As the landscape of advertising has changed, and buyers have demonstrated time and again that they trust their peers over celebrities, influencer marketing has become a commodity. Between 2016 and 2018, influencer marketing grew from a $1.7 billion to $4.6 billion industry, according to Influencer Marketing Hub’s The State of Influencer Marketing Report 2019.

A Few Key Insights About B2B Marketing That Will Put Things In Perspective

Before we dive into strategies for partnering with B2B influencers, I want to provide a little background information on B2B and B2C marketing and why the content an influencer creates for your brand would be of value.

LET’S COMPARE THE TWO: B2C VS B2B INFLUENCER MARKETING

In the consumer-facing world, B2C influencer marketing is a pretty straightforward, concept-wise: high profile influencers (or “creators”) partner with brands to promote a product or service to their followers on social media.

By far, the most popular platform for B2C influencer marketing is Instagram. Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are also popular go-tos for creating and sharing sponsored content. For B2B, marketing with influencers is a different process altogether.

About one in three marketing professionals run influencer campaigns for the B2B sector. And the most popular platforms are Facebook (89%), LinkedIn (81%), and Twitter (75%), according to Blue Corona.

With B2B Marketing, Content Paves the Path to Purchase

Content paves the path to purchase for both B2B and B2C buyers. Seventy-one percent of B2B researchers begin their research with generic Google searches. Eighty-nine percent of B2B researchers use the internet for the research phase, while B2B buyers conduct about a dozen online searches before interacting with a vendor’s website. Most view at least eight pieces of content during the purchase process, and 82 percent of buyers viewed at least 5 pieces of content from the vendor prior to purchase.

Stats. Stats. Stats. Well, there are a few more that will serve as useful segues into the influencer marketing part of this post: 80 percent of business decision makers favor getting brand information via an article series more than ads, but relevance is key. One in three business buyers limit their engagement with B2B vendors is because marketers send them irrelevant content.

The fact is targeted, relevant content is useful tool for moving B2B buyers through the purchase process. helps move buyers through the purchase process. Six in ten B2B buyers say they can make a purchasing decision based on online content alone. While 64 percent of C-suite execs have to okay company purchases, 81 percent of non-executive decision-makers also have a say in purchase decisions.

The challenge for B2B marketers is that buyers usually don’t show up on their radars until they are more than halfway through (57 percent) the purchase process. That’s when they finally talk to a sales rep. As a brand, you have to be deliberate, proactive, and strategic about the way your team handles content creation and distribution.

Four Tips for Finding the Right Influencers for Your B2B Influencer Marketing Campaign

One of the key advantages of influencer marketing that any B2C company can vouch for is that it enables brands to amass a catalog of user-generated content specifically designed to appeal to the influencer’s audience. Influencers are brands within themselves. Most influencers are very protective of their reputations and their audiences because they’ve worked so hard to cultivated a community built on mutual interests and trust.

Partnering with a B2B influencer gives you an in with each influencer’s audience. No, it won’t be marketing designed to target your entire audience, but that’s an old B2B marketing model anyway that no longer works.

That said, any brand can leverage influencer marketing to generate more leads, provided that influencer is offering expert insight. Below we go into specifics of how your B2B operation can do just that.

#1 Identify Influencers Who Most Align with Your Brand

Partnering with the right influencer is largely a matter of finding those whose values align with your own. Otherwise, your campaign can end up looking like a series of sponsored ads.

That’s a bad thing. A very bad thing.

So, seek out influencers who have similar goals and similar audiences. In the B2B world, you can look at known quantities within your industry like popular event speakers, thought leaders, business heads, industry trade-journal authors, and expert bloggers/vloggers.

• Do their goals (or those of the company they represent) align with your business?
• Can they shape opinions in your business sector?
• Are your customer bases similar? Similar enough for there to be significant overlap between your target audience and theirs?

Know that while both B2C and B2B influencers are active on social media, B2B influencers heavily focus on Twitter and LinkedIn (particularly LinkedIn Blogs). LinkedIn is a good place to start when you’re searching for influencer partners. Actively building your pool of potential partners can be as simple as following hashtags on LinkedIn.

(Which you can access by clicking the Discover More link beneath the Followed Hashtags section on the left panel in your Home feed).

#2 Carefully Examine Potential Influencer Partners

By far, finding the right influencer partners is the thing brands find most challenging. Without access to influencer marketing software like The Shelf that can run reports on demand to provide you with the data you need to find influencers who will be the best fit, you’re pretty much stuck manually scrolling social media feeds to see if you can spot patterns and inconsistencies.

Engagement Is the Single Most Important KPI

By far, the most important metric to watch is engagement rate. Engagement gives you some indication of how an influencer’s content is being received by his/her followers.

The good news is that identifying B2B influencers is a lot less risky than spotting legitimate B2C influencers. What you see with a B2Bs influencer’s audience size and engagement is typically what you get. More than anything else B2B followers pluck leaders from among the masses based on the person’s track record.

So, even the bots that are following Jack Welch can’t really damage the reputation he’s already built as a business leader. And businesses don’t seek out Simon Sinek’s expertise because he has 2.4 million followers on LinkedIn. They probably seek him out because he’s the “WHY?” guy. His large social media following is just a nice bonus.

Because B2B influencers are often working in niche industries, they’re usually known quantities in their sectors, so their authority is easily verified. When influencers are still establishing their authority, it’s a good idea to vet influencers by verifying the authenticity of their authority. Go to their websites, look for articles they’ve written and videos they’ve created and published. In the B2B space, authority and influencer are more easily verified.

Macro or Micro for B2B Influencers?

Should you ever target a micro-influencer? The obvious question is: why would a business forego working with the Jack Welches and Larry Kims of the world – an opportunity that would allow any company business to maximize its visibility by getting in front of millions of an influencer’s followers – to partner with an influencer who has thousands of followers?

There are a couple of reasons companies typically choose to partner with micro-influencers over macro-influencers or celebrity influencers.

The first is budget. Along with a wider reach, macro-influencers typically have significantly higher fees, which can present a barrier for startups and micro businesses.

Another popular reason is that smaller B2B influencers typically have more targeted audiences. Before Gary Vaynerchuk became Gary Vee, the clouds-and-dirt-sneaker guy, he hosted a show called Wine Library.

Wine.

Gary Vee.

Which means that 10 years ago, you probably only knew this guy if you frequented his family’s liquor store or watched his wine-tasting channel on YouTube. For him, “going wide” most likely meant diversifying his message to capture a larger audience.

One reason commonly given as a reason to partner with micro-influencers over macro-influencers is increased engagement, which is valid. Often the fewer followers an influencer has, the more effectively they’re able to reach their target audience.

Of course, the trade you make with micro-influencers is usually time, as it takes longer to reach the same size audience you would reach by partnering with just one or two macro- or mega-influencers. If you have the time to hire a dozen micro-influencers who can take the next few weeks to make the rounds, or if you’re targeting a smaller audience working with smaller influencers probably won’t pose a problem.

Micro-influencers are a particularly good fit if you’re a B2B operation looking to boost your local SEO. True, certain B2B companies, particularly those in the tech/SaaS sector, are solely digital companies that sell to other companies nationwide.

However, if your B2B brand has a physical location and meets with customers face to face, having a strategy to boost brand awareness in your area is important. Hiring a micro-influencer who has followers and fans in your city and town will go a long way to helping you achieve just that.

#3 Maintain Good Relationships with Influencers

This may seem like a no-brainer, but there’s a subtle art to maintaining a mutually-beneficial relationship with an influencer. You never want to come on too strong by suggesting they eschew their greatest commodity—authenticity—for hard-sell sales tactics. This would be a futile strategy anyway because, as we mentioned above, B2B buyers don’t respond to overt advertising tactics anyway.

Moreover, always ensure relevancy in what you’re offering them. Influencers thrive on providing their audience meaty content on topics relevant in their lives. If your products or services aren’t meeting that demand then there’s no point in continuing the partnership. In short, continuously reinforce your value proposition to the influencer with whom you work.

#4 Share Their Content to Acknowledge Their Expertise

Then there’s the content, which is the lynchpin for B2B influencer marketing. Many B2B influencers hold natural positions of authority such as journalists, analysts, business owners, experts, and content creators. Nothing says you’re more committed to building a long-term, mutually beneficial business relationship than sharing THEIR content to your network on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

Just remember to tag them when you share (or retweet) their content. It lets them know you’re committed to mutual promotion and also helps put you on their radars so they will start following you.

COPY AND PASTE THIS CODE TO EMBED THIS GRAPHIC.

<div style=”clear:both”><a href=”https://marketing.theshelf.com/infographic-content-and-b2b-influencer-marketing”><img src=”<br /><br /><br /> https://marketing.theshelf.com/infographic-content-and-b2b-influencer-marketing” title=”Content Paves the Path to Purchase for B2B Marketing” border=”0″ /></a></div><div>Courtesy of: <a style=”text-decoration:underline; color:#11d3c8;” href=”https://www.theshelf.com/the-blog/influencers-b2b-marketing”>The Shelf</a></div>

Conclusion

In the end, a successful B2B influencer strategy is about building relationships. It’s finding influential individuals who are authentic and who can drum up interest in their content, events, and conversations.

Yes, authenticity is a bit easier to measure than it is in the B2C world of Instagram influencers, but putting together an influencer campaign in the B2B space is just as much of a challenge. But if you can adhere to the above tips and strategies, you’ll find that the questions resolve themselves, and you’ll enjoy a mutually-beneficial relationship with the right influencer to help you maximize your lead generation.

About This Contributor

Ryan Gould, Vice President of Strategy and Marketing Services, Elevation Marketing

From legacy Fortune 100 institutions to inventive start-ups, Ryan brings extensive experience with a wide range of B2B clients. He skillfully architects and manages the delivery of integrated marketing programs, and believes strongly in strategy, not just tactics, that effectively aligns sales and marketing teams within organizations. Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

The post Why Influencers May Be the Solution to Your B2B Marketing Problem appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

Big and small businesses alike work hard to find (and implement) creative influencer strategies for their top products. A lot of planned elements go into a creator marketing strategy. 

There are unboxings, reviews, paid posts, events, activations, social media takeovers, and more depending on what the brand requires.

It’s not surprising that even small businesses engage influencers, considering that around 85 percent of consumers trust user-generated content over branded content, and 61 percent of consumers trust word-of-mouth marketing and social media reviews when making important purchases. 

It’s clear that if you want your business to do well and keep you top of mind with your audience, you need a solid influencer marketing game plan, and that often means you’ll want to work with brand advocates.

RELATED POST.

An 8-Point Checklist to Find Influencers for Your Brand

Know Thy Influencer Tiers

Before we get into converting your influencers into genuine brand ambassadors, let’s grab a quick refresher on the different types of influencers. We’re dropping this in here because it’s just as important to understand when to use different types of influencers as it is to actually know the difference between them. 

Mega Influencers

Mega-influencers are the big kahunas of the influencer world. They are usually global brands themselves who have parlayed their offline celebrity into online influence and can command (and get) six and seven figures for their sponsored content.

