In this day and age, every marketer or company that respects itself must have a comprehensive knowledge of the various social networks and to maximize their social power for marketing and selling their products. Creating an amazing Instagram page just isn't enough these days, not when most people are getting their buying tips mainly from friends, families, and people they follow and more than they do from commercials and online advertising.
"83% of online respondents in 60 countries say they trust the recommendations of friends and family, according to the Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising Report released on 09-28-2015". “While advertisers have started to follow consumers online, about a third of online advertising campaigns don't work—they don't generate awareness or drive any lift in purchase intent,” said Randall Beard, President, Nielsen Expanded Verticals.
Not only are they listening to their friends and family online, they are also acting on these recommendations. According to the Nielsen report, the same percentage of respondents who trust the opinions of family and friends also said that they also often take action on these (83% each).
So how should we promote our products online with this in mind?
Working with local influencers is one of the solutions the online marketing world has been investigating during the past few years and the results have proved to be more than effective. Since we know that 88% of online consumers trust online reviews written by other consumers, just as much as they trust recommendations from friends and family members [BrightLocal], we also know this is a new and exciting opportunity for us to use this consumer trust to our advantage. How? By working with online influencers.
First of all, what is an "online influencer?
Online influencers come in all shapes and sizes. They can be segmented by areas of interests (sports, beauty, fashion etc…), ages, geographical location and their follower's characterizations. Once you have a clear segmentation of your customers, you will be easily able to find the right influencers for you.
So, for example, if your product approaches mainly a young audience between 13-18, who like playing video games, you will need to find gaming influencers who are the same age and who talk about this subject on the various social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. For this specific area, YouTube would probably be the best place for you to start
How do I find the right influencers?
Today the internet has made it much easier to find these influencers, once you have got your segmentation in place. There are many influencer agencies and PR firms who have created a detailed influencer network, according to the various topics they talk about such as mommy bloggers or to the specific social networks platform, like YouTubers. You will then be able to work with them to locate the best influencers for your brand.
Another way is, of course, to just use Google. If you enter for example the phrase "Gaming influencers" or "Gaming experts" you will come across all of the various influencers in that field. This will take you more time but will cost you less.
Influencer marketplaces are another great way of locating the right influencers for you. There, you will able to match the right influencers to whatever product you are looking to promote online without the hassle of searching for them for hours or paying agency fees.
How to work with influencers
Once you have found the right influencers for your product, you will need to figure out how exactly he or she can help you promote your product online. This is the most important stage of working with influencers and where more marketers usually fail.
There are a number of efficient ways you can use these influencers to your advantage:
Use them to spread the word about your product, ignite conversations online around your product, use them as spokespeople for your product, use them to introduce a new product on social networks, use them to raise awareness to your products or use them to sell your products.
One of the best ways to successfully work with influencers is to first understand exactly what you want the influencers to do for your product and brand before you find them.
Krembo Rebels – Case study, PUPA Duckface
Instagram campaign with local influencers – The Duck Face competition
Last year we conducted an online campaign for the makeup and beauty brand PUPA. They were about to launch a new lipstick and although the duck face was at the end of its trendy period in the world, in Israel it had not yet reached its peak.
What did we do?
We located 8 young trendy makeup savvy women from around the country who had more than 10,000 followers on Instagram.
We then sent each girl a pampering care package with a number of products by PUPA. Each girl uploaded a picture of herself doing a duckface pose with a pre-written text we had sent them with the products. The text also included a number of repetitive hashtags.
The pictures were accompanied by the text and hashtags and encouraged other girls like them to also upload a picture of themselves doing the duck face pose. Out of all the girls who participated in this competition, 10 girls won a PUPA gift basket with their favorite products.
At the same, we also launched the Duck face PUPA competition on Facebook. There we did not work with influencers the Instagram girls were asked to refer their fans to the Facebook page as well.
The results
The Facebook paid campaign reached 464,097 and received 4100 likes, 63 shares 1230 comments and 1680 new page likes to the PUPA Facebook page.
The Instagram influencers, who together had more than 40,000 followers were not paid but were given free products as an incentive. Together the influencers reached more than 10,000 people on Instagram without paying them at all. This was additional free advertising for us on one of the most popular social networks.
This is a good example for a good market campaign that interacts with different channels that complete each other: Instagram and Facebook, together with the right influencers.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that working with influencers has an amazing potential if you are looking to create a strong branding or and community building campaign. Once you understand the basic psychology behind the mass intelligence of online social networks, planning your marketing plan will be a piece of cake!
