Our Favorite Halloween Influencers Serving Up Chills and Thrills

These are the creators who, with their passion and talent, truly encapsulate the essence of this haunted holiday. We’re talking about the makeup maestros who can transform faces into eerie entities. The DIY crafters who bring to life the most ghoulish of designs. And the decorators whose spaces brim with all things supernatural. To celebrate, we’ve curated a list of our top 13 (a deliciously spooky number) Halloween influencers. These creators will fill your feed with every phantom, poltergeist, and pumpkin imaginable. Dive in, if you dare!

1. Mimi Choi @mimles

Mimi Choi is THE professional illusion artist. Her insane illusion makeup art is taking TikTok and the whole internet by storm. She is based in Vancouver and acclaimed for her innovative illusionary style. It’s earned her international recognition and a substantial following on most platforms since her graduation from Blanche Macdonald Centre in 2014. 

Originally from Macau, she immigrated to Canada in the 1990s. She melds inspiration from her diverse background, surreal art, and vivid sleep paralysis experiences to create her distinctive, macabre looks. 

In addition to instructing at her alma mater, Mimi conducts global masterclasses. She also works as a freelance artistic director for prominent brands, such as NYX Professional Makeup and Burberry. Her transformative work has been featured across various platforms in pop culture. In 2019, she designed the widely acclaimed Met Gala look for actor/model Ezra Miller.

2. Little Ms. Scare All @littlems_scareall

Known as Little Ms. Scare All or ‘Your Fairy Gothmother,’ Jessica Smith embodies Halloween aesthetics every day, showcasing her passion for gothic attire and makeup. She delivers a unique blend of spooky style, relatable memes, and insightful makeup tutorials. 

Her content serves a vast audience seeking macabre aesthetics fused with humor and style. It’s no wonder she’s a sought-after personality, especially during the Halloween season. Fans and fellow Halloween creators alike flock for her enriching and creative insights.

3. Miranda @spookylittlehalloween 

Miranda is Minneapolis’s friendly neighborhood ghoul. Like many other creators on this list, she loves to celebrate October 31st year-round. She enchants spooky enthusiasts with inspirations for decorations, DIYs, and parties on her blog. And she goes the extra mile supplementing them with enthralling playlists, optimal year-round shopping spots, and festive recipes. 

During the Halloween season, she diligently informs her followers about the newest spooky products on store shelves. But her holiday haunts don’t stop there. She explores the amalgamation of various holidays with Halloween-themed twists, such as Spooky Christmas and Valoween to Summerween. 

Fans look forward to a sprinkle of spookiness in their mail when she periodically sends out zines and full-size magazines. (The 2023 edition is currently available in her shop.) For aficionados of the Halloween lifestyle, her corner of the web serves as a perfect refuge. There, every day is a Halloween celebration.

4. Venus Halloween @halloweenxo 

Venus Halloween, a year-round Halloween influencer, has been a source of festive and spooky content for over a decade. In her world, every day is a Halloween celebration. 

With her distinctive black and orange Instagram feed, Venus unveils a mix of shopping hauls and innovative DIY projects. This year, she is actively participating in #31mugsofhalloween, revealing a unique Halloween-related mug each day. 

Residing in Orange County, California, Venus frequently shares her regional festive adventures. She’s a source of daily inspiration for Halloween enthusiasts in SoCal and beyond. Her impactful presence and creative endeavors make her a standout figure among Halloween creators. She’s a go-to influencer for those seeking to immerse themselves in the Halloween spirit 365 days a year! 

5. Snitchery @snitchery 

Eleanor Barnes is better known as Snitchery to her millions of followers across TikTok and Instagram. She has effectively merged the realms of beauty and cosplay, shaping a unique niche in the Halloween influencer world. 

Her artistic facial creations have captured the attention of numerous beauty brands. She’s worked with household names like MAC, Tarte, Too Faced, and her favorite, Milk Makeup. 

Eventually, Barnes transitioned her content focus to beauty-centered cosplay. Her long-standing passion garnered support from brands like Fenty Beauty even as she maintained her unique aesthetic. It’s no wonder she’s quickly gained a substantial following. Snitchery amassed 3.9 million followers thanks to her distinctive, beauty-focused cosplay content that sets her apart in both communities.

6. Sarah @the_pumpkin_queen 

Sarah Cooke, known as The Pumpkin Queen on Instagram, has captivated the Halloween enthusiast community. Her enchanting, spooky feed is a delightful mix of festive memes and haunting Halloween decorations. As a prominent Halloween influencer, she significantly impacts the Halloween-loving audience. She’s constantly sharing content that resonates with those who adore the spooky season. 

The Pumpkin Queen brings a unique flavor of cute yet eerie aesthetics to her followers. Her Etsy shop, GOREnaments, is a treasure trove for fans. It offers a variety of horror-themed stationery items and ornaments. The products allow aficionados to imbue their lives with the Halloween spirit all year long. 

Her innovative approach intertwines the cute with the spooky, making her a distinguished figure in the sea of Halloween creators.

7. Sam @halloweenhappy 

Sam is the creator behind the vibrant Halloween Happy account on Instagram. Her spooky lifestyle content has successfully garnered the attention of thousands across Instagram and Facebook. 

More impressively, her distinct approach to Halloween-centered content captured the fascination of The Drew Barrymore Show. Her appearance on the daytime program gave a wider audience a glimpse into her haunting hometown of Salem, Massachusetts. 

Within the expansive realm of Halloween influencers, Sam stands out. She offers her followers a journey through haunting hauls, innovative décor inspiration, and festive planning ideas, fostering a year-round Halloween ambiance. She seamlessly blends the mystical allure of Salem with her passion for all things Halloween. Her social media platforms are hubs for those seeking to inject a dose of spookiness into their lives.

8. Sydney Nicole Addams @sydneynicoleaddams 

Sydney Nicole Addams is a Halloween influencer to watch. She captivates her audience with makeup looks that are simultaneously haunting, intimidating, and intricate. While her creations may appear daunting, she provides extensive tutorials, allowing enthusiasts to replicate her spine-chilling looks. 

Whether it’s the chaotic charm of Harley Quinn or the ethereal allure of the Corpse Bride, Sydney adeptly guides her followers through transformations into iconic characters. Additionally, her platforms are rich with discount codes, offering her followers exclusive access to savings on her favored makeup products. She’s a go-to resource for accessible, affordable Halloween makeup inspiration and instruction. 

9. Kiel James Patrick @kjp 

Every July, KJP releases an Instagram Reel laden with pumpkins and vivid fall leaves. It signals the impending arrival of the spooky season. Kiel James Patrick, known as KJP, has long been a staple in social media circles. He’s well-known among Halloween influencers and creators with a penchant for fall content. 

KJP’s immersive photos and videos encapsulate the essence of the quintessential New England lifestyle. They evoke a sense of timeless charm and scenic beauty. Each year, as the leaves begin to change and the air turns crisp, KJP shares mesmerizing images that paint a picture of Halloween in New England.

His content features a seamless blend of elegance and seasonal charm. He provides a unique and aesthetically pleasing perspective to all lovers of this bewitching season.

10. Alessandra Dell’Oso @delizieinquota 

Alessandra Dell’ Oso transports her followers straight into the enchanting heart of Italian woods. Her autumn-infused feed features a world where the magic of fall and the splendor of Halloween converge seamlessly. 

This creator’s bilingual content, articulated both in Italian and English, captivates a global audience. Followers savor her delectable fall recipes and recreate the culinary treats she shares. 

Aside from cooking, Alessandra’s content features DIY craft inspo, cozy outfit ideas, and autumnal experiences. Her uniquely Italian twist to the seasonal celebration keeps fans flocking back for more.

11. Lily @pintsizedphoto

Lily is the ingenious creator behind the lifestyle and fashion blog, Pint Sized Beauty. Her passion for Halloween and fall translate to engaging content that captivates over 190 thousand followers on TikTok. 

Broadcasting from her quaint English town, Lily’s feed is a delightful concoction of autumnal vibes. She showcases eclectic Halloween finds, fall recipes, and seasonal outfit inspo. 

Every piece of content she crafts resonates with a warmth synonymous with fall, interspersed with the thrilling allure of Halloween. Her unique blend of fashion-forward and seasonally-inspired content continues to shape trends. This Halloween influencer inspires a global audience eager to experience the charm of an English autumn.

12. Lori Castellon @ghoul.at.heart 

Are you hosting a haunted house party? Or a cozy movie night in? If you’re still planning your menu, don’t worry. Lori Castellon has you covered. Her page is full of the most creative Halloween recipes and tablescapes for your future ghoulish gatherings.

The creator of Castellon’s Kitchen is always cooking up Halloween-centric creations. Recently, she decided to designate a unique platform exclusively for her Halloween obsession. Her new blog Ghoul at Heart delves deeper into the essence of this haunting celebration.

Lori’s affinity for Halloween is a nostalgic journey back to her childhood. Her creations invoke memories of autumn walks, school costume parades, and homemade Jack-o-lantern cupcakes. At the end of the day, it’s clear Lori has always been a Ghoul at Heart.

13. Erin @spookygobragh  

No description suits Erin’s feed better than her own.  “You’ll get a lot of ghosts, orange, and mugs,” she says. Sprinkle in some pumpkins and awesome festive finds and you’ve got her account covered. She’s a simple and effective Halloween influencer proving sometimes it’s best to stick with the basics.

The Trick of Finding the Best Halloween Influencers is our Treat for You

Our journey through this eerie season has been all the more thrilling with this incredible array of talent. From faces painted with tales of horror to spaces that echo with ghostly whispers, our curated list of 13 Halloween creators offers a variet of spooky spirit. 

These Halloween influencers prove the heart of this holiday lies in the artistry that brings shadows to life. They’ve filled our feeds and hearts with phantoms, poltergeists, and pumpkins. If you’d like help finding influencers for your next festive campaign, schedule a strategy call with one of our experts. Until next year, may your days be filled with chills, thrills, and endless Halloween inspiration!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Abigail Welcom | Marketing Magician

Abby wins hearts and gains trust as our Brand Marketing & Outreach Coordinator. She puts her Film and Television Production degree to good use dreaming up visual marketing for The Shelf. When she’s not dazzling us with out-of-the-box ideas, you can likely find her at The Happiest Place on Earth — Disneyland!

The post 13 Halloween Influencers to Follow This Spooky Season appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

Choosing the right influencer can sometimes feel like speed dating. You’re constantly trying to see if you and the other person are a match. For 3 in 4 marketers running influencer campaigns, influencer selection is still a bit of a mystery. If you’re still wondering if you’re doing the whole influencer sourcing thing right, we’ve got you covered.

What Is Influencer Selection?

Influencer Selection is a process of identifying the qualities and proficiencies an influencer needs to successfully help brands reach their marketing goals. In short, it’s the process of choosing the right influencers. Not all influencers will be a good fit for every campaign. Effective influencer partnerships take some doing.

The influencer selection process is often easier when you have an influencer sourcing tool (like our proprietary influencer marketing platform), or better still, you have access to an influencer discovery team (like we have here at The Shelf ). That’s mainly because choosing the right influencer requires you to look at quantitative data about the influencer, qualitative data about an influencer’s content, and behavioral data about the influencer’s audience to determine if a creator has real influence with the audience the brand actually needs to reach.

Yeah, it’s a lot. And it’s a pretty big deal for your campaign!!

Picture it:

Your brand is looking to run your first influencer marketing campaign that sells a competitively priced athletic shoe. For this campaign, you’re targeting shoppers over the age of 40 who are lower-middle class and more swayed by price than brand name. They’re tightening their belts this holiday season and planning to make fewer purchases, but they’re gung-ho about shopping. Choose the right micro-influencer avatar(s) that would work for this campaign:

Influencer One

Jill, a 55-year-old CFO, runner, and self-proclaimed “common sense fitness” guru. Jill is active. On IG, half of her feed is Jill in different outfits. The other half of her feed is a mix of candid pics and Stories of Jill and her partner or Jill and her friends out and about. She reserves TikTok for the kid in her – hopping on trends and creating bodyweight workout videos and reworking popular cooking videos with healthier substitutions.

Influencer Two

Erin, a 42-year-old recently divorced mom of 4 is transparent enough to walk her audience through her big life change. She’s navigating single parenthood, downsizing a bit, and even talked about recareering. She talks through her experiences as a form of self-therapy on TikTok. She’s active in that she spends lots of time outside with her kids and her dog, as evidenced in her IG feed, but exercise isn’t really her thing. She has enough on her plate.

Influencer Three

Jakob is a 60-year-old, lone wolf-type poker enthusiast and adventurer who never married but has done well in real estate. Jakob is a silver fox who does quite a bit of sailing and traveling. He loves posting his “Jake vs Jake” physical challenges on TikTok. His entire IG feed is made up of the people he meets and the places he visits on his travels and adventures. 

Erin is the most like your target audience — someone who is busy, budget-conscious, and needs a comfortable shoe that will last. 

But of the three, Erin probably wouldn’t be the best choice for your campaign. While Erin is your target audience, Jill and Jakob are a bit more aspirational and more likely to deliver a higher entertainment — and maybe even educational — value. 

The Power of Influencer Partnerships in Your Marketing Strategy

For the sake of everyone being on the same page, let’s answer the question that still gets asked by Googlers tens of thousands of times every month: what is an influencer?

Brands seek out influencers because influencers know how to connect with and relate to their audiences. They are masters of messaging, and they’re great at cutting through the noise and zeroing in on exactly what their audience wants and needs to see and hear.

Influencers are not:

• Your in-house marketing team having their third meeting with Legal this month

• Boxed in with preconceptions of the kind of marketing that really drove sales for your product in the past

• Members of your content team, trying to make sure every piece of content fits somewhere in the funnel or doubles as a marketing asset.

Influencers are:

• Independent creatives who are experts at using content not just to come up with cool messaging, but also to facilitate authentic connections and memorable experiences for their audiences 

In essence, they’re the true maestros of crafting exceptional content that can infuse your brand with a layer of depth often unattainable by your internal team. This is precisely why brands join forces with them.

But…

Navigating the complex world of influencer sourcing and influencer selection can be a daunting task. Scratch that. Choosing the right influencer can be a full-blown headache.

As brands and marketers strive to create impactful influencer campaigns, the one thing they have to do to ensure their campaign delivers is learn how to find the right influencer partners. That means overcoming a variety of different challenges – fake followers, brand safety issues, content rights, rising costs…  

So, let’s talk about it. I want to use the next two or three minutes to shed light on key insights to help you make informed decisions and create authentic influencer partnerships that resonate with your audience.

Influencer Selection Trips Up 75% of Marketers

The journey toward successful influencer selection begins with understanding the hurdles that brands often face. According to a report by Mediakix:

• 50 percent of marketers have trouble identifying which influencers have fake followers
• 38 percent of marketers are troubled by rising influencer costs
• 28 percent say maintaining brand safety and brand alignment is problematic, and
• 18 percent say they have trouble making sure sponsored content meets FTC regulations and requirements

Source: Mediakix

These statistics underscore the need for a strategic approach to influencer selection. Brands can’t rely on choosing influencers based on follower counts. And we’ve gotten beyond just looking at alignment, values, and engagement ratios.

The heck?

So how do you choose the right influencer partners? Yep. That’s the question that troubles 3 in 4 marketers as they’re crafting their influencer campaigns.

The Different Types of Influencers

What are the different levels of influencers? The influencer marketplace breaks down into five influencer tiers – mega/celebrity influencers, macro-influencers, mid-tier influencers, micro-influencers, and nano-influencers.

Each type of influencer can support your efforts on multiple fronts. We actually did a pretty thorough breakdown in a recent post on influencer tiers, but just to recap…

Mega/Celebrity-Influencers (1M+)

These are the Beyonces and Kardashians of the social media sphere that are often household names. This tier is typically the most expensive and makes up a small fraction of the global influencer network. They also come with lower engagement rates since their audiences are so large. It’s a pretty sure bet that some people are just following the influencer because so many other people are following, and not necessarily because they have anything in common with the influencer.

While celebs may seem like the cream of the crop when it comes to enhancing your brand’s exposure, the numbers tell us that it isn’t so simple. A larger following doesn’t necessarily equate to a larger profit margin next quarter. Why? Well, because choosing the right influencer depends on more than follower count alone.

There are plenty of other factors and countless variables that can complicate the influencer selection process.   But these variables also deliver opportunities for brands to hyper-target their influencer campaigns. 

Macro-Influencers (300K – 1M Followers) 

We like to classify macro-influencers as those who are experienced and often create full-time or have some form of representation. They are often well-versed with the industry standards and what’s expected of both parties. This influencer tier is especially great for those who want to maximize their brand’s reach. 

Mid-Tier Influencers (50K – 300K)

The mid-tier is an in-between influencer that may be working toward becoming full-time. They often boast higher engagement rates than their high-tiered friends. You can expect these influencers to ask for more than a product exchange and they’re fairly familiar with the industry. 

Micro-Influencers (10K – 50K) 

The micro-influencer tier is where you’ll see a more diverse range of experience among influencers. Some may be pricey and experienced while others may be less familiar, charge less, or place a higher value on getting free products to supplement their rates, which generally start around a few hundred dollars per post and can easily climb to $5K per post. Pretty wide berth, right?

One of the great things about micro-influencers is they typically have higher engagement rates, making them a good investment if your goal is to get audience members to take action. 

The industry has already caught on to the potential of influencers with smaller followings, which is why Influencer Marketing Hub found that there was a 300 percent increase in the number of micro-influencers used by large firms from 2016 to 2020. 

Nano-Influencers (1K – 10K) 

Nano-Influencers pose an interesting opportunity as many know their followers in real life and typically have larger engagement rates. While you want to be sure that there is an intent to influence, this tier can be extremely beneficial to your marketing efforts as the level of trust between the influencer and followers can often be higher. 

We actually created an encyclopedia on this stuff…

The Complete Guide to Influencer Marketing

Here’s What to Look for In an Influencer Partner

Now we know who’s who. You’re one step closer to choosing the right influencer. Awesome! But how do you whittle down a pool of 50 million influencers? And how do you separate those with large followings from creative partners who can actually get their sizable audiences to take actions on your behalf?

I’ll tell ya.

Your influencer selection process essentially dances to the rhythm of your campaign goals. What’s the scoop with your campaign? Why are you launching an influencer marketing crusade right now? If you’re aiming to rack up more app downloads, you might fancy the idea of tapping into micro-influencers who rock those engagement stats (we’re talking comments, saves, sticker taps – not just the old thumbs-up). Throwing in a big-league influencer could also be a smart move to draw more peepers to your product and give your brand’s popularity a nice boost.

Or perhaps you’re eyeing the throne of thought leadership. In that case, you’ll want influencers who groove with your niche or boast industry wisdom – it’s like picking the right ingredients for a recipe that’s uniquely yours.

Stir things up by diversifying. Maybe you’re all about opening new chapters in your brand’s story by stepping into untrodden markets. Think about introducing bachelors to some swanky dog chow or getting multitasking moms to make a vitamin swap.

Whatever floats your boat – whether it’s app downloads or mom’s secret vitamins – these dreams of yours hold the key to shaping the qualities of that “perfect influencer” for your gig.