Macro Influencers 

Macro-influencers have between 300,000 and 1,000,000 single-platform followers. Most macro-influencers are well-known internet stars, most of whom earned their fame online first, and gained their following by creating enticing content, usually across multiple social channels. 

Mid-tier influencers 

Mid-tier influencers have between 50,000 and 300,000 single-platform followers. Weirdly, they aren’t always thought of when brands are doing influencer selection, even though they have sway with tens of thousands of social media users. 

Micro-Influencers

Micro-influencers have single-platform audiences that range from 5,000 to 50,000 followers. Micros are the cool, up-and-coming social media stars that everyone wants to know and be friends with. Why? ‘Cause they’re cheap dates and know all the trivia.  

Nano-Influencers

Nano-influencers have between 1,000 and 5,000 followers on a single platform, with one caveat: nano-influencers are only classified as such if they actually have intentions of being one. In this day and age, anyone can rack up 1,000 followers pretty easily, so a nano-influencer is one who is intentionally communicating with their audience with the understanding that they have influence with their followers. 

Annnnnd… What Are Brand Advocates? 

Influencer marketing aside, brand advocates are people who love your product, brand, or both and they have no problem telling other people about it. These are loyalists that brands love to retain because they swear by the products they use, and their circle of influence attracts new loyalists, too. 

Now, within the context of what we’re talking about here, brand advocates are influential social media creators who partner with brands to extol the virtues of the brand’s products. Their goal is usually to increase awareness and keep brands top of mind. 

Often, brand advocates will promote all sorts of programs and ways for consumers to buy the brand’s products. 

These can include things like discount coupons, sales info, member benefits, or vouchers. For influencer campaigns. The Shelf uses its proprietary SaaS platform to organize any challenges, contests, and incentive programs. But outside the capable walls of The Shelf Influencer Marketing Agency, a brand could also use data warehouse software to keep the records of these types of programs sorted. Super useful if you’re doing email blasts and cold calls. 

So, how can you get the best of both worlds and marry these two concepts? How can a brand hit the sweet spot, i.e., convert their panel of influencers into genuine brand advocates who will earnestly push their products, going above and beyond the line of duty? 

How to Convert Influencers into Brand Advocates

Here’s how you can turn influencers into dedicated brand ambassadors and increase engagement for your brand. 

1.   Pick the right influencer

Seems like a no-brainer, but influencer selection is tricky. Like, really tricky. Historically, it’s been one of the toughest things for in-house marketing teams to master about influencer marketing. Makes sense. There are a lot of important variables to consider when it comes time to identify potential influencer partners:

• Demographics
• Audience sentiment
• Fraud and bots
• Brand safety issues
• Brand-to-influencer alignment
• Creativity and vibe

The good news is if you have the right tools, you can find influencers for even the toughest influencer selection efforts. The right influencer can fall in love with your brand, turning them into brand advocates.

​​2. Account takeovers

A great way to warm influencers to your brand is to invite them to take over your social channels, which is essentially just having a set period of time when an influencer is in charge of and posting to (and through) a brand’s account directly. 

You may remember the now iconic takeover of Sephora’s Instagram account by the reclusive Olsen Twins back in 2016. The event got tons of press as the famous duo posted their first selfie EVER to Sephora’s account.

Brands like Glossier and Calvin Klein will bring on influencers and allow them to take over (which is a fancy name for this frequently. In fact, Calvin Klein has made brand advocates out of the Kardashians after repeated campaigns. 

Well, you don’t have to be Calvin Klein or bring in a Kardashian. When you find the right creator (or creators) and have them go live or post to your account for a few hours, or even for a day.  

Fans get a fun surprise when they come to your social channel, plus they’ll get the chance to engage with the influencer. Piggybacking on the influencers’ audience will get you eyeballs, and more importantly, engagement. Ultimately, the goal is to get those all-important conversions. 

3.   Use two-way communication

One of the things that can make an influencer marketing campaign look and smell like an ad is when brands present creators with scripts that don’t jibe with a creator’s normal content. 

That’s a no-no. And the best way to get your sponsored content totally ignored. Banner blindness is real. 

Instead of sending an inflexible script, an influencer brief would be a better option. An influencer brief is a document that the brand/agency provides to influencers/content creators which outlines the creative and logistical details of an influencer marketing campaign. 

The value of working with influencers is that they know exactly what to say to engage and influence your target audience. So, choose the best creators for your campaign, provide them with a framework, and let them do what they do best. 

Just a quick note here… By law, creators own what they create. So, be sure to sign a formal contract with the influencer that details what is expected of them, but also what rights you have to the content they creat for your campaign. Shameless plug… look for DocuSign competitors (free) to seal the deal electronically and roll out your campaign without a content rights hassle later on.

RELATED POST.

What is an Influencer?

Final Note: Prioritize ROI

We didn’t mention this earlier, but it’s important to identify your campaign goals long before an influencer brief or selection process ever kicks off. That way you know which metrics are important to monitor during your campaign.

It’s important to monitor your ROI as your influencer campaign progresses. Monitoring the metrics will help you determine if you’re on track to meet your goals. Plus, it’ll help you determine how to tweak your campaign in real-time to get your campaign on track. 

About the Author

Yauhen Zaremba – Director of Demand Generation

Yauhen is the Director of Demand Generation at PandaDoc, all-in-one document management tool for almost all types of document including this California bill of sale template. He’s been a marketer for 10+ years, and for the last five years, he’s been entirely focused on the electronic signature, proposal, and document management markets. Yauhen has experience speaking at niche conferences where he enjoys sharing his expertise with other curious marketers. And in his spare time, he is an avid fisherman and takes nearly 20 fishing trips every year. He has also written for other domains such as Landbot.io and DivvyHQ.

Headshot: Image

The post How To Transform Your Influencer Network Into Brand Advocates appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

However, clever brand leaders won’t blaze trails blindly. Instead, they ensure they have protections in place that will keep them from absorbing the impact of negative publicity and financial liabilities that may crop up when influencer campaigns go wrong. And they sometimes do. Smart brands install influencer insurance.

This post reviews the risks and challenges that can surface unexpectedly, leaving brands navigating unfamiliar territory regarding influencer marketing. Plus, let’s unveil some tailored solutions for brands, content creators, and influencers. 

Listen to this article

What Influencer Marketing Risks Do Brands Face?

Although influencer marketing is booming, with expectations of the market expanding to roughly $16.4 billion in 2022, this fast-growing industry faces unique risks. Much of the time it seems they pop up out of nowhere. Many of the exposures we’ve listed below snowball from supposed annoyances to high-dollar lawsuits. Let’s review some risks brand/influencer teams face regularly.  

FTC Noncompliance 

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recommends influencers identify sponsored content with the #sponsored or #ad hashtags. However, not all content creators follow these guidelines. Some never label their content whatsoever. Unsurprisingly, the FTC has cracked down on content creators and influencers, shifting influencer guidelines from suggestions to mandatory rules that it can (and will) enforce. It pays to watch new FTC regulations closely so you’re not blindsided when you least expect it.

Often, it’s not just the FTC that are watching influencers. This week, reality start Kim Kardashian agreed to pay a $1.26 million fine levied by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in which she and several other influential celebs including boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr and basketball star Paul Pierce were accused of promoting a crypto coin as part of a plan to inflate the value of the coin ahead selling it to investors.

So, it’s probably not a coincidence that the SEC released this video the same day the settlement was reached.

Unfulfilled Expectations 

The headlines sometimes feature famous battles between influencers and brands due to unfulfilled expectations. A legal struggle often ensues when agreements are forgotten or ignored and promises are broken. Brands and influencers must be on the same page, preferably via a well-written legal contract called an influencer brief. However, unfulfilled expectations can still create issues regardless of legalities. Influencers and brands can avoid these costly hurdles by nurturing an open and transparent business relationship.

Legal Liability 

There’s a saying that talk is cheap — but those same cheap and “innocent” words could result in costly lawsuits. Several lawsuits could surface from mere words, such as libel (defamation), copyright and trademark infringement, breach of confidentiality, negligent misstatements, and bodily injury (arising from content). Here’s the thing: what may seem harmless to one person could be offensive to another. While walking on eggshells is no fun, understanding legal liability is a critical aspect of your influencer marketing strategy.

Business Downtime 

Technology sometimes fails us, and service outages can come from many angles, from routine system maintenance to cyber extortion attacks. When influencers and brands depend on a cloud service for continuity, a malfunction can trigger business interruption. When content creators and influencers can’t do their job, brands often pay the price (i.e., lost income, lawsuits, extra operating costs, etc.). Take it from us; these occurrences happen at the most inconvenient times. 

Data Protection 

Cybersecurity has become a priority for most company leaders, primarily because of newly evolved cyber liability risks. Consider the massive data breaches Robinhood and Twitch experienced in 2021. Although a data breach isn’t anything more than a disclosure leak or security violation, they cost US businesses more than $4 million per incident. Unfortunately, hackers are savvy on many platforms brands use for influencer marketing, bumping data protection up the priority list. 

Third-party Injury

There’s nothing casual about endorsing products on a social media platform, mainly because of the legal ramifications that might erupt. For example, people can make numerous claims against content creators who endorse a defective product. Some allegations include negligence, fraud, and liability. When brands roll out new products that result in third-party or personal injury, such as financial loss, there could be several lawsuits to juggle. Even if the suit is baseless, defense fees add up quickly, especially with many parties holding liability. 

We actually created an encyclopedia on this stuff…

The Complete Guide to Influencer Marketing

What Is Influencer Insurance? And What Insurance Coverage Do Brands Need?

Media Liability Insurance (also known as Influencer Insurance) protects creators and brands from potential lawsuits involving their social media activities.

According to the extensive list of risks above, brands and influencers face a plethora of challenges. However, the insurance industry is notoriously antiquated, so relying on “old school” problems to solve emerging risks doesn’t pan out. Christine McCarthy from Scale Underwriting — developers of the new media liability insurance product, Sale Social — sums it up well, “The emergence of TikTok and other digital content platforms requires the insurance industry to think differently.” 

As a result, brands must address the well-known risks their influencers will undoubtedly face. We recommend those involved in influencer marketing to consider purchasing insurance containing protection from the following: 

• Advertising exposures: This coverage protects against a claim for breach of contract from the advertising agent or brand.
• Publishing exposures: This portion protects against libel (defamation), copyright and trademark infringement, breach of confidentiality, negligent misstatements, and bodily injury (arising from content). 
• Regulatory exposures: FTC investigation and defense costs can add up quickly, but this coverage protects against failure to disclose paid endorsement.

As mentioned, only bespoke insurance products can fully protect brands and their influencers. Additionally, here’s a list of coverages brands opt for when pursuing influencer marketing goals:

• General liability protects brands against basic business risks and is the foundation of any risk management plan. 
• Business interruption insurance replaces income lost and extra expenses.
• Cyber liability protects brands against damages from specific electronic activities.
• Property insurance reimburses companies for direct property losses.
• Product liability protects against claims alleging your product or service caused injury or damage.
• Professional liability protects brands against lawsuits of inferior work or service.

