The number of people who go online is still increasing steadily. Along with it, the way that people do shopping has also changed. It means that traditional marketing is not as effective as it used to be. Marketing is about connecting with prospective customers at the right time and in the right place. Now, it means that marketers need to meet people where they spend a lot of time: on the internet. We can benefit from digital marketing techniques, which is a form of marketing that exists online. Here include all digital marketing techniques that use electronic devices and the internet.

As stated by Philip Kotler, marketing author, Consultant, and Profesor, “Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine customer value.”

Many businesses use digital techniques and channels like social media, search engines, emails and other sites to connect their audiences. Businesses’ online branding assets encompass a spectrum of techniques such as email and digital advertising, online brochure and so on. All of them fall under the umbrella of digital marketing. 

There are top 5 digital marketing techniques which are: content marketing, search engine optimization, social media marketing, email marketing, and digital advertising. Besides these, businesses can find different alternatives in this digital ocean to focus on to grow in 2019. Let’s dive deeper into five more digital marketing techniques. 

Live Video Marketing

In recent years live video marketing phenomenon has been propelled by social media. Social channels like YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook support live video streaming and some of them has already become a vital platform for gamers, journalists and various types of audiences.

Livestream videos can be a great equalizer for small businesses as it helps to tell the brand’s story and gives access to the brand in a whole new way that has much more contribution.  Live video streaming marketing allows brands to try something new. You can do live stream videos to create conversations, provide the necessary information, highlight partners, employees, and fans. 

• Live videos are effectively used in the following cases: 

• Q&A and conversation with the audience 

• Q&A and customer support

• Product introductions or special annoncements

• Live events 

• Backstage and behind-the-scenes streaming  

Data-driven Marketing

Data-driven marketing is the strategy of using customer information for optimal and targeted media buying and creative messaging.

Modern data-driven marketing began with the invention of the customer relationship management (CRM) software. CRMs allow marketers to track who individual customers are including the name and contact information.

It is one of the most transformational changes in digital advertising that has ever occurred. Usage and activation of data, often in an automated or semi-automated manner, allows for a significantly more optimized media and creative strategy. This people-first marketing strategy is more personalized. It has also been responsible for driving considerable ROIs for marketers.

Today, marketers are spending over $6 billion a year on data-driven targeting solutions like data management platforms (DMPs) and demand-side platforms (DSPs).

Benefits of data-driven marketing are: 

• Messaging audiences with relevant messages
• Targeting the right consumers 
• More efficient media buying 

Affiliate Marketing 

Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting other people’s (or company’s) products. You find a product you like, promote it to others and earn a piece of the profit for each sale that you make. Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing techniques and tactics especially for businesses that don’t have a tonne of capital. Because they only pay money for sales. 

There are a few things that marketers should know about affiliate marketing. 

1. It is challenging to recruit affiliates. 

2. You need to continuously optimize your website. If people are driving traffic but the visitors are not converting into customers, that means they are either driving irrelevant traffic, but most affiliate marketers are good at what they do. So usually the traffic sources typically qualify or it means that your website isn’t converting. And it is usually the issue. 

Despite those challenges, affiliate marketing is a popular tactic to drive sales and generate significant online revenue. Extremely beneficial to both brands and affiliate marketers, the new push towards less traditional marketing tactics has paid off. 

In fact:

• 81% of brands and 84% of publishers leverage the power of affiliate marketing, a statistic that will continue to increase as affiliate marketing spending increases every year in the United States.
• There is a 10.1% increase in affiliate marketing spending in the United States each year, meaning that by 2020, that number will reach $6.8 billion.

Targeting “Generation Z”

For many marketers, “Generation Z” is a mystery. They’ve been so focused on targeting millennials in the past ten years that they’ve forgotten about a whole new generation of young’ uns who are now able to buy from brands. From an e-commerce perspective – Generation Z should be easy to target as they’re online already. They know how the technology works and they’re very active on social.

Ways you can target “Gen Z”

1. Create engaging content – not advertisements
2. Make your content interactive
3. Use media that appeal to “Generation Z”
4. Focus on social channels

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are an increasingly integral part of digital marketing. AI has moved beyond a buzzword to a foundational layer in any successful marketer’s toolkit. 

From Google’s use of AI in search results through to chatbots, predictive analytics, content creation, and personalization, we are seeing AI entering our daily lives as both marketers and consumers. So, we highly recommend the usage of Artificial Intelligence in the new digital marketing strategy. As the personalization is really vital than before, and clients are expecting an incredible shopping experience from brands. 

It’s fascinating that 73% of users want to give up information for an increasingly customized advertisement experience. That’s why experts suppose Artificial Intelligence as a connection between the client and the product. Furthermore, regarding investigations, Artificial Intelligence will increase to more than seven billion dollars per year by 2022.

