#1 Pepsi Virtual Suhour 

An ever-increasing number of businesses are taking a chance with new and modern advertising strategies to improve the impression of their campaigns, the effectiveness of their messages, and increase brand awareness.

One of these strategies which have seen a great deal of achievement is influencer marketing, or in other words, the act of brands teaming up with web-based social networking influencers.

Influencers are so significant nowadays that brands are collaborating with them to humanize their messages and offer their products with their followers since these profiles are appreciated by hundreds, thousands, and even a large number of online users. People tend to listen to someone they trust. Would you rather enroll in language courses promoted by your favorite YouTube blogger or by Facebook Ads?

Sometimes influencers are smoothly turned into brand ambassadors, and that’s where the interesting part begins. First, let’s begin with this:

What is a brand ambassador?

A brand ambassador is someone who is paid to not only talk positively about the brand but to embody the brand they are endorsing. Good examples of famous brand ambassadors could be Gigi Hadid who is the Global Brand Ambassador and the face of Tommy Hilfiger’s womenswear or George Clooney who has been the brand ambassador for Omega for many years now and has chosen to endorse only international brands to avoid oversaturation in the US.

So, what does a good brand ambassador look like?

How should they act?  

Companies need ambassadors to reach as many people as possible, across a variety of channels and platforms. Presently, this does not mean an ambassador must have 20,000 Instagram followers or thousands of email contacts to represent your brand. But they should have a well-established online presence and a highly-engaged network that they can access via their blog, emails for example. 

Ambassadors are not salespeople who are trying to make as many one-time sales as possible. They exist to bring up strong, loyal relationships between your customers and your brand. Your ambassadors should not only be passionate about your products or services, but they should also be skilled at making deep connections with others on your behalf.

How to turn influencers into brand ambassadors in 4 steps?

1. Build a good connection

The primary step in making an awesome relationship with an influencer is establishing personal affinity. Once you come across somebody that you simply think would be an extraordinary fit for your brand, reach out to them to create a connection- you can tell compliments to their photography or recent blog post they just wrote that resonated with you.

They will appreciate that you just took the time to learn about them and send a personalized message. That is no doubt that it will show them you are interested in what they are doing. From there, you can begin to introduce your brand and kindly ask them to try out your brand or services. It would be great if you could also invite them to upcoming events. 

2. Do not forget to provide them with sneak peeks

An essential way to show influencers that you simply need to work with them for the long term is to clue them into upcoming news and events. Allow them to get involved in your new product launches, invite them to try new offerings before it hits the shelves, or hosts them for a private tasting of new menu items. If you can include them on important occasions for your brand, this would make them feel as they are part of an elite group.

3. Choose those who have a professional mindset

Does the influencer respect deadlines without reminders? If yes congratulations! You are in the right way!

This point is all about good communication but includes the factor of trust and maturity. When you are supervising brand ambassadors remotely, you need to be sure that they will perform without micro-management. Can you rely on your ambassador to follow your agreed-upon calendar and post on deadline without follow-up from your staff?

If you believe that they include your hashtags, Instagram handles, and website or product links without any reminder, you would be successful in choosing that brand ambassador. A creative mind and perfect brand arrangement are one of the most essential things when you are engaging an influencer to represent your brand. You also want to be sure that the campaign will progress without overwhelming administration and regular content checking from your team.

4. Accept and value their opinions 

Last but not least, one of the key points to turn an influencer into a brand ambassador is to ask for their feedback on your brand. Motivating them to share their honest opinions on services or products, you make them feel they are important in sharing your brand. Additionally, it will not only show them that you value their input but hearing direct feedback from bloggers and influencers that reach your target audience is beneficial for your brand and can inform your plans and business developments.

Feel free to register on Keepface as a Brand to discover thousands of influencers worldwide for your product and services.

When brands ready to roll with their influencer marketing campaign, a perfect influencer brief will give the influencers several guidelines and touchstones. It is a core element for the clients to reach a wider audience via influencers. Influencer marketing is just about creating strong bonds with individuals who can share your brands with their followers.  The best way to build prolonged, cost-effective relationships is by setting and managing expectations. 

The visionary influencer brief is the key to any successful marketing campaign. It prevents further communication gaps and highlights the purchaser’s perception and makes sure everyone, both clients and influencers, speak the same language.