RELATED POST.

2022 Influencer Marketing Best Practices

Where Can Brands Purchase Influencer Insurance?

Brands can depend on three main ecosystems to provide influencer insurance, including:

• Commercial insurance broker, representing the buyer
• Insurance agent, representing the insurer
• Independent marketplace, partnering with other industry players

Naturally, shopping for commercial insurance is a nuanced process. It’s more than merely landing on the cheapest deal. Brands want online support, multi-channel communication, comprehensive coverage, and more. Working with a trusted commercial insurance broker is an excellent way to address your particular needs, especially one specializing in your industry. 

Insurance agents can also be helpful; however, they do bat for the insurer instead of the buyer. So, you might end up with more products than you genuinely need. Independent marketplaces are designed for convenience and efficiency as opposed to guidance and support. It’s a solid idea to know what you want before teaming with an independent marketplace. 

Related Post

UGC Rights: Who Owns the Content You Pay Influencers to Create for You?

How Much Does Influencer Insurance Cost?

Although each brand is unique and unlike another, the insurance industry relies on several concrete factors to determine the premium cost for influencer insurance. Aside from your brand’s size and developmental stage, insurers consider the following factors: 

• Exposures: risks being insured
• Company practices; views on safety, compliance, and risk management
• Revenue: total amount of income generated by the sales of goods and services
• Location: where your business is located
• Number of employees: size of your workforce
• Business equipment and property: includes office equipment, specialized tools, real property, etc.
• Program structure: the amount of deductible and willingness for a company to assume more risk
• Claims history: the type and amount of past claims against the company

Influencer marketing isn’t going away anytime soon, making it an excellent idea to understand the terrain extensively. Identification is a massive part of risk management, and some might say it’s half the battle. By taking into account known risks and practicing clever risk management techniques, brands can become savvy marketers and harness influencers’ impact to the fullest.  

Influencer marketing is a hot topic currently. Nearly 41 million creators have up to 100,000 followers, giving brands the perfect opportunity to capitalize on this technique. However, clever brand leaders won’t blaze trails blindly. This post reviews the risks and challenges that can surface unexpectedly, leaving brands navigating unfamiliar territory regarding influencer marketing. Plus, let’s unveil some tailored solutions for brands, content creators, and influencers. 

About the Author

Shraddha Nair (She/Her)

Shraddha is a Client Advisor, Customer Success team member with Founder Shield, a risk management partner for rapidly evolving, high-growth companies. Founder Shield works with more venture-backed companies than any other brokerage in the world and was created to take the stress out of buying insurance for venture-backed startup companies. . 

shraddha@foundershield.com 

Connect with me!

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

Getting specific results that focus on different types of metrics depends on the way an influencer campaign is structured. The Shelf blog has several published posts on the different types of influencer campaigns – how to build Instagram influencer campaigns for clicks vs influencer campaigns for awareness.

Another way to tweak your campaign and the outcomes you get is to switch up the model you use for your influencer collab. But how do companies know which type of influencer collaboration to choose? In this article, we’ll compare six types of influencer collaborations so you can see which would suit your brand the best.

The Do’s and Don’ts of a Successful Influencer Collaboration

The digital revolution is here. Work, entertainment, and socializing have all shifted online. Social media use is up by over 40 percent since 2019. And by 2021, the influencer market was worth a staggering $13.8 billion. During 2020, 58 percent of social media users noticed an increase in influencer content. So, it’s no surprise businesses are including influencers in their marketing strategies.

In order for an influencer collaboration to work, it needs to feel authentic. Let’s say you’re a B2B marketing firm looking to promote your new course on high-velocity sales. Partnering with a marketing influencer would feel much more authentic than a fashion influencer. So, it’s important to choose influencers who share the interests and values of your target audience.

There are several ways to find influencers for your campaign, and the influencer selection process is critical for the success of your campaign. The nuances of finding the right influencers are important, but whatever way influencers are selected, you want to be able to compare different influencers based on things like:

• The number many followers they have
• How engaged their followers are
• How active they are on the platform and across other platforms
• How their content usually performs and how their followers respond to different types of content

If you’re thinking of collaborating with an influencer, there are a few do’s and don’ts you should bear in mind.

Do…

1. Have clear goals, objectives, and KPIs

Having clearly defined goals for your influencer marketing efforts will shape your campaign. Visibility, traffic, and conversions are top, so before you approach an influencer, you need to know:

• What you want to achieve
• How you want to achieve it
• How you’ll measure success 

Most camp

2. Provide an influencer brief

A good influencer brief introduces the influencer to your brand and provides clear guidance on the kind of content you’re looking for. An influencer brief tells the creator what is expected of them. Think: campaign ideas that are similar to what the influencer is already creating, but tailored to your brand and campaign needs.

For example, if you’re running a baby and parenting campaign, and you chose a mommy influencer who is very candid and open about motherhood, it’s smart to have a creative framework developed by your own creative team in which the influencer can craft her own content.

An influence brief gives the creator context for the campaign without trampling all over their creativity.

3. Tailor your approach

When it comes to doing influencer outreach, you can tailor your approach by using the influencer’s first name and referencing their work (which means you have to know their previous work, right?). If you don’t, they’ll know it, and that will put them off working with you. This is also crucial in order to create the best brief possible.  

4. Offer fair compensation

Whether you’re offering a fee or free products or services (about a third of brands running influencer campaigns want to pay influencers in freebies), you need to make sure it’s fair and competitive. After all, popular influencers get offers from brands all the time and they decline as many offers as they accept.

Just like any other job/career, influencers have semi-predictable rates that can be compared to industry standards, and most influencers have no problem negotiating for what they’re worth. And let’s face it – at the end of the day, you’re trying to woo them and leverage their talent to help your business, not the other way around.

5. Give the influencer time to prepare

When you approach an influencer, ask them how long they think the project will take. And remember: stellar content takes time to create. So, make sure to reach out with plenty of time, otherwise, their rate will go up for a speedy delivery or they’ll simply turn the offer down due to time constraints..

Don’t…

1. Don’t limit the influencer’s creativity

It’s important to specify the kind of content you’re after, but it’s also important not to limit the influencer’s creativity. The influencer knows their audience, so let them create the kind of content they know works best.

2. Don’t pitch straight away

Before you jump into your pitch, get to know the influencer. Building a connection will make it easier to tailor your approach later. And in the long run, it will make the collaboration smoother. 

3. Don’t expect instant results

It can take time for influencer collabs to pay off. It may even take more than one campaign. This is why doing your research and choosing the right influencer is so important. If you do your due diligence,it will pay off in the end. 

Types of influencer collabs

Now you know some of the general do’s and don’ts of influencer collaborations, let’s look at some of your options. 

1. Sponsored content

Sponsored content includes sponsored social media content and sponsored blog posts. Both can be effective ways of generating interest and driving sales and conversions. In most cases, a business pays the influencer a flat fee.

The pros and cons of sponsored content are:

Image Created by Writer

Sponsored social media content

An influencer (or influencers) posting about your brand is a great way to get shoppable content and boost sales. Instagram is the leading social media channel for sponsored content. In fact, 89% of companies say that Instagram is important for influencer marketing.

It’s important to specify exactly what you want in your influencer brief. Do you want posts with images or videos? Facebook or Instagram Stories? These are all types of sponsored content. 

It’s also important to include guidelines on disclosure. On most channels, #ad, #sponsored, or #promotion is acceptable disclosure, but it’s always good to review the current FTC guidelines regarding sponsored content disclosures.

Sponsored blog posts

In this case, a business pays an influencer to advertise their brand on their blog. Blogs tend to be trusted, so they’re a good option for businesses looking to attract customers. There are two main types of blog posts used in influencer marketing:

1. A dedicated post: This is a post on the influencer’s blog dedicated solely to your brand. 
2. A roundup-style post: This is a post that mentions several businesses. For instance, if you’re promoting your new business app, the influencer could include you in a post about the 10 best business apps. 

2. Guest blog posts 

Sometimes, influencers let businesses post content on their blog in the form of a guest blog post. In this case, the business creates the content rather than the influencer. It’s a bit like influencer whitelisting, which is when a business posts content on an influencer’s social media channels.

If this sounds like something that would work for your brand, first, you’ll need to check if an influencer allows guest posts. If they do, check their guidelines, and then pitch an idea in line with what they usually write about, but try to avoid sounding too promotional. Remember: the aim of a guest post is to write something informative. And don’t forget to include some links back to your website.

3. Brand ambassador programs 

These are also popular, though, they work best when you’ve already developed a relationship with the influencer. Brand ambassadors use and post about your product or service on a long-term basis. They can post content on their own channels or on a branded website with other influencers.

Brand ambassadors may also take part in company events and host giveaways. For example, a brand ambassador promoting video call software could host a giveaway where the winners get five free video calls with the influencer.

They are already loyal customers happy to promote the brand, so it’s an easy way to get brand awareness and even some conversions.

4. Giveaways

Giving influencers free products or services is a great way to boost brand awareness, too. Why? Because influencers can show their followers the great stuff you gave them! Most influencers do this on social media, but some have also taken the next step: buying a domain name. In this case, they can show off your brand on their website too.

Giveaways can generate lots of likes, comments, and shares. But they can backfire. The influencer might not promote you, or they might give you a negative review if they don’t like the product. So if you’re planning a giveaway, it’s best to work with influencers you already know.

5. Takeovers 

Takeovers are when an influencer takes over your social media channels for a day, week, or even month to create and post content for you. A takeover may not seem like an obvious way to promote your brand, but it can be surprisingly effective. Takeovers can boost your credibility, increase trust, and excite customers about your brand. An Instagram takeover is particularly popular, but it works on other channels, too.

If you’re planning a takeover, you need to work with an influencer you trust, especially if you’re planning a full takeover. A full takeover is when an influencer has complete access to your account. You can also do a partial takeover, which is when the influencer sends you the content to post.

Image Source

6. Affiliate Marketing

with Influencer collaborations with brands actually show up in your social media feed in a couple of different ways, one of which is affiliate marketing.

If you’re wondering “what is an affiliate program and how does it work?” – it’s simple. A company partners with an affiliate (such as a blogger or influencer) and pays them a commission. In exchange, the affiliate promotes the company to their audience. The affiliate gets paid, and the company gets customers. Win-win!

Image Created by Grace Lau, illustrated by Konstantin Smirnov

The Future: AR influencer collabs

The expected growth of augmented reality shopping paves the way for a whole new type of influencer collab. Augmented reality superimposes digital content over real-world environments. AR shopping is becoming more and more popular, especially “try-on” apps that let you try outfits on virtually or see how a new sofa looks in your space.

Try-ons could be a great way for influencers to promote a brand. They could ask followers to vote for their favorite outfit or which table they should buy. The possibilities are endless. 

Find what works for you

There are many types of influencer collaborations to choose from. Some – like takeovers and giveaways – work best with influencers you already know. Others work with any influencer. The main thing is to find what works for your brand so you can foster a productive relationship that brings you customers.  