Here are the essential benefits of AI for Digital marketing: 

• AI can hyper-personalize customer experience by analyzing their profiles.
• AI increases the speed of the production of certain types and formats of content.
• AI-powered software can decide what content to create and when to distribute it.
• AI can process large quantities of data and make accurate predictions based on patterns that emerge from it.
• AI can predict customer behavior and identify and nurture valuable leads.

Influencer Marketing 

The last digital marketing technique on our list is influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is the process of identifying, researching, engaging and supporting the people who create high-impact conversations with customers about your brand, products or services.

It offers brands the potential to unite their marketing, PR, sales, product, digital marketing, and social media through powerful and relevant relationship-based communication with influencers. Both the ROI and marketing potential of influencer marketing is tremendous.

Recent studies have found that 75% of B2B buyers are influenced by information found on social media. As online customer conversations continue to evolve so drastically, social media influencers are playing a critical role in breaking online clutter, creating relevant customer dialogue and bringing trust to the table for brands and marketers alike.  

In an era where consumers have never been hungrier for reviews, ratings, and word-of-mouth recommendations, influencers are the key to unlocking their trust and dollars. Remember trust pays!

5 things for a successful influencer marketing strategy: 

1. Knowing your target customers and understanding who impacts how they evaluate, discover and buy your product.
2. Finding the right influencers who produce and share content that can impact your business or your buyer’s decision-making process.
3. Monitoring influencers for opportunities.
4. Following, sharing, and linking to your influencers will be the first step in a fruitful relationship.
5. Measuring your results and keep track of your effectiveness. 

Influencer marketing is rapidly gaining popularity. No doubt marketers are catching on to the ROI and relationship-building potential. In 2015, Schlesinger Associates released a study in which 84% of marketers said they would launch at least one influencer campaign in the following year. Others have claimed that the industry of influencer marketing could soon expand to $5-10 billion dollars in spending.

Here at Keepface.com, we facilitate straightforward communications and collaborations for both brands and influencers. Through an automated platform, brands can reach the most relevant and matching influencers, negotiate and collaborate with them. At the same time, influencers can create their channels, negotiate with brands and choose their favorite brands for further partnerships. Keep up with the latest developments in influencer marketing by visiting our influencer marketing blog.

For a good few years now, Millennial has been the word on the lips of many marketers but brands may soon have to shift their focus to a younger, more diverse audience that is growing at a rapid pace, Generation Z and Alpha. Born with smartphones, tablets, and technology at their fingertips, these young consumers are the ones to watch. Generation Z, a group of consumers that were born from 1996 onwards and Generation Alpha, born from 2010 onwards. So this blog covers how big brands use influencer marketing to target kids?

“They are adult consumers of the future.”

Here are some interesting statistics about Gen Z.

Technology has always been front and center for these two generations. With 73% of Generation Z having access to subscription video on demand services and over 90% of them owning a smartphone, this younger generation is unlike any other. 

According to a recent study, children between the ages of 5 and 15 now spend at least 15 hours online every week, which is 1 hour and 18 minutes more than they used to but how are they spending their time online exactly?

Surprisingly, social media is not at the top of that list. 73% of children between 5 and 15 use YouTube more than any other online platform. Some even indicated that they would rather watch videos and shows on YouTube than watch TV.

It is predicted members of these generations will make up 40% of all consumers, which means that brands really need to start paying attention to what makes them tick.

So what do marketers need to know about them?

• They do not respond to traditional marketing

This generation does not respond to advertising in the same way that older generations do. The use of ad blockers is almost a given, which means that marketers need to think of more creative, impactful ways to not only reach this audience but grab their attention too.

• They are all for the community.

Their peers are important to them and they care about what others have to say. All of their most important conversations happen online and they’re much more likely to respond to brands that are more humanized.

• Optimized contents are their thing. 

These young online users are used to having to sift through mountains of online content all the time, so while it might seem that this generation has a really short attention span, they’ve really just learned how to assess and recognize the content they really want to consume in a short amount of time.

Brands already collaborate with Kid Bloggers to Sell Toys and Clothes

“Toys R” – Toy Box reality show campaign

Brands and marketers are stepping into a partnership with these kid influencers and their parents, and even the more as the holiday shopping season picks up. The big brands in particular – Walmart, Amazon, Target, and eBay – are competing for a greater share of the toy market recently vacated by “Toys R”, which closed down more than 800 stores in June of 2018.

It’s worth noting that while “Toys R” was responsible for a hefty 12 percent of all toy sales in the US before its demise, the toy sales industry has been slowing in recent years. Toy manufacturers are losing market share to mobile games – which now account for 20 percent of the $187 global toy and games market.