Can you imagine a world without communication? Certainly, not. It applies to market campaigns too. When brands don’t communicate what they’re looking for, influencers are completely clueless. The reason they are not able to handle this situation is that they don’t know what’s expected. As a result of it, campaigns are behind schedule just because everyone is dazed and obscurity will go on and on.

So what is the solution? An influencer campaign brief.

Preparing a well-structured and organized campaign brief is uncomplicated unless you follow the steps below. Write an excellent influencer brief, catch influencers’ attention, direct your campaign to the accomplishment.

What Is an Influencer Campaign Brief?

An influencer marketing brief is a document, but not an ordinary one. That kind of document is sent to the influencers which clients want to collaborate with. The client’s purposes, timetables, expectations, deliverables, guidelines, and key performance indicators (KPIs) for cooperation are pointing up in the brief. It may also include legal clauses on disclosure and content usage rights.

It’s the comprehensible outline of your brief is a great way to transmit your request from influencers.

The influencer campaign brief ensures that your influencer and brand’s goals function properly.

Why should you create an influencer marketing brief?

We somehow explained what is this influencer brief, nonetheless, why do we need it?

Let’s take an example, imagine you are planning to create a long-dated influencer marketing arrangement and run not one but even more campaigns, at that time creating an influencer brief is vital. For the record, talented influencers get requests of cooperation from brands almost every day.

A perfect brief can be the tool to make them believe you are the one they should work with. The Influencer Brief creates a common ground for both clients and influencers to elaborate softer cooperation processes. It makes influencers understand what are your objectives and how they should share suitable content to the audience which you want to reach.

How to Write a Perfect Influencer Brief?

Clearly there are some steps you should follow in order to prepare an excellent brief. Here they are.

Step 1. Campaign Essentials

In this part, you should introduce your brand and product to potential influencers. You should tell them who you are, what is your motive in this campaign, what you want to achieve and how. Explain your company’s activities with two or three sentences. If you add your logo it could give you a boost too. Provide influencers with excessive information, what were the past campaigns your company implemented. So influencers would know how your product or service is used and how they could promote them to their audience.

Step 2. Campaign Overview

Two or three sentences will be enough to describe to the influencers what you want to accomplish via launching this campaign (brand awareness, consideration, engagement, etc.).

Influencers have to know your expectations to succeed. Which channels you want the content to be shared, how many posts you want to create, branded hashtags, links, etc. What you want to include in their captions or bios. Duration of the campaign and your target audience. Will you provide an additional budget for promotion purposes. Decided deadlines for the campaign, and how are you going to calculate the report’s results. Provide payment information. Which social media accounts you want your brand to be tagged in their post and last but not least the goals and key performance indicators of your campaign.

Step 3. Campaign Deliverables

First of all, give further instructions for the influencers, and ask them to pass their address, phone number or to order the product from your website. Second of all, provide guidelines for the content that you prefer. You can emphasize some points as well. Such as, what should influencers highlight in their photo or what should they write in their captions and so on.

Despite the fact that you should give freedom to the influencers as much as they need, still, their content should fall into line with your brand. Setting guidelines for content theme and style could be a good idea because it allows influencers to use their creativity and ensure that what is passed to the audience is aligned with your brand. Key messages you want to include whether they should use tags & hashtags.

Collaboration with influencers is not just about promotion, it’s also about finding somebody who could share your visions into the wider audition. You should trust them and see them as new partners, you could also get some content ideas from the influencers themselves.

Step 4. Campaign do’s

This step is quite crucial and in the course of preparing influencers briefing you should include the campaign messages in the post captions, content for review should submit on the date indicated, logo or product have to position to brand guidelines, sponsored hashtag and brand tags should include in your post.

Step 5. Campaign don’ts

Your pictures, as well as posts, shouldn’t contain alcohol or drugs within them, don’t falsify or misinterpret information about brands and never compare one brand to another. Don’t include another sponsored post into yours.

Having a perfect influencer brief is the first stage in any successful campaign. It outlines constructions with clear objectives and will give you clear direction and understanding of your own expectations. You will achieve greater achievements in influencer marketing that you imagine.

To let you understand what an influencer brief looks like we’ve attached an Influencer Brief Example for you here.

With its different culture, marketing ecosystem, and size of the market, the Middle East, and North Africa (MENA) have a huge potential that you cannot place this region behind your influencer marketing strategy. Consumer spending in the UAE alone is expected to exceed $261B by 2021 offering a huge opportunity for overseas expansion.