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Streamlining Your Influencer Selection Criteria 

Whether you hire the best influencer agency (us ), use an influencer marketing platform, or create your own system, there is a need for alignment between your brand (product, voice, values, message) and the influencers you select. Remember, choosing the right influencer is not just about high follow rates. Even though the macro- and mega- influencers have massive followings, adding “celebrity” to your lead growth campaign for your software company doesn’t necessarily translate to big bucks, even though doing so could make your campaign more memorable. 

It’s not just relevance and context. It’s more like synergy. We know, it’s the buzzword you can’t escape. It’s building harmony between two parties who are working together to share a message. 

Just as you might be familiar with building out personas for your customers, it can help to take a similar approach for your influencers. How old are they? Do they have a family? How often do they post? What do they like to do for fun? Have they recently become freakishly good boxers? 

Let’s streamline the influencer selection process by identifying your influencer selection criteria. These are the data points you need to know to make influencer sourcing data-driven.

Gather Demographic Info on Influencers

Most macro-influencers and many micros will already have an influencer media kit that provides brands with information about the influencer’s reach, engagement ratios, blog traffic, and audience size. But you also need a significant amount of data on the influencer that typically falls under the heading of demographic/quantitative data. Think:

• Age
• Gender
• Marital status
• Family size
• Race/ethnicity
• Background
• HH income
• Location
• Language

Include Performance Data

In addition to identifying the type of person you want to bring in for your campaign, it’s also a good idea to make sure the person wants to be an influencer. This is important true for nano-influencers who may just be super likable and grow followers quickly, and not necessarily interested in becoming influencers. Choosing the right influencer requires the creator to see themself as an influencer.

Performance data is an important part of the influencer selection process. Aside from just talking to influencers to find out if they’re interested in your campaign, you can also find out a great deal of info ahead of time by looking at performance data. Look at metrics like:

• Follower count
• Reach (because algorithms show the content of creators who have engaged audiences)
• Engagement ratios
• Types of engagement (likes vs comments vs saves vs sticker taps vs swipe-ups)
• Platforms on which influencers are most active
• Topic, quality, and frequency of posts
• Previous partnerships
• Authority

Don’t Forget About the Quality of the Content

A lot of marketing teams would stop there and use the qualities listed above as the criteria around which they build their entire influencer campaign. But there are also qualitative markers that will be crucial to creating a sticky campaign that resonates with consumers. Pay attention to:

• Storytelling
• Entertainment value
• Quality of content
• Audience sentiment
• Level of creativity
• Values
• Relatability
• Influencer personality
• Lighting
• How they engage with followers
• Aesthetic (still comes up; not nearly as important as it was before 2020)

Choosing the right creator for an influencer partnership is not a perfect science. It includes reviewing data that’s both quantitative and qualitative. Just as you want to pay attention to engagement rates, location, age, and budget, you also want to consider their overall aesthetic, content quality, and values. You might conduct some research into their work or even look to their other partnerships to help you discover whether your brand would make sense with their overall message. 

While spreadsheets can help (and we definitely use spreadsheets when it comes time to calculate influencer rates — or what we think they may end up being), there’s a level of critical review that feels more holistic as you find the right partnerships. Below is a recommended list of factors to consider for each influencer. 

Effectiveness and Actual Influence

The influencers you select need to be able to craft targeted sponsored content that can reach the specified audience. Be mindful of the influencer’s skills and where they shine. If they specialize in makeup flat lays for Instagram, you wouldn’t want to ask them to create a video of them using the products on YouTube or TikTok. Understand their style. Can you imagine your brand messaging fitting in with their content seamlessly?

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Analyze Audience Behavior 

This is a BIG one, and too many brands skip audience analysis at the expense of their campaign ROI. The reason influencer marketing continues to grow is because of how it can influence behavior. If a creator can’t influence the behavior of their audience, we don’t actually call them an influencer. And it may be that some influencers are only influential when it comes to certain topics. 

What kinds of hashtags do they use? How are they using emojis? (There is such a thing as boomer emojis.) What kinds of brands do they post about? What kinds of brands do they wear? Mention? You can often tell if an audience skews young or if it comprises a segment that would respond to different messaging or a different product altogether. 

Take note of how their audience interacts with the content for insight into the type of individuals involved. Everything from hashtags to the jokes they make can help you understand information like age or other interests.

The influencer’s followers need to be engaged and match your brand’s target audience. Otherwise, your message may fall into the online void of doom. 

Consider the Influencer’s Goals

It’s also important to remember that influencers have a checklist they’re running through on their end to determine whether the brand is a good match for them and their personal brand. While you’re choosing the right influencer, they’re choosing the right brands. Consider micro-influencers like Sophia (@svvphia). When asked what she looks for in brand partnerships Sophia said:

“It’s always great partnering with brands I feel I really align with, especially those whose philosophy revolves around reducing their carbon footprint, commitments to giving back to their community and diversity (in the workplace and the creators they collaborate with), using durable and smart packaging, and price points that reflect the above.” 

The perfect influencers for your brand and specified campaign are out there, it’s just a matter of alignment. 

Practice What You Preach 

Influencers work hard to build their brands and their audiences. It makes sense they’re super particular about the brands they choose for partnerships. For an influencer, being connected to a brand that’s fallen from grace or that says and does things that fall outside of the influencer’s value set is the fastest way to lose followers and future partnership opportunities.

Skrrrrt!! Back Up and Pause on Entertainment Value

Entertainment value often gets overlooked amidst the hustle and bustle of brand strategies. While the brand team hones in on value propositions, benefits, and features, the legal team keeps a watchful eye on communication balance. However, these elements alone won’t captivate users or push your sponsored content up the algorithm ranks. Let’s break it down:

For the younger generation, platforms like TikTok have become go-to TV. Consider this: the average 18-24-year-old in the US spends a solid 54 minutes watching traditional TV. Yet, in a world of multitasking, the TV usually isn’t their sole focus when they’re watching.

On the flip side, the same demographic spends a significant 79 minutes daily on TikTok. The difference might not seem colossal, but it’s all about the trend. Year after year, traditional TV viewership drops while engagement on short-form platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram soars.

What’s driving this change? Social media platforms are captivating audiences with engaging and entertaining content, and the results are undeniable. They have been successful at keeping users engaged for longer and longer periods of time.

Let’s get straight to the point. No matter what message you’re conveying, it needs to be packaged within content that’s educational or, more importantly, entertaining.

Consider this: Salesforce recently released data indicating that the shopping journey spans an average of nine different channels. This contrasts with the long-held notion of seven touchpoints. We’re not talking about seeing something seven times. We’re talking about nine different channels.

This shift highlights two significant factors:

1. A seamless shopping experience across various platforms, encompassing both digital and physical realms, is now a must.

2. Collaborating with content creators capable of sparking interactions across multiple platforms is pivotal.

Personal example: my 9-year-old daughter isn’t concerned about where Mr. Beast appears; she’s watching the content. Similarly, I won’t pass up a Trey Kennedy video, regardless of the platform.

In a world where entertainment rules and consumer journeys traverse multiple avenues, ensuring your content is engaging and captivating holds the key to sustained success.

Influencer Sourcing: Finding Social Media Influencers

You might be thinking “Okay, I get the gist, now how do I do this?”

Use an Influencer Platform

There are multiple approaches for both influencer sourcing and influencer selection. You might use an influencer marketing platform. This will allow you to filter potential influencer candidates by their demographics, categories, or performance metrics.

The real deal here is how that platform actually populates influencers. Are influencers curated by people and added to a database? Or do influencers join as part of a network of creators from which platform users can then source potential influencer partners?

Our platform uses AI to automatically add potential candidates to our database as soon as they achieve nano-influencer status on any single platform. Yes, that’s tens of millions of content creators. Then our influencer discovery team does the heavy lifting by using campaign requirements and client goals to shortlist potential candidates. Finally, our clients review their options and provide feedback.

Working with Agents

Agents can be a way to work with one professional that represents a variety of influencers for easy communication. We’ve worked with tons of agents to negotiate the terms of an influencer’s participation in a campaign. You’re almost always going to be working with an agent for megas and celebrities. Just keep in mind that creators who are represented by agents tend to be pricier than those who aren’t.  

Doing Your Own Influencer Outreach

You can also create your own influencer outreach strategy to contact influencers. (This link goes to a post that includes templates, too — just an FYI.) But I’ll say this:  Using a platform can save you time and energy as you can usually narrow down your search and apply filters for a quicker selection process. 

Before you reach out to influencers, you want to be clear on what you’re looking for. Be professional and relatable. And make sure that the influencer is a reasonably good match for your campaign. Influencers hate it when brands reach out blindly, without bothering to do any research ahead of time. Choosing the right influencer means doing your homework first.

If the opportunity feels too open-ended or doesn’t make sense for what the influencer does, you might find yourself in a string of rejections that never make it to that first date. 

Just as there is a funnel for consumers as they become customers, you may take a similar approach to influencer matching and relationship building. Some may feel like a long-term strategy where you’re warming them up to become brand ambassadors as opposed to hitting KPIs in the short term with a one-off campaign. 

Hire An Agency

If you have the budget, you will probably want to hire an agency to run your influencer marketing campaign. Choose one with a track record of performance. This should include influencer marketing case studies that you can see and verify and preferably an agency that specializes in creative strategy. The agency is the go-between that translates your marketing goals into creative concepts. As long as they choose the right influencers, they’ll have no problem guiding creators to make content that converts. That means more amazing content you can use across channels and at different points of your sales funnel.

We actually have an entire guide on how to choose an influencer marketing agency. You can download that one here.

Good Influencer Partnerships Require Ongoing Relationship Building

For those looking to take on the long game with their favorite influencers, be sure to focus on how you can build a meaningful relationship. Flattery will get you everywhere in life, but not if it’s lacking in heart and doesn’t feel real. Don’t just comment “cool,” on all their posts. Get specific and determine what it is about the influencer that attracts you and your team. How does this align with your brand? Be willing to share your genuine thoughts. 

If you’re just starting your outreach program, consider looking for influencers who are already obsessed with your brand. Your number one fans pave the way for the types of loyal partnerships that will help your influencer marketing strategy.

Searching for Influencers in Your Niche

Google Alerts and exploring hashtags can help you find influencers as well. Starting conversations and building relationships organically can take more time. But it can also help you be more thorough as you’re vetting influencers. Get a feel for who they are beyond vanity metrics like follower counts and Likes. Some may even set up interviews or work to create more involved partnerships depending on your brand’s values and needs. 

As an agency, there can be a lot of people working behind the scenes for a campaign. Try to ensure that each influencer you select has one point of contact. This will minimize confusion and enhance the relationship for both parties. Be mindful of the types of relationships you want to build. You may seek out both short- and long-term influencers to work with, depending on your campaign goals and your influencer selection process.

Consider casting a wide net, as not every influencer may be jumping at the opportunity to work with you. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but the truth is that these influencer partnerships should benefit both parties. 

Not everyone is going to love you. But the ones that do are going to be able to share their authentic experiences in a genuine way with their followers. That is what you want. Try to welcome the rejection. It helps you get one step closer to that perfect match. 

Refine Your Process

Your system will probably evolve as you start to complete and track your campaign efforts. You should routinely update your pool of influencers as you track campaign progress and document their performance. Be mindful of feedback as you work with your team and partnerships to help you adjust your system as needed. 

Your campaigns are going to change with the needs of the brand, which means you are constantly selecting influencers. You want to stay open to new people and opportunities that can help you routinely meet your campaign goals. Sometimes the influencers from your last campaign are not going to be the best choice. 

Be sure to document progress, concerns, and more with each influencer. This will help you determine if you want to continue working with that person or if you’d rather bring in someone new for the next campaign. 

Treat Influencers as More Than a Number

Influencers are a hot commodity for everyone’s marketing efforts. But they also don’t always like to be treated like just a number. As you build and foster these relationships, consider small adjustments. Making these at the beginning of your selection process can help the partnership feel more special and intimate. This can encourage more interest on the influencer’s part as they feel more invested as you interact with them as a representative of the brand. 

If the budget doesn’t allow for additional gifts or more pay, look to handwritten notes or kind words in your interactions to deepen their emotional connection to the brand.  

Related Post

How to Set Goals (Real Ones) for Your Influencer Marketing Campaigns [Downloadable Guide]

Final Thoughts on Influencer Partnerships

In a world where entertainment rules and consumer journeys traverse multiple avenues, ensuring your content is engaging and captivating holds the key to sustained success. Influencers craft content that adds a unique layer to your brand. They navigate various platforms, captivate audiences, and embody the spirit of authenticity brands crave. So, it’s important that you’re able to choose the right influencers for your campaign. That means tightening up your influencer sourcing and influencer selection strategies.

The post Influencer Partnerships: The Agency’s Technical Guide to Choosing the Right Influencers appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

But where do you begin? This article is a good place to start. We’ll walk you through everything from what type of crowd fund is best for your campaign, to choosing the best influencers to help market it, to sharing some examples of already successful crowdfunding campaigns out in the wild. 

Whatever your project and wherever your crowd, there’s likely an influencer with a following that aligns perfectly with your goals and target audience. We’ll help you find them and make the most of their marketing power. Let’s get started!

What is Crowdfunding?

First, let’s define our terms. If you’re here on The Shelf’s blog, you probably know what influencer marketing is. If you need a refresher, think of it this way. Influencer marketing is a typically digital alternative to traditional marketing that uses influencers and their followings to market on social media. Because influencers come with their own crowd, it’s a natural progression to influencer marketing for crowdfunding. 

But what is crowdfunding? Think of crowdfunding as a fundraiser. Remember selling Girl Scout cookies or Boy Scout popcorn door-to-door? Your neighbors pitched in a small amount of money and you were able to raise enough collectively to fund the annual camping trip. Crowdfunding is similar. In grown-up land, crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising small amounts of money from a large group of people. So the crowd produces the fund. 

In today’s day and age, crowdfunding typically happens on the internet. No need to go door-to-door wearing a little sash. Of course, contributors to a crowd fund don’t necessarily get cookies or popcorn or anything tangible for their contribution (though they can). The benefit of contributing to a crowd fund is enjoying the reward of the finished product, whatever the venture or project is the crowd is funding. 

What are the Different Types of Crowdfunding?

There are several different ways to crowdfund. Each of them can benefit from influencer marketing, but before we dive into how you can market your crowdfunding project, let’s determine what sort of crowd fund you should start. There are four basic types of crowdfunding: donation-based, equity-based, debt-based, and reward-based. Your budget, brand, project, and goals will determine which type of crowdfunding venture is right for you. Here’s a quick explainer of each type to help you decide: 

DONATION-BASED CROWDFUNDING

Donation-based crowdfunding is pretty self-explanatory. This is a type of fund in which people give money for nothing in return. This is potentially the most generous type of crowdfunding and therefore can be difficult to achieve depending on your project. People are motivated to donate because they truly believe in your brand, project, or cause. Donation-based crowdfunding can be successful in the charity space. People feel good donating and investing in a good cause. 

EQUITY-BASED CROWDFUNDING

Equity-based crowdfunding is an investment for the contributor. People who contribute to the fund receive a portion of the business based on how much they pay towards the fund. Basically, brands give away a portion (or shares) of the company in exchange for this financial support. This type of crowdfunding is popular with startups and small businesses. 

DEBT-BASED CROWDFUNDING

Debt-based crowdfunding is categorized as peer-to-peer lending. This basically means that your brand is receiving a loan from the crowd that will be paid back. Those who pledge money for the project are guaranteed to get it back with interest before a certain deadline. Think of this as leaning on your community for extra cash rather than taking it to the bank. 

REWARD-BASED CROWDFUNDING

Reward-based crowdfunding is exactly what it sounds like. Contributors receive a reward for contributing to the fund. This is a particularly popular form of influencer crowdfunding because it feels similar to a social media giveaway. Rewards generally coincide with the value of each contribution. For example, a tier-one reward might be a t-shirt. Tier two may offer something more valuable like a free service. And so on. This incentivizes contributors to donate more and rewards them for their efforts. Win-win!

What Is Influencer Marketing for Crowdfunding?

Now we have a basic understanding of both crowdfunding and influencer marketing. How do we put them together to make some mega-successful ROI magic?

There are two parts to every crowd fund. The crowd and the fund, duh. The great thing about influencers is that the best ones come with a crowd built in. And this isn’t just any crowd. Influencers aren’t shouting in the townsquare to random passersby. They have curated, highly targeted audiences that often reflect specific niches. The best influencers are valuable as marketers because they have highly engaged audiences who truly trust them. These crowds they possess aren’t filled with randos. Their crowds are ideal audiences for someone’s brand. All you have to do is find the influencer who has the crowd that aligns with your target audience. 

Because influencers have developed trust with their audiences, or crowds, their followers may be more willing to contribute to a crowd fund when it has the influencer’s support and stamp of approval. Trust is the name of the game here. It’s natural for consumers to be wary of companies asking for their money. Especially if that ask doesn’t guarantee anything immediately in return (a reality for donation-based and debt-based crowdfunding). Influencers can bridge the trust gap and get contributors to buy into your brand and crowdfunding efforts. 

Is an Influencer-Powered Crowd Fund Right for Me?

Whether you’re new to the crowdfunding game or you’ve been raising funds for years, influencer marketing may be the boost your next crowd fund needs. Influencer partnerships can enrich your campaign strategy and infuse some much-needed creative power and variety when you need it most. If you’re looking for any of the following benefits in your next crowdfunding campaign, influencer marketing may be the way to achieve them: 

• Building trust with your audience
• Reaching niche audiences
• Increasing brand awareness
• Providing value to your contributors
• Developing cross-functional content

How Do You Market a Crowd Fund?

Obviously, there are many ways to skin a cat (what a horrible phrase) and market a crowdfund. This article is specifically about influencer marketing crowdfunds, so we’re going to focus on that. 

GOALS

The first step to influencer marketing your crowd fund is to define your campaign goals. Clearly you’re hoping to raise money, but are you also looking to increase brand awareness? Maybe you’re trying to deepen trust with the audience you already have. These goals will likely help you determine what type of crowd fund is best for your campaign. 

AUDIENCE

Once you’re clear about your goals, you’ll want to identify your target audience. Who are they? What do they like to see on social media? What would motivate them to contribute? And perhaps most importantly, who do they follow and trust?

CREATIVE VISION

After your goals and target audience are squared away, you’ll need to establish a creative vision. How will your content provide value to your contributors? How will you motivate them not only to click or follow but also to spend their hard-earned dollars to support your efforts? A creative vision and content ideas will help you in the next step which is…

INFLUENCERS

Choosing the right influencers! This is a fun part, at least for us at The Shelf. (If you want help with your influencer selection, let us know.) Find influencers who align with your crowd and make awesome content. Remember, the best influencer-generated content comes with some creative freedom on the part of the creator, but it’s always good to give them a brief with some direction. You want to give them space to create freely within the confines of your campaign. 

You may notice that the steps to marketing a crowd fund using influencers are pretty similar to influencer marketing for any other old product or service. You’re not wrong. There are, of course, more wrinkles to consider with a crowdfund, but the basic influencer marketing principles remain. 

How Do I Get a Crowd to Actually Contribute to My Fund?

One of the easiest ways to increase the chances people will contribute to your fund is to provide value to your contributors. This probably seems like a no-brainer, but it works! If you’re a new brand or start-up small business, this may look like running an equity-based campaign. For legacy brands looking to raise funds for a new venture or project, rewards-based crowdfunds may be the most successful. 

