The influencers you invited for the holiday dinner will still make a lot of noise around her if you just know how to work with them correctly./Pexels.com
The influencer economy has a sales power that no form of marketing has cracked before. Direct access to the consumer, authenticity, organicness, and the sense of freedom of choice among the target audience are changing the rules of the game.
Not for nothing, according to a survey by the Digital Marketing Institute, already in 2023, NIS 150 million has been converted from traditional marketing to influencer marketing, and in the US, 49% of consumers rely on influencer recommendations at the time of purchase.
It's no secret that during the holidays, we, the consumers, open our wallets while marketers and brands race for our attention. Those who succeeded in inviting (on time) these guests of honor to their marketing moves for the holiday season, and especially to speak the new consumer language, will yield results.
But it's not enough to launch an influencer campaign, the choice of content, creative, and partners and partnership must be precise and appropriate to the target audience and message. So how do you do it right? Here are some practical considerations to consider when choosing an influencer campaign, from decision to implementation.
Setting goals for the activity
The goal can be specific or long-term activity that begins during the High Holidays and continues to November, which is known as an equally significant sales period. The goal does not have to be a definite sale, it can also be strengthening consumer awareness or even creating content, in which case there is no relevance at all to the amount of followers. The proliferation of calls to action (CTAs) will cause confusion among the target audience and negatively affect the metrics (KPIs). The goals of influencer activity vary greatly from brand to brand and therefore, the recommendation is to set specific goals for each campaign and choose the relevant influencers accordingly.
Smart influencer choice
Choosing the right influencer is critical to the success of your campaign. Quite a few examples show that when time and thought are not allocated to this issue, the return on investment (ROI) tends to be very low. It may sound trivial, but data in the US market shows that 61% of marketers find it difficult to choose influencers correctly for their marketing moves.
There are different types of influencers and not every type is relevant to brand goals:
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- Content creatorswho know how to shoot, edit and build a story using video will usually bring better results, both in terms of organic exposure and reliability.
- Working with influencers who arecelebswill often involve creating identification and connection between the brand and the persona itself, and less dependent on the influencer's ability to create content.
- A third option is to use content creators who are not necessarily influencers, that is, people who know how to create content, but the emphasis is on thecontent products and thebrand's use of them and not on the community around them.
User content is king
During the holidays, the main goal is sales, so user generated content (UGC-style) is a great and practical way to drive this goal. These are relatively short pieces of video content (usually up to 30 seconds) in which a content creator, regardless of the number of followers, conveys the brand's messages in an authentic, organic and reliable way, which also includes a call to action at the end of the content in the form of a recommendation. Such content will usually look like something anyone can shoot at home.
The length, language and format are very much aimed at the main target audience of social networks, Generation Z, which also has a very large consumer power. This is exactly where the secret lies, and the polls attest to it. In fact, 82% of U.S. consumers trust the opinions they see on social media, especially when it comes to content from friends, family and influencers, whom they see as a close and trustworthy circle.
Not just the 'why', the 'how' is a key player
Video drives action much more than an image. The decline in engagement with the Threads app is indicative of how much more impact video content has had in recent years than written content. Speaking of video, stories are the best source for an organic sales campaign because only there is the option to add a direct and coded link to the site, which also allows quantifying and analyzing the results.
My recommendation is to look for influencers with a statement who can create organic and reliable content in a clear and consistent format, rather than just looking at the number of followers. In addition, I recommend choosing a visual campaign in the form of video and focusing on stories rather than a feed intended primarily for awareness campaigns, and constantly measuring activity with dedicated links and promo codes that drive sales.
Organic combined with sponsored
As mentioned, influencers are an excellent advertising tool for generating organic, authentic and reliable exposure to different audiences. So why not also use the content itself in a sponsored way to stand out more and reach more audiences? It is important to emphasize that this does not refer to advertisements on sites but to the use of authentic content through paid promotion on social networks that can lead to excellent results.
While in the U.S., 51% of consumers block ads on websites, social media, paid advertising is a little harder to block. Meta's pixel, for example, which is used to monitor behavior across the web, appears on more than eight million websites and is even vulnerable to consumer behavior without Facebook accounts. Therefore, my recommendation is to also make use of content created with influencers through sponsored means such as social media advertising, mainly by branded content promotion, i.e. promotion from the influencer's profile.
Chen Hasson is the founder of SHOUT Group
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