Even if you didn’t necessarily buy all your toys there, making the trip to “Toys R” stores with the kids was a holiday tradition in the US.
However, for small toy companies, it can be difficult to get on the shelves of megastores. Influencer marketing provides a way for small toy companies to insert their brand in front of potential customers just as the year’s shopping season gets underway.

To actualize its goal, “Toys R” first partnered with ABC and Mattel to support reality television show called The Toy Box. In this TV series, passionate toy inventors presented their unique ideas to a panel of judges made up of kids. They leveraged young social media star @katieryan430 with 1.9MM followers who was the perfect social media influencer to deliver the brand’s message. They created a humorous series of posts and video contents covering kids having fun and playing with toys.

View this post on Instagram

Watching Ava play barbies has always been entertaining. Ava calls this video “the horrible sad story of coffee man.”

A post shared by Katie Ryan (@katieryan430) on Jun 29, 2019 at 11:30am PDT

At the end of the competition, the winning toy was produced by Mattel and sold exclusively at “Toys R”. To promote this partnership, they tasked WHOSAY to design a social campaign that resonated with the “kids know best” creative of TheToy Box.

As a result, her native posts generated over 22.5M impressions and 2.2M engagements (including paid). Viewer sentiment was surprisingly positive with 85% of the comments reflecting enthusiasm for the content. Her original content boosted media metrics with nearly 3.8M impressions and almost 1M engagements.

“Target” – Kid clothes campaign

Back in 2017, Target launched a children’s clothing line designed, modeled, and promoted by a class of kids. The 10 kids worked together to design a collection for children aged 4-16 years old, all displaying their own individual styles.

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#ad had a lot of fun creating this shirt for @target Art Class Fall Semester 2017. LOOVE the lips + i added a little bit of glitter to spice it up (; swipe for behind the scenes ❤️ this shirt and other #ArtClass items will be available online and in stores on August 27th!

A post shared by loren gray (@loren) on Aug 23, 2017 at 1:59pm PDT

The kid influencers ranged from 7-year-old photographer Hawkeye Huey to Dance Moms star Kendall Vertes, each with their own unique styles and designs is woven into the 100 piece collection.

“Target” used this same tactic again in later seasons of their “Art Class” line as well as inviting kids to come in and assess their other clothing lines each season. Each campaign features a new batch of kidfluence

“Walmart” – New website

Walmart introduced a completely new website so that it looks more like a traditional lifestyle blog than an e-commerce site. 

Smartly, Walmart is using well-known kid influencers as a way to better position itself to grab a greater share of the toy market, and equally as important, grab a greater share of consumer attention.

Top-Rated by Kids features filmed experiences and unscripted (though not unedited) reviews from Walmart’s cast of kid influencers about the toys currently lining the shelves of Walmart stores and those trending – the ones you can only get on Walmart.com. Products featured on the left and the kid influencer reviews accessible on the right. The review is filtered by kids and age level. 

But, of course, Walmart and Target aren’t the only brands partnering with kid influencers. eBay has recently begun to launch a new advertising offensive featuring a range of influences across a wide range of niches and backgrounds. One of the more surprising choices they made was working with British Dad Blogger and his son –LadBaby. The two of them have appeared in a number of TV commercials, promoting the family-oriented side to eBay. 

Back in 2016, Forbes reported that sports events are on the rise among millennials in the US and globally. Our generation is very attentive to their health. An increasing amount of people support a healthy lifestyle, and for sure an active lifestyle and sports are playing an important role in this living tendency.  The last couple of years the sports industry saw many innovations. Sports became more attractive for an average person because of the new technology and more accessible and affordable pieces of equipment. Due to those tech innovations watching sports events became immersive and interesting that gave rise to sports influencers. 

The sports industry is a growing and diversified market

The worldwide sports industry is worth over  €450 billion and the average growth is 4% per year.

The sports industry is only growing, but also it is evolving. It now consists of numerous branches and sections. Some sports brands incorporate beauty, food and, fashion into their product ranges, and they not only concentrate on sports products but also focus on facilitating healthy living. 

Sports Influencers Create Buzz for Sporting Events

During huge sports events perhaps all of you have noticed the heavy presence of game chatters on social media throughout the game. Like any other events, online activities can easily build buzz. Leveraging influencers for even the smaller events can easily get at least local attention. 

Here are a few ways sports influencers can help you get the word out about your sporting event.

Sporting Events Need Attention

According to a survey, Americans spent $56 billion on sporting events annually. Here includes ticket costs, transportation, food, and beverages. To gather those massive audiences together marketers first need to get the word out.