Everybody loves free stuff. You tell me something is free and it’s hard for me to pass it up. That’s why the reward or “free gift” economy is so compelling. By creating a reward offering, you’re incentivizing people to contribute to your fund. They get the moral boost of donating to something they believe in and the added bonus of getting a gift (or some other reward) for their generosity. Everybody feels good about the transaction, so everybody wins!

If you’re looking to run a reward-based crowdfund, consider what rewards your audience would find most compelling. Are they a tote crowd? Maybe they love a branded t-shirt. If your brand is more service- than product-focused, maybe a discounted service is the way to go. If I can get 20% off a massage, I’m way more likely to book the massage. You feel me? 

Find out what your audience wants and find a way to give it to them that balances their monetary contribution. There’s also an added gamification aspect to stratified or tiered rewards. Your most avid supporters will get to climb the ranks to that highest reward tier, and whatever the reason for being there, it always feels good to be on top. 

What Makes a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign? 

Successful crowdfunding campaigns do several things. They help you raise the funds, deepen your connection to your target audience, and create value for your contributors. If you go the influencer marketing route, they also result in a productive symbiotic relationship between your brand and influencer partners. 

Let’s take a gander at a successful influencer-led crowdfunding effort already out in the world. 

SOULCARE COACH ZAWADI NYONG’O

Zawadi Nyong’o pulls double duty as both the influencer and the brand in this crowdfunding example. Zawadi is a yoga teacher and SoulCare coach who maintains her small business with the help of crowdfunding. Her approach is donation-based, and it gives her contributors the opportunity to communicate with her directly via their donation. She uses the link in her Instagram bio to direct contributors to her Ko-Fi supporter page, Venmo, or Cash App. 

The messaging surrounding her donation structure is compelling (and a tale as old as time). A small donation, often advertised as the price of a cup of coffee, is marketed as just that. Buy Zawadi a cup of coffee with your donation and support her life’s work. This works well for an influencer-run brand because her followers already have a parasocial relationship with her and therefore are more likely to want to buy her a cup of coffee the way a friend would. In addition to these ever-present donation opportunities, Zawadi used her crowdfunding model to fund the publishing of her “I Am Always Here” affirmation meditation on @insighttimer. Not only do her contributors get to support her life and work, they also directly benefit from the services she’s able to create with their donations. 

Influencer Marketing for Crowdfunding in Conclusion

I hope this answered all your burning questions about how you can utilize influencer marketing in your next crowdfunding campaign. Raising money for a project or venture you’re passionate about is no easy feat, but rest assured it can be done. And influencer marketing can make it easier and potentially more fun! 

Find your crowd and raise those funds with the help of influencer partners who truly get your mission and your brand. If you’d like help finding those influencer partners or designing your influencer marketing strategy for an upcoming crowdfunding campaign, schedule a strategy call with one of our experts! We’re always happy to help. 

About This Author

Ariana Newhouse | B2B Writer

I am a freelance writer and comedian based in Los Angeles, and while making people laugh is my jam, it’s not always the company brand. So, I strive to make people feel something. My writing philosophy is collaborative, empathetic, and humanistic. At the end of the day, no matter the message, there are real people on both ends of the process.

The post Influencer Marketing for Crowdfunding: How It Works appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

Crypto influencer marketing is just that — influencer marketing campaigns tailored specially to the crypto space. When done well, it can bring in the big bucks.

Benefits of Influencer Marketing for Crypto

If you’re a brand running a cryptocurrency project, chances are you can benefit from influencer marketing. Crypto is anything but traditional, so it makes sense to veer from traditional marketing strategy. Influencer marketing for crypto allows you to niche down to your specific target audience in an intentional, cost-effective way. Some benefits of crypto influencer marketing include:

• Increased brand awareness
• Authentic engagement with niche audiences
• Establishing credibility in the crypto space
• Enhancing trust with consumers
• Cost-effective campaigns with brag-worthy ROI

Is Crypto Influencer Marketing Profitable?

Influencer marketing is famously cost-effective when compared to traditional marketing. That remains true in the cryptocurrency space. Depending on the scope of your campaign and the audience size of your influencers, you can run a successful crypto marketing campaign at nearly any budget. 

In general, brands generate $6.50 in revenue for every $1 spent on influencer marketing. And the market is only growing. According to Statista, the influencer marketing industry is valued at 21.1 billion dollars today in 2023. 

How to Find Crypto Influencers

The first step to finding the right crypto influencers is to hone in on the appropriate channels. Unlike typical influencer marketing, your crypto audience may be more likely to frequent Reddit, Twitter, or Discord. Other big players in the crypto space include Youtube, Medium, and Telegram. That’s not to say you should skimp on the more popular social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. We always support a cross-functional approach to influencer marketing. But it’s important to hone in on where your target audience scrolls. 

Once you’ve established your desired channels, it’s time to find influencers. Look for influencers who create content relevant to your brand, project, and campaign. The best influencer partnerships are built on an alignment of values. Because the crypto space can get a bad rap for being scammy, it’s important to choose influencers who are credible and have a respected reputation in the space. You can look at their experience, previous collaborations, and reception from followers to determine an influencer’s credibility. 

Example from a Crypto Influencer

Here’s an example of influencer marketing for a crypto brand that looks a little different from what we typically see of influencer posts. Crypto influencer Kevin Mcoin, who runs Crypto Club on Youtube, posted this video plugging the crypto project Pokerfi. 

Unlike typical influencer posts, we never see Kevin’s face in the video. Instead, we hear his voice, a trusted, credible source in the crypto space, explaining the benefits and features of this project. 

Cash in on Crypto Influencer Marketing 

The best influencer marketing stays fresh and keeps up with the times. For your brand, that may mean dipping into the world of cryptocurrency. If you’d like to learn more about how to integrate crypto into your influencer marketing, schedule a strategy call with one of our experts today.

About This Author

Ariana Newhouse | B2B Writer

I am a freelance writer and comedian based in Los Angeles, and while making people laugh is my jam, it’s not always the company brand. So, I strive to make people feel something. My writing philosophy is collaborative, empathetic, and humanistic. At the end of the day, no matter the message, there are real people on both ends of the process.

The post What Is Crypto Influencer Marketing and Does it Work? appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

Video influencers aren’t just making waves on short-form apps like TikTok and Instagram Reels. They’re making a splash on YouTube as well, and it makes sense why. The platform was literally made for them. Learn how you can make the most of influencer-generated video content and leverage YouTube as an influencer marketing platform.

If you’re new to YouTube video marketing, don’t sweat it. In this post, we’ll break down the most influencer-friendly YouTube features and the benefits of investing in content for the platform, and a few YouTube influencer marketing examples to get you inspired. Let’s dive in.

Why Marketers Love YouTube Influencer Campaigns

Before we get into exactly what YouTube features are best, let’s figure out why it’s even necessary to use yet another platform. You know what that means – YouTube stats! Marketers love YouTube because it’s an incredibly popular site that fills a need in the market for user-generated, long-form videos. With more than 2 billion monthly active users, YouTube is the second most popular social media network in the world, behind Facebook. YouTube users are fueling the creator economy. 

More than 500 hours of content are uploaded every minute, and users watch over a billion hours of video each day. When it comes to demographics, it’s clear that YouTube is a platform for everyone.

In terms of age, YouTube’s viewership is pretty evenly distributed. About 67 to 77 percent of each age group watch videos on the platform. YouTube does skew slightly toward male viewers, with 56 percent of users identifying as men. But the platform is just as popular with the over-50 crowd as it is with teens.

Because so many people watch YouTube videos and there is such a wealth of content and creators on the platform, it’s easy for marketers of all kinds to find value in YouTube influencer marketing. 

Is Investing in YouTube Influencer Campaigns Worth It?

Yes. YouTube influencer marketing is a great investment for your brand. The platform generated $28.8 billion in ad revenue alone in 2021. An overwhelming majority of Americans are on the platform regularly. 91 percent of us watch videos weekly, while 62 percent are on the ‘Tube daily. And, YouTube is doing heavy lifting far beyond the confines of the U.S. 62 percent of global consumers are on YouTube. More than 100 countries have localized versions of the app. It’s now available in 80 languages!

Of all the users, all over the world, 90 percent of them say they use YouTube to discover new products. And, 70 percent of viewers have actually made a purchase after discovering a brand on YouTube. 55 percent of marketers already use the platform, and with these numbers, we expect that figure to grow over the next few years, especially in the influencer marketing space. 

When working with an influencer marketing agency like The Shelf, we’ll almost always recommend an integrated influencer marketing campaign across platforms. Adding YouTube video marketing to your strategy along with Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, and Instagram influencer marketing can take your campaign to the next level. YouTube influencer campaigns are most often lumped in the lead generation category, but with the right strategy, the platform can also work well for conversion campaigns.

The Cost of Working with YouTube Video Influencers

YouTube is likely to incur the heaviest investment per post if you’re planning to run an influencer campaign. YouTube videos are often longer than TikToks or Instagram Reels, and they require editing software and skills outside of the app, unlike their aforementioned competitors. Don’t let the extra change deter you. YouTube offers big bang for your buck. The average earned media value for YouTube influencer marketing last year was $21,632. 

A variety of factors will influence the rate a creator charges for a YouTube video, so we’re not dropping any numbers in here because it’s very likely that by the time you get around to reading this post, the formula we provide you will be outdated. Things are changing fast in this space.

Although, mega influencers (those with more than 1 million followers) are less likely to adhere to this pay scale. But keep in mind that rates will be affected by:

• Audience size and engagement rates
• Whether the creator has an agent
• The type of video you want – whether it will be a dedicated video or a haul
• Content rights – how you plan to reuse the content once it’s created
• Whether you plan to whitelist the content once it’s created.
• Whether the content will be repurposed for print ads

Tips for Working with Video Influencers

Okay, I promise we’re almost there… we just want to make sure you have all the information you need to effectively use the YouTube features ideal for your brand. Part of this information is on how to work with the right YouTube influencers.

There are so many video influencers on YouTube it can be hard to know where to start looking for one to work with your brand. Start by finding creators that align with your niche, whether that’s beauty, gaming, cooking, hiking, or something more obscure, there’s an influencer for almost everything on YouTube. Try searching relevant hashtags to discover new influencers. Or you can always partner with an influencer marketing agency like The Shelf to discover YouTube influencers who align with your campaign goals.

YouTube influencer campaigns, like all influencer marketing, work best when you let your influencers’ creativity shine. Hire people you can trust to do good work, provide them with a detailed brief, and then watch them work their magic. Don’t stifle your influencers with too much restriction. The freedom to create is often what separates the old-school ads and the more authentic, new-age influencer promotions.

The Best YouTube Features to Flex in Your Video Influencer Campaigns

Because of its horizontal screen format, YouTube can feel like a stand-alone component in your influencer marketing strategy. There is some overlap between the functionality of YouTube and apps like TikTok and Instagram, but it’s important to note the features that make YouTube a unique platform for video influencers. Make the most of your YouTube video marketing with these influencer-friendly YouTube features. 

LONG-FORM: YouTube may be branching out to shorter-form content, but its bread and butter is long-form. Brands that invest in long-form video campaigns on YouTube consistently see the strongest ROI. We’ll see if that changes with YouTube shorts in the coming years, but for now, don’t sleep on long-form. While TikTok extended its max video length to 10 minutes, most creators still stick to videos that run 3 minutes or less on the clock app. So, YouTube retains the long-form niche for now. 

PAID ADS: More than 5 million viewers pay for YouTube TV monthly, making it the largest internet TV streaming service in the U.S. When ad dollars shifted away from traditional TV to streaming and internet advertising, YouTube greatly benefited. Consider repurposing influencer-generated content for paid ads to increase your reach and engagement.

STORIES: This is a relatively new YouTube feature in beta testing, so it’s only available to creators with 10,000 followers or more. YouTube Stories are mobile-only videos that allow creators to engage with their communities in a more casual, less permanent way. Unlike other social platforms, YouTube Stories last 7 days (rather than 24 hours).

SHORTS: Since their release in 2020, YouTube Shorts have already racked up more than 5 trillion views. These short videos appear in the vertical format and are 60 seconds or less. And yes, you guessed it — they’re YouTube’s rival to TikTok and Instagram Reels.

LIVE: Have your influencers go live and stream while they interact with your product. Creators can stream from mobile or desktop devices. While live, they can interact with followers in the chat, answer questions, provide product demos, and more. Just make sure they stick to YouTube’s community guidelines.

PREMIERE: Launching a collab with one of your brand ambassadors? That may call for a premiere! YouTube Premieres allow creators and viewers to experience a new video in real time. Your brand and influencer partner can share the watch page ahead of the video premiere to build up the hype and create buzz about your launch. It’s like walking the red carpet online. 

Types of Video for Your YouTube Influencer Campaign

So, now that you know what YouTube features there are, it’s important to figure out how you want influencers to use them.

YouTubers are some of the most skilled video influencers out there. Because the platform doesn’t have the built-in editing software that apps like TikTok and Instagram do, YouTube creators have to learn hard shooting and editing skills using traditional software. 

Remember, YouTube influencers are some of the most creative influencers in the game. When you book influencers for your campaign, give them permission to let their creativity (and editing skills) run wild. The best content comes from letting creators do their thing. That’s why you hired them in the first place. 

If you need some inspiration for the type of videos to include, here are some YouTube influencer marketing examples:

UNBOXINGS: These videos are great for product launches, but you can showcase current products as well. Make sure your packaging is top-notch so the unboxing experience is a beautiful and engaging one. 72 percent of American shoppers say packaging affects their purchase decisions. And, if you’re working with a larger influencer, but have a smaller budget, consider being part of an influencer’s haul video, where they unbox products from many brands.

TUTORIALS: Whether you’re in the business of cosmetics, home improvement, or budgeting, tutorials are a great way to show how new customers could potentially use your products. 55 percent of consumers watch videos before making a purchase. Tutorials can help convince consumers to buy and make them feel confident when using the product.

CONTESTS: Giveaways and contests are a great way to increase engagement and hype around a new product or service. Contests have a 34 percent higher conversion rate than other online forms. Makes sense to me. Who doesn’t like free stuff?

DAILY VLOGS: Show what your product looks like in the daily life of a customer (or in this case, influencer). Seeing your product out in the wild, and being used by someone potential customers follow and admire, is likely to convince them to buy. Plus, this is often seen as an authentic form of product placement, since it shows the use of the product in someone’s daily life.

REVIEWS: A whopping 90 percent of consumers say online reviews impact their buying decisions. Because influencers build trust with their online communities, many will be more willing to take a recommendation from an influencer than an anonymous written review.

Of course, there are no set-in-stone ways to make this content or type of YouTube feature that has to be used for a certain type of video content. All of these types of videos are used with different features and can be very effective with the right influencer.

Learn From These YouTube Influencer Marketing Campaign Examples

One of the best ways to get inspired to use YouTube as an influencer marketing channel is to see how it’s been done well before. Check out these YouTube influencer marketing campaign examples to get the gears turning for your next strategy sessions.

AMERICAN STANDARD

The bathroom and kitchen fixture leader, American Standard, ran a campaign called #MyAmericanStandardJourney to highlight how their products can level up bathrooms to modern luxury. The brand partnered with DIY home improvement influencer Denise Cooper, who runs the YouTube channel Bemyguestwithdenise. She captured the complete remodel of her bathroom using American Standard products and raked in more than 47,000 views. 

Denise Cooper’s bathroom before the American Standard remodel. Source: YouTube

Denise Cooper’s bathroom during the American Standard remodel. Source: YouTube

Denise Cooper’s bathroom after the American Standard remodels. Source: YouTube

REFRIGIWEAR

RefrigiWear is an apparel company on a mission to keep workers warm in the coldest conditions. They were looking to partner with blue-collar influencers who worked in cold climates for a recent campaign. This is somewhat of a tall order, seeing as there aren’t many influencers occupying that niche. Luckily, they were able to partner with Nick and Scott, the brothers of Welker Farms.

The Welker brothers got some great engagement on the video they created for the campaign, bringing lots of exposure to the RefrigiWear brand, with a whopping 239,546 views. These types of videos are proof that authentic creation on the side of the influencers goes a long way. This video doesn’t feel like an ad because the product is seamlessly integrated into his routine, and that’s what audiences want to see — products their favorite influencers actually know and love. 

Nick Welker wearing his RefigiWear gear on the job. Source: YouTube

FEIT ELECTRIC

The family-owned company, Feit Electric specializes in standard and smart lighting designed to make any living environment safe, functional, and beautiful. During COVID-19, they ran a campaign to inspire customers to make their homes more comfortable while they were stuck inside. 

Feit partnered with influencers like Angela Lanter to show the installation of their lights and all the smart features that come along with them. Angela’s organic-feeling YouTube video amassed 11,452 views and more than 100 comments. Not too shabby!

Get YouTube to Work for You

We hope this helped open your eyes to all the ways YouTube may be an influencer marketing platform for your next campaign. Working with video influencers is a great way to build out your marketing strategy and harness the power of YouTube’s massive user base. Whether you’re launching a new product, in search of more glowing reviews, or hoping to give your audience an in-depth explainer of how to use your upcoming product or service, YouTube’s long-form format offers the flexibility, and the time, to accomplish your campaign goals. 

If you’d like help crafting your next YouTube influencer campaign, don’t hesitate to call your favorite YouTube influencer marketing agency. (That’s us — The Shelf.) Our expert team will help you craft a strategy that works for your brand and brings in the big bucks. Schedule a strategy call with our team below. Or you can always follow along with us on The Shelf’s YouTube channel for more influencer marketing tips and tricks.

Happy marketing!

About This Author

Ariana Newhouse | B2B Writer

I am a freelance writer and comedian based in Los Angeles, and while making people laugh is my jam, it’s not always the company brand. So, I strive to make people feel something. My writing philosophy is collaborative, empathetic, and humanistic. At the end of the day, no matter the message, there are real people on both ends of the process.

The post The Marketer’s Guide to YouTube Features appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

About 85 percent of Pinners head to the platform when they’re ready to start planning new projects, and 82 percent of Pinners say they have made a purchase based on a product they saw on Pinterest. And 93 percent of Pinners say they use Pinterest to plan future purchases.

As marketers, the goal isn’t convincing Pinterest users that they need to buy because they already have a purchase intent. Instead, the goal should be:

• Understanding your audience – Pinners tend to be the decision-makers in the household.
• Monitoring trends – Pinners are planners.
• Meeting consumers at the right time with the right message – Pinners spend twice as much time shopping each month than people off the platform, and they spend more than a quarter of their time on the platform shopping. 75 percent of weekly Pinners say they’re “always shopping.”

Pinterest presents a powerful marketing opportunity that can not only get your products in front of shoppers who have their wallets in hand but can also drive huge amounts of traffic to your website.

In this post, I’m going to help you build a Pinterest marketing strategy (you’re welcome) that will fortify your next influencer campaign.

What We Cover In This Post on Pinterest Marketing

• A Quick Overview of Pinterest
• Pinterest Demographics: Who Uses Pinterest?
• User Behaviors That Make Pinterest an Influencer Marketing Goldmine
• Optimizing Your Influencer Campaign with Pinterest Marketing
• Making Your Pins Shoppable
• Tips for Making Pinterest Marketing Work for Your Business

WE ACTUALLY CREATED AN ENCYCLOPEDIA ON THIS STUFF…

The Complete Guide to Influencer Marketing

A Quick Overview of Pinterest

What Is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a visual discovery platform that allows its 445 million monthly active users to create (or “pin”) their own visual content, or bookmark (“repin”) other users’ pins. Imagine if Instagram and Google got together and had a digital baby. That’s Pinterest. Pinterest is one part social media platform, one part search engine, and one part digital scrapbook.