About the Author

Grace Lau is the Director of Growth Content at Dialpad

Grace Lau is the Director of Growth Content at Dialpad, an AI-powered cloud communication platform with handy features such as crisp and clear UCaaS solutions and digital voicemail for better and easier team collaboration. She has over 10 years of experience in content writing and strategy. Currently, she is responsible for leading branded and editorial content strategies, partnering with SEO and Ops teams to build and nurture content. Here is her LinkedIn.ere is her LinkedIn.

The post Which Type of Influencer Collaboration Best Suits Your Brand? appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

Building Your Branded Assets with Influencer Content

If you’re a business owner, one question that’s always on your mind is how to scale your business. A great product is a must, but it won’t boost your ROI unless people know about it.

As more and more of us rely on social media for news, networking, and entertainment, the role of effective social media marketing takes on growing importance in the digital strategies of brands and marketers.. 

Fun fact: over 40 percent of adults used social media more often in 2020 compared to 2019l. Upwards of 58 percent of users noticed a corresponding increase in influencer-generated content. 

That said, partnering with influencers can (and should) be lucrative for both businesses and influencers. FYI, we have an entire collection of influencer marketing stats that you can check out. BUT one pretty important stat for marketers is this: 

90 percent of the brands and marketers who have used influencer marketing will vouch for its effectiveness. 

Coincidentally, the last time we published that particular stat, it was more like 75 percent (with 25 percent of brands saying they saw ZERO ROI from their campaigns, so this is good news). 

In 2021, the value of global influencer marketing reached $13.8 billion, according to Statista (and basically everyone else). Influencer marketing works and as more brands adopt this strategy as part of their digital marketing efforts, influencer marketing as an industry continues to grow.

But problems can arise if businesses don’t communicate clearly with the influencer. A lot of brands miss this aspect of planning an influencer marketing campaign. From the moment influencer outreach begins, the goal should be creating a brand partnership that is mutually beneficial for the brand, the influencer, AND the influencer’s audience. That’s where influencer briefs come in. So, what is an influencer brief, and why do you need one? Let’s find out.

What Is An Influencer Brief?

An influencer brief is a document that the brand/agency provides to influencers/content creators which outlines the creative and logistical details of an influencer marketing campaign.

Unlike an influencer contract, the brief is a set of expectations and best practices for a campaign that applies to every creator working on the campaign. So, you don’t have to outline usage rights or influencer whitelisting or specific deliverables for individual influencers UNLESS you also plan to use your influencer brief as an influencer contract.

An influencer brief is essential whenever a brand works with an influencer. It forms the basis of the entire arrangement-slash-relationship between a brand and an influencer. An influencer brief is the first thing an influencer receives from a brand after the initial outreach.

What Goes In An Influencer Brief?

Now you’re ready to start your influencer brief. There are websites that provide templates for creating influencer briefs. They may even write an influencer brief for you. If you’d rather have your in-house team handle this, however, here are 10 topics every influencer brief should cover.

#1 Information about the brand hiring for the campaign

This is a big one for two main reasons: First, brands want to make sure the influencer understands the basics like the proper spelling of a brand name (for instance, it’s eos and not Eos). As well, most influencers are careful to only partner with brands they support and whose CSR initiatives and public reputation align with the influencer’s values.

#2 Information about the specific product being promoted

Sometimes it’s obvious what the product is, but it’s smart to also include information about the specific product influencers will be promoting with their posts. Again, there has to be alignment here. What makes your brand stand out? How does it benefit customers? If your software lets customers make high-definition phone calls, for instance, include this in the brief. It could be what sells your brand.

#3 The channels and media formats to use

Tell the influencer which channels are being used in the campaign. Instagram is the most popular channel for influencer marketing – after all, 71 percent of under-30s use IG – but TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, and Facebook are also important channels, especially for B2C campaigns.. 

Data from Pewresearch.org

There are even podcast influencers who’ll discuss your products during their shows. They can help you take advantage of the 42 percent rise in global podcast consumption that the spoken word audio industry’s enjoyed over the last few years.  

#4 The branded hashtags tied to the campaign + visibility/industry hashtags to boost post visiblity

Branded hashtags are often used as a way to track audience engagement during a campaign. Plus, it helps influencers tie their posts to specific trends, movements, ideas, and brands. In addition to utilizing campaign-specific hashtags and branded hashtags, each platform has its own catalog of hashtags that are used to help posts get more traction and visibility.

#5 Campaign goals and info about the “why” behind the collab

Be sure to include your goals, objectives, and KPIs in your influencer brief. These tell the influencer exactly why you want to collaborate and what you aim to achieve. Are you launching a product on Instagram? Is this a brand awareness campaign? Or are you running a holiday campaign? Is it an always-on year-long campaign? For influencers, understanding the end goal of the campaign will inform their creative process to help brands reach campaign goals.

#6 Specific, brand-requested details

These can include things like mentioning a store location in the caption or using a specific phrase to describe a product. It’s also a good idea to provide clarity on your brand’s style and tone of voice. You could include the main points from your style guide or a mood board of colors and images you like. You should also specify the way you want your brand name to appear in campaigns to avoid confusion with similar-sounding brands.

Here’s a pretty clear example: A campaign to announce a discounted hotel stay at MGM Grand Casino would need to specify location identifiers as part of the caption text since the MGM Grand Hotel and Resorts is a Las Vegas hot spot that’s 2,014 miles away from MGM Grand Detroit.

#7 Social responsibility and legal stuff

Guess what? Videos or pics of an influencer shopping in-store should reflect how the influencer is adhering to state and local laws about vaccination status, social distancing, and masking up. That’s something brands would definitely need to address in an influencer brief.

It’s also vital to include guidelines on proper disclosure. After all, there are fines for not disclosing paid content on social media. You should check the requirements for each channel, but here are some guidelines to get you started:

• Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook: include #ad, #sponsored, or #promotion in the post.
• Blog posts: include a disclosure statement near the heading.
• YouTube: include a sponsorship statement in the first line of the description and the video.
• Podcasts: tell people it’s sponsored content before delivering the marketing message.

Screenshot from Facebook.com

#8 Formatting

As part of the influencer brief, it’s okay to include a few formatting requirements since formatting and design specs will vary depending on the channels being used and the brand. In general, format-related topics will include:

• Content format and size. Specify the height and width images should be and whether you want them in RAW, GIF, JPEG, or PNG format.
• Any marketing material you’ll provide, like logos or slogans
• Which buttons or other CTAs you want the influencer to use. For instance, a “subscribe” button or a “buy now” button. Or maybe just language int he caption that sends people to the brand page or to a link in a bio.
• Presentation. This could include things like showing text overlays in Reels and TikToks after a certain amount of time.

The key is to provide guidelines without inhibiting an influencer’s ability to be creative.

#9 Creative ideas

There’s nothing wrong with providing influencers with a few thought starters and creative influencer marketing ideas for the campaign. The Shelf account managers will usually provide influencers with a list of maybe a half-dozen ideas that align with the creative concepts presented to the client in the campaign proposal. We’ve also been known to offer tips on lighting and camera angles.

#10 DOs and DON’Ts

This is another important area to cover. Briefly outline what kind of content is suitable and what kind isn’t. A dos and don’ts list is a great way to avoid confusion and clarify your vision. What should the influencer include? What shouldn’t they include? Adding “please don’t mention companies X, Y, and Z” will ensure the influencer doesn’t accidentally mention a competitor.

Why Do You Need an Influencer Brief?

Providing an influencer brief is one of the influencer marketing best practices brands should follow. Why? There are several reasons, such as: 

• It helps your brand stand out from the crowd.
• It gives the influencer a clear picture of your brand, so they can create content that wows your target audience. 
• It prevents misunderstandings that could derail your influencer marketing strategy. 
• It ensures the content produced by influencers is tied together in some way, whether by hashtags, color palettes, language, posting schedule… SOMETHING.

3 Things to Consider Before You Create an Influencer Brief

Before you begin your influencer brief, there are a few things you need to consider.

#1 Defining your goals, objectives, and KPIs 

As with all B2C and B2B marketing strategies, you first need to decide what you want to achieve.

• Do you want to raise awareness of your brand?
• Do you want to get more clicks to your website?
• Do you want to promote a sale?

Once you’ve determined your campaign goals, think about how to achieve them. What kind of content do you need? Who’s your target audience? Which influencers are those consumers following? How will partnering with that influencer help your brand or product to stand out?

Finally, you need to identify which influencer marketing metrics to track for your campaign, right? Because impressions are great, but they don’t matter nearly as much when the most important metrics for your campaign are conversions and sales.

Data from Shanebarker.com

#2 Which type of influencer can help you get there

Next, you need to decide which influencer or influencers to partner with BASED ON the likelihood of each type of influencer to help you reach your campaign goals. There are several types of influencers to choose from:

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There are also specialist influencers like brand ambassadors, social advocates, referrers, and loyalists. These influencers are good for increasing conversions.

#3 How you’ll find influencers

Influencer marketing platforms are a great place to find influencers. They let you compare them to find out:

• Which ones align with your brand’s vision and values.
• Which ones target the audience you want to reach.
• How much their followers engage with them.

Some platforms use a recommendation engine that suggests influencers based on previous results. This is similar to how an eCommerce recommendation engine recommends products based on purchase history. 

RELATED POST.

What is an Influencer?

You Just Want to Influence the Influencer

More and more brands are taking advantage of the rapid growth of the influencer market. Influencer marketing is a great way to get your name in front of customers but to persuade influencers to work with you, you need a superb influencer brief.

If you follow all the steps in this article, you’ll be sure to have a brief that influencers will appreciate. And if they appreciate you, they’re more likely to work with you.

About the Author

Grace Lau is the Director of Growth Content at Dialpad

Grace Lau is the Director of Growth Content at Dialpad, an AI-powered cloud communication platform for better team collaboration and customer relationships with features such as Dialpad small business contact center. She has over 10 years of experience in content writing and strategy. Currently, she is responsible for leading branded and editorial content strategies, partnering with SEO and Ops teams to build and nurture content. Here is her LinkedIn.

The post How to Write an Influencer Brief That Gets AMAZING Campaign Content appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

In this post, we want to highlight a few important things to remember about Instagram, influencer marketing, and partnering with Instagram influencers to boost your visibility, drive engagement, and draw customers.

What Is Instagram Influencer Marketing?

Instagram influencer marketing is a word-of-mouth marketing tactic in which brands collaborate with popular Instagram creators to promote the brand’s products and increase a brand’s visibility among targeted audiences. Brands hire influencers to help them turn scrollers into clickers.

Influencer marketing isn’t new. Back in the day, Liberace – a stylishly-dressed, prodigious “pop” pianist who was basically the 1950s version of Elton John – helped a national bank get thousands of dollars in new deposits just by mentioning the bank on his variety show. Influencer marketing can occur just about anywhere an audience exists. This most recent iteration of influencer marketing grew alongside the popularity of Instagram influencers. Hence, Instagram influencer marketing.