Sports influencers are generally part of the population attending those events each year. Whether you’re promoting a local softball game or Olympic games, influencers have the power to generate buzz for your event at a fraction of the price you would pay for a billboard or TV ad.

Influencers are Authorities

Sports influencers often go beyond being mere fans. They can often name every player with the most hits or the Football winners by year. This has earned respect from their followers, who see them as experts in their chosen sport. If you choose the right authority, you’ll have access to their highly-engaged audience, and those audience members will be eager to fill the seats at your own game.

Sports Influencers Have Passion

In addition to knowing everything about their favorite sports and teams, influencers often have a passion that translates in every post. Passionate, but popular, fan exists at the local level, as well, sometimes even within high school sports as well as college level.

If you can work with that sports fan, offering free tickets and other VIP perks, you’ll find the combined passion of the team and the influencer will be contagious. Finding and winning influencers depends on careful research. Here are how worldwide events benefited from influencer marketing.

“Olympics – Winter Games”

Dating back to 1896, the Olympics is the world’s largest international sports competition. Every two years, thousands of athletes representing more than 200 countries converge to compete amongst the best of the best in a variety of sports. 

These events are a great opportunity for advertising for all kind of brands. During the games, Olympic athletes take center stage in the marketing world, routinely starring in television commercials, appearing on cereal boxes, and becoming ubiquitous across digital and social ads.

More recently, the growth of social media and influencer marketing has given way to lucrative brand partnerships online. Many brands are leveraging Olympians to publish sponsored content on Instagram and other social platforms.

Here is a famous example that P&G’s influencer marketing campaign that took place during the 2018 Olympics. 

The company leveraged the 2018 Olympics to both advertise many of its brands and to take a distinct political stance in the form of a heartfelt TV commercial promoting equality and tolerance. A number of influencers and Olympians partnered with the brand to promote the same positive messaging across social media.

Together with the Olympics TV ad, P&G partnered with 9 diverse Instagram influencers ranging from a celebrity stylist to a fashion blogger to multiple Olympians. Each published between 1 and 12 sponsored Instagram posts and many used the hashtag #LoveOverBias, which is also featured in P&G’s television commercial.

Even P&G leveraged non-athlete influencers, who was merely an observer of the event, they managed to produce more influencer content during the event. 

As a result, 87% of consumers stated they would purchase a product based on values – because the company advocated for an issue they cared about. And 76% would boycott a brand if it supported an issue contrary to their beliefs.

The TV advertisement encourages consumers to buy P&G products not only because they’re useful, but also because the company aligns with his/her values.  

“FIFA World Cup”

Budweiser is one of the most recognizable beer brands in the world. The brand premiered an international influencer marketing campaign to tie into its sponsorship of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia.

The beer brand partnered with YouTube stars, professional football players, and media personalities to create branded reaction videos on Instagram. Budweiser launched an Instagram-based influencer marketing campaign to cement its brand sponsorship of the FIFA World Cup.

This sponsored content took the form of reaction videos, a style of video where someone films their emotional reaction to an event. The brand also partnered with celebrities and social media influencers to film World Cup reaction videos. They used the hashtag #ReactionChallenge to encourage fans to share their own reaction videos while watching the game.

 

 

 

 

 

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?⚽️ Who will create the craziest reaction video during the World Cup? Post your video with the #ReactionChallenge and join the game with @budweiser! #PartnersWithBud #DrinkResponsibly #ReactionChallenge @Budweiser

A post shared by Anastasia Pelikh ✈︎ (@v.i.d.n.a.y.a) on Jul 13, 2018 at 8:10am PDT

Budweiser’s Instagram influencer marketing campaign sought to bring in an international audience of all ages through its choice of brand partners.

Beer is a natural match for World Cup Sponsorship – enjoying the game with friends and drinks is a universal experience for sports spectators. Alcoholic beverages are consumed in many settings: at home, at a bar, or at a stadium watching the game. This allows Budweiser the ability to promote the beverage with versatility and playfulness.

Before taking off an influencer marketing campaign, it can be beneficial to know this statistical information – every investment in food influencer marketing generated 12 times its value in earned media. Unlike the owned media which is brand’s social media accounts and website and paid media like bought advertising, earned media is the visibility received by a brand with third-party means (blogs, social media and so on). 

Nowadays a word-of-mouth technique is the most effective way to sell, the extent to which social media has taken up space in our lives means it’s now possible to use social media on a full scale by mobilizing the right influencers.

Influencers are people that have achieved a large following on social media by posting videos or photos that take the interest of a certain demographic and by remaining authentic to their audience over time. 

Traditional influencer marketing was about leveraging the top industry influencers and celebrities as brand ambassadors and running ads on TV and radio. It is not only expensive but also irrelevant for food brands which are not in the top of the industry with several outlets in different geographies. Micro influencer marketing is definitely the way to go for a small food brand. 

