6 Reasons Why Influencer Marketing Still Works

Influencer marketing still works and here are 6 reasons, to back up that claim. Do you use influencers as a part of your business’ marketing strategy?

Influencer Marketing 101

What is it?

Influencer marketing is collaboration between a celebrity or an influential person (usually on social media) with a company to promote a service, product or campaign.

It used to be that celebrity endorsements (think of Michael Jordan with Nike) was the driving force that would influence an audience to buy products, but with this digital age, “influencers” can come from social media and blogs. These will be people with a large following with a niche audience.

Why Use Influencer Marketing?

This can be a powerful marketing tactic in your arsenal that provides the consumer with trust and value of your brand. A third party recommendation or ‘seal of approval’ can boost your company and offerings’ reputation.

The partner you work with will not only bring with them their own network of followers, but their follower’s network as well. You have automatically increased your social media presence and traffic to your site through this connection.

Even though there are many options to block out the marketing noise that people can hear through commercials with on-demand, streaming and settings to block certain items seen on your feed – the internet has become the avenue where everyone is corralled and influencer marketing provides an extreme opportunity to align with an influencer who will best support your brand’s vision and goals.

How Do I Choose an Influencer?

You must make sure that you assess your brand’s campaign goals and the influencer’s content before making any partnerships. Other items to consider are:

  • Relevance – does this person share content that pertains to your business and/or products?
  • Reach – what is the potential number of people that can be reached based upon the influencer’s following (remember to include all channels they are on)?
  • Action vs Engagement – will this influencer only drive awareness or convert them in to purchases?
    • Engagement in this instance is commenting, sharing or liking posts.
  • Saturation – is this influencer already promoting too many products?
  • Visibility – what channel(s) are the influencer on that will maximize visibility to total network?

You want the influencer to build trust and have their following value the opinions they present. Without this, there will be no conversion for your brand.

Working with the Influencer

This will solely be based upon your agreed upon terms with the influencer, but be prepared to release some creative control. They have built their entire following upon a specific passion, service or product. Collaborate with them on what they feel best will resonate with their following, but also adheres to your brand standards.

Legally, they must follow rules from the Federal Trade Commission, specifically under disclosure. This should be built in to your agreement.

  • Video reviews must have both written and verbal disclosures stating partnership.
  • Though each social media platform has their own rules, please use those as more supplemental to the FTC than the rules to abide by.
  • #ad and #sponsored are useful hashtags to use for disclosure, but they must be highly visible.

Compensation will and should be part of your agreement as they are providing a service to your company to drive traffic and increase sales. All influencers will want different types of compensation pending the level of involvement and visibility of their following.

  • Financially – pending the level of commitment and influencer’s visibility across platforms, this can be an option, but proceed with caution as the sincerity of the ‘paid recommendation’ may be diluted.
  • @Mentions/Shout Outs – being able to share a post or blog that the influencer has written on your companies’ pages will drive more traffic to their site which will make them feel recognized and honored to continue to support your brand in the future..
  • Discounts/Giveaways – offering the influencer a discount on the product or service can be a great incentive for future recommendations. Possibly offering them a trial package/time with a new product to use and put out the first review would be a great incentive for the influencer, informing their followers and building awareness to your company.
  • Commission – this could be a great alternative to financially compensating someone for their efforts. Also, this can be easily accounted for with certain discount codes or tracked URLs provided to their followers to make the purchase.

How to Measure ROI on Influencer Marketing?

First, you must determine what the main goal is for partnering with an influencer – awareness, lead generation, social media presence lift, sales, etc.? Being as specific as possible when setting your goals will be valuable in reviewing results in the end to determine the ROI. Examples below:

  • Drive an extra $X,XXX sales per week
  • Add an extra XX email addresses to its database each week
  • Add an extra XX subscribers each week
  • Increase their followers by XXX per week
  • Double their engagement on determined social media platform

We can apply the same items that are used to consider an influencer to measure the ROI (return on investment) that will optimize your success.

Sales: if you are looking to increase your sales of a service or product, an easy way to measure is to include a specific code or tracked URL to the influencer to include in their posts.

Lead Generation: was the content created inviting enough for the influencer to push out to allow for more subscribers or followers to further share the information?

Social Media: view the likes or subscribers to your page after an influencer campaign has ended. Make sure to record numbers before and after versus cost (compensation to the influencer plus any paid ads per social media platform).

Engagement: measuring the views, clicks, likes, shares and mentions will help analyze the success of the campaign versus cost (compensation to the influencer plus any paid ads per social media platform).

Reach: did the content that was crafted resonate and bring meaning with this niche group that the influencer is a part of?

Pending on the value that needs to be added to your brand, utilizing the influencer marketing tactic can be very beneficial and can come with a huge reward for minimal cost that the digital space leverages. Careful evaluation of the potential influencers and their network is a key component as you can reach a highly niche audience that is beneficial to your mass market product or service.