Moreover, the region experiences digital transformation with the increase in the internet, mobile, and social media usage in recent years. Statistically, 9 out of 10 Arabs use at least one social media platform daily. 

This sudden increase in social media users then led to the emergence of influencers with a relatively larger audience. After the surge in the number of influencers, the advertising industry has started to zoom in on influencer marketing. The Middle East leads the GCC market with the highest demand from top paid influencers and brands. 

But first, let’s get to know the region better and later we’ll give you tips on how to start your own influencer campaign starting from today!

#1 Influencers make a real-world impact

For millennials, influencers are the preferred choice when it comes to discovering new products. According to the study, 47% of women between 18-24 ages say online platforms are the main sources of information on brands and products. And 73% of respondents said they’ve purchased a product after an influencer mention, which is a strong number to show the social power of influencers. 

For global brands, mega influencers are stars to expand into the region. Fashion, beauty sectors introduced worldwide known mega influencers such as Huda Kattan and Maya Ahmad. Along with launching her own brand, Huda Kattan also collaborates with leading beauty and fashion brands. 

Dubai based beauty influencer Maya did numerous partnerships with famous makeup brands including MAC Cosmetics, Dior, Kiko, and Givenchy.

 

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A post shared by MAYA مايا (@themayaahmad) on Feb 12, 2020 at 10:10am PST

The popular influencers effectively convert global brand promotion into the local context. 

For its haircare brand Elvive, Loreal started long-term influencer collaboration with Dubai based lifestyle influencer Narins Beaty. She explains the features of Elvive products which allow growing long and healthy hair while using heat tools. She is very popular in MENA and always shown with beautiful and her long healthy hair and growing popularity among Gen Z makes her the best choice for Loreal’s #dreamlong campaign.

#2 Cultural diversity

Almost half of the marketers that work in MENA use influencer marketing and 94% find it successful for their brands’ marketing. However, influencer marketing in MENA differs from the Western market. Your influencer marketing campaign should be specially designed to the region’s culture and tastes otherwise you will end up with low KPI. 

Content that allows the influencer creativity and freedom always wins in influencer marketing in MENA. According to the Mc&Kinsey report, the market is characterized by less loyal consumers who are always in search of affordable and substitute products. In this context, influencer marketing is a great way for global brands to enter the MENA market.

#3 Influencers are replacing TV commercials

Social media is viewed as trustworthy and it has overtaken TV as a source of information. 

Marketing strategies that are cleverly designed to the market features are winning in influencer marketing too. Uber has an outstanding new-comer example of influencer marketing in MENA. 

 

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A post shared by Aseel | أسيل ?? (@aseel) on Feb 24, 2019 at 11:34am PST

Uber effectively ran the influencer marketing campaign by tailoring its brand objectives to Saudi Arabia’s socio-economic system. The goals were to grow the brand’s social media communication and build credibility. Together with the government’s support for the modernization of socio-culture, Uber’s campaign touched several hot topics such as women empowerment, entertainment, and employment. The long-term partnership with big size influencers drew high ROI and positive engagement towards Uber. 

#4 Micro-influencers are more persuasive than celebrities 

Micro-influencers especially are on the rise and gaining more online power. They have dominance in terms of the level of trust and therefore having more brand partnerships. Not surprisingly, influencer marketing is experiencing a shift from macro-influencers to micro-influencers as they generate more engagement and authentic content. 

Besides, working with micro-influencers enables brands to reach multiple audiences with less spending. They are more relatable to their audience, therefore have more influence over them. Unlike celebrities, they introduce themselves as they are. As a result, YouTube stars became more popular than TV stars.

How to rock influencer marketing in MENA?

Local and global brands have done noteworthy collaborations with mega influencers especially on the beauty industry. Although influencer marketing is going crazy in the region, it requires different approaches. Here are a few of our tips:

Leverage Credibility of Micros

Despite its growing size, influencer marketing in MENA is an infant industry with lots of niches and influencers to be discovered. Credibility is a key component of micro-influencer marketing. 

As marketing experts suggest micro-influencers are the future of influencer marketing. Even now, they have more engagement rates and profitability. MENA is not an exception. With a high level of engagement and authenticity, micro-influencers have the potential to increase awareness and bring new consumers. They are especially relevant for small budgets.