There are over 240 billion pins currently uploaded to Pinterest and its users have created 4 billion boards. Each pin contains a title, description and a link to where the content being pinned lives on the web (usually the link goes to a blog or a sales page).

Pinners must also assign every pin a board like the ones you see here from Target’s official Pinterest account. A board is a collection of pins, usually organized topically.

Pinterest is largely driven by visual content that can quickly travel across the platform, and to every corner of the world wide web to bring new visitors to your blog, website, or online store. The platform accounts for up to 8 percent of all referral traffic to websites.

Pinterest was pretty innovative, right out of the gate

When Pinterest first launched in 2010, it was invitation-only. Do you remember that – waiting to hear back from Pinterest and not even fully getting what it was? I distinctly remember my buddy Ron urging me to get waitlisted for this thing. I did, and it was literally weeks before I was let in. Even still, I don’t think I really started using it for another two or three years. In spite of the invite-only launch, Pinterest ended up being the fastest site in history to reach 10 million monthly active users.

Here’s the bit that will interest marketers:

Pinterest attracts people who flock to the platform for inspiration on what to buy. That means you can reach a large portion of your audience, as they are actively looking for products, with marketing messages that are going to be well-received.

I use Pinterest to collect a running tally of things I want to learn, find, try, or buy. This can include things like figuring out how to stop killing my dahlia, finding fitness influencers I trust and buying whatever stuff they tell me I need (Brittne Babe and Nardia), or setting up the extra bedroom as a remote learning spot for my kids.

From the beginning, Pinterest has been a hub for the crafts and DIY communities, as well as various lifestyle verticals like beauty, fashion, and home decor which are driven by visual content. But Pinterest is a growing hub for verticals that aren’t visually focused, like personal finance.

According to Pinterest…

• Most Pinners are in the market for at least one financial service. Financial companies like American Express, Business Insider, and Bank of America boast an accumulated monthly Pinterest viewership of over 25 million. (I have an entire board called “My Money Game.”)
• Travel searches were up 60 percent in 2022, with Pinners creating boards for places they want to visit, hotels, lodging, and activities for upcoming vacations
• Pinners use the app for car shopping too. In 2021, branded automotive pins performed 62 percent higher than dealership’s home websites.

Pinterest is for more than the DIYers, it’s for all consumers. Today Pinterest is the platform that eight in ten Americans know about, and four in ten are actually using.

Pinterest User Demographics: Who Uses Pinterest?

Me. I use Pinterest. Faithfully. But also, like a bunch of other people, too. So…

Early on, Pinterest earned a reputation for being the place moms and crafters went to hang out and dream up ideas, but there is a much wider diversity in Pinterest’s audience than you might think.

More than 75 percent of the platform’s audience is outside the United States. And 75 percent of Pinterest users are women.  One in three U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 29 use Pinterest, as well as 34 percent of those between 30 and 49, and 38 percent of adults between the ages of 50 and 64 use it. Regardless of age, Pinterest is a mother’s paradise. A whopping 80 percent of U.S. moms are on Pinterest.

And their kids are, too! Gen Z Pinners are up 40 percent year over year and U.S. millennial Pinners are up 35 percent. Gen Z purchased 80 percent more new products than other generations in 2022. It makes sense that brands that connect with Gen Z can see 14x the revenue growth opportunity compared to those targeting other generations. 

Most people use Pinterest to look at pictures (60 percent) and find/shop for products (55 percent). It’s also a place to watch videos, with more than one billion watched on the platform each day. Pinterest was the second most visited social media site in 2022 (after Facebook). Probably because 66 percent of users say Pinterest is their go-to search engine.

That makes sense to me. Here’s why…

If you were to search for “short blond pixie cut” on Google then perform the same search on Pinterest, different results would show. More importantly (for searchers), Pinterest filters the results a little smarter for stuff like this.

In the two screenshots below, check out the filter options along the top of each picture (and the fact that Google results INCLUDE Pinterest pins).

Versus…

Pinterest also does a better job of integrating sponsored content a little more naturally with your actual results.

Actually, let’s try it for another popular Pinterest topic – home decorating. The search term is “small bedroom ideas”. I actually had to scroll down a bit because the first row on Google was sponsored content/products.

Now, it’s not that people don’t want to shop on Pinterest. The truth is actually quite the opposite. Pinterest is the social platform users are MOST likely to choose when they are ready to spend money. In fact, shoppers on Pinterest spend 2x more than shoppers on other social platforms.

Ninety-seven percent of Pinterest searches are unbranded, meaning users are open to suggestions from brands. In fact, 78 percent of Pinterest users say they want to see branded content, and more than half of shoppers name Pinterest as their platform of choice for finding and shopping for products. While other platforms have pulled ahead in terms of social commerce, Pinterest still commands a large portion of online shoppers.

User Behaviors That Make Pinterest an Influencer Marketing Goldmine

Take a look at the picture below, captured on a random trip to McDonald’s during in the summer of 2019.

That June, McDonald’s sponsored the Women’s Expo in Atlanta, GA. In case you’re wondering, Atlanta is a global destination point. It’s home to a sizable entertainment industry hub, with countless television shows and movies being filmed here, everything from Marvel Studios to Vampire Diaries (one of our neighborhood pizza joints is Mystic Pizza – my daughter loves that).

In 2019, the celebrity lineup for the Atlanta Women’s Expo was nothing to sneeze at – reality stars, social media stars, movie stars…these women are famous.

But it wasn’t just McDonald’s that was involved. To give you a better idea of the scope of this event, other sponsors included luxury brands like Chanel, Coach, Michael Kors, Jimmy Choo and Dior, as well as retail heavyweights like The Home Depot, Walgreens, and Kroger.

Why am I telling you this? Because upon closer examination of the poster, you can see that one of the featured workshops for this event, which draws tens of thousands of women every year, is a Pinterest workshop. So, let’s talk about why that is.

Pinterest is the fourteenth most popular social media site, but its users are highly engaged. Eight in ten say using Pinterest makes them feel positive. Most Pinners think of Pinterest as a bright spot on the web, calling it a place where positivity lives. 

Pinterest Has Cross-Generational Appeal

Whether Gen Z, Millennials or Boomers, adults love Pinterest. They love having a one-click storage place of awesome photos and cool ideas. They love having a place where they can build targeted audiences whose ideas and tastes align with their own.

Pinterest Time is Me Time

Pinterest is where people go to source and collect ideas to help them be their best selves. The fact that Pinterest is so heavily aspirational (with no PERSON in particular to be the target of anyone’s love-hate aspiration) keeps Pinterest from earning the same stigma as some of the other popular social networks.

There are no reports of Pinterest-fueled depression or rage. It’s aspiration without the stigmas. It’s no real surprise (especially to anyone who actually uses the platform) that 1 in 2 U.K. Pinterest users call the platform an “online oasis.” This is likely due, in no small part, to Pinterest banning political ads in 2018.

Pinterest is a Positive Corner of the Internet

Pinterest gives all the feels. Pinterest is the platform that helps people feel more creative, inspired, and organized. Ninety percent of weekly Pinners describe the platform as filled with positivity. Less than a third felt that way about competitor platforms like Instagram and Facebook. And 86 percent of Pinners also use Instagram.

Pinners are Planners…and They Plan Waaaay In Advance
Pinners are planners. While Pinterest users post about seasonal events year-round, there are noticeable spikes in engagement with holiday- and event-related content in the weeks before that holiday or event. Seasonal pins drive 22 percent higher online sales.

But if you notice, the posts start typically a few months ahead of the holiday. Pinterest users tend to start planning twice as early as people who use other platforms. It’s not uncommon for holiday campaigns to begin nine months in advance. Heck, Father’s Day ideas start circulating around the platform as early as March and interest in Halloween starts to spike in June.

Holidays aren’t the only dates on Pinners’ calendars. Pinners also use the platform to plan life’s important milestones, like buying a new home, decorating said home, getting married, and going on vacation. 

Pinners Are Purposeful

Pinterest users are more likely to use the platform for the intention of finding products and ideas, as opposed to just using the platform to kill time. Eighty-nine percent of users use Pinterest to make purchase decisions. 

Pinners Favor Mobile

Pinterest users heavily favor the app. Eight in ten users access Pinterest on mobile devices and 85 percent of Pinterest searches are on mobile. 

Pinners Use Pinterest to Source Ideas

Pinterest is the go-to spot on the web for people to discover new products and source new ideas, and part of the reason branded content is so effective is because Pinterest shows new content based on what people have seen and engaged with before. This personalization helps the platform naturally integrate product ideas and Promoted Pins in a way that doesn’t look like ads or make users feel like they’re being marketed to. 

Pinners Are Buyers

While most social media platforms are shoppable now, Pinterest users go to the platform with purchase intent. Eighty percent of Pinners say they’ve made a purchase based on something they saw on Pinterest.

Half of all Pinners make a purchase after seeing a promoted pin. And, since two in three Pinterest users are actively looking to make their next purchases, smart marketers can leverage the platform as a way to generate both traffic and revenue.

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<div style=”clear:both”><a href=”https://www.theshelf.com/the-blog/pinterest-marketing”><img src=” https://marketing.theshelf.com/infographic-pinterest-user-behaviors” title=”How To Use Pinterest Marketing To Power Your Influencer Strategy” border=”0″ /></a></div><div>Courtesy of: <a style=”text-decoration:underline; color:#11d3c8;” href=”https://www.theshelf.com/the-blog/pinterest-marketing”>The Shelf Full-Funnel Influencer Marketing</a></div>

Optimize Your Influencer Campaign with Pinterest Marketing

Now you know the latest on what Pinterest is used for and who’s using it. Let’s dig into how to make the most of those stats for your next campaign.

Recent Updates to Pinterest Will Make Influencer Campaigns Way More Effective

In recent years, the geniuses over at Pinterest have been rolling out updates and changes that will make marketing on the platform A LOT easier. Most of the biggest changes happening with Pinterest are similar to the ones we’ve seen with the Google algo over the past few years. 

Pinterest wants to make sure the in-feed content it shows Pinners is content that’s high in quality, relatively recent, loaded with value and compels people to engage (i.e. stay on the platform).

According to a MEDIUM post from one of the platform’s Engineers, Recency and Relevance are two of the most important factors that determine what content shows up in users’ feeds.

Pinterest Favors Recency

Recency is about keeping the users’ feeds fresh. Before, Pinterest feeds were largely based on user engagement data: what’s already popular on Pinterest + user preference based on previous engagement.

That’s not the case anymore. Now, Pinterest surfaces a lot more recent content, as the algorithm now favors new pins over repinning. In fact, pins with the word “new” in their text overlay lead to nine times higher aided awareness. That’s great news for your next campaign, right?

With the new algorithm, a pinner’s home feed will be a mix of content from the other Pinners they follow (trust me, it becomes a really compelling reason to follow more Pinners), the topics in which they’ve shown the most interest (i.e., stuff that fits the other stuff they’re pinning to boards), ads, and video or multimedia content (we’ll get into this later in this article).

Pinterest Favors Relevancy

Relevance has a lot to do with user experience on Pinterest. The platform has taken some pretty big steps in recent years to influence how different topics and content types show up in-feed.

For example… previously, to keep from sharing misinformation, Pinterest would suppress searches most likely to turn up questionable or controversial info, like a search on vaccines. 

Now, instead of suppressing searches, Pinterest presents information from trusted experts ONLY and removes users’ ability to comment and provide feedback on that info. 

The Pinterest Algorithm Accounts for Several Factors to Determine Relevance:

• Attainable  – Can the user take action on the content? Pins need to compel people to try, make, or do.
•  Authority  – Is original content from a trustworthy source? Is it from someone who has made a name for herself in this category? Does the pin link out to a trustworthy website?
•  Visually Appealing – Does the creator have a knack for creating compelling images/videos that can grab attention? Is the pin branded (with your brand or your influencer’s brand)? Does it have text overlay with a clear message that tells people what the pin’s about?
•  Positive  – Does the pin inspire more ideas or motivate users to do something cool?  Pinterest pegs itself as the last feel-good corner of the web.
•  Searchable – Is the blog post title compelling enough to push people to save the pins? Are both the title and the pin description keyword optimized? Do they include hashtags?
•  Pinnable/Shareable – Is the value prop/benefit of your product highlighted either in the title or somewhere else in the pin?  
• Strong CTA – Remember, you’re making these suckers actionable, so it’s okay to tell people which actions to take.

Another big one for that algorithm we mentioned earlier is that it’s also deliberately showing certain content to ensure not only cultural representation, but content from businesses of different sizes. Part of Pinterest’s commitment to help small businesses impacted by the current business environment.

So…

The new algorithm favors newer content which is perfect for those seasonal or holiday influencer campaigns. 

Pinterest also favors content that ticks the boxes of “Controllable Distribution”, a process the engineers use to make sure certain content types are showing up in feed results.

The Verified Merchant Program

The first step for any brand planning to leverage Pinterest for marketing is to become a Verified Merchant.  Pinterest uses this program to judge the legitimacy of a brand. Only pins from Verified Merchants surface when Pinners choose to Shop, Shop Collections, or Shop Similar. 

Verified Merchants have:

• a digital footprint besides Pinterest
• a secure website 
• high-quality website content and product pages (quality product photos – no stock photos)
• a way of providing daily inventory updates (usually via RSS)

Brands that sell affiliate products, upcycled goods, animals, and services aren’t eligible to become Verified Merchants.

Create Multimedia Ads from Multiple Pin Formats

Remember that Pinterest, like all social media platforms, places priority on content that can get people to engage and spend more time on the platform. That means skipping the part of life where you’re stuck styling pins for hours on end, and opting instead for multiple media formats.

One of the cool things about becoming a Verified Merchant is that you can upload your product catalog (Pinterest can handle up to 20 million product pics per account), and each product is made into its own Pin. But if you don’t take that route, there are other formats you can use. The more the merrier.

Image Pins

Your typical image pin should be eye-catching and even stop other Pinners mid-scroll. If you have the ability to stage and capture stunning photographs or have an entirely visual product, then image only pins can be valuable.

Of course, sometimes the thing you’re selling is content, ideas and affiliate products. In that case, the goal is to create a well-designed, eye-catching pin where the title is compelling enough to warrant being bookmarked.

Video Pins

In addition to your standard image pins, you want to create more video/actionable/interactive content. Pinterest favors pins that will get people to take an action, and video is great for this.

Video views on the platform have grown to one billion daily, driven by food and beverage, beauty, DIY, entertainment and home decor. For ads, recommend video length is 6-15s long. Although, you can make videos anywhere from 4 seconds to 15 minutes in length. Use super-short videos (with audio) to catch Pinners with cool demonstrations.

Product Pins

These are the pins that show up when Pinners show purchase intent. Pinners use the platform to create dream collections, so having high-quality images they can swoon over should be part of your strategy.

Story Pins

Story Pins are multi-page Pins that pretty much last forever. Pinners can add images, videos (up to 60s), and text overlays to each pin. 

Story Pins reach your followers + anyone who has shown an interest in the topic, so it makes sense to rely on your hashtag strategy and keyword strategy here. 

Story Pins are a great way to detail a step-by-step process, create a supply list, ingredients list for recipes, and embed products in outfit and decor inspo boards. 

With Story Pins, brands can contextually embed products as part of a single overarching theme where your product isn’t the focus.

In the example above, a Story Pin is dreamed up by a young Pinner about where she would like to shop. And if you’ll notice, the Pinner isn’t even the person featured in all the pins… because Pinterest is about sharing ideas, not social validation. 

Create Multiple Keyword-Optimized Pins and Boards

It’s a good idea for your influencer partners to create multiple pins for each sponsored post, optimized for different keywords. 

An easy way to do it is to pull different titles from relevant H2s and H3s that are in the blog post you’re linking to (you may need to work with influencers to ensure those H2s are properly optimized, too).

If you’re creating multiple pins for each message or audience you’re targeting in your campaign (which you definitely want to be doing), keyword optimization is one of the key strategies you’ll want to keep in mind because you’ll be able to reach Pinners by:

• their interests
• the keywords they search when they’re looking for content on a particular topic or idea
• actalike audiences that target people similar to your existing audience

Don’t forget to target. You can even have different pins targeting different points in the purchase cycle.

Let’s use the Levi’s pin as an example.

Pins can also target subgroups of a larger demographic by angling pins toward seasonal or event-focused concepts. Like one pin for choosing Festival-Style jean shorts and another for making sure your pre-made holes don’t get all stretched out.

The general idea is to show Pinners the different benefits and applications of your product. 

Don’t Forget About Your Boards

Each board you create can be classified as either Public, Secret, or Group. Best practices indicate that creating 10 boards initially is a good way to start, with each board tailored to your target audience in order to attract them to your pins.

Pinterest serves two billion searches a month. As you can imagine, Pinners will need a way to find your content. That’s where your keywords strategy comes in. Your keywords are going to be vital when naming and creating your boards. Choosing which topics to focus your boards on should be based on the keywords you think are most important to your brand.

Loop In Bloggers and Influencers Who Are Active on Pinterest

Here’s where you can add variety, reach, and SEO value to your otherwise awesome Pinterest ad strategy.

Partnering with bloggers and influencers to create content that contextually embeds your product allows you to leverage the social proof offered by bloggers who can demonstrate the real-life application and value of your product, or give people a really compelling reason to go to your store.

So, during the influencer selection process, choose a few bloggers who have had multiple pins get repinned a bunch of times. 

Note: Bloggers usually style their blog pins differently than a product pin, and blogger pins link back to individual blog posts, so you’ll want to have product pins that go back to your product pages AND blogger pins that go to the blogger’s site. Just be sure the blogger includes high-quality pics of your product in action.

BONUS: If you notice, to the right of the pin above, you’ll see that Pinterest allows Pinners to comment on and post pictures of the pins they’ve tried. You can have other influencers in your campaign post examples of how they used your product or what they found in your store to provide that extra nudge of social proof.

SHOPPING SPOTLIGHTS AND LOCAL TARGETING BOOST STORE TRAFFIC

Shopping Spotlights is an influencer-curated list of shoppable recommendations based on current Pinterest Trends. The lists surface for users according to their interests, previous behavior with similar content, AND THEIR LOCATION.  

** Since Pinterest is aiming to display local retailers as part of its push to support small businesses. Seriously… you gotta start pinning stuff!

For this feature, Pinterest is bringing in well-known style influencers (including bloggers, magazine editors, and designers) to create articles/content with shoppable links/products embedded in them. 

Plus, influencers will do “lookbook” types of catalog pages – again, based on Pinterest Trends – curated by brands

Make Your Pins Shoppable

You can shortcut the path to purchase by making your pins shoppable to allow Pinners to click your pin and go straight to your online store.

Shop from Boards –  When a Pinner visits your board, they’ll now see a Shop tab that shows products from (or inspired by) the Pins on your board. You wanna show up in those recommendations? Time to start pinning and getting pinned.