These micro influencers have a niche following that is usually specific to a particular region. For instance, food bloggers of Istanbul would have the majority of their followers from Istanbul. If you collaborate with such food influencers, they would talk about your product, post pictures, videos, and put up reviews on social media and the product review sites. This, in turn, will help you increase your visibility, and garner credibility for your product and brand.

It is more effective when food brands equip their consumers and influencers with a challenge or event they can participate in using a set hashtag. This engages the influencer’s network and creates a community and camaraderie for everyone participating or following the challenge.

“Activia”s campaign for Ramadan 

“Activia” is a yogurt brand of “Danone” company and launched under the “Bio” brand name. It is classified as a functional food, designed to improve digestive health. Emphasizing this feature, the company started a campaign during Ramadan, a month of fasting in the Muslim countries. 

The Ramadan campaign targeted people who were fasting for the whole month. The idea behind the campaign was to focus more on the functional benefit and more on the product. Throughout the campaign, influencers showcased Activia yogurts in their iftar tables and shared their experiences how the yogurt helps them to feel relieved after a heavy meal. The campaign involved 12 influencers, however, received over 50.000 engagement during the first six days. The campaign lasted the whole Ramadan and reached nearly 300.000 audiences across Instagram and Facebook.

“Hello Fresh”s approach

“Hello Fresh” is a company that sends weekly menus to families and busy people who don’t have time for cooking. They work with a variety of influencer from vegan food bloggers to multitasking mothers. 

The foremost goal of the campaigns was to demonstrate the advantage of the service for busy people, especially those who take care of their health. Through these influencer marketing campaigns, Hello Fresh wanted to reach broader audiences and raise awareness around its brand. The company provided many of the influencers with the discounts by special promo codes and even apron with a personal touch, creative gifts and so on. As a core part of their lead generation strategy, the company invested mainly in influencer marketing. 

Besides providing them with promo codes, influencers were asked to share branded hashtags like #hellofreshpics and #freshfriends. They also encouraged their audience to do so. 

By demonstrating how the product solved influencers’ problems,  the company achieved raising awareness of its delivery boxes in an authentic way. 

“Youfoodz”s strategy

This is an Australian food brand, which wanted to promote its newly launched winter menu with the help of influencer marketing. They leveraged a range of influencers with the niches related to food, fitness, and health. The brand runs an influencer marketing campaign with 81 influencers which resulted.

During the campaign influencers managed to create more than 162 Instagram stories and in total 167 pieces of content. As a result, the campaign saw 507.909 impressions from the content, 70.000 engagements and reached 1.5 million audiences on Instagram and Facebook. 

How to nail your influencer campaign

These are all excellent ways to demonstrate how to leverage influencers to have the desired brand impact. But the key to success behind each of them is finding the right influencers to work with. With that in mind, here are a few things you should remember when looking for influencers:

• Alignment – Will your campaign content look good coming from them, given their respective niches? Do they align with your industry and brand values?
• Popularity – Are they someone your target audience can relate to? How popular are they amongst your target audience?
• Reach – Is the influencer capable of engaging your target audience? 
• Demographic – Is their fan base similar to the buyer personas you’ve built for your company?

Here are strategies how food brands capitalize on influencer marketing trends and stand out in cluttered digital environments.

Show the origin of food

It is more common for food brands to experience rumors about where their food products come from. Showcasing the origins of products with the help of influencers have helped many food brands to save their reputations. They may monitor the factory where their products are produced or fields where ingredients were gathered from and share their experiences on social media accounts. 

Promote in-person events

Of course, it’s ideal when brand representatives can interact in-person but plenty of brands work with influencers to be ambassadors and host events for a brand.

What’s fantastic about working with influencers to host a party or event is all of the sharable content that results. Think about the posts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and blogs that get created with any party.

Be part of a greater brand

Millennial consumers especially demand that a brand fulfills its responsibility to do good for the world, not just making money.

There is no reason that food brands should be sharing a really cool story with their advocates and influencers they partner with. 

Seasonal influencer planning

Working with influencers more than once, on an ongoing basis, creates more authentic and trusted earned media. Thought behind it is that consumers trust an influencer when they talk about a brand at least three times.

Having a plan in place to work with the same network of influencers for an entire year is key. Food brands do this exceptionally well by planning their marketing partnerships according to the seasons. Think autumn pumpkin spice lattes and summer peach deserts.

Influencers love to be in the loop and in the know when it comes to a new flavor and product launches so use this to work with them to help your brand announce new products throughout the year.

Conclusion

Even though influencer marketing can bring you a huge success, it has a dark side too. 