Target Gen Z

Gen Z population of the MENA region is rapidly growing and going to dominate social media platforms as well. Social media usage by Gen Z’s leads to the emergence of nano-influencers and the rise of micro-influencers. 

One of the prominent influencer campaigns were run by Egypt’s Commercial International Bank. Considering that banking is not among the interests of Gen Z, that was pretty risky to take. So, to make it engaging for the youngsters the bank added popular dabbing fashion into the action. The campaign was calling young people to make changes in the New Year. The campaign ended with high engagements, almost all of the socially engaged users were asking about bank services.

Work with Experts

Even if you have done successful influencer partnerships before, the MENA market has a distinct nature and legal requirements to consider before diving into partnering. 

The biggest issue brands face in influencer marketing is not having a clear view on how to find the relevant influencers and negotiate with them. BPG Cohn & Wolfe Influencers Survey revealed that 55% of brands’ biggest challenge was finding relevant influencers, and followed by 41% negotiating terms and conditions.

If you plan to enter the region you will need an expert consultancy to run an efficient campaign and to reach your target audience smoothly. Keepface gave assistance to many brands over the years, helping them to find the best fit influencers and to manage all the process from negotiating with influencers to reporting the success. 

Choose the Right Social Media Platform

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube have millions of active daily users in the MENA region. 

YouTube is a destination for tech and gaming influencers, while fashion, beauty, food, lifestyle influencers choose Instagram. About 30K Middle East-based YouTubers have more than 10K followers. Video content is the highly preferred choice by lifestyle, entertainment, gaming influencer niches while photo content is popular among fashion and interior concepts. 

With comprising 10% of the world’s Instagram users, influencers in MENA are mainly focused on Instagram. Social media users in the region are a vivid consumer of stories and videos. 

And, of course, there is TikTok. From celebrities to TikTok evolving influencers the TikTok sees a huge surge in usage since 2019. Most influencers in terms of follower count are coming from UAE and Saudi Arabia mainly on comedy, acting, and fashion content. TikTok itself launched #CreateForGood and #TikTokCares campaigns with MENA influencers to educate people on tolerance and safety manners.

@salmansfamilyThree things to avoid at the beach ? ##tiktokcares ##pourtoi ##foryou ##couplegoals @isleym.b♬ son original – salmansfamily

Despite its differences with the rest of the world, the MENA region has a vibrant influencer marketing ecosystem. The population is hyper-connected and their personal experiences are more important than brands’ popularity. Therefore conducting authentic influencer marketing is challenging but rewarding. Here at Keepface, we’ve helped brands around the world by finding the right influences, creating and managing high ROI campaigns, and advising to build the right influencer marketing strategy. 

If you’re looking to amplify your brand’s voice through influencers feel free to contact us.

How would you engage with your community in the middle of crises? Almost every industry is affected by the global pandemic. There is a certain category of influencers who will help you to reach your customers and bring your sales up during the crisis. 

With all the cuts in ad spend, the global pandemic turns influencer marketing into a more meaningful form of digital marketing. Influencer marketing is adjusting itself to changes requiring more improvement based content. Followed by the spike in consumer demand for social media content, influencers massively increase their posts. Live streaming gets more popular as it generates more social interaction. They also try new content styles and new platforms. 

Let’s see some influencers categories who are shining during the crises and will help your brand to reflect it.

#1 Foodies are busy at the kitchen

 

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A post shared by Jake Cohen (@jakecohen) on Jul 2, 2020 at 6:27am PDT

Raise your hands if you have cooked something you have never done before the quarantine. We all did. And the biggest inspiration for us was food influencers who are busy with sharing posts about trying something new. 

Also, affected by the closure of restaurants, now people have more time to try homemade recipes. Live streaming is the most popular and rising content type among food influences to educate and enjoy time with their followers. 

Besides, this is a godsent time for food brands to communicate with their consumers and nail their influencer campaigns. There are so many creative ways brands can work with food influencers during the lockdown crisis.

#2 Lockdown is going well for fitness bunnies

There is not a better time to stay healthy and physically active than ever. While the demand for a home workout is increasing digital fitness industry has boomed. Today, fitness videos are one of the most viewed videos on YouTube. Home exercise videos have increased by more than 200 percent in the UK. 

Since gym studios were forced to close fitness influencers make home exercise tutorials. They encourage social interaction among followers and help to reduce stress and anxiety during the quarantine. 