Shop from Search –  Shop tab appears on search, making it easier for Pinners to shop in-stock products from different retailers when searching for terms like “spring outfits“, “office decor“, “DIY kitchen remodels“. Pinners can also filter by price and brand now. (Start pinning!!)

Shop from Pins –  Pinners can shop similar products right from the Pins shown in visual search. Just click “shop similar” to see related in-stock products for looks and rooms.

Shop from Style Guides – Browsable style guides appear for “ideas” searches. These visual recommendations make it possible to explore trending styles, new products, and “style profiles” even when you don’t have exact words to describe what you’re looking for.

Shop from Lens – Pinterest has been consistently improving on the performance of its Lens function, which lets you snap a picture of an object you see while you’re out and about and use that pic to find similar objects from different brands on Pinterest.

Even cooler, users can see similar products from retailers in their area.  

Pinners can also upload screenshots of things they’ve seen on another platform to conduct a visual search and shop that item on Pinterest. 
Fashion and home decor are HUGE categories for Lens users. The Lens feature boasts 600 million monthly searches — that’s 30 percent of total Pinterest searches each month.

 

Shop from Try On – Now you can envision what a product will look like on your body or in your space with the Try On feature. Try On works in 3D to give you a better sense of everything from makeup and clothing to home decor.

One of the classic detriments of online shopping is that there is no way to see if you actually like an item in person before it’s paid for and delivered. With the Try On feature, you can get a feel for products without having to ask an attendant for a fitting room. It’s no wonder Pinners are 5x more likely to make purchases from try-on pins when compared to standard pins.

Final Tips for Making Pinterest Work for Your Influencer Campaign

As with any social media site, the way the general public uses Pinterest, and the way businesses use it differ greatly. You can’t simply expect to put up a few boards, pin a few images to them, and suddenly attract loads of web traffic. You have to do things differently to get the best results.

ADD PINTEREST SAVE BUTTONS TO YOUR SITE

You want to be sure that it’s not just you pinning your content on the site. You want your followers, customers, and potential leads to be doing it as well. The best way to do this is to make it as easy as possible for them to share your content. By including a pin button on your site, you can increase the amount of content pinned from your site by up to 5x as much.

You can install permanent pin buttons to each image, or use hover buttons that only appear when a user moves the cursor over an image. The latter can often look cleaner and allow your pictures to maintain their visual integrity. But, by having a permanent button, you’re making it easier and more obvious for users to take advantage of the option.

PIN CONSISTENTLY

Dumping all of your pins in one go is not recommended. Instead, you should aim to pin at least once a day, ideally in the evenings or at weekends if you’re working with the U.S. market. Spread your pinning throughout the day and week to help keep a consistent schedule going. As with any marketing – consistency really is key.

PLAN AHEAD FOR HOLIDAYS

When it comes to holidays or special event marketing, plan to start pinning around 45 days in advance. This gives your pins time to get traveling around the site and attract more attention.

MAKE YOUR PINS ACCESSIBLE

For many of us, it’s easy to forget that not everyone who uses social media can consume the content in the same way as us. Pinterest is a highly visual platform, so this can be severely limiting for those with visual disabilities. There are ways you can make your content more accessible, helping to expand your audience even further.

For instance, if someone needs to use screen readers to access visual content online, text over images won’t register as text to them. This means that you need to incorporate proper pin descriptions to really make your pins work for you. Also, make sure that any fonts you choose to use are as clear and easy to read as possible. Finally, don’t forget to be conscious of your color choices. If you take the time to use color contrast ratios, not only will it make your content easier to read, it will also make it look more appealing in terms of design.

PROMOTE YOUR PINS

If you have a marketing budget for social media, you should definitely consider plugging some of that cash into a Pinterest strategy. There are two different options when it comes to spending money on marketing your pins – promoted pins and shoppable pins.

Promoted pins work in pretty much the same way as promoted posts on any other network. You pay money to have Pinterest show your pin to people who you select through targeting. How many people see it will depend on your ad budget. They identify these posts with a small “promoted” button on the bottom of your image, and viewers can select that button to see more information about who promoted it.

The difference with using these promoted pins on Pinterest though, is that once a user pins your pin to their board, they begin to act like organic pins. This is why promoting on Pinterest can really help your budget travel further. In fact, according to Pinterest, brands who launch ad campaigns on the platform received an average of 20 percent more organic clicks.

USE BUYING PINS

These pins are ideal for when you have multiple items to promote in each image. They appear pretty similar to promoted pins, but they have little dots over each product that you can click through and buy.

Pinterest recommends that you include between 4-6 buyable items in each pin to get the best results. Each link should go directly to the object when possible to make it easier for users to engage with.

It pretty much goes without saying, but these pins are optimized for generating sales, so if brand awareness is your goal, you’d be better sticking with the traditional promoted pins.

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<div style=”clear:both”><a href=”https://www.theshelf.com/the-blog/pinterest-marketing”><img src=” https://marketing.theshelf.com/infographic-making-pinterest-work” title=”How To Use Pinterest Marketing To Power Your Influencer Strategy” border=”0″ /></a></div><div>Courtesy of: <a style=”text-decoration:underline; color:#11d3c8;” href=”https://www.theshelf.com/the-blog/pinterest-marketing”>The Shelf Full-Funnel Influencer Marketing</a></div>

TL; DR – Pinterest is Effective AF

Pinterest is one of those great online tools that you can really get results from, even without spending a dime. It is still extremely underused by many businesses, so now really is the time to capitalize on the opportunity and get ahead of your competition.

Pinterest is a visual discovery platform where users go to dream, get inspired, and perhaps most important to brands…to plan purchases. More than half of active users open their apps in the store to use as a shopping list.

When it comes to your Pinterest marketing strategy, you can’t really phone it in. The returns will be better if you can get in there and do the work. Spend the time nailing your Pinterest marketing strategy. Design great-looking pins, schedule them out across the week, and build your boards around the best keywords for your brand. Do all this, and you’ll be winning.

(Thanks, Ariana for making this post way more awesome. You’re such a friggin’ rock star!)

The post How To Use Pinterest Marketing To Power Your Influencer Strategy appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

In this post, we look specifically at how a few important characteristics of Millennial Parents and how they use social media to make purchasing decisions.

Millennial Moms

Who Are Millennial Moms?

Estimated to be born between 1980 and 1995ish (we actually adjusted this date since we first explored this demographic in 2018), Millennial women are now between the ages of 28 and 43 years old. They are the kids of Baby Boomers and Gen X parents.

More and More Millennials Are Becoming Moms

More than 80 percent of new moms are Millennials, according to BabyCenter. Approximately a quarter of America’s mothers are Millennials, and about half of Millennial women are now moms to school-age kids. I want to say the number falls somewhere around 10 to 12 million moms, but I can’t say for sure. What I can say is the percentage of mothers who are Millennials will increase over the next decade and a half. Why so long? Well… in part, because women are starting their families later and giving birth to kids well into their 40s. And the youngest Millennial women are still in their late 20s.

Millennial Moms Really Are Different From Previous Generations

Culturally… Sixty-seven percent of Millennial Moms are multicultural, according to research from Carat. In fact, Millennial Moms and their children are part of the two most ethnically diverse generations currently living in the US.

When it comes to the work-life thing… Like Gen X and Boomer Moms, most Millennial Moms work, often out of necessity. And it’s a heavy load to carry for the one in three moms who feel overwhelmed by their responsibilities, according to data released by MDLIVE. Thirty percent of Millennial Moms work full time, and 35 percent call themselves homemakers.

In 2018, one-third of Millennial Moms were the primary breadwinners in their households, and a third of THEM were either unmarried, or not cohabitating with a partner. In 2022, for moms as a whole, nearly half (47 percent) are the primary breadwinners for their households.

But as the children of Millennial Moms get older, balancing their own mental health with that of their kids’ mental health is proving to be tough.

When it comes to a sense of self… According to Think with Google, 67 percent of millennial moms say they have continued to pursue their personal passions since having children, which is significantly higher than Gen X moms.

When it comes to money… Unlike mothers of generations before them, Millennial Moms are, by and large, more confident with (and more savvy about) finances and products that protect their family’s financial well-being.

Millennial Moms and Their Identities As Mothers

Motherhood is crucial to the identities of Millennial Moms. In fact, with so many “social” eyes watching, being a perfect mom is a goal to which many Millennial Moms aspire. In a world where Millennial Moms must work, 17 percent of Millennial Dads are now stay-at-home dads.

Work-Life balance is an ideal to which many Millennial Moms aspire. One in four Millennial Moms is willing to pay at least $50 a month to have someone step in and help them keep their home lives organized. About 20 percent of Millennial Moms are willing to pay up to $150 a month for that kind of help. It’s probably a good move considering one in five family meals are now being eaten in a car.

Get this: 9 in 10 Millennial Moms would clone themselves if the option were ever on the table. Interestingly enough, about a quarter of the women polled would send then their clones to medical school just so they’d be able to step in as doctors or nurses as needed. Me? I’d have the cloned me in charge of laundry. And proofreading. And Instagram engagement. Laundry, proofreading, and Instagram engagement.

And maybe those third and fourth performances of The Nutcracker at my daughter’s ballet school.

WHAT JOBS WOULD MOMS WANT THEIR CLONES TO DO?

1. Housekeeper – 56%
2. Laundry service – 51%
3. Chef – 41%
4. Nanny/babysitter – 38%
5. Personal assistant – 36%
6. Personal shopper – 34%
7. Tutor/homework helper – 31%
8. Handywoman – 30%
9. Chauffeur – 28%
10. Doctor/nurse – 26%

Source: SWNS Digital

How Millennial Moms Use Social Media

Millennial Moms are social creatures indeed, significantly more social than Gen X Moms. While Millennial Moms favor Instagram and Facebook (average MM has 500 Facebook friends), the typical Millennial Mom have 3.4 social media accounts, compared to 2.6 accounts for moms, according to Weber Shandwick’s Digital Women Influencers: Millennial Moms report.

For Entertainment

Millennial Moms prefer smartphones to laptops. More than half of the Millennial Moms surveyed said they spend most or all of their time online using their phones. They also spend more than 17 hours on social networks every week. That’s 30 percent more time than the average mom spends on social sites. Millennial Moms spend two hours more per week on social than they do watching TV.

For Community

Where Millennial Moms are concerned, “community” is the magic word. Millennial moms have more close friends than the average mom (24 vs 22 for other moms). Yes, they spend more time on social, but they’re not vegging out on Instagram. They engage with one another. The average Millennial Mama gets asked for a product recommendation 9.6 times per month.

She also offers her own unsolicited product recommendations online 10.4 times a month.

Millennial Moms rely on the online communities they’ve built to make buying decisions and are totally okay with offering their opinions online about products – any products at all. They talk openly about clothes, brands, retailers, experience-based services, and even financial products.

In addition to giving advice, 46 percent of Millennial Moms look to the recommendations of their own networks when it comes time to make buying decisions.

How They Shop

Moms control 85 percent of household purchases, with spending power that tops $2 trillion. Women also outpace men when it comes to using mobile for shopping, especially in-store shopping.

Millennial Moms Look for Deals

Millennial Moms shop for deals. Here are a few interesting stats from Tribe and Retail TouchPoints:

• 83 percent of Millennial Moms shop online to hunt for the best price
• 79 percent of Millennial Moms use e-commerce to get a better selection of products
• 62 percent of Millennial Moms shop online because of the good shipping options
• 57 percent of Millennial Moms shop big sales like Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday
• 49 percent of Millennial Moms shop at big box retailers and clubs for discounts and bulk buying opportunities.

I, and 41 percent of my female contemporaries, look up email promotions while actually in the store.

How does that play out? While my better half is loading the conveyor belt with products from our cart, I am punching in the names of products as they move down the belt to find discounts. Between the time we get in line and the time hubby hands over the cash, I can usually cut our bill by up to 25 percent with coupons I can click to download to my phone in a few seconds. I count it a victory, a dazzling display of teamwork.

That’s women shoppers for you.

What about brand names? Well, Millennials, as a whole, tend to be less brand-focused than Gen Xers, Flipside: Millennial parents can be swayed. More than half of Millennial parents say they are “very loyal” to a brand once they find one they think is the perfect marriage of quality + price.

And Millennial Moms heavily favor speed and convenience to streamline as much of their day-to-day work+life tasks as they possibly can. One in four Millennial Moms has a smart home assistant like Google Home or Amazon Echo. And of those who have such devices in the house, 31 percent of Millennial Moms use them to add items to their shopping lists.

Millennial Moms are far more likely to have necessities like diapers and beauty products delivered to their homes than to spend time combing the aisles for them in-store. Forty percent of Millennial parents currently use a subscription service.

Millennial Dads

Who Are Millennial Dads?

If you think there’s a bit of a gap between how Millennial Moms do things compared to previous generations of moms, I gotta say: Dadhood has changed quite a bit as well. While the youngest Millennial men are still finding their footing in the workforce, older Millennial Men have officially reached middle age (gasp!). No less cool… just older.

Millennials are parenting about half the world’s kids. No small feat, considering we just posted about how there are 50 million kids heading back to America’s public schools for the 2022-23 school year.

Without a doubt, Millennial Dads are responsible for some of the biggest shifts in fatherhood… maybe ever. They are more likely to think of fatherhood as important to their identities; when polled, 9 in 10 Millennial Dads even went so far as to say it’s important for them to be the “perfect dad”.

Crushing It As Dad

Millennial Dads spend five more hours per week with their children than dads did in 1995, and 3x the number of hours dads from 1965 spent with their kids.

Prince Harry’s request for a two-week paternity leave just ahead of the birth of his baby boy made headlines. Granted, I’m not exactly sure what he does as his 9 to 5 (other than be the most awesome Royal), but his request isn’t an unusual request for today’s new parents. Paternity leave is a priority for Millennial parents; 80 percent of Millennial Dads would be reluctant to leave a job that offered paternity leave.

Millennial Dads prioritize family time, and many of them are sharing in the day-to-day responsibilities of raising children and maintaining a family. Half of the two-parent households say they split the household chores equally between the parents.

How Millennial Dads Use Social Media

For Millennial men, fatherhood seems to turn on that social media gene. About 70 percent of Millennial men use social media, according to Nielson Newswire. They use blogs, online news websites, and social networking sites to make purchase decisions.

By the same token, 70 percent of Millennial Dads seek out parenting information online, according to Think With Google. And most of the time, that searching is done using the device closest to them – usually their smartphones. When are those moments showing up? Daily. Half of the dads are heading to social media daily for parenting advice.

As well, 45 percent of Millennial Dads use search to get answers to questions on everything from the best baby products to the best cities for families. This they do in lieu of getting advice from their own dads, by the way.

Dad Time

Far more than Boomer fathers, Millennial Dads are kicking in on one-on-one time with the kids, the shopping decisions, and the housework. As most Millennial families are two-income households, the changing role of fathers in the home is just too big for marketers to ignore.

Millennial Dads dedicate 28 percent of their time online to dad-related content and 60 percent of Millennial fathers say they’re better dads because of the resources they’re able to find online. One such resource is YouTube. Moreso than millennial Moms, Millennial Dads rely on YouTube for parenting guidance and as a way to connect with their kids.

How Millennial Dads Make Buying Decisions

When we ran down the stats for our recent back-to-school post, one of the things that stood out was the fact that, on average, dads outspend moms on back-to-school stuff by more than 100 bucks.

It’s not really a question of whether or not Dad goes shopping. It’s more a question of how Millennial Dads are shopping. Eighty percent of Millennial Dads handle (or chime in on) the household shopping, and we’re not talking about getting a list from Mom and running an errand she doesn’t have time to run. I’m talking about Dad doing a little research then going to the store to buy what his family needs. And Millennial Dads shop a little differently than Millennial Moms.

Couponing

Millennial Dad probably isn’t going to the store in a fanny pack stocked with coupons as Millennial Mom. He isn’t even super-duper concerned about loading up his grocery store app with digital coupons. One, it takes too long, and most dads are all about getting the task done fast and done well. And two, handing a fistful of paper coupons to a pretty cashier is not on any dude’s list of ways to crush it. It’s just not.

So, if you’re a brand that’s targeting men, discounts are great and they absolutely WILL make it more likely that Dad will buy your brand… but add the discount to his rewards account automatically as points or email it to him. Don’t expect him to spend time in the evenings searching your app for a $3 off coupon.

Quality Counts for Something

Millennial Dads shop for quality more than Millennial Moms, AND they are more concerned about quality than Millennial men without kids. According to MediaPost, 66 percent of Millennial Dads say that high quality is extremely important. By comparison, 50 percent of Millennial men without children, 45 percent of Millennial Moms, and 51 percent of the general population focus on quality.

A Brand’s Value and Values Matter to Millennial Parents

A brand’s corporate values matter as much as the quality and value its products deliver. About half of Millennial Parents always will a brand’s views on topics that matter to them personally, according to an article published by the National Retail Federation. An article went on to say that 45 percent of Millennial Parents will only shop for brands that reflect their own social and political values.

In-Store Mobile

Both Millennial Moms and Millennial Dads will use their phones in-store to enhance their shopping experiences. The difference is usually a matter of what they’re looking for.

Moms are more likely to be looking for deals. Dads? Product reviews. Dads also use their phones to find nearby locations, look up store hours, and create shopping lists while shopping.

Courtesy of: The Shelf Full-Funnel Influencer Marketing

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Conclusion

Millennials are the most educated generation on the planet, and the most socially connected in decades, but they face trials American parents haven’t had to face in recent history.

Economic instability, the recent pandemic, job uncertainty (Millennials change careers more than Gen Xers, Boomers, or the Silent Generation ever had to), climate change, and shifts in the global political landscape can have a catastrophic impact on the future of the entire world.

This is the environment in which Millennials are rearing children. Yet, they spend twice as much time with their kids as previous generations. Millennial Dads are home more to shoulder some of the responsibility of helping around the house. Millennial Moms are somehow present with the kids AND working full-time.

Millennial parents value parenting as perhaps the most important part of adulthood, out-ranking even professional aspirations and financial success. So, it seems Millennial parents are crushing parenthood… or at the very least, raising the bar.

For brands and marketers: use social media marketing, video marketing, and of course, influencer marketing to help parents streamline and even marry the research+ purchase process so that Millennial parents can achieve what they want most – to optimize everything around them in an effort to preserve and prioritize family.

About the Author

Sorilbran Stone | Content Strategist

I serve as the resident content strategist and the official Head of Content Marketing at The Shelf. Marketing is my happy place. I’m as happy looking at analytics as I am actually creating a thing. I focus a lot on dreaming up and implementing the best ways to create, publish, and distribute content that will build your brand and get your audience to do a thing.

The post What Makes Them Buy: Millennial Parents in 2023 appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

Product launches are an exciting opportunity to increase sales and grow your audience. In this guide, we’ll demystify the process with a step-by-step plan for introducing Instagrammers to your brand and new product. 

Step 1: Figure Out Who You’re Targeting and What They Want to Fix

The first step to any successful product launch is defining your target audience. You’ll want to identify which demographics you’re speaking to and how they shop on Instagram. Consumers behave a little differently on each social platform, so make sure you’re tailoring your launch specifically to your audience’s Instagram habits. 

It’s also great to understand their pain points. What problems are they trying to solve? Pain points could be the specific reason they’d buy your product or service, and pain points could include any challenges they’re having with one of your competitors.