Let’s say you newly opened restaurant mainly focused on vegan food. You heavily invested in influencer marketing and suddenly hundreds of people are posting about your restaurant and also recommend their friends. You will definitely get noticed but as you are new in the industry, the skill set of all your restaurant staff might not be trained or experienced enough to handle such a huge crowd.

And consequently, in a hurry to manage the huge crowd, your food and service might get compromised with. And compromising with these basic things for which your customers visit your restaurant at such an early stage, will not leave a very good impression on your customers. Thus, it is essential to not venture into this until you are absolutely ready.

It has already been proven that influencer marketing is a valuable tool for marketing products or services, with some of the essential outcomes such as increasing awareness, reaching new audiences, improving brand advocacy and sales conversion.

In 2019, influencer marketing is considered as one of the most effective marketing tools to drive a higher return on investment. 80% of marketers think it is more practical, while 71% thinks that influencer marketing helps to drive customers and traffic of high quality. In comparison to the other social media platforms, Instagram abounds with influencers. According to statistics in 2016, Instagram had 9.7K sponsored influencer posts, and that was expected to increase to over 30K in 2019.

Although the influencer marketing is so widely used, marketers still face difficulties with identifying the most suitable influencers for their campaigns.

Choosing the most relevant influencers is critical because they can either make or break your campaign. There are so many factors you should give thought to before making the final decision:

• Do they create relevant, authentic, and high-quality contents?
• What is the demographics of their audience?
• Do they have a high engagement rate and massive reach?

Partnering with macro-influencers with a broad reach usually charges thousands for a single post. But partnering with micro-influencers with a lower audience will bring a higher engagement rate. As many marketers decide to leverage the power of influence of celebrities, collaboration with micro-influencers is rising and becoming more popular.

So, which one is most suitable for your campaign: macro-influencer or micro-influencer marketing? Which one works best, and which one is a worthwhile investment?
In further paragraphs, we will discuss each one in details to identify the main differences, and when to work with one of them?

Who are micros

Micro-influencers are considered social media users with a small audience. According to the definition of Forbes, they usually have followers within the range of 10.000-50.000. However, they initially categorized as having a higher engagement rate with their audience in comparison to the macro-influencers.

They usually comprised a focused and targeted niche market. Therefore they are experts on a particular topic and have more information about their niches. They are considered more reliable because they are usually everyman sharing their personal recommendations, everyday life, their passion, and dislikes.  

Who are macros

On the contrary, macro-influencers have a broader audience. They usually have 50.000 to 300.000 followers on a specific social media platform. Their content is in high-quality and is made up of focused topic or passion.

They have a loyal audience which grows organically over time. It’s worth to note that they are typically well-known in the local community and sometimes worldwide; therefore, their power of influence is also high. We can think about macro-influencers as celebrities.  

Unlike micro-influencers, macro-influencers require more budget, so small and medium businesses should always consider their budget prior to starting their marketing campaigns.

Micro vs. Macro: Know the difference

If you are not certain about which type is the best fit for your business, read on to identify the key differences and similarities before deciding which one is a really great option to ratchet up the return on investment of marketing campaigns.

Engagement rate

This is one of the most important differences, since the micro-influencer has a higher engagement rate than celebrities.

According to research by SocialPubli, they produce 7 times more engagement rate than the average produced by macro-influencers. Micro-influencers are the most engaging and fast-growing influencers in the digital marketing industry.

Although they don’t have as many followers, their audience has a more natural interest in the shared content. Therefore, followers engage with their content even when they know it’s a sponsored post.

Research carried in 2016, shows that as the number of followers increases, the engagement rate decreases. Markerly studied about 5M posts from over 800K Instagram users.

The research found out that influencers with 1K followers or below gets 8% more likes; however, influencers with followers of 10.000 only get 1.6%.  

What does this mean to marketers? Engagement rate is the best metric to measure the influence. Running a micro-influencer campaign is a great way to take your brand in front of lots of various audiences.

Authenticity

Authenticity is a key factor in each influencer marketing campaign. Consumers are more likely to follow the recommendations of influencers who appear more genuine, which means the influencer campaign can be a great way to establish an authentic bond with the target audience.

Brands were using celebrities in traditional promotions for decades; however, the report by Collective Bias shows that only 3% of customers would think about purchasing a product endorsed by a celebrity, and 30% would consider buying a product that was promoted by a micro-influencer who is a non-celebrity.

Brands that collaborate with micro-influencers see 20% more conversion rates. That doesn’t seem surprising for us, because customers are more likely to make their decisions based on word-of-mouth advice of close and distant friends or influencers.  But this doesn’t mean that macro-influencers are not authentic or credible.

Let’s look at one example.