At Colleen Eakins Design, we can help strategize what design components will be needed in your campaign that the chosen influencer can utilize.

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Incorporating Social Video Marketing

Currently, in the content marketing landscape, video marketing is the highest valued strategy. The personal touch that a video can offer that other content marketing tactics can’t, is unbeatable. Social video marketing is replacing commercials on TV because more people are spending time on their phone than watching the tube.

Are Videos THAT Successful?

You are probably thinking that social video marketing is just another fancy term for commercial. Yes, but also a big NO. With commercials you get a 30 second blimp in to a product without any real emotional connection. With video marketing pushed out on social, the brand is able to position themselves in a way that allows for full interaction. Think about the videos you have recently watched on any social media platform – you can view, re-watch, like, comment and share all within minutes. This not only can increase your social media awareness, but drive engagement and sales from having one or several small snippets of valuable brand-boosting tools.

Types of Videos

When deciding on what video is best for your company and brand for a specific campaign or goal – you must take in to consideration that not everyone in your audience will respond to one type of video the same way. Being able to have a selection of videos ready will help serve the whole audience.

  • Interview (Q&A) – try different formats of this type. Prepared questions with a team member/leader of the brand or taking live questions from the comments. This can also be done with one person who speaks directly to the followers and answers questions as they come in.
  • Behind-the-Scenes – this type of video is a great way to show your audience how you operate as a team, company, and the real work that is put in to produce a product or service.
  • Product Video – watching someone else who knows the product demonstrate its capabilities is a great way to convert your audience to purchase the item. Keep in mind that an informal video might perform better than a paid ad, as it will seem more sincere.
  • Live Video – using a platform that offers live steaming is very beneficial. It can make it seem like your brand is more ‘human’ and willing to showcase that mistakes happen because what you are showing is live and there is no editing. This will create a great connection with the audience. This type of video is great to incorporate other types in a live setting (Q&A, behind-the-scenes, announcements, etc.).
  • Audience Generated Content – let your loyal followers share their own content. This will show how willing your company is in engaging with those that enjoy your product of service. Find organic fan posts, reach out to them individually or hold a contest to collect clips.
  • Announcements/Breaking News – whether these are live or filmed beforehand, using these types of videos can create a buzz and following for a launch of a new product or service. A lot of users will go to social media to find their news and any breaking stories. And your followers will feel like they received the news first and have the power to share that information, if they please.
  • Events – you can use this type of video in a live setting or as an edited reel post event. This can give the audience watching online a chance to see what those attending can’t see with behind-the-scenes footage or speaking one-on-one to special guests.
  • How-Tos – everyone has looked up in a search, “How to….” and received many video choices about what they are needing. These will need to tailored to the social media platform that it is being posted (a few minutes vs. an hour), but can be very useful if your product can be difficult to use or your offerings can be combined with many different items.

What Social Media Platforms Do I Use?

This will pertain to the type of video you are producing and targeted audience from the determined campaign or goal. We know YouTube as the ‘king’ of videos, but other platforms are great for video marketing, as well.

YouTube will offer the chance to create longer content, if needed. Although, keep in mind your audience and if their attention span will be able to handle a feature film. YouTube does not have the live feature and may be best suited for interviews, demonstrations, or company/event reels.

For Facebook and Instagram, the time length of your video will need to be shorter. It will also need to be more entertaining, and creative to compete with the other items in your follower’s feed. These two platforms also offer the additional story feature, which you can use for announcements, quick behind-the-scenes exclusive views, how-tos, and live streaming.

Snapchat will offer you the shortest amount of time to show your content. This however, may be where your audience may live if they are in a younger age group. Short, fun videos will keep the attention of your audience while pulling them in to seeing what will be shown next.

Loop in your analytical findings to determine which channel may best serve your goal. Use a variety of video types and channels to help test which avenue resonates with your followers.

Creative Tips

Small team? Don’t have the budget or resources to create high quality videos? There are some great applications that can assist in developing great videos:

  • FilmoraGo – is a free mobile video editor, with purchase options built within the program. Features include: trimming video, adding themes or filters, music, and captions.
  • Magisto – is a free mobile app that prides itself on turning images and videos into stories within just a few quick clicks with similar features as FilmoraGo. They also offer a business plan that offers a company to reorder movie scenes.
  • Adobe Premiere Clip – is a free mobile app, with paid upgrade plans. They offer an automatic edition option that will generate a clip based on the uploaded content with customized options or use their freeform editing option that will allow you to edit as you see fit. You can also share the content to the app’s community.

At Colleen Eakins Design, we can help strategize what design components will be needed in your video along with a storyboard to guide you in producing the best content for your campaign. Contact us today!

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