Here’s what I mean…

Let’s say you’re a sea moss brand. Last year, sea moss gel was trending all over TikTok. Kim K was spotted having a sea moss smoothie and A-List celeb (and TikTok darling) Kevin Hart invested in a sea moss brand during an episode of Shark Tank.

People choose to drink sea moss for a number of reasons, many of them health-related. So, customer pain points can be focused around things like trying to get more essential and trace minerals in their diets without adding a bunch of calories. Or maybe they’re trying to find a fix for respiratory issues.

BUT a quick look at the customer reviews of some of your competitors could reveal that one of your competitors has logistics issues that result in sea moss gel jars arriving cracked or reaching the customer spoiled because of refrigeration problems during shipping. Another competitor may have customer service issues – customers can never reach anyone to get their questions answered or address their problems.

Both aspects – the health-related ones and the quality control ones – are pain points for your customers. So, understanding the pain points of your prospects provides you with different ways to shape your messaging during your launch campaign.  

TIP: IG Stories is the PERFECT way to test messaging since Stories disappear from the feed, your profile, and Direct after 24 hours unless you add the Story to your highlights.

Step 2: Grow Your Instagram Following with Members of Your Target Audience

Okay, this one may seem like a chicken-egg situation, but you’re going to have to put some time, effort, and other resources into growing your following.

This is an essential step for two reasons. First, you want to promote your new product to a full house, not an empty crowd. And second, influencers will be more excited to work with you if you have a greater audience reach.

The good news is that you don’t need to garner millions of followers. Nor do you need hundreds of thousands. A couple hundred is a great place to start.

Here are a few no-sweat ways to grow your audience quickly:

• Fill out your Instagram bio. Infuse it with your brand voice, and tell new followers what you’re all about. Don’t forget to add a link to your website. 
• Lean into video. In years past, we urged readers to build a grid of at least 12 images. That’s cool. But if you have 12 images, you’ll want to have at least 12 videos. And maybe make half of those image spots carousels instead of single pics. Make your grid as engaging and interactive as you possibly can.
• Ask your existing network to follow your page and pass it along to their friends. A story share goes a long way for brand exposure. 
• Use the hashtags your customers are using. Instagram allows users to follow not just people, but also topics, right? So, make sure you’re cataloging your content with hashtags.

Step 3: Clearly Define the Goals for Your Product Launch

We’ve been harping on this one for years. Set goals for your influencer marketing campaign. Build your campaign out to meet those goals. Know which influencer campaign metrics to check to determine whether your campaign was successful.

The trick here is to set specific goals that you can track and measure. Of course, you want to generate max buzz, pre-orders, and sales for your new product. Setting more specific, intentional goals will help you reach even more conversion-focused goals vs awareness goals.

Before building your campaign, you need to ask yourself: Is your main goal to gain more followers? Increase brand awareness? Sell lots of your new product? Drive downloads of your app? Gain a bunch of 5-star product reviews?

Narrowing down your specific campaign goals will help you tailor your content and choose the right influencers for your campaign (more on that later).

Remember, when it comes to influencer marketing, not all success has to equate to a sales transaction. In fact, influencer marketing helps drive action that eventually will lead to a conversion. But that’s eventually.

If you don’t hit your sales goals, but you get thousands of views, gain hundreds of followers, and increase engagement with your campaign, that’s a major win. That sort of increased brand lift always precedes more sales.

Want more specifics on how to create product launch goals? We penned a short ebook that shows you how to structure influencer campaigns to meet specific goals. If that’s your thing, click the big, ol’ button below.

Step 4: Map a Timeline for Your Launch Date

How long does it take to run a good campaign? Ideally, you want to create an Instagram marketing campaign that’s around 30 to 60 days. This gives you enough time to grow buzz, track analytics, and optimize the best-performing content.

Remember that it typically takes a couple of weeks just to recruit influencers, ship products, approve influencer content, and schedule posts to go live. So, make sure you start your campaign a few months before you want to see those results.

Start by selecting the date you want your campaign to go live. Then work your timeline back from there. Just know that this is a weeks-long process.

If you don’t have four months, don’t worry. We’ve pulled together successful campaigns in a few weeks. You can always scale down your campaign. Launching a service is also more flexible. Because there’s no need to ship physical products, you can get away with a service launch campaign that’s only a month long, depending on when you’re running the campaign. You have to snag influencers for a holiday campaign early because they get booked up fast.

HERE’S WHAT A TYPICAL PRODUCT LAUNCH TIMELINE CAN LOOK LIKE:

Day 1-7: Building hype

Day 8: Product launch

Day 9-14: Post-launch follow-up

Day 15-30: Maintaining momentum

TIP: Lean on your influencers for content. Not in a mafia way, but in a trusting-them-to-do-what-they-do kinda way. Influencers literally make money by knowing how to create content that resonates with their audiences. So, let them do that. You want to allow for structured creative freedom, meaning they know what your goals are and they understand your brand and message, but they have the freedom to introduce your product and present your brand in a way that THEIR followers will find compelling. (the best way to do this is to provide them with an influencer brief that outlines the expectations.)

BENEFIT: If you do it this way, you’ll have a ton of influencer-generated content that you can repurpose later across your own branded channels. And the content that comes from each creator will be different. You know what they say: Variety is the spice of life. Just make sure to get the content rights.

Step 5: Choose the Right Influencer Partners

Okay, influencer marketing is a whole big thing – you know it, we know it. We’ve penned a massive, detailed, everything-you-need-to-know guide to influencer marketing strategy. But for now, we’re just going to talk about influencer selection.

Finding the right influencer partners is a crucial part of the process. And we’ve gotta be honest here: it may take you a few weeks to get the right influencers committed to your campaign, especially if you’re not using an agency like The Shelf for the influencer selection process.

But never fear – you can totally find influencers on your own. We’ve laid out this checklist to help you do just that.

So, who are the “right” influencers? Well, the trick is to choose influencers whose audiences overlap with your target audience. Once you’ve found them, you’ll want to consider your budget and the reach you’re hoping for with the campaign.

Would your influencer budget be better served on one mega-influencer or would your audience be better served using several micro-influencers or even nano-influencers with more defined niches? This all depends on your campaign goals, budget, and whether you’re hoping to reuse influencer-generated content (which we recommend, if possible). We’ve broken down the influencer tiers here so you know which creators to target. 

Step 6: Use Your Team’s Creative Genius

Cue your creative vision. This is the “structured” part of that structured creative freedom I was talking about before. Now, what makes Instagram so compelling is that it went from being a photo-sharing app to being a storytelling platform.

The photos you use on Instagram should support your corporate brand. When people arrive at your Instagram account, they should “get” how the pics align with your brand and the launch. We’re talking about having a color scheme that’s in line with your brand, consistent use of filters, camera angles, layouts, frames, negative space in your pics — the regular Instagram stuff. A pretty feed that’s eye-catching and useful, just branded. Create & Cultivate is great at this. And Compartes Chocolate – they have such a great feed.

Anyway, my point is that with influencer campaigns, you get to have a little more freedom with your brand theme. Reels and Stories are a great place to allow your influencers to run wild with their own creativity. 

New Product Launch Examples

When Activewear brand @popflex_active launched their Stardust collection, it featured a range of black and sparkly leggings, bras, and tops. This is what their Instagram feed looked like in the week leading up to the launch and the week of the launch itself. You can see they had a clear vision for the visual direction: blacks, whites, and pops of iridescent shimmer. 

Their influencer partner @zoestone posted this all-black Popflex ‘fit the day before the Stardust launch. Although it’s not as stylized as the in-house creative the brand generated, it still sticks with the theme of the launch and effectively teases the new products. 

Step 7: Build a Catalog of AMAZING Assets for Your Campaign

The content influencers create should be centered around themes and concepts that your in-house creative team (or your influencer marketing agency) comes up with. And the type of content you need for your campaign (i.e. video hauls, product reviews, memes, etc.) plays a huge role in which influencer partners you choose for the campaign.

But you don’t have to rely solely on the content your influencers create. Feel free to also create assets and content in-house to run alongside your influencer-generated content.

We recommend coming up with unique branded hashtags so you can follow along with consumers who are reposting your products and have all your influencer-generated content accessible in one place. Have influencer partners add that branded hashtag to all of the posts they publish throughout the product launch campaign (including their Instagram Stories).

Keep the lifespan of each post in mind as you’re planning out your calendar. Stories last for 24 hours, which makes them perfect for testing out messages. (Of course, you can add a story to your highlights within that 24 hours if you want to hang on to them.)  Whereas infographics can be shared over and over for weeks, especially if they’re funny, informative, or entertaining.

One of the primary benefits of working with influencers is the sheer amount of sponsored content you get so you can repost campaign content across your own branded channels without having to recycle the same content over and over again.

Step 8: Rock Your Launch Day!

Instagram marketing goes beyond pushing the “publish” button and monitoring the launch. You need to be online all of launch day engaging with your audience.

In fact, why not go live so you can answer questions and see all the excitement first-hand?

Here are other tips you can use to ensure your launch day goes well:

• Answer DMs promptly
• Reshare relevant content from followers
• Add your Instagram Stories to highlights for the late-comers
• Edit your bio to reflect your launch specifically (including a trackable link)
• After launch day, don’t forget to continue measuring the results of your campaign

Final Words On This…

Planning an effective influencer marketing campaign for your product launch may seem tedious, but it’s well worth it. Once you have all your nuts and bolts, all you have to do is screw them into place. We hope these 8 steps help you take your next launch out of this world. 

And if you’d like help crafting the perfect influencer campaign for your launch, you’re in the right place. In addition to the tips above, our experts have all the industry know-how to get eyeballs on your products and sales in the bank. We’d love to help make your campaign goals a reality. Schedule a strategy goal with us by clicking below. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ariana Newhouse | B2B Writer

I am a freelance writer and comedian based in Los Angeles, and while making people laugh is my jam, it’s not always the company brand. So, I strive to make people feel something. My writing philosophy is collaborative, empathetic, and humanistic. At the end of the day, no matter the message, there are real people on both ends of the process.

The post How to Launch a Product on Instagram in 8 Simple Steps appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

Originally, this sucker was more than 10,000 words of content. But we shortened it. A little. Still, this complete-slash-ultimate-slash-A-to-Z guide to social media influencer marketing strategy covers:

• Everything a brand needs to know to justify influencer marketing spend
• Everything the Marketing Manager needs to know to get buy-in from the higher-ups
• Everything the marketing team needs to know to set up and run an influencer marketing campaign
• And everything the demand gen/paid team needs to know about optimizing a live campaign to deliver the best results

Nuff chit-chat. Let’s get started.

We dropped even more cool insights into the download.

Click to view this guide as a PDF

What You’ll Find in Our Epic Influencer Marketing Strategy Guide

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing has become an increasingly important part of the digital landscape. But what (EXACTLY) is it?

A mommy blogger speaking well of a skin cream that helps reduce the discomfort of her daughter’s eczema? Is it a celebrity endorsement? How do we define it?

How does it really affect your marketing campaigns? How do you create an influencer marketing strategy? More, how do brands translate Instagram Likes into conversions?

We’ll get into all of that in this influencer marketing strategy guide, but first, let’s start at the beginning:

Influencer Marketing is a form of word-of-mouth marketing where brands hire social media creators with influence in specific areas ( important) to talk to their own audiences about the various benefits of a brand or product.

That’s because influencers (or creators) are the people others follow, look up to, and keep up with for advice and inspiration – whether the topic is fashion, beauty, finance, tech, gardening, or even more niche interests like car detailing, agriculture, or spelunking!

The Benefits of Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is personal… Where paid ads are often thought of as non-personal marketing, influencer marketing is far more personal, and that personal touch increases sales and is the driving force behind the effectiveness of influencer campaigns. Four in ten millennials who follow influencers say they feel like social media influencers know them better than their own friends. How’s that for personal?

Influencer marketing is a more targeted approach… Influencer marketing allows brands to get in front of niched-down segments of their target audience by borrowing the goodwill of the people those audience segments already like, trust, and admire. Sixty-one percent of consumers trust the recommendations that come from micro-influencers and macro-influencers.

Influencer marketing offers strong social proof… Influencers are great at two things: creating compelling content and getting their followers to take an action. Brands that work with influencers are gaining allies who already know how to present ideas, concepts, and visuals to their audience that can get them to respond.

Influencer marketing allows for real-time results… When brands roll out influencer marketing campaigns in stages, they have the opportunity to monitor the campaign performance in real-time to allow the marketing team a chance to optimize campaigns and put more resources behind content that’s performing well. Influencer marketing is also a great way to test messaging before sending ad concepts to print or using them in PPC campaigns.

Influencer marketing is more affordable… Influencer marketing is an all-in-one solution that allows brands to go directly to social media influencers for branded content to promote their product or service, eliminating the need for a creative team whose job is to create the assets for specific campaigns.

Influencer marketing works faster… Influencer marketing has proven to be an effective tool for boosting brand lift across multiple channels. Influencer marketing strategies are a good way to drive traffic back to the brand’s website, talk-up an event, promote a new product, and assemble a catalog of creative, compelling content creation.

Why Influencer Marketing Works So Well (even though we know we’re being marketed to)

We are bombarded every single day with branded messages. Ads abound. There’s a popular stat floating around that the average person sees up to 10,000 ads a day. Well, if we’re seeing more than 5,000 ads a day, and the average person’s only getting six hours of sleep a night, that means during our 18 waking hours, we see 277 ads every hour on the hour, which is about one ad every 4.5 seconds.

For every day in 2019, about 13,560 pieces of influencer-created sponsored content went up on Instagram, according to Statista. Between 2019 and 2022, the influencer market more than doubled in size, going from $6.5B to $15B in value.

Today, nine in ten marketers say they are running or planning to run an influencer marketing strategy campaign in the near future. Influencers seem to have a finger on the pulse of social communities.

So, how do we get ANYTHING done?!!?

Two ways: Adblockers and ad blindness.

Tens of millions of people have taken deliberate steps to make sure they’re not exposed to ads by using ad blockers that are so sophisticated that they even help you skip pre-roll YouTube ads altogether. Something like 44 percent of adults who use the Internet globally also use an ad blocker.

So here’s the question: If people hate ads so much, why does influencer marketing even work on smart consumers and why do brands continue to implement social media influencer marketing strategies?

Short answer: It’s the presentation. Influencer marketing doesn’t disrupt an Instagrammer’s experience like a TV ad interrupts an episode of The Bachelor. And believe it or not, one of the (many) reasons people go to social media in the first place is to learn about new trends, products, brands, and movements.

Courtesy of: The Shelf

How Influencer Marketing Works

Influencer marketing integrates pretty seamlessly with your overall digital marketing strategy because it lets brands show up at different touchpoints along the path to purchase. The most effective and best influencer marketing strategies work across multiple platforms.

For every channel you add to your digital marketing strategy, you can improve your ROI and effectiveness by up to 35 percent, according to Analytics Partners. And studies have shown that conversions increase by at least 10 percent for brands that use influencer-generated content in the online purchase path.

Take a look at the channels identified in the graphic above. All of those channels – the subway ads, the Pinterest board, the newsletter – are access points for different types of influencers to extol the virtues of your brand, creating a kind of echo chamber all across the web.

In the previous section, we included the stat (in the pink chart) that 81 percent of millennial women say social media is the best way to reach them, making social media marketing strategies the key to success. That’s a stat to which most digital marketers would easily subscribe. Well, here are a few more of the answers given by millennial women from that same poll:

• 36 percent say websites they trust are a good way to reach them
• 35 percent say online articles 
• 35 percent say email 
• 17 percent say online video 

Let’s move on to some tactical elements of your influencer marketing campaign strategy to give you a basic understanding of how the puzzle pieces fit together. This will make it easier to understand how threading an influencer marketing strategy throughout your digital marketing activations can help you hit all the important KPIs your brand is targeting this year. (And really, after the year we’ve had, don’t we all just kinda need a win right now?)

Setting Your Influencer Marketing Campaign Strategy Goals

We totally get why some marketers and brands are still giving influencer marketing the side-eye.  There’s a lot of talk about things like earned media value, brand-building, long-term value, playing the long game…

That’s all great, but aren’t you more interested in finding out what part of influencer marketing strategies lines up with ACTUAL business goals – the kind of business goals set by REAL companies? So many brands are still under the misguided notion that influencer marketing is just a brand awareness play when that’s not the case at all. For brands, the value of running an influencer marketing campaign goes far beyond just reach and Likes. 

It’s not that you can’t accomplish important business goals by learning how to create an influencer marketing strategy. We’ve run our fair share of influencer marketing campaigns to help clients get more app downloads, boost sales, and drive site traffic AND foot traffic. More often than not, there’s a disconnect between what a brand WANTS to accomplish and how it STRUCTURES its influencer marketing campaign strategies to achieve that end. The former has EVERYTHING to do with the latter.

Influencer marketing strategies need goals. Your campaign goals set the metrics you use to track the success of your influencer campaign.

Whether the goal is to get a new product in front of buyers, get traffic back to your site, or get a catalog of creative assets you can post across your own branded social platforms, a well-planned influencer marketing strategy can help you accomplish REAL marketing goals and move the needle on larger organizational goals.

Knowing How to Structure Your Influencer Marketing Strategy to Hit KPIs

Influencer marketing campaign strategies can (and should) be custom-built to achieve specific goals. Knowing which outcomes you want to see will determine how your campaign is structured and which influencer marketing strategy you use. There are three primary types of campaigns you can use to reach your influencer marketing goals – be it increasing engagement rates, increasing sales, or building brand awareness:

Brand Awareness Campaigns help you get lots of eyes on your brand, product, or event very quickly. These campaigns work best when your goal is to introduce a new product, when you’re rebrandingor when you’re trying to present a value prop big enough to interrupt the buyer’s regular pattern (like getting someone to cancel the auto-shipped vitamins they like to switch to your brand of vitamins). 

Content Campaigns are designed to create a catalog of high-value sponsored creative content that brands can reuse as needed across their own branded channels. Traffic/Clicks Campaigns work best for increasing site traffic, growing your list, getting sales, and when you’re also running retargeting campaigns (and need prospects to see your brand a few more times to stay top-of-mind).

Courtesy of: The Shelf

Let’s say you’re a women’s clothing retailer and you’re planning to run a spring influencer marketing campaign. Here are a few influencer marketing strategy examples that show how each campaign would look with the different types of campaign structures:

Scenario 1 for Traffic/Clicks… You partner with three or four Instagram macro-influencers who have really popular blogs. You do this because you want to drive tons of people to your site to shop your big sale and use the blogger’s discount code to buy a romper you know their audience will love. 

Scenario 2 for Influencer Content… You want to swap out your boring-as-hell product pics with influencer selfies or candid-looking shots of customers wearing that romper. You bring on a dozen or so Instagram nano-influencers who can take cute pics of themselves in the romper, and maybe even leave reviews so it looks like regular user-generated content. 

Scenario 3 for Product Awareness… You’re also upselling a snug, new body shaper to pair with the romper and you have a couple of great YouTube macro-influencers in mind who are active on TikTok and Reels. These gals will talk shoppers through the different ways to style the romper with tips on how to match the right body shaper with the right outfit. 

The point is… As an influencer marketing agency, once we know what your goals are, we know the best way to structure the influencer marketing campaign to meet those goals by tweaking the way we handle the rest of the campaign elements.