Maybelline wanted to increase brand awareness and sales for the new product launch at Walmart. In order to achieve this goal, they collaborated with beauty influencers who created video contents giving beauty tips and trick. They emphasized the benefits of the product and temped followers to visit Maybelline’s stores.

 

 

 

 

 

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Find out about my two favorite products and how to achieve the perfect natural look on www.eleventhandsixteenth.com #falsiespushupdrama #collectivebias #ad

A post shared by Kimberley Pavao (@kimcpavao) on Oct 16, 2015 at 3:30pm PDT

They managed to generate 73,700 views and 35.7 million impressions to the content they have created. Meanwhile, influencer’s blogs involved 10.900 engagements, that resulted in a 1.3x progress in total brand media value.

Reach

Massive reach is a major feature of macro-influencers or celebrities. Despite the decent number of followers, micro-influencers’ reach is trifle when compared to than that of their celebrity peers. They are able to spread any brand’s marketing message to large audiences through a single post thanks to so many followers. To achieve such a massive reach, you might need to work with several micro-influencers. Thus if your goal is to raise brand awareness and increase visibility, macro-influencers is a better opportunity.

Affordability

Even though macro-influencers offer an extensive reach, to partner with them is costly, which makes them less approachable. Mainly, small and medium enterprises or start-ups with limited marketing budget might choose to go with micro-influencers instead.

As stated by the New York Times, working with influencers with 3-7 million followers can cost you $75,000 per Instagram or Snapchat post, following an average of $187,500 per Youtube video and they charge about $30,000 per Twitter post.

Nonetheless, starting micro-influencer campaigns are considerably less expensive. According to a report of Bloglovin’, 97% of micro-influencers costs less than $500; 87% of which cost about $500 and 96% of influencers charge $1000 for a sponsored blog posts. For Facebook and Twitter posts, your expenses will not be more than $500.

Relevance

An extra significant benefit of partnering with a micro-influencer is that he/she can connect with highly relevant audiences. This opportunity can help marketers improve the return on investment of their campaigns positively.

They are usually experts in particular fields such as fashion bloggers, beauty bloggers, gaming vloggers, and lifestyle coaches. Despite the fact that they have smaller followings, those followings include people who are genuinely interested in influencers’ niches. For that reason, they are expected to get easy conversions and more relevant leads.

Macro-influencers may be real experts in a specific topic as well. Nevertheless, they are sometimes seen endorsing products that are utterly unrelated to their expertise.

As an example, let’s say you are going to open a new restaurant. Instead of working with a macro-influencer who creates in high-quality contents about cars, collaborating with foodie micro-influencers whose followers might be more appropriate to your business is a better option to go with.

Making the final decision

Now you have a broader perception of how micro-influencers can benefit you accomplish your marketing goals. The main issue is to prioritize your targets. If it’s a matter of authenticity, go with micro-influencers. If generating more reach is more vital for you, then go with macro-influencers. No matter which one you choose, creating a strong bond with those who have the power of influence will define the success of your entire marketing campaign.  

Vacation season is here! It can be a low season for marketers. However, even the low seasons let marketers experiment and try new ideas on influencer marketing campaigns when the majority of contents are usually covered travel tips and guides. But like social media itself, influencer marketing is also capable of adapting to new trends and flow of ideas. So this time can be useful to try various areas of influencer marketing like the food and beverage industry.

Influencers have already changed the way we approach social influence, particularly in the food and beverage industry. The predictions are that influencer marketing is here to stay because recommendations of these strong social personalities carry a lot of weight than the brand itself. You can infiltrate the whole summer with a sustainable idea powered by influencers for broader reach. Here are some famous examples of lucrative summer influencer campaigns.

“Malibu Drinks campaign”

Malibu is a rum-based beverage brand with a budget as tiny as a cocktail umbrella. In 2016 it was tapping into influencers all around the world to target young adults in summer via “The Malibu Games” campaigns. So Malibu created a large festival on a tropical island resort and turned summer fun into a competition of Olympic proportions.

According to the owner brand – the Absolut Company, the goal of the campaign was to focus on daytime drinking while addressing a shift in consumer behavior towards richer experiences and average alcohol consumption.

The campaign was manifested through the phrase “Your summer you is your better you” – meaning summer makes people do things they usually wouldn’t do; it makes people became their better-selves.

They needed a group of influencers whose personalities were in line with Malibu’s, but not typical influencers. Malibu collaborated with 32 influencers from 9 countries, including Dominican recording artist Natti Natasha and model/comedian Hannah Stocking, who have all participated in different summer-inspired games. They featured a series of videos and shared during the summer with the hashtags like #BecauseSummer and #MalibuGames.

In 2018, the campaign generated 155 million video views, 2.1 million website visits, and finally, 5.4 million engagements. Besides this, influencer marketing campaigns established Malibu as an icon of summer.