Today, when most people think of influencer marketing, they think of Instagram, and with good reason. Instagram is the most popular platform for running influencer campaigns by a long shot, with 79 percent of brands using Instagram for influencer campaigns, compared with Facebook (46 percent), YouTube (36 percent), Twitter (24 percent), and LinkedIn (12 percent), according to Influencer Marketing Hub.

Why Choose Instagram for Influencer Marketing?

Well, there are several really good reasons to launch an influencer campaign on Instagram. A whopping 79 percent of brands use Instagram for influencer (or word-of-mouth) marketing. And it makes sense why – Instagram is the 7th most visited site in the world. 59 percent of American adults use Instagram daily. And brands are benefitting. 

• 44 percent of Instagrammers use the app to shop weekly
• Instagram’s ad reach grew by 20.5 percent last year
• 50 percent of Instagram users have discovered a new brand on the app
• Brand Stories have an average 86 percent completion rate
• 90 percent of users follow at least one business account

Instagram influencer marketing pays off

The first, and most important, reason for choosing Instagram for your influencer marketing efforts is because Instagram is one of the most active and profitable marketing channels for brands. Working with Instagram influencers to promote products is a proven way to reach new audiences.

Grammers don’t mind branded content

Believe it or not, most Instagram users don’t mind seeing sponsored content from their favorite influencers. Legitimate influencers tend to be very particular about the types of brand collabs they accept. In fact, influencers are more likely to turn down an opportunity than to accept it if they don’t believe the brand would be of interest to their followers. 

It’s how they keep their sway, their credibility, their followers. In that way, professional Instagram influencers follow influencer marketing best practices. 

Instagram users are accustomed to seeing brands in their feeds. In fact, 200 million Instagram users visit at least one business profile every day. About 8 in 10 Instagrammers use the platform to research products and services.

Users rely on Instagram for product discovery

Instagram’s also emerged as an important marketing channel for reaching consumers at a time when they don’t mind being approached by brands. That’s worth mentioning because that’s not always the case, right? If you’ve ever let your finger hover over the countdown to YouTube’s Skip Ad button, you understand what we mean. 

According to a Bustle survey, 81 percent of millennial women polled say their time on social media is the best time for brands to reach them. For Gen Zers, 73 percent of teens say Instagram is the best way for brands to reach them. 

Instagram Influencer marketing could end up being a great opportunity for you to find the right target audience for your brand and increase your visibility and conversions during the holiday season. Here’s a stepwise guide to get you started – 

Brands can reach their customers on Instagram (and influencers are EXPERTS at getting organic reach)

Over 1 billion people use Instagram every month, and spend around 53 minutes every day browsing through the app.

 Now, it’s true that Instagram reaches approximately 20 percent of the global population. But it’s also true that organic reach is down to its lowest ever, with the average post from an Average Joe reaching less than 1 percent of Joe’s audience. 

That leaves the 71 percent of US businesses currently using Instagram as a marketing channel needing a legitimate plan to get eyes on their products. 

Part of what makes influencers so valuable to brands is the fact influencers are really great at getting people to engage with their content. The more engaging a social media creator’s content is, the more the Instagram algorithm will favor their content and show it to wider and wider audiences. That’s how brands are able to solve the organic reach problem.

Tips for Building Your Influencer Campaign on Instagram

The logistics of building an influencer marketing campaign are actually pretty simple IF you understand that there are lots of moving parts. If you are not working with an influencer marketing agency and you don’t have an in-house influencer marketing team, think of these tips as good advice for building strong influencer campaigns that will help you hit some of your most important campaign KPIs.

Set realistic campaign goals 

Determine first what you want your influencer campaign to accomplish and that will determine whether you build a brand awareness campaign, a clicks-focused campaign, or a content-focused campaign. Know your goals also determines which metrics you’ll track to determine the ROI of your influencer campaign.

Plan your campaign early

The “lotta moving parts” thing? Not an exaggeration. So, give your team plenty of time to plan and execute an Instagram influencer marketing strategy that will be successful. Planning ahead will help to ensure the most important aspects of running a successful influencer campaign are handled without making the process unnecessarily stressful or unfruitful.

The average influencer campaign takes anywhere from 10 to 16 weeks to go from signed contracts to campaign results, with 12 weeks being the sweet spot. If you’ve run campaigns in previous years, plan a little extra time because one of the influencer marketing trends The Shelf team has seen is that it’s taking longer to get contracts signed. This is true of micro influencers and nano influencers as well. So, you’ll need to work in a little extra time to find relevant influencers for your campaigns.

Identify your target audience BEFORE you contact influencers 

Instagram influencers are awesome, but they’re not psychic. So, identify your target audience so you know exactly who you’re trying to reach before you start the influencer selection process.

Here’s something a lot of agencies skip: Finding the right influencers for your campaign means figuring out which potential influencer partners have followers who most closely resemble your ideal customer. Remember, the whole point of running an Instagram influencer marketing campaign is to get in front of your customers. So, it’s crucial that you have a method in place for analyzing an influencer’s followers.

Use creative concepts to keep content interesting

Social media influencers are experts at creating compelling content, sure. But it’s okay to provide them with a framework of different campaign concepts they can use to generate influencer content.

This all sounds fantastic, but that means there needs to be someone on your team or a strategist within the influencer marketing agency that’s managing our influencer campaign who can dream up these creative concepts.

Amplify your campaign with cross-channel marketing

Most Instagram users are active on other social media platforms as well. So, it may make sense to amplify your campaign by cross-promoting to other social media channels. And this doesn’t necessarily have to put a huge dent in your marketing budget.

Often, content creators will use social media scheduling tools that allow them to auto-post a single piece of content to multiple social networks with a single click. So, someone can post the same video to Instagram Stories to reach their Instagram audience while posting the same content as a Pinterest Story Pin to reach a wider audience on Pinterest. We call those value-adds, and they usually won’t cost much more than what you’ve already negotiated.

Yes, most influencer marketing strategies are Instagram-based, but if the audience you’re targeting also spends a good amount of time listening to podcasts or minding their Pinterest boards, you can boost your campaign results by looping in podcast influencers and other platforms into your social media marketing.

Monitor and optimize campaign performance

The Shelf influencer marketing platform includes a dashboard that allows our team and our clients to monitor the performance of each influencer’s content. This way, we get a sense of the kind of Instagram posts and messaging that resonates with the target audience in real-time. Ideally, you could optimize underperforming content to get more engagement, thus making it more visible since Instagram’s algorithm favors popular content.

We also make it a point to launch a whitelisting campaign to run paid social ads alongside the primary Instagram influencer campaign. Whitelisting is turning an influencer’s organic posts into a paid ad and running it through the influencer’s account (instead of running an ad/dark post through your brand’s account).

Whitelisting is a really effective way to boost the visibility and engagement of your marketing campaigns so that you can get better and better ROI over the course of your campaign.

Instagram Marketing: The How

When it comes to the how of Instagram marketing, you’re in the right place. Influencer marketing on Instagram is our bread and butter. We’ve got plenty of resources to get you started.

Whether you want to increase your brand awareness, launch a product or promote a sale, Instagram is the perfect app for influencer marketing. Learn how to:

• Set campaign goals
• Find the right influencers
• Make money as a content creator
• Write kickass influencer briefs
• Make the most of your content
• And more on our blog!

Instagram Marketing Examples

Now that you’ve got the basic guide to Instagram statistics, let’s take a look at brands and users that are already making the most of the platform. Check out these Instagram marketing examples and get inspired to create your own.

EOS REELS

One of our clients, evolution of smooth (eos), is ch-ch-chugging along on the Reels train. They know how to get creative, capitalize on trends, and engage wider audiences using the Instagram Reels feature. 

For example, this Reel transforms their eos lip balm products into Stranger Things characters. This engages the Stranger Things fandom, which overlaps with their target demographic. And they were able to garner even more engagement on the post because they used the viral song “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)” by Kate Bush. The start of the fourth season of the show kept this post going strong with engagement and visibiity, too.  

Instagram Reel from @eosproducts.

Remember, Reels are a place to get reel creative!

INFLUENCER PRODUCT TAGS

The best Instagram features aren’t just for brands. Remember creators, influencers, and regular users can all use these capabilities as well. Influencer Elyse Meyers is a TikTok and Instagram Reel queen, but she also utilizes Instagram features like Product Tags, and she has her own Instagram Shop to sell her merch.

Instagram Post and Shop from @elyse_meyers.

Clicking the Product Tag in her feed post takes you directly to her Instagram Shop where you can buy the t-shirt directly in the app. Talk about seamless!

Conclusion

The influencer marketing industry is replete with agencies that will Instagram provide influencer marketing services. But there is a method to what seems like the madness of partnering with social media creators to promote your brand and products. Hopefully, this post has been useful in helping you to forge a general path forward.

We have published influencer marketing guides on a wide range of topics, from conducting influencer outreach to auditing the influencer marketing agency running your campaigns. They’re free and you can use these guides to help you map out a fortified influencer campaign that will help you reach your marketing goals.

The post An Actionable Guide to Instagram Influencer Marketing in 2022 appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

In this post, we’re going to identify the key metrics that are most important to influencer marketing ROI and show you a few examples of some of the influencer marketing campaigns The Shelf team has run that performed well. Plus, walk you through and tell you how to create always-on influencer campaigns that can be optimized in real time.

Does Influencer Marketing Work? Yes, But…

Now, before we dig into influencer marketing ROI, let’s answer the obvious question: Does influencer marketing work?

Influencer marketing is skyrocketing. From 1.7 billion in market size in 2016, to 9.7 billion in 2020, influencer marketing, as an industry, is expected to grow to $13.8 billion by the end of this year. These numbers don’t seem surprising when you consider 89 percent of businesses that have tried influencer marketing say it’s better or comparable to other marketing initiatives. 

Influencer marketing works. You may remember the now-famous 2017 study from Tomoson which reported brands generated $6.50 in revenue per $1 spent. About 13 percent of influencer campaigns generate $20 for every $1 invested in the campaign, and 70 percent make $2 for every $1 invested, according to a poll.

Even as recently as last year, $5.78 was reportedly the average ROI on every $1 spent on influencer marketing, according to the Influencer Marketing Hub Benchmark Report 2020. 

So, why is this form of digital marketing so effective? Influential people have successfully promoted brands, products or services for as long as societies have existed. But formalized influencer marketing campaigns running on social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube emerged because consumers shifted their trust away from brand-generated marketing to the growing catalog of user-generated content that makes up the “social” part of social media.

Consumers are more likely to heed the advice of someone they consider a knowledgeable peer than the gimmicks of a company’s own branded content drummed up by savvy marketers. 

But not every business that includes deploys and effective influencer marketing strategy has been able to recoup their investments. Upwards of 18 percent of influencer marketing campaigns fail to produce any return at all. So, it’s not enough to pick the right influencers and the choose the right social channels. You also need to keep track of your campaigns. So, let’s talk about that aspect.

