influencer, please take in mind:
The tips:
– The Influencer should be aligned with your brand values, if you are inclusive, this should be too.
– You must speak to an audience that their passions are your product. For example, if your brand sells clothes, you want someone who talks about fashion tips.
– It doesn’t matter how many people follow this influencer, but how much engagement they have. A huge number of followers and a very low engagement just show these followers were not gained organically.
– Always ask for internal statistics before hiring your Influencer, this allows you to rectify that their community is aligned with your target audience.
Be Strategic
Please, no matter if it takes you another week of time, don’t leave the strategy out. You can’t wake up one morning after dreaming that your brand is going to be super successful and decide to send 5 gifts to 5 famous people on social media. In this case, it is important to pause, consider the strategy and follow the step-by-step mini guide that we will detail below. A strategy will give an order, and clarity, decrease your margin of error and make execution easier. Does influencer marketing works? Yes, but if you do it intelligently and strategically.
Step-by-step Mini Guide
- Set up your objective, it must be SMART. Example: Increase my online sales by 20% in the next month.
- Set up your budget and how you want to distribute it. Ex. Total budget: $5.000 USD / I want 1 top influencer ($2.000 USD + product) 2 medium influencers ($500 each + product) + 5 micro-influencers ($300 each + product) + 10 mini-influencers (only product)
- Reach out to influencers (follow the tips above) and choose the best options
- Align the calendar with influencer posting and set up your website and social media so everything is ready and in order
- Design the perfect way each Influencer will receive your product, make It personal, and make it emotional
- Run the campaign
- Track all relevant metrics to define if your campaign was successful
Successful Influencer marketing case
One of the most successful Influencer marketing campaigns, which we personally love was Dior’s Shades of Dior campaign. Dior’s objective was to create awareness of their new Dior’s Forever Foundation, which is a range with 67 unique foundation shades. Their strategy might seem simple, but it was beyond perfect. Dior reached out to 67 different influencers, each one matching a different shade. They each posted for 67 consecutive days. The results? They had a total audience reach of 2.66M. In addition, their posts had 1.85M impressions and resulted in 592K engagements.
This campaign on Twitter:
67 Shades of Skin: How Buttermilk Delivered Dior’s Most Inclusive Influencer Activation to Date https://t.co/zfXpzVGGsC via @talkinfluence pic.twitter.com/xrZnjye9zB
— Winning at B2B Influencer Marketing (@winfluencermktg) September 22, 2020
The final answer
Yes, Influencer marketing does work, is one of today’s most powerful tools, just check The Kardashians and all the brands around them. But don’t get me wrong, you must invest wisely in Influencer marketing, with influencers who resonate with your brands and whose followers are as real as you.
Set up a meeting with CREA and start your influencer marketing campaign
With love,
Tati