Choosing the Right Social Media Platform(s) for Your Campaign

Which platforms should you choose for your influencer marketing campaign? The answer to this question eludes many marketing teams. So, by default, a lot of marketers just go ahead and run influencer marketing strategies on Instagram alone.

Instagram influencer marketing is definitely important. But each of the other major social media platforms offers advantages that are naturally a good fit for achieving different influencer marketing campaign goals. 

Instagram is the most popular platform for running influencer campaigns by a long shot, with 67 percent of brands using Instagram for influencer campaigns, compared with Facebook (43 percent), TikTok (42 percent), YouTube (36 percent), Twitter (15 percent), and LinkedIn (16 percent), according to Influencer Marketing Hub. 

The factors that determine where your social media influencer marketing strategy campaigns should run are your product and your audience:

• Knowing what your audience needs to see and hear in order to understand the value of your product
• Knowing where your audience spends time online
• Understanding which platform will give you the best shot at nailing the other two factors

For instance…

Platforms like Pinterest, Facebook, and TikTok are great social media platforms for reaching different types of audiences with different products. They each have their own culture, norms, and way of presenting ideas. But they’re not the only channels for influencer marketing strategies. 

If you’re trying to reach busy professionals, for example, you may need to loop podcasts into the mix. Or add YouTube and Facebook if you’re targeting a more mature demographic since those two platforms are so widely used by older social media users, especially now that churches, community groups, and in-person gatherings have gone virtual.

On a good day, only about 2 in 5 marketers feel like they know what the heck they’re doing when it comes time to recruit influencers, according to Ste Davies. 

That’s a BIG DEAL because knowing how to align the RIGHT influencers with the RIGHT concept determines how your influencer marketing campaign strategy will ultimately impact lift across metrics like brand awareness, follower growth, new subscribers, downloads of your awesome thing, intent to purchase, or completed purchases. 

Yet, influencer selection remains one of the primary challenges for most of the marketing teams who sit down to plan an influencer campaign.

So, how can you tell the difference between an influencer who is going to push your brand to the next level vs. one that will just eat up your marketing budget with no return on your investment? How do you know who to choose to produce the best influencer marketing strategy?

Let’s work out some of the most effective techniques for partnering with creators who will be the best fit for your influencer campaign and help you reach important KPIs.

The Different Types of Influencers for Your Influencer Marketing Strategy

Remember a few years ago when most brands focused their attention (and budgets) on large influencers with huge audiences? The general consensus was the more followers an influencer had, the better their influencer marketing campaigns would perform.

But that consensus turned out to be flawed. Actually, it wasn’t true at all. Not even a little.

Thankfully, most of the brands we encounter now know better, even if they don’t exactly know how to do better. Now, clients come to us asking for recommendations on which types of influencers would work best for their influencer marketing campaign strategies.

There are basically five tiers or types of Instagram influencers to choose from when it comes to social media influencers. Different agencies and brands will have some version of this chart that they’re working from. But based on our extensive research and our own knowledge of the influencer culture, we think this is the most logical and inclusive breakdown.

How to Find Influencers for Your Influencer Marketing Campaign

Have you ever seen an influencer’s feed and thought he or she would be perfect for your next campaign? Yeah, that’s how a lot of brands handle the process of finding influencers for their social media influencer marketing strategies. In reality, influencer selection is a bit more complex than just pinpointing influencers who create visually appealing content, and it takes more than just finding influencers who seem to be members of your target audience.

The pool from which you source influencers also matter. Here are the four most common sources brands use to find influencers for your campaigns to drive results:

• Influencer Networks: A roster of an existing influencer network curated by a third party

• Opt-Ins: Influencers who respond to your “casting call”

• Agents: Professionals who represent a group of top influencers (which isn’t the same as repping a large group of influencers)

• Outreach: Conducting cold outreach to influencers you don’t know and who probably don’t know you

Although popular, these methods often end up being too restrictive and time-consuming to execute, and they don’t allow for real-world applications.

What happens if your campaign calls for blue-collar influencers, gardeners, or gamers? Will the influencer marketing agency have the resources and know-how to find the people needed for that campaign? 

Influencer marketing platforms usually give you the best chance of finding a large enough pool of potential candidates for influencer campaigns, especially for brands that are targeting subsegments of your audience. You can sift through creator profiles using filters like age, location, brand affinities, engagement ratios, and even the categories in which influencers wield the most sway to narrow your candidate pool.

Choosing the Right Influencer Partners

Reaching the right audience hinges on how good you are at choosing the right influencers for your influencer marketing campaign strategy. In order for that influencer selection process to work, it needs to integrate a couple of really important factors.

A lot of marketing teams underestimate the importance of their influencer selection process. Influencer selection directly impacts a brand’s ability to move the needle with a social media campaign, but most brands have no idea how to actually structure the influencer selection process.  

Most marketers have a pretty solid grasp of the basic information needed about an influencer to determine if he or she is a good fit for a social media influencer marketing campaign. That data usually falls into the category of quantitative data:

• Stats
• Follower size
• Engagement rate or view rate
• # of posts
• Overall post performance
• Demographic targeting
• Location
• Age
• Budget + Availability
• Previous sponsorship performance
• Fraud detection

Courtesy of: The Shelf

But qualitative insights are also important for choosing the influencer(s) who will be able to get you the outcomes you want to see. These include information on:

• Quality of content creation
• Is it creative? Original?
• Influencer aesthetic
• Relatability
• Does the influencer fit your brand?
• Are their values/messaging aligned with the brand?
• Does the influencer’s content fit the campaign’s creative direction?

An influencer should be chosen based on the likelihood she’ll be able to create content for the specific buyer persona/targeted audience segment she’s creating content to reach. In the example below, let’s assume these influencers both talk about fashion & are currently in their 20’s. But they clearly target different demographics, which means they will appeal to different types of brands in the same vertical. 

Finding the right influencer partner requires you to know more about an influencer than just demographic info and follower count. 

The influencer selected also needs to be great at creating content for the specific platform(s) where your target buyer is most likely to spend time. For instance, a food blogger who creates amazing-looking flat lays for Insta may not have the same knack for creating entertaining TikToks, and the entertainment factor is a huge part of TikTok culture. 

An influencer should stick to creative concepts that support the messaging needed to push your target buyer deeper into your funnel and/or farther along on the purchase path.

One thing you’ll want to remember about your influencer selection process is that it’s also important to take a look at the targeted audience’s behavior. By looking at the behaviors of audience members who are actually liking and commenting on an influencer’s posts, you can refine your targeting even more. Huh?

We have an entire post dedicated to influencer outreach penned by our Director of Account Managers. If you want to know how to approach influencers for collabs, that’s the post you want to read. Even has email influencer marketing strategy templates.

Click the big, pretty button below to read that one.

Related Post

How to Do Blogger Outreach (Includes Templates)

Identifying your campaign goals and understanding who is in your audience determines how we structure influencer marketing strategy campaigns to get specific outcomes

→ which helps you pinpoint the best platforms to use to reach your customers

→ which then dictates the types of influencers we need (and the superpowers they need to have to make your campaign deliver on KPIs).

And of course, all of this shapes the kind of content that influencers will create for your campaign.

There’s a caveat here because a BIG part of what we provide for our clients has to do with the creative concepts our influencer marketing strategy team comes up with to help guide and shape the direction of the influencers’ content. 

Our Account Managers serve as the bridge connecting the brand’s desired KPIs with influencers who are best equipped to deliver. One of the ways we do that is by building out creative concepts BEFORE we even select any type of influencers for our influencer marketing strategies. 

Specifically, as it relates to your content strategy, influencer marketing has some pretty compelling benefits: 

Scale content creation by outsourcing it to an army of influencers.

Expand your visibility by aligning influencer selection with keyword research so you have a diverse group of creators building content specifically designed to target different long-tail keywords.

Amplify your message by bringing in creators who are also raving fans who can promote content and increase the likelihood of making your content go viral.

Prove your value by leveraging the Domain Authority of your influencer partners and adopting their endorsements as much-needed social proof.

Securing Content Rights

We know it’s not fun and it sounds pretty boring, but you have to have a UGC rights contract in place for any influencer marketing campaign strategy.

At our influencer marketing agency, we typically negotiate rights for sponsored content to be used by the brand as they see fit, across their social media channels. But the larger the influencer, the more likely you are to have resistance from the content’s creator. Sometimes that takes the form of an expiration date for the content, or the creator being able to delete sponsored posts from their feed after a certain amount of time… it can get a little weird and a little complicated.

Still, it’s crucial that you iron out those types of details in a written contract because influencers are well within their rights to ask a brand to take down a post that was part of a sponsored campaign the brand has ALREADY PAID FOR if reuse is not clearly defined within the contract. In an absolute-all-out-worst-case-ever scenario, the influencer could actually sue for copyright infringement.

Clarity and transparency are KEY in negotiating UGC rights, both for brands and Creators. Creators need to know from brands exactly how sponsored content and other UGC will be used and how long that content will be used for that purpose.

To ensure a smooth influencer marketing campaign strategy process, always include a section in your influencer contract outlining when an influencer can take down sponsored content, and clearly state that you reserve the right to remove any content an influencer produces for your brand.

Influencers can be particular about the content they leave on their feeds. If you’ve ever looked at an influencer’s Instagram, you know that they’re selective about how much-sponsored content they have on their page.

And duh! This makes sense. You don’t want to see sponsored post after sponsored post – it will ruin their authenticity with their audience.

Brands, on the other hand, also need the authority to take down or remove content that doesn’t meet the established brand guidelines. You can’t have bad or misaligned content that you paid for hanging out on the internet.

To create an effective influencer marketing strategy without any problems, you need to get influencers to agree they won’t infringe on any other person’s rights or copyright. Influencers should not incorporate the pictures, content, audio, or video of another creator’s work into any campaign. That’s uber-important.

To ensure you get what you paid for, we always list a set of DOs and DON’Ts because influencers (bless their hearts) will inevitably do weird things. So, you need a record of the hashtags to be used, any people or things that need to be mentioned in sponsored posts and the length of time the post is to stay published to a creator’s site or social channel.

Contracts also include things like confidentiality clauses that require influencers to keep your super-duper top secret secrets a secret… and indemnification that keeps you out of court in the event a zombie apocalypse, Yeti appearance, or freak accident happens during the creation of the sponsored content during an influencer campaign.

Contracts are crucial, and the details you include in your contracts can save you time, reputation, and tens of thousands of dollars in litigation. Our iron-clad contracts allow our clients to have stress-free campaigns…but trust us when we say every clause in our contract was the result of a hard-learned lesson.

How to Get the BEST Creative Content from Your Influencer Partners

Okay. Buckle up.

If you want great content from your influencer marketing push, you’re going to need really great influencer marketing strategies (plural) that you can provide the influencers.

Building out the strategies for an influencer marketing campaign involves several important elements: knowing who you want to target, knowing where they hang out online, understanding how they shop, and having a solid grasp of the buyer personas the brand wants to reach with the campaign. Those three elements form the comfy cushion upon which your strategists can unleash their creativity.

Strategists?? Yeah… that’s the thing…

We know a lot don’t have designated creative strategists who come up with cool influencer marketing ideas for a living. Something like a third of the marketers asked still struggle to come up with creative ideas for their influencer marketing campaigns (and you say #basic product post?).

If you’re not bringing us on to dream up the concepts (because we actually have strategists), the fix for this is to take a group approach to your influencer marketing campaign strategy and dream up some creative influencer marketing ideas that perfectly align with your voice, style, values, and aesthetic.

Your influencer marketing strategy should have two important elements: a way to get your customers to take the next steps on the path to purchase, and specific, measurable goals to let you know your customers are moving toward a conversion. And since your internal marketing team understands your customers’ path to purchase so well, it’s crucial that they monitor the messaging tied to your influencer campaign.

Take CBD, for instance: In 2019, when CBD was trending everywhere, High Yield Insights released a report which contained a chart of the five buyer personas most likely to purchase cannabidiol (CBD) products.

The personas varied greatly in their demographics and psychographics, which, of course, means marketers have to reach them in different ways and with different messages.

Just so you can see what we’re talking about here, we pulled a few characteristics from three of those buyer personas.

Which would resonate with a message on pain relief? Skincare? Who would you be able to reach on Instagram? Facebook? TikTok? 

Campaign Management

If we take a high-level view of an influencer marketing campaign strategy, there really are enough bells and whistles and cogs and doodads to keep a significant portion of your marketing team busy. 

Contrary to popular belief, running an influencer campaign isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it type of thing. Because…

Even if you give influencers 100% creative control and plan to approve anything and everything they send you, you’ll still need a few people handling the logistics of managing a campaign and making sure the influencer marketing strategy compels your audience to take the actions you want them to take.

Many of the problems that brands have with their campaigns can be traced back to the team (or lack of a team) running that campaign. In order for your influencer marketing campaign strategy to perform optimally, you need team members who will be taking ownership of some really important tasks such as:

• Finding influencers
• Heading off influencer fraud
• Sending products out to influencers
• Maintaining brand safety
• Coming up with creative concepts and strategies
• Maintaining the timeline
• Setting up tracking pixels (for affiliate links)
• Ensuring influencers adhere to FTC regulations
• Adapting strategies to algorithm changes
• Integrating new features on social if they’ll help your campaign
• Optimizing campaigns

Which is the topic of this section – how to create an influencer marketing strategy that delivers  better and better results from the influencer campaigns you run.

Which Metrics Should You Track with an Influencer Campaign?

Without fail, that’s the question brands (and especially CMOs and VPs) want to know before, during, and after their influencer campaign. Which metrics will move the needle for our brand?

You and I both know that influencer marketing was darn near overrun by fraud a few years ago when brands were hellbent on only partnering with influencers who had the most followers and engagement, both metrics that can easily be gamed.

The hit list of metrics you want to watch during an influencer marketing strategy campaign includes these:

Post Engagements – The number of likes, comments, and shares on a post

Engagement Rate – Post engagements / total number of followers * 100 

Story Views – The number of times a user has viewed an Instagram story

Story View Rate – Story views / total number of followers * 100 

Post Video Views – The number of times a user has viewed an Instagram video post

Replies, Shares, Profile Taps, Link Clicks – The various actions a user can take on Instagram stories

Post Impressions – The total number of people your content is visible to

Post Reach – The total number of unique people who see your content

Clicks – The number of actions taken on a post in the form of a click to a designated URL. Clicks are counted through link in bio, swipe up, post links, etc.

Unique UTM links – These codes added to the end of a URL track clicks and performance of marketing activities

Tracking Pixels – Used for blog content, these snippets of code allow you to gather information about visitors on a website (how they browse, what type of ads they click on, etc.)

Brand Sentiment – How relevant was the branded content to the influencer’s audience and did the branded content actually resonate with the audience (ie: commenting on the outfit vs. the brand sponsorship or messaging)

And the preferred metrics for this list can shake out a number of different ways depending on your influencer marketing campaign strategy goals.

Optimizing Influencer Marketing Strategies for Better ROI

One of the great things about running an influencer campaign is that you’re able to tweak live influencer marketing campaigns as they’re running and keep an eye on the metrics listed above in [relatively] real-time. That means you can make changes to the content, messaging, visuals of your campaign, and even your overall influencer marketing strategy as already-live posts deliver the insights you need to keep your campaign performing well.

Optimization allows you to use influencer-generated sponsored content to target the exact audiences that are most relevant to you, directly from the influencer’s account. This supercharges social proof because endorsements come directly from the influencers’ accounts, not the brand’s account. 

Create an optimization framework that you can use as a roadmap to continually improve on the results of a LIVE campaign and deliver data that can have profound effects across ALL of your marketing channels. 

#1 CTA

What is a CTA? Call to Action- A button or request for users to do something, to take some type of action.

Why a CTA is important: Establishes connections, results in a conversion, expands customer reach, motivates your audience. 

#2 CONCEPTS

What are campaign concepts: Brand-safe creative ideas that make people want to engage with your campaign content. 

#3 Post Type

What are post types: Post types refer to the combination of media formats + platform features.

#4 VERTICALS

What are verticals: Verticals are segments of your target audience identified by their commonalities.

#5 INFLUENCERS

What are influencers: Social media users whose followers look to them for advice and guidance on specific subjects. 

#6 DISTRIBUTION

What is distribution? Distribution entails getting a greater reach for the top-performing content in your influencer marketing campaign strategy. 

The sponsored content influencers generate for your campaign can be repurposed and reused across different channels. Doing so extends the life and value of your campaign content and enables your influencer marketing strategy to deliver returns for years to come.

Instagram feed post of Iris Apfel x Zenni Optical collab

As little as 16 percent of brands have influencer marketing strategies for incorporating user-generated content (UGC) even though a quarter of search results for large brands are linked to UGC and other content not created by the brand itself. 

Instagram story introducing the Iris x Zenni collab

A Few Things to Keep in Mind

Before you reuse any influencer content, make sure you have permission to do so to protect your social media influencer marketing strategy and campaign. 

Plan ahead. Draft an influencer marketing strategy plan for how you’ll incorporate influencer content into your social content calendar.

Mix in influencer content with your traditional branded content. Remember: Balance is key.

Yes, you still have to tailor the content to the channel. No copying-and-pasting, y’all. Reformat assets to platform specs, and craft unique captions/post text.

Try out different methods of reusing, and multiple formats. Alternate between resharing, reposting, and repurposing (defined on the following slides).

Not all influencer content will be great for your pages. Reuse only high-quality content that is representative of your brand and/or compliments your existing brand aesthetic.

You have options. You’ll usually have more content from each influencer than just what gets posted to their feed. So, you can use similar content for retargeting or different posts altogether for different parts of your funnel. Check out the reuse of the above Instagram post from Iris Apfel to this screenshot of Zenni Optical’s website homepage.

Reshare, Repost, and Repupose Influencer Content

Quite simply, when your page SHARES the influencer’s original post from their page to yours.

Note: this is frequently referred to as “sharing” a post, and sometimes – to make things equally confusing – reposting a post. Typically we don’t need to make such clear distinctions between re-share and repost, but for the purpose of creating a clear, precise article with explanations for you, we’re gonna harp on this for about 20 more seconds.

Defining Elements:

→ You do not upload a new asset to your post before RE-SHARING it

→ The post on your page appears as a SHARE rather than a photo or video.

→ RE-SHARES can only occur on the same platform on which the original post was published.

Examples of Ways to Reshare Influencer Content

• Reshare an influencer’s live FB video broadcast onto your brand’s page to increase engagement rate 
• Re-share influencer giveaway posts published on their Instagram feed to your IG story to notify your existing followers of the giveaway and tell them how they can enter
• Help amplify an influencer’s video published to Facebook Watch by sharing it to your page with a meaningful caption
• Embed influencer social posts of any type in your brand’s blog posts
• When an influencer tweets a link to their sponsored blog post, “favorite” the tweet and then retweet it with a comment
• Create a playlist on your brand’s YouTube account that is only for influencer YouTube videos. Add their videos (uploaded to their YouTube channel) to the playlist 

Level:

Beginner – Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

A new post published to your page that looks as though it was “reposted” from an influencer’s page.

Create a REPOST by uploading the influencer’s asset to your post and pair it with quoted text from their original post caption.

This influencer marketing strategy will generate brand awareness and expand your reach.

Defining Elements:

→ The post appears as though you REPOSTED an influencer’s original post and added a sentence or two to the caption before doing so

→ REPOSTS are confined to the channel the original post was published to.