Which Are the Best KPIs to Track for 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?

Influencer marketing has been plagued by fraud for years. In the early years, brands deployed short-sighted methods for selecting influencer partners, focusing on metrics that can easily be gamed like audience size, number of Likes, and comment counts. Still today, those are the primary criteria most in-house marketing teams use to identify influencer partners for campaigns.

Most in-house teams use vanity metrics like an influencer’s audience size, number of Likes, and comment counts as the primary criteria to identify influencer partners, even though those metrics can be easily manipulated.

Determining which metrics are the most important ones for your campaign start with you identifying a goal for your campaign. And your campaign goals determine how you will structure an influencer campaign. 

We typically like to say there are three main types of influencer campaign structures that marketers can deploy to achieve a number of different goals. 

• A Brand Awareness campaign – designed to help brands boost brand lift so people start to recognize the name and maybe even associate the name with a product or experience. We have a post on building brand awareness campaigns that you can read here.
• A Conversion campaign – designed to help brands send traffic to a place where customers can take specific actions, usually buying something, downloading something, or joining something. We have a post on this one, too that you can read here.
• A Content/Asset campaign – designed to help brands build a catalog of creative assets they can reuse for online and offline marketing. If you want to get up to speed on this UGC campaigns, you can read this post on getting content, this on content rights one, or this one.

Each campaign structure works well to accomplish different goals, and each campaign structure shifts to highlight specific types of metrics. For instance, engagement becomes important with an awareness campaign because it’s the easiest way to validate the reach of a campaign. 

So, let’s now look at the various different types of metrics and the corresponding campaign types.

Reach

If a campaign runs and no one sees it, does it even make a sound? Not quite how that saying goes, but you get the point. Reach measures the total number of unique people/accounts that see your content. Not to be confused with impressions which is the total number of other accounts your content is visible to. But just because something shows up in the feed doesn’t mean your entire audience saw it. 

There’s a pretty well-known stat that says for any given post, only about 30 percent of the poster’s audience will ever see the post. That said, the best way to get the most reach and visibility for your campaign is to partner with active influencers who have audiences across multiple platforms.  

Here’s a good example: The Shelf team rolled out a holiday campaign for Feit Electrical on TikTok targeting the DIY and home decor audiences.

The video above from @blankslatereno was cross-promoted on Instagram where it generated another 800 instances of engagement (video views and comments).

But this campaign also ran on YouTube with a video lifestyle vlogger Angela Lanter published detailing how she and her partner updated their back porch with Feit Electric products to create their own personal winter wonderland.

Reach is one of those elements that can also be manipulated (not in a bad way) because the more frequently someone posts and the more frequently others interact with their content, the more likely the social media platform’s algorithm is to show that person’s content to more people. 

Types of campaign: All types

How to track reach: The best way to track actual reach is through engagement. Potential reach is usually a calculation of an influencer’s audience size x the total number of influencers working on your campaign. 

Engagement

Engagement measures how well your target market has connected with your influencer’s content. Generally speaking, engagement is: 

(Post engagements / total number of followers) * 100 

Engagement ratios different from influencer to influencer, from vertical to vertical, and platform to platform. On Instagram, average engagement per post hovers right around 1%, which is noticeably lower than it was even last year (when it hovered between 1.5% and 2%).  

Engagement rates for sponsored content are usually lower than an influencer’s organic content, but great content that resonates with followers will usually have an engagement rate that stays right in line with an influencer’s average engagement ratio. 

If you’re seeing higher engagement rates on your sponsored content (more comments, likes, or shares) than the influencer’s usual posts when they’re not being sponsored, then you’ve hit a good success rate with that collaboration. 

Types of campaigns: All types. Engagement is always a good metric to track. It’s the best way to validate the reach of a campaign, and it provides you with real-time insights into whether or not a post is performing well with an influencer’s audience. 

How to track engagement: If you don’t have access to a platform like The Shelf from which you can monitor all of your campaign content in one place, your influencers can access information about the performance of each post from the different dashboards. For instance…

For instance, Instagram has Insights that you can access once you have a business or creator account. Facebook has its own Facebook Business Suite that allows you to manage your account and shows you detailed reports about your audience, analytics report and trends. On Pinterest, the Analytics menu is the place to access Audience Insights and insights about how well content is performing.

What counts as engagement: One of the reasons engagement is so critical as a metric is because it includes a pretty wide range of actions, depending on the platform where your campaign is running. 

• Core Post Engagements – The number of likes, comments, saves, and shares on a post
• Views – The number of times a user has viewed a video 
• Replies, Shares, Profile Taps, Sticker taps, Link Clicks – The various actions a user can take on Instagram stories

We actually created an encyclopedia on this stuff…

The Complete Guide to Influencer Marketing

Followers on Your Account

If you’re doing an influencer campaign with a Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube influencer, you should see more followers or likes coming on to your brand’s social media account. For example, you’re working with an Instagram influencer and you noticed that your Instagram profile suddenly garnered more likes and followers, that’s most likely the effect of your collaboration.

Types of campaigns: Brand awareness

How to track: You can do this by viewing how many subscribers, likes, shares, followers or comments a specific platform generated. This applies to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube and Instagram. An increase in email subscribers after your campaign is also a good indicator of the success of your influencer marketing initiative.

Site Traffic or Clicks

Site traffic can encompass a number of actions. It can lead to sign-ups, sales, downloads, and users adding products to their cart. 

Types of campaigns: Conversion campaigns and Content campaigns

How to track clicks: Having a dedicated landing page and URL is important so you can see how often that page is being visited. Each influencer will need to be assigned a tracking pixel that you can monitor because there will be situations when the landing page is one of your own sales pages, but it may make more sense to send traffic to maybe a blog post on an influencer’s own website so visitors can grab a discount code or access to a special promotion.

Or it may just be that the influencer created value-add content and posted it to their own website and you get more opportunities to grab someone’s attention and getting the clicks by sending them to the influencer’s blog.

Give your influencers their own affiliate links. You can send traffic to a single promotion page or to a specific page for each influencer. 

For instance, one of The Shelf’s most recent campaigns was with a wedding dress company where each influencer picked their own dress and styled a backdrop that was AMAZING! In that situation, it makes sense to send traffic from an influencer’s Instagram feed or website to a landing page on the brand’s website that features the dress the influencer was wearing in the post. 

For the Feit campaign in particular, influencers like Angela Lanter who used tracking pixels were able to drive traffic to a custom page on Feit’s website. You can see below that Angela used trackable links in the video description:

Clicking on the link goes to a landing page on Feit’s website featuring a variety of different products Angela’s mentioned in her content for the campaign.

Without tracking pixels, it will be challenging to tie your influencer marketing efforts to specific traffic or actions taken on your site. It’s also important to be able to measure the effectiveness of different influencers for future partnerships.

Being able to track the actions taken will help you measure the impact of the influencer campaign on your SEO or link building strategy. You can use reports and insights from Google Analytics to get an idea of how well each piece of sponsored content is performing.

Elements you’ll want to track:

• 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 campaign goals.

Related Post

Which Social Media Network Drives the Greatest ROI?

Hashtags and Mentions

If you’re launching a campaign with a specific hashtag, and the influencer’s followers are using that hashtag, then you’re creating a sort of viral effect, which is great for awareness campaigns.

Types of campaigns: Brand Awareness

How to track: You can use tools that can scour all corners of the internet to find hashtags you’ve specifically set for your campaign or mentions. Buzzsumo is one such tool where you can monitor brand mentions and your progress over time. You can also use the tool to track hashtags and see whether people are using them across social media platforms.

Leads

For some businesses, sales from influencer campaigns may not be immediate. So it’s important to also track and measure qualified leads. Make sure that you have a method to capture email addresses. Once you capture their contact information, you can then evaluate how many qualified leads you’ve captured.

A clear understanding of how many leads an influencer can bring you, how long it takes those leads to hit sales or conversion stage and knowing how long the entire process takes are crucial in determining the success of your influencer marketing initiative. This will also let you know if it’s a strategy you should pursue in the long run.

Types of campaign: Conversion campaigns

How to track: Leads are captured through emails and sign-ups. Use a CRM, like Salesforce or Zoho, to help you see where the lead originated from and how they landed on your site.

Related Post

Influencer Strategy: Getting Clicks vs Boosting Brand Awareness

Sales

Influencer marketing can be an effective sales driver. Statistics show  that 74 percent of online consumers turn to social networks to guide them in making the right purchase decisions and that 40 percent of Americans have stated that they’ve bought an item online after seeing an influencer use it on social media.

Types of campaigns: Conversion campaigns

How to track: Apply UTM tracking code to know if a purchase came from the influencer’s post.

A promo code is also an easy way to both push more sales and track how many users the influencer campaign reached. Discount codes and promo codes are always a good way to entice new customers and it will be amplified with the right influencers.

Another creative way to track sales is by creating a hashtag campaign aimed for people who have purchased your product. Have them publish a post or photo of the product with the hashtag and track how many people have used the hashtag.

Wrapping Up

As with all marketing campaigns, you need a clear influencer marketing goal and strategy before you implement one. Knowing your goals will help you prioritize the important KPIs, which will then narrow down your focus to elements that will amplify your results. 

Be clear about what you’re expecting out of the partnership when working with influencers. Is it for awareness or sales? Having the right influencer isn’t enough; you have to gather data to know if the campaign is delivering business results. 

Once you’ve got these things figured out: goals, KPIs, strategy, and the right influencers, begin your campaigns. Be prepared to tweak and change your strategy overtime. Eventually, you’ll accomplish all the goals you’ve set out for your influencer marketing campaign.

About the Author

Itamar Gero is the founder of SEO Reseller, a global digital marketing solutions provider that empowers agencies and their local clients all over the world.

When he isn’t working, Itamar is traveling the world, meditating, or dreaming (in code).

The post Influencer Marketing ROI: Which Metrics Will Give You the Best Campaigns? appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

In just 10 years, Instagram has evolved from a mere photo-sharing app to become one of the most popular social media platforms for daily use, and one of the most lucrative platforms for creators. With over a billion monthly users, Instagram is now the go-to app for your daily dose of inspiration and in-app checkouts.

Instagram has also turned into a business platform to be reckoned with. Millions of entrepreneurs, and easily 70 percent of all brands, are taking advantage of Instagram’s selling power to launch new products and make more sales.

And it’s not just for unicorns or whatever. You could join the ranks of successful creators who earn money from Instagram if you’re willing to put in the work… and it’s gonna be tons of work, babe.

Cool.

Fine.

But how on earth do you even start? Can you even sell if all the followers you have now are your mom, your high school classmates , and best friend?

Don’t fret.

You don’t need hundreds of thousands of followers to make money on IG, even though it’s pretty normal to think you do. You don’t need as many followers as you think. 

While top Instagrammers have hundreds of thousands (or millions) of followers, those with a small well-engaged following of just 1,000 fans can also make money on Instagram. If you’re still interested, keep reading for specific tactics to make money on Instagram.