“Halo Top’s ice-cream campaigns”

Halo Top was a low-calorie ice-cream company which was founded in 2011 in the UK. It’s famous for its health low-calorie ice-creams. Five years ago the company was hanging by a thread, but now each box of ice-cream is flying off the shelf.

In the beginning, for building up its name, the brand was using traditional in-store sampling and demonstrations at trade shows. But sooner they found out that this method simply was costly and not working.

So what type of marketing strategy helped Halo Top to make their way to the top?

It merely bred “buzzword” around influencer marketing. Halo Top sent free samples of newly released ten flavors to YouTube influencers, such as fitness gurus are ideal for a healthy ice-cream brand.  

As these influencers made a top-rated review of products, it may safely be said that their strategy gets a success. By tapping influencers into their strategy, Halo Top managed to build its name at an affordable cost.

In addition to this, Halo Top focused on increasing social presence as well. It emphasized its distinction from regular ice-cream brand and spread positive reviews across mainstream media outlets like USA Today, Popsugar, Spoon University, and Buzzfeed. It tempted consumers to try out brand’s products. Now, according to figures of IRI, by September 2018, it had already sold roughly 3.3 million pints of ice cream, which means roughly 1 pint every 9 minutes.

Tips to influencer campaigns for summer

What kind of campaign techniques should you use to ensure delivery of important results?

Events

It is the best way to showcase your product thoroughly by inviting influencers to an event so they can network. If you aim to raise your brand’s awareness, stories, and posts covering the event on mainstream social media platforms would especially work well.

As in the case of “Malibu Games,” they chose a location boasting summer sun, sand, and water, as this was in line with the summer vibe that Malibu wanted to promote.

Product reviews on mainstream social media

This is a classic word-of-mouth technique. Bold reviews of the product on mainstream social media platforms will not only increase brand awareness but also makes consumers note the product for future consideration. In Halo Top’s example, what made it a center of top-rated recommendations is its focus on unique features such as natural and healthy ingredients.

Recommendations from professionals (e.g., fitness gurus)

Nowadays, we usually turn to social media when we seek recommendations and advice from professionals. These people are considered as a trusted source of recommendations. According to the study, 40% of people depend on their recommendations and decide to purchase something after seeing it on social media channels. If consumers are confident about their reviews, they will make decisions accordingly.

Besides, these influencers are niche focused specialists with a like-minded audience – meaning targeting those audiences is highly likely to drive more conversion rates.

Collaborating with micro’s

Micro-influencers seem to be all the rage right now. We’ve discussed in the past the pros and cons of micro-influencers. So, depending on your brand and how specific your target market is, micro-influencers can be very beneficial if you are relying on strong conversion rates. Try running a small campaign with micro-influencers in the 1000 to 10.000 reach range.

Influencers at this size will sometimes post in exchange for some product. So there might not be much to lose, and in return, you might find your own perfect influencer campaign. Of course, the big “con” for micros is content quality and control, so if you do choose to trial a campaign and have important brand guidelines, you may be better of with the semi-pros in the mid-level range.

Explore beyond YouTube and Instagram

We know Instagram and YouTube influencers are dominating in this influencer marketing game. The way these social platforms are set up makes for compelling campaigns and easy-to-track engagement and conversion rates, but it might not hurt to explore other areas. TikTok, in the past several months, has seen a huge growth in numbers and could be the perfect platform if your target is in the under 18 age range.

There are also streaming platforms, like Twitch, which bring in an insane amount of viewers and incredibly influential users.

The popularity of podcasts has even exploded in the past year causing many marketers to turn there for influencers. We aren’t saying to ditch Instagram and YouTube altogether, but be aware of the impact of other social channels. Especially if your audience is Gen Z.

Go long-term

Summer could be the perfect time to begin long term influencer campaigns that’ll last throughout the remainder of the year or even into 2020. Maybe you are unsure of which way to go in influencer marketing–this is your chance to test the waters with different types of posts or a variety of influencers to see what works and what doesn’t.

You also have the chance to start building long term relationships with influencers with the goal of them becoming brand ambassadors. This season is a great opportunity to experiment so that when the busy months and holidays come along, you’ll have set your campaign up for true success.

If you spent a lot of time on social media channels and create some content for your followers, you’ve probably thought of being a social media influencer. Why not? You are already doing it without any compensation. Why not do it as a full-time job and get discounted or free products from well-known brands?

It’s no longer a secret that companies collaborate with social media influencers as an effective marketing method. We live in a world that 70% of consumers ask social media before deciding to buy something or not. A survey carried in 2016 revealed one of the most interesting facts about micro-influencer marketing that will grab the interest of every marketer.