When a brand takes the influencer’s assets, optimizes them for the channel, and then posts them directly to your page(s) with an original caption.

Examples of Ways to Repost Influencer Content

• Quote an influencers’ product review (or something they’ve said about your products in one of their post captions) in a tweet and tag them for credit/as the source 
• Repost an influencer’s Instagram feed giveaway post to your page with a caption outside the quoted text telling your followers how to enter the giveaway on the influencer’s page
• Have influencers submit additional assets + captions for an Instagram or Story takeover on your brand page, and post them to your page on their behalf on the day of the takeover (have them cross-promote the takeover on your page so their followers know to go check out the content!) 
• When an influencer posts to their Story and links to a sponsored blog post, do the same on your page (upload the asset and link to the blog post in the swipe up) rather than re-sharing their original story to yours (see Grove Collaborative repost example)

Level:

Intermediate …But still pretty easy. 

When a brand takes the influencer’s assets, optimizes them for the channel, and then posts them directly to your page(s) with an original caption.

Defining Elements

→ REPURPOSED POSTS can occur on any platform, regardless of where the original post was published to. 

→ REPURPOSED POSTS include totally original captions (written by you) and multi-asset posts can feature assets from multiple influencers (if app.).

→ Creativity is key! 

Examples of Ways to Repurpose Influencer Content

• Use influencer assets in ads that promote a new product launch or on product detail pages
• Feature influencer photos as “proof points” in abandoned cart reminders (“We noticed you still have X in your cart! So and so loves their X – here’s what they said about it…”)
• Chop up influencers’ videos and string together into one that tells a story about your brand from your influencers’ perspective, and post it to Facebook Watch or YouTube
• Get your influencers to create product demo videos they don’t post to their pages that you can feature on product detail pages on your website
• Include influencer assets in e-books or another type of downloadable/gated content 
• Create quote graphics using part or all of an influencer’s caption/comment about your product(s) and post it to your social pages

Level:

Advanced-ish – Requires some thought & planning.

We created an entire influencer marketing strategy guide just on repurposing influencer-generated content. Click the pretty button below to read up on best practices.

Related Post

Reusing Influencer-Generated Content (How To + Best Practices)

Influencer Marketing Definitions

Reach – Influencers’ follower count at the time of posting

Unique Reach – Campaign-wide metric that means the sum of all influencers’ follower counts across platforms

Total Potential Reach – Influencers’ follower count x Total number of posts

Impressions – Total number of times the content is viewed on Instagram. This can come from the influencer’s profile, scrolling on Instagram, searching hashtags, etc. (IG does not identify how many seconds qualifies)

Authenticated Total Impressions – Sum of all story views (called impressions) across all story frames 

Engagements – Number of interactions on post (i.e. comments, likes, link clicks, shares, replies, profile visits, sticker taps)

Total Engagements – Likes + comments: sum across all posts (Stories: Link clicks, shares, replies, profile visits, sticker taps: sum across all frames)

Engagement Rate (ER) – Authenticated total engagements divided by total potential reach 

IGC – Also called influencer-generated content, it’s the total unique images and/or story frames created for a campaign. Also referred to often as User-Generated Content, or UGC.

Avg. Platform Engagement Rate – Average engagement rate from ALL the influencer’s posts in last 60 days minus the last 15 days (the last 15 days are subtracted as new posts are still gathering engagement)

Campaign Platform’s Engagement Rate – The overall engagement rate for the campaign as a whole (total engagements from all campaigns posts divided by the total potential reach of the entire campaign)

Impressions/Reach Rate (IG Story Stats) – Auth. total impressions divided by total potential reach

Engagements Rate (IG Story Stats) – Total engagement ÷ auth. total impressions

Authenticated Total Impressions / Impressions – Sum of all story views across all frames 

Total Aggregate Follower Counts / Total Potential Reach – Influencers’ follower count x total number of posts

Whitelisting – Using obtained permissions from influencers to run paid ads through their identity. (See the example in the whitelisting section)

CPC – Cost per Click: Your total digital spend, divided by your total number of clicks 

CPE – Cost per Engagement: Your total digital spend, divided by the number of paid engagements

CPM – Cost per 1,000 Impressions: Your total digital spend, divided by your total paid impressions, then multiplied by 1,000

Sticker Taps (on Stories) – A sticker is a design element that can be added to images or videos on Instagram to give context to posts. Stickers are usually things like related hashtags, @mentions, and locations.

They can also be more interactive things like quizzes, donations, polls, and emojis. Now you can even include links in stickers. So, sticker taps are responsive taps to the stickers on a post to show interest in the content. Total clicks on Influencers’ “story stickers” is an important indicator of campaign success.

Swipe-Up – A swipe-up happens when a social media user slides their finger from the bottom of a Stories post to the top to find out more information, go to a sales page, or engage with social media content in another way. Swipe Up to Buy or just Swipe Up is commonly used in Stories as a call-to-action

Link Clicks (on Stories) – Total times someone swipes up on an influencer’s swipe up link or clicks on a sticker with a link.

Profile Visits (on Stories) – Total clicks to an influencer’s profile from story slide

Replies (on Stories) – Total replies to an influencer’s Instagram story using direct messaging

Shares to Stories – Instagram can share in-feed posts of other users by posting them to their own Stories for 24 hours. 

Views – A view is a predetermined number of seconds a user allows a video to play. This magic number differs from platform to platform.

Clicks to Branded Pages – On Instagram, clicks to branded pages happen when users either click the branded link in an influencer’s bio, the link in a story sticker, or swipe up to go to the landing, sales, or product page of a promoted offer.

Influencer Marketing Stats and Benchmarks

Blogs

• 70% of consumers would rather learn about a company from a blog post than an advertisement (Source)
• 72% of blog readers would rather watch the recap video than read the blog
• Internet users in the US spend 3X more time on blogs than they do on email. (Source)
• 59% of people will share an article without reading it first, or ever. (Source)

SNAPCHAT

• 293 million people use Snapchat each day. (Source)
• On average, people spend 34.5 minutes per day on Snapchat and send 34.1 messages a day. (Source)
• The average Snapchat user opens the app more than 30 times a day (Source)
• 82% of Snapchatters are 34 years old or younger. (Source)

PINTEREST

• Pinterest has more than 444 million active users. (Source) 
• 85% of Pinners say Pinterest is where they go to start a new project. (Source)
• 80% of weekly Pinners have discovered a new brand or product on Pinterest. (Source)
• 98% report trying new things they find on Pinterest. (Source)

FACEBOOK

• 23% of those on Facebook daily have purchased something from an influencer/blogger recommendation. (Source)
• 73% of U.S. Facebook users check the platform daily, and 93% use it weekly. (Source)
• Facebook is the third most-visited website after Google and YouTube. (Source)
• Facebook users spend 38 minutes a day on the platform, on average. (Source)

INSTAGRAM

• 1 in 4 Gen Z and Millennials actively seek stories of products and services they are considering buying. (Source)
• 500 million users view Instagram stories daily. (Source)
• 50% of users say they’ve bought a product they discovered on Instagram. (Source)
• Instagram users spent an average of 30 minutes per day on the platform in 2020. (Source)

TWITTER

• 40% of those on Twitter daily have purchased something from an influencer or blogger recommendation. (Source)
• 87% of Twitter users also use Facebook, and 84% also use Instagram. (Source)
• Promotional content from influencers yields a 5.2X increase in Twitter users’ purchase intent. (Source)

YOUTUBE

• Video content is 50X more likely to drive organic search traffic than plain text. (Source)
• One quarter of daily Youtube users have purchased something from an influencer or blogger recommendation. (Source)
• 90% of global shoppers say they discover new brands and products on YouTube.
• 70% of consumers in the US, Mexico, and Colombia have purchased a product after seeing it on YouTube. (Source)

TIKTOK

• In less than 18 months, the number of US adult TikTok users grew 5.5 times. (Source)
• Half of TikTok’s global audience is under the age of 34 with 32.5% between 10 and 19. (Source)
• TikTok users spend an average of 52 minutes per day on the app. (Source)
• 49% of US teens have used TikTok, compared to 9% of Americans overall. (Source)
• Half of TikTok users say they’ve shared someone else’s TikTok on another social network. (Source)

Let This Be a Starting Point

Interested in more data-fueled insights to build your influencer marketing strategy? Check out 111 Influencer Marketing Stats. It’s frequently updated and a great source of insights and info that will give you a great overview of the influencer marketing strategy space.

Plus, this post is loaded with links to good sources to provide you with a more in-depth understanding of the influencer marketing strategies covered in this guide and offer valuable tips for developing successful influencer marketing campaign strategies.

Or if you’d rather talk to a human, we have a couple here who are pretty awesome. Our influencer marketing strategy services can help you run campaigns shaped by data-driven insights.

The post The 2023 Guide to Influencer Marketing Strategy (hit those KPIs!) appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

Despite everyone needing brand awareness and visibility before being able to get a sale, brand awareness campaigns aren’t typically the sole focus of influencer activations. Stakeholders are pushing marketing teams to make it rain.

via GIPHY

But we get that without understanding the nuances, it can be tough to figure out how to structure a campaign to boost awareness vs structuring an influencer marketing for conversions. So, let’s talk that – the difference between top-of-the-funnel influencer campaigns vs bottom-of-the-funnel influencer campaigns.

TOFU Influencer Campaigns vs BOFU Influencer Campaigns

If you’re of the mindset that influencer marketing is just for boosting brand awareness, or you happen to be one of the people who low-key think a brand awareness campaign is a cop-out, this post is for you. Influencer campaigns can play a really important role in ultimately helping you to turn eyeballs into sales. Of course, there are more elements to factor into your omni-channel sales strategy than just having influencers tell their followers that our product is the cat’s meow (and the dog’s bow-wow), but understanding how to structure influencer campaigns to support and even facilitate the sales process is pretty important these days.

Let’s quickly identify a couple of important things that distinguish a brand awareness campaign from a campaign for traffic and clicks. 

Reach

Whether you’re rolling out a brand awareness influencer campaign or a campaign for clicks, reach is going to be important. 

For brand lift influencer campaigns… it’s smart to partner with larger influencers – as many as your budget can handle. The goal is to have a network of macro-influencers talking up your product or brand to their followers and extolling the virtues of your product.

When your campaign goal is to get clicks… partner with a diverse set of influencers who have sizable, engaged followings. In this case, it may be more beneficial to enlist a greater number of smaller influencers to give you the opportunity to target different segments of your audience with more targeted messaging.

Platform

For brand lift influencer campaigns… Short-form video is fantastic for boosting awareness, which makes TikTok, Instagram (Reels) and even YouTube (Short) are the perfect platforms for getting more eyes. YouTube is effective, for sure, but it tends to be a much larger financial investment (like, add-a-zero larger).  

For influencer campaigns for conversions… Coupling Instagram Reels with YouTube is a great way to have influencer content perform double duty. If you’re driving people to a landing page, you could have influencers push traffic to their own blogs where users can grab coupon codes after checking out more behind-the-scenes content on the brand or product. You could also have influencers send traffic directly to your own landing page by making it a requirement for influencers to attach a specific, trackable URL to their posts.  

When they’re active on their own blogs, the content they create for your campaign has a much better chance of surfacing in Google search results. When they’re also active on Instagram, they can drive traffic from the platform to their blog, or from the platform to your landing/product page. 

Another thing to remember about blogs is that the content has an exponentially longer life cycle than Instagram posts (2 years compared to 2 days). So, you want to partner with bloggers who have blogs that are well-trafficked, and whose blogs bring in unique monthly visitors in the tens of thousands. You may have to work with them to create keyword-optimized influencer-generated blog content. 

Dedicated Content

For brand awareness campaigns… One of the things brands can do to minimize costs is to include their products as part of a larger piece of content that may include other products as well. For instance, having your luxury bath set included in a Mother’s Day haul video that features super-comfy slippers, aromatherapy set, and a few other luxe items. 

Great for brand awareness. Not ideal for clicks. 

For an influencer marketing conversion campaign… When the goal is to get clicks, have influencers create dedicated content to ensure your product is the only one featured. For Instagram posts, also make sure your branded hashtag and your brand or product @-mentions are the only ones in the caption. For YouTube videos, make sure your link is the only one in the product section of the video description. 

CTA + Link

For brand awareness influencer campaigns… mentions are 100% necessary, but links usually aren’t. It may even be too soon in the process to expect people to hop over to your site from IG unless your product is being tagged or included among shoppable items as part of a lookbook or outfit of the day kind of thing. But generally, for brand lift influencer campaigns (which can live on Instagram), you just want to make sure the influencer includes the branded campaign hashtag and @-mentions the brand. 

For an influencer marketing campaign for conversions… you’ll need both links and a CTA. This one and the previous point go hand-in-hand because you’ll want a dedicated post that makes your product look like the only game in town. You don’t want the influencer mentioning competitors by name, even if it’s just to say how awesome your thing is compared to theirs. And you don’t want your link buried in a list of affiliate products that could easily steal your thunder. 

No, to get conversions, have influencer partners include links back to your landing page/product page, and the swipe-up feature in Stories should go to your landing page or product page as well.

Love this example from a campaign we ran for Feit Electric, which generated more than 60,000 clicks over to our client’s landing pages. The campaign called for several influencers to drive traffic to Feit’s website. So, landing pages were created of each influencer’s recommendations (to match the products they created their content around) and traffic was driven to these landing pages from sponsored content posted on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

Angela Lanter created this back porch makeover video , transitioning their porch from a fall theme to a winter theme using Feit Electric string lights.

She attached links from her content to a corresponding landing page on Feit’s website, which included those string lights as one of her recommendations.

It’s so important that when people see influencer content they have a clear path for what they should do next. “Swipe up to grab this deal” or “Head over to my blog for the coupon code” or Links and a clear CTA will help influencers drive Instagram traffic from Instagram and provide followers with those next important steps.

In this case, Angela included trackable links in the description of her YouTube video and she actually walked users through the Feit Electric app that allows you to control your smart lights even when you’re not home.

One thing on pushing traffic to a landing page…

Now, I’ll quickly add here that a Wunderman Thompson poll revealed that 56 percent of consumers would rather not have to leave a platform to make a purchase. So, for your 2023 clicks-focused influencer campaigns, it may be worth it to consider focusing more on streamlining and shortening the path to purchase. 

Promo Codes + Pixels

For brand awareness campaigns… pixels are a good idea because looping retargeting into your brand awareness campaign is a smart move. I always like to use the vitamin example. Let me first say that I’m not really in the market for a new vitamin since I’m all stocked up and have my regular vitamin on autoship through Amazon. But I actually could be swayed if @getupwithnards or another one of the moms I follow online . This would be one of the influencers I follow who has young children and a full-time job sitch. If one of them finds a vitamin that cures “mom brain” and helps stabilize energy, my ears would perk up, and I promise you it wouldn’t take long before I was in somebody’s funnel.

Unless I got distracted by life. That happens to a lot of us.

And if there’s no retargeting strategy that pulls me back in with a pic of the vitamin bottle or some UGC from a mommy influencer who participated in the campaign, it would be really easy for that vitamin brand that had me HOOKED to miss out on a guaranteed sale. So, pixels are a must for brand awareness campaigns AND conversion campaigns.

But for getting clicks… promo codes also matter. They incentivize the deal you’re promoting, and they’re a good way to track which influencers are delivering for your campaign. When you know that, you know which influencers to loop in for the next stage of your current campaign, and even for future campaigns. 

Product Visibility

For any influencer campaign you run, the images should be hi-res images that are captivating and engagement-worthy. This one isn’t really a differentiator, but it’s worth noting in this post that contextual product embeds will trump basic product placement posts every single time. If I had to nail it down to a percentage, I would say the product should be visible in 20% – 25% of your content, whether that’s video or images. What goes in the rest of the content? LIFE, man!

That’s not to say every post has to be some lame pic of you mopping your floor with a yellow container of cleaning solution on the countertop in the background. (Actually, those don’t have to be lame either.) But it is to say that generally speaking, the actual products won’t be the main focus of the post.

A really fun take on this may be hosting an Instagram takeover where each of your influencer partners engage on your profile for a few days as part of the campaign. But still, all that other stuff I mentioned still applies.

Content + Messaging

The final aspect of this whole thing that is important for both brand awareness campaigns and campaigns for conversions is the messaging. Remember what I said earlier about not needing vitamins, but being swayed by a mom who feels my pain and maybe has a better solution than me taking three different types of vitamin every day?

Messaging matters, and that’s true even when it seems like drumming up interest and getting conversions is going to be impossible. Enter Mint Mobile.

Before Deadpool was showing up in Mint Mobile spots with his dry wit and hilarious commentary, Mint Mobile took to Instagram with an influencer campaign to boost brand lift while simultaneously driving clicks. The video below is from Ryan Reynolds’ YouTube channel. His Mint Mobile spots are hilarious.

Our challenge, of course, was getting a SIM card to make you stop-scroll and click. And posting a pic of an actual SIM card wasn’t going to do it. The influencers we brought into the campaign needed to be creative. They needed to be really good at creating compelling visuals.

The other thing was the messaging had to be spot-on if the campaign was going to compel people to click the link and give the service a shot.

Of the concepts we went with for this campaign, I want to show you two so that you can see how content + messaging + product placement works to drive a click.

Concept #1: Influencing (@afashionnerd)

Appeals to influencers and creators, many of whom are building their businesses and reputations while trying to keep their cost of living low.

Concept #2: Adulting(@prettylittleeegirls)

Young adults who are just making their way in the world. What’s more appealing than finally adulting and not needing your parents for something as important as your phone because you’ve found a way to get your phone bill down to $15 a month… and you can definitely handle $15 a month.

This campaign drove more than 10,000 clicks because it wasn’t just pictures of the Mint SIM card and captions talking about it being $15. The campaign was made up of really interesting images that stand out in the feed captioned with messaging that was relatable and that could compel people to act.

This brings me to my final point…

When you’re running a campaign for clicks, make sure you have stipulations in your contract that ensure influencers will keep their posts live for as long as possible. Many influencers don’t mind keeping sponcon in their feeds, but be prepared to negotiate if you want to keep that content live in the influencers’ feeds after your campaign ends. It IS a good idea to keep that cotnent live for as long as you possibly can, ESPECIALLY blog content because once it’s live, it has SEO value that can drive traffic to landing pages for years to come.

So… You CAN Build an Influencer Campaign That Supports Conversions

Effective influencer campaigns go way beyond just building brand awareness. Don’t get me wrong, campaigns designed to boost brand lift are important -awareness always precedes a click – but when you know what to do, you can build influencer campaigns to achieve a number of different marketing goals. Clicks happens to be one of them.

Actually, if you want more help with this, we wrote a book on setting campaign goals here.

Otherwise, The Shelf team is pretty awesome. We dream up amazing concepts to help even the most utilitarian products – like SIM cards – come off as a little more hip, edgy, and necessary. If you need help with your next campaign, we’ve got you covered. Click the button and let’s rack up a win.

About This Author

Sorilbran Stone | Content Strategist

I serve as the resident content strategist and the official Head of Content Marketing at The Shelf. Marketing is my happy place. I’m as happy looking at analytics as I am actually creating a thing. I focus a lot on dreaming up and implementing the best ways to create, publish, and distribute content that will build your brand and get your audience to do a thing.

The post Influencer Marketing for Conversions vs Influencer Marketing for Awareness appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.