Three Ways To Make Money On Instagram Creating Content

We’ll assume you’re here because you’re new to the influencer world. So before we get into the heavy-lifting, let’s just rehash the basics of becoming an influencer.

An influencer is someone who has trust with audiences concerning specific topics. To their audiences, influencers are trendsetters and trusted experts whose opinions about certain subjects are highly regarded. Brands rely on influencers to use their authority with their audiences to get people to take action.

Many brands can’t command this kind of influence, and so they partner with influencers who create content on behalf of the brand (aka sponsored posts) that help promote their products.

Becoming an Instagram influencer takes more than just having a decent number of followers and reach on your account (also known as vanity metrics). Brands also want to work with someone who can get engagement from their audience.

So, to the main point—how do you make money as an Instagram influencer?

1. Partner With Brands and Create Cool Content for Them

Typically, influencer deals involve influencers creating content such as Instagram ads, a post, a video, or a Story. You then get paid to post this content on your Instagram account.

The amount of money paid for such content depends on the scope of work you’re doing (IG Stories vs posts vs IGTV vs YouTube vs blogs, and on and on) to work with and the scope of the work you’re doing. In a survey by Shopify, 42 percent of influencers surveyed said they charged $200 to $400 per post. This gives you an idea of what some brands pay.

Here are a few important things you need to do to become a successful Instagram influencer and earn top dollar.

Choose a niche

Remember what we said brands are looking for most in an influencer? Trust. To earn trust from your followers you must live and breathe your brand. If you’re just starting out, the easiest way to do that is for you to focus on one or two topics that you consistently post about.

“Yeah, but I want to be a lifestyle influencer.”
Lifestyle influencers are mostly grown, not really made. If you post about just a few topics consistently when you start out, you create a cohesive brand, and it will be easier for both your audience and brands to figure out where your expertise and influence lies.

So…

Get into a niche that you can truly say is something you believe in and love. The more you niche down, the more authentic (and relatable) you become. Grow your audience

The other important thing that brands want from influencers is a large and engaged following. Do you still have your mom and bestie as your followers? Don’t panic just yet. There are plenty of well-researched strategies that will help you get more followers on Instagram.

For one, you can quickly grow your audience by committing to posting consistently. Studies show that audiences demand consistent content. 

An analysis by Tailwind found the more people post on Instagram, the more engagement they get.

In addition to posting frequently, you also need to boost your content visibility because the more people you manage to reach, the higher your chances of driving sales. 
Partner with brands who are about what you’re about

You can find brand partners by pitching them directly or just being ready when smaller brands approach you. Contact potential brands in your niche and pitch them what you can offer using your media kit. We wrote a post on what goes in an influencer media kit, just in case you want to know how to put one together.

Don’t forget to provide them with plenty of compelling details about your audience and approach. Make sure you include important metrics that add value to your partnership: such as engagement rate, audience size, etc. 

Here’s a tidbit you probably need to know: it’s okay to start with smaller brands because your glowing track record with previous campaigns is part of what will help bigger brands determine whether to hire you. Post transparently

When posting sponsored content, be sure to make it clear the post is sponsored. for. The usual practice is to tag the post as “Sponsored” or “Paid partnership with (brand)”. 

Trust me, you don’t want any problems with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Be sure to read up on their guidelines and continue to check up on them as they get updated regularly.

2. Become An Affiliate

The second best tactic for making money on Instagram is becoming an affiliate. With this kind of tactic you will be focusing more on making sales for the partner brand—not just generating awareness—in exchange for a commission.

Your brand partner will give you a trackable link or unique promo code to follow up on sales generated from your efforts.

Instagram affiliate marketing requires a more calculated strategy than influencer marketing. To make as many sales as possible, you need to have a solid plan going into it. Here’s how to successfully choose an affiliate network and use this tactic. Choose the best affiliate programs for your brand, otherwise…

Choose a product-focused niche that you feel most comfortable with or passionate about. You can start with the products that you use in your day-to-day life and create content centered around reviews and highlights of the product’s features. 

You can join a brand’s affiliate program directly or join an affiliate network. To be on the safe side, do both, it won’t hurt your chances!

Some popular affiliate networks include: 

• Amazon Associates
• ClickBank
• RewardStyle
• CJ Affiliates
• Rakuten

Post about the product

Once you find the product(s) you want to promote, and you’ve got your tracking codes or links, create outstanding posts promoting them on Instagram. Remember to use gorgeous images and videos that just want to make people buy, buy, buy. 

3. Sell Your Own Products

The third strategy for making money on Instagram throws you into the e-commerce world. The Shelf has a really cool running tally of influencers who have their own merch and products. So, the

If you have your own products, you can use your time and influence to make money by selling them on Instagram, instead of selling other people’s products. If you already own a business, selling on Instagram could be an important addition to your marketing strategy. (Besides, it’s always a good idea to add a new income stream.)

Set up a shoppable account

Instagram has been making huge strides in making the platform more business-friendly. From shopping-focused features like the Explore tab to product tags to shoppable posts to shoppable Stories. 

The most recent layout update and Instagram Checkout, make it even easier for people to shop right from the Instagram app.

Turn your Instagram account into a business account and take advantage of these features. And don’t forget to create a product catalog to make your products stand out more!Post your products

Hype up your products through regular Instagram posts and Stories. Use Instagram analytics tools to measure your success so that you can see what’s working and what is not. Also, be sure to engage with your audience.

It’s that easy!

Three Tips on Using Instagram for Business

Instagram is growing by the day. More and more people are getting interested in making money on this popular platform. So, how do you ensure that you remain at the top of your game? Always stay in the loop on new trends and rules that are necessary to make money on Instagram.1) Know the ins and outs of Instagram for business

Understand how the Instagram business account works and the features that are only available to business accounts. Make sure you also understand how you can leverage the business account to make more money on Instagram. 2) Launch an Instagram Shop

The biggest advantage of having an Instagram shop is that you can integrate your product catalog with your Instagram profile. With this feature, you can promote your products directly to Instagram users through a special Shop tab on your profile, Stories, posts, and in the Explore tab.3) Learn the Do’s and Don’ts of selling on Instagram

Instagram has detailed rules on how you should post, the types of images or videos you should post, and how many times per day you can post. There’s also a limit to the number of hashtags to include. 

Make sure you follow these rules to improve your chances of making money on Instagram.

Let’s Get That Money!

Instagram is growing exponentially and brands are investing a significant sum of their marketing budgets on the platform.

Whether you’re just starting out or are a seasoned IG user, you can learn to make money using the platform’s new features. And now there’s a ton of info out there (including this post!) on how to do just that.

So go on and turn that thought of making money on Instagram into reality by implementing these Instagram money-making tactics.

Happy influencing!

We accurately measure real-time and historical social media data, illustrating information in easy-to-read graphs and layouts that simplify reporting and strategizing. Our product helps you effortlessly track #hashtags, keywords, @accounts and URLs on Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and Facebook. Use us for real-time campaign monitoring and optimization, brand monitoring and optimization, and data-driven market and competitor research. https://keyhole.co

The post How to Make Money as a Content Creator on Instagram appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

What is gamification?

The basic idea behind gamification is very simple:

What if we took game dynamics – like competition, leveling up, or rewards – and applied them to non-game situations?

Or, to put it another way: What if you could turn your social media profiles into an interactive experience, where people “play” by engaging with you and earn rewards?

We’re all a little bit competitive. Everyone loves to see their name on a leaderboard or get the dopamine rush from successfully completing a game level. As online games and video games become even more popular, your followers are primed for gamification on social media. And it’s easier than ever to add quizzes, games, and contests to your online posts.

So far, so fun. But what does gamification marketing do for you? Sure, it’ll entertain your followers,  but what do you actually get out of it?

How Gamification Marketing Helps to Grow Social Engagement

Gamification is great for social media engagement because it fulfills several goals at once. And what could be better than that, right?

Gamification can:

• Encourage people to spend more time on your profile
• Increase brand exposure and brand awareness
• Keep people coming back for more
• Create a sense of community and competition for your followers
• Give you a simple, fair way to choose winners for giveaways
• Tap into your follower’s hobbies, interests, or nostalgia

That’s a lot of benefits. Let’s break them down, one by one:

#1 ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO SPEND MORE TIME ON YOUR PROFILE

You can add gamification to your social media profile by posting simple challenges, using in-app tools (like Story quizzes), or linking to more sophisticated games. All of those strategies encourage people to spend longer interacting with your posts. Result: social media algorithms will show that people love your work.

#2 INCREASE BRAND EXPOSURE AND BRAND AWARENESS

Gamification marketing is helpful for branding because you can customize your content with extra branding. Whether you’re growing a personal brand or boosting a sponsor, this is a great way to increase brand exposure and awareness.

For example, this hotel group made a quick Halloween card game for their followers. They only added one branded detail: the name and logo of the group, printed on the back of each card in the game. 

It was subtle, but it meant that players saw the hotel group’s name again and again. That’s brand exposure and pretty genius!

#3 KEEP PEOPLE COMING BACK FOR MORE

Imagine you’re playing a quick jigsaw online. You just miss out on completing the puzzle – by five seconds!

Do you quit, or do you play again?

Most people will choose to play again. And that’s one of the reasons that gamification is so powerful. Followers will come back to interactive, gamified content again and again.

And if you can set up a series of games, or pick a weekly winner… even better!

#4 CREATE A SENSE OF COMMUNITY AND COMPETITION

A lot of people don’t follow influencers just for the influencer themselves. They’re also there for the community. And if you’ve spent time building your personal brand, you’ll know that an online community is one of the most rewarding things about being an influencer.

Gamification can help you strengthen that community. For example, you could run a weekly leaderboard where the highest-ranking “players” get featured.

Over time, your followers will get to recognize each other, swap gameplay tips, and share a healthy sense of competition. You could even bring followers together from different social networks, uniting them all with the game.

Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen people demanding more transparency from influencer giveaways. They want to know how you picked a winner and whether it was fair. 

Gamification makes that whole process simpler. Instead of trying to pick a random person, you can let the game do the work for you. Give prizes to the first person to complete a game or the highest scorer over time. If you still want to pick a random winner, game apps can help you filter out duplicate entries and previous winners.

#6 TAP INTO YOUR FOLLOWER’S HOBBIES, INTERESTS, OR NOSTALGIA

Do your followers love quizzes? Then challenge them to a battle of wits.

Do they love games of chance? Then set up a prize wheel and invite them to spin.

Do they remember the good ol’ days of Snake and Minesweeper? Then build a classic game with your own branding.

You can connect with your followers by sharing their hobbies, interests, and even their nostalgia. And when you add gamification into the mix, that connection is even more powerful. 

In 2020, we’ve seen nostalgia trending – for old fashions, games, and designs. Look out for influencers and brands running old-school promotions and contests.

How to Use Gamification Marketing on Social Media

We’ve talked a lot about the benefits of social media. But by now, you’re probably wondering:

How do I make all of this work? Don’t I need a web developer, a designer, or even my own game studio to make this happen?

Well… actually, no. Gamification is more accessible than it’s ever been before.

To start with, there are built-in tools on many social networks. We’re talking quizzes, hashtag challenges, and polls. That’s gamification for beginners.

But you can do more. There’s a whole world of apps out there, which will help you build smart quizzes, spin-the-wheel games, puzzles, word searches, minesweeper, and more. All you have to do is pick a game dynamic, add your branding, and share the game on your social profiles.

The key is to choose a game that appeals to your followers and is easy to play. Once your followers are hooked on having fun, you’ll reap the rewards of increased engagement, interaction, and brand awareness.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Corinna Keefe is a freelance writer. She specializes in topics around digital marketing, social media, and organic engagement.

• Website: www.easypromosapp.com
• Twitter: twitter.com/corinna_keefe
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/corinnakeefe

The post 6 Smart Ways Gamification Marketing Can Power Your Influencer Strategy appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

Your instincts may be telling you that if you can harness the power of social media trends you can probably boost the bottom line for your ecommerce store, and the statistics agree. A study by Sprout Social found that when consumers follow a brand on social media, 91% go on to visit the brand’s website or app and 89 percent buy from the brand. These customers also bring more customers in, with 85% saying they refer friends and family members to these brands.

 

This method of reaching customers has become even more important as shifts in how people consume content has diminished the effectiveness of traditional advertising. Streaming entertainment options mean radio and television advertising is less likely to reach an audience (though radio has enjoyed a nice little comeback during the pandemic).

As far as online advertising is concerned, one report found that over a quarter of U.S. internet users have ad blockers, and the average click-through rate of banner ads in North America is just 0.08 percent. Clearly, ecommerce brands need to find other ways of reaching their customers, and social media is an excellent way to connect.

Facebook has 1.56 billion daily active users, and the average user spends an hour a day on the platform. Instagram has 1 billion users, and Twitter’s number of monthly active users is 330 million. That’s a lot of eyes that brands can reach, and it doesn’t include the users on niche or up-and-coming new platforms, like Reddit or TikTok.

But social media has more to offer than just an audience. One of its strengths is the ability to target your effort. Whether you’re paying for social media advertising or implementing an organic social media strategy, you can use tools like hashtags and the platform’s research tools to connect with people who want and need your product. With the right strategy that focuses on key social media trends, you can get customers to follow your ecommerce brand and create a ready-made audience for your every sale and product launch.

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6 Social Media Trends That Matter to Ecommerce Brands

#1 Influencers Are Key

Social media influencers occasionally get a bad rap, but the truth is that they’re a very powerful form of word-of-mouth marketing. A now-famous study by Tomoson in 2017 found that businesses made $6.50 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing. In 2020, Influencer Marketing Hub’s Benchmark Reports put that ROI at $5.78 generated for every $1 invested in influencer marketing. Not bad.

Many of the brands that still think of influencer marketing as a way to boost brand awareness are the same ones struggling to launch successful influencer campaigns. In fact, only 25 percent of influencer campaigns actually fail to result in revenue. And marketers believe they get more sales-qualified customers through influencers. These are consumers who are ready to spend money and who recommend products to family and friends.

The best part is that influencer-generated content is the kind of advertising consumers want because even though the sponsored content is, well… sponsored, it’s still perceived as being more authentic than content created and owned by the brand. Authenticity is a big deal to 90 percent of consumers when deciding which brands to support.

It also means that since an influencer’s followers made a decision to follow, you’re reaching exactly the sort of people who want to buy your products — the targeted and enthusiastic audience of your influencer.

To see an influencer campaign done well, check out Skullcandy. Skullcandy’s Mood Boost campaign connects with hot musicians and features videos, performances, interviews, and hashtags. As the influencers promote to their audiences, Skullcandy also introduces the musicians to new fans, creating a symbiotic relationship. As a bonus, each month has a limited edition bundle attached, encouraging fans to buy.

#2 Video Is Everything

You’ve probably heard that video is king in the social media world. Social Media Today found that a third of all time spent online is devoted to watching videos, and 90 percent of customers say videos help them make buying decisions. Companies that use videos on socials have a 27 percent higher click-through rate and 34 percent higher conversion rates than those that don’t.

Video doesn’t have to be slick YouTube creations. There are over 8 billion average daily video views on Facebook, according to Omnicore, and people are also watching video content on Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. (We actually just published a guide to Instagram Reels that has some pretty compelling info about the reach and engagement Reels is getting for brands and creators!)

The types of videos you can produce are endless. Think about product demos, promotions, stories, and testimonials. About Us videos help you create authenticity and connection, and if your history is too long, create more than one, such as the initial idea, the people behind it, and creating the prototype.

Take a look at this chart below from GlobalWebIndex. Three of the five top types of content followers want to see from influencers are video, and the how-to tutorial (which we’re assuming is video as well) is the top choice.

Videos can also help you create authority with your audience. You’re probably already an expert in your field, and you can create How-To videos that educate your customers on a topic. These sorts of videos drive customer engagement and are likely to be shared, helping you connect to a wider audience.

To create successful videos, know your audience and make videos that they’ll enjoy. Test the response, and make more videos like the ones that do well. Lastly, think about how people consume your videos, and make sure viewing is easy for them. People on Instagram prefer a square or portrait format, for example, so they don’t have to turn their phones. It’s the little things…

Mountain Crest Gardens uses their videos to give their customers some insight into the company. The succulent sellers have promotional videos across their social channels but also use short stories, particularly on Instagram, to show behind-the-scenes life, such as sorting seeds and watering. This video we actually found on the homepage of MountainCrestGardens.com.

#3 Use Social Media for Customer Service

Just as phone calls took over mail, instant messaging is overtaking phone calls, and ecommerce brands need to take this into account when setting up customer service channels. Customers prefer to communicate via messaging, as it’s convenient, easy, instantaneous, and often available around the clock. Messaging options also make people feel more comfortable about the brand, as they can easily see that service is available.

Instant messaging on Facebook is one option for customer service, but brands also need to be able to respond to customer service queries in other forums. Conversations about your brand on a social media channel can help or damage you, depending on how you respond. Make sure you have people monitoring your brand so you know when you’re mentioned. They can boost the positives, answer questions, and resolve or address complaints. A dedicated customer support profile can help you quickly find customers who need assistance, and chatbots can be established to answer easy questions quickly.

Remember to always be transparent with customers. People expect quick responses, so if you don’t have staff available 24/7, list your hours clearly. Establish social media best practices early, so customers receive consistent service when interacting with your brand. Finally, remember to respond to positive comments as well as negative. A personalized thank you helps your happy customers feel valued and increase your customer retention rate. Check out Skullcandy’s active Facebook page to see this in action. Customers are welcomed with a chat box in case they have any questions. 

#4 Have a Solid Social Commerce Strategy

Social commerce refers to any activity that relates to buying and selling on social media – shoppable posts. Although more social media companies are introducing native checkouts within the platform, social commerce can also include promoting products, providing customer service, and answering questions.

As platforms have seen the potential in selling through social media, the options for promoting within them have grown. There are buy buttons, shoppable posts, dynamic ads, and more being offered to businesses that want to use social media to sell products. These methods work. One report shows that in 2018, 55 percent of consumers made a purchase through social media channels. For platforms like Pinterest where more than 8 in 10 users on the platform come to the platform with the intent to buy, that percentages shoots to 85 percent of users have made a purchase based on something they saw on the platform. (We also published a guide to Pinterest over the summer that includes a breakdown of the new shoppable functions, local search capabilities, and Story Pins.)

Think about how you can use social media to sell your products, and set up a strategy that takes advantage of each channel’s strengths. Spearmint Love has a presence on multiple platforms and uses each to their advantage. Instagram has pictures of adorable babies in their clothes, while Facebook has videos and plenty of interaction. Each post includes links to their ecommerce store. They haven’t neglected Pinterest and use the platform’s shop feature to direct customers to curated collections.

Although built-in ecommerce is rising in social media, don’t neglect your own ecommerce store. Your own space online gives you complete control over your customers’ experience, allows you to collect better customer insights, and helps insulate you from the impact of platform changes, such as algorithm updates.

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#5 Adopt an Omnichannel Social Presence

Thinking about a social presence can be overwhelming. There are so many platforms, and a new one seems to become popular every day. It can be tempting to decide on one platform and stick to it, and this isn’t a bad strategy for plucky startups that are trying to get ahead. But to get the most from social media, you should have a presence on multiple channels.

Each social media platform has its own strengths and weaknesses, so each gives you different opportunities to connect with customers. Instagram and Pinterest are the platforms of choice for visual marketing, while Twitter lets you have witty conversations and Facebook is great for videos. Each platform also attracts different users. TikTok is popular with Gen Z, and Facebook is used by millennials and Gen X.

Choosing the right platforms to reach your target audience makes your social media effective, but understanding who uses each platform can also let you create unique content for each channel based on the users. An omnichannel strategy not only lets you reach different types of audiences but it also protects you from the vagaries of changing algorithms and popularity. If you’d built your entire business around Myspace, there would have been a lot of rebuilding required when Facebook came along.

Camelbak is one company that does omnichannel well. It has a presence on Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook, with numbers of followers ranging from 26K on Twitter to 632K on Facebook. They use relevant, timely content that suits the platform, utilizing video, hashtags, and user-generated content to create engagement and continue to build their brand.

#6 Curate User-Generated Content to Satisfy Customers

User-generated content, or UGC, is one of social media’s biggest strengths. It’s defined as any content that’s created by your customers, including videos, images, and reviews. One Nielsen study showed that 92 percent of consumers trust recommendations from people they don’t know over branded content. This makes UGC super valuable, because your customers are going to listen to people they consider peers more readily than they will listen to you.

UGC has the added benefit of being memorable content that is abundant and free. Consumers are eager to be featured by their favorite brands and this helps you build relationships with your passionate customers who are generating the content. In addition to marketing, UGC can give you insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your products.

If you’re wondering how to generate the content, it’s as easy as asking. Send follow up emails that ask for reviews, and include social sharing links. Use hashtag campaigns to encourage social sharing, and add your favorites to your website. Also remember to keep an eye on social media sites, including third-party review sites like Yelp, and publicly address concerns. A well-crafted response to negative feedback can win over a dissatisfied customer and attract new attention.

Furniture company Burrow makes great use of UGC. Yes, they have customer reviews on their website, but on their Instagram, they have dogs. There are dogs lounging on their couches and dogs relaxing on their rugs. Although their account features more content than just dogs (what more do you need?!), including other UGC, the dogs encourage likes and comments, and each one links back to the creator’s Instagram so people seeing the images know that they’re genuine.

Conclusion

Social media marketing can seem like it has a large learning curve, from deciding on the right platforms to having a strategic content marketing plan and figuring out when to post. But the benefits far outweigh the time and money that most companies spend learning the ropes. Social media has the ability to build relationships with customers, which leads to trust, authenticity, and more money spent on products. Keeping an eye on the trends and integrating them into your social media strategy can help you make the most of your social media platforms.

The post The Social Media Trends ECommerce Stores Are Adopting appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.