#3 Home has the best background 

Although there is no place to try fashion trends of 2020, fashion influencers do not stop creating content with work-from-home outfits. The quarantine also forces fashion gurus to create more creative and purposeful content at home.  They offer a healthy distraction in this nervous situation for those who want to work on their personal styles. Video content is also popular among fashion influencers as they prepare videos while taking ongoing social media challenges.

 

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A post shared by KATIE ONE (@katie.one) on Jun 30, 2020 at 1:17pm PDT

#4 Tech wizards are upgrading influencer marketing

Tech influencers are taking advantage of crises by actively posting about the latest digital news and innovations. Influencers often share their user experience and recommendations. Usually, these people are industry bloggers, experts who are a genuine source of information and tent to have authenticity and engagements. This is also an opportunity for people to add new skills while getting digitally connected. 

With the rapid digital transformation, the role of tech influencers is becoming more important as consumers value third party advice before making purchase decisions. Considering that many brands continue to digitalize their operations the role of tech wizards will be vital for B2C and B2B business as well.

 

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A post shared by Gadget Flow (@gadgetflow) on Jun 26, 2020 at 1:42pm PDT

#5 Lifestyle influencers reshape their content strategies

Lifestyle influencers are tailoring their content to “home edition”. The range of lifestyle content is increasing with lifehacks to combat the crisis, to #workfromhome, house cleaning, the lists of books, must-watch movies, and of course Netflix recommendations. In addition, influencers try and advise different time management tools and apps to manage time at home efficiently. 

Along with influencers, many brands increase their social media posts and adjust timings to drive more engagement. A good example was done by P&G’s brand Always. The brand let popular social media influencers take over their Instagram stories for a day and post IGTV videos on the brand’s page. Such activities contribute to better brand-influencers also brand-audience relations.

#6 Hustlers beat crises

Entrepreneurs are another rising influencers category during crises. By posting about their taken steps and future expectations of the business these people are getting more social interaction. Profound knowledge and solid backgrounds allow them to be accepted as a valid source of information. From marketing perspectives, entrepreneurs have more significance in B2B business being the right players for endorsing related products.

Don’t just dream about it.
Take action and work as hard as you can.

— Neil Patel (@neilpatel) June 26, 2020

Last but not least

These are influencer groups who pivoted their content and expected to be in favor of brands in crisis. Influencer marketing has never been this important to connect your audience and spread your message. To find more influencers go to Keepface’s Influencer Discovery and get access to one of the largest influencer database. Here’s our step-by-step guide on how to find the right influencers for your brand in seconds. 

We live at a time when there is so much competition amongst brands and services. This challenge has forced brands to come up with a highly effective marketing strategy to stay in business. One such is influencer marketing as a social media marketing strategy. For instance, in the online casino gaming, a brand such as Lightning Link is engaging influencers in their marketing strategy to create brand awareness.

According to a study conducted by Tomoson, businesses are making as much as $6.5 for every $1 used in influencer marketing strategy. The poll additionally rated influencers as one of the fastest-growing customer acquisition channels. 

We highlight 6 of the most common mistakes in influencer marketing strategy.

#1 Not Cherry-Picking an Influencer for your Marketing Strategy

If you pick a wrong influencer, your marketing strategy will barely result in sales. The biggest assumption that we make is that more social media followers would result in more sales, while it is not an obvious cause.

To effectively pick an ideal influencer for your online business’s marketing strategy, we recommend that you consider the following:

Scrutinize the Influencer Followers

For influencers, followers make one of the most critical marketing strategy elements, and hence they are always on the race to bag them. Surprisingly, some influencers purchase ghost ‘followers’ such as bots, which would always have their numbers spiking. Looking at the posts by most influencers, you will always find the bots posting unrelated or incoherent comments, which should be a red flag.

Analyze Previous Influencer Engagements

If a competitor previously used the influencer in their marketing strategy, it would be prudent to analyze the level of engagement on their posts. A keen analysis of the influencer posts helps you understand whether the comments and interactions are by organic followers or bots. You will know rich influencer interactions from the comments and feedback on inquiries made by followers. 

However, there might be posts with followers who comment or engage more with the influencer’s personality instead of the product. This only means that this influencer might not be ideal to be one of your marketing strategy components. 

#2 Having No Primary Goal in Mind

Since you are considering an influencer for your marketing strategy ideas, do you have any specific goal in mind? 

It would be a waste of resources to engage an influencer without any intent. Just getting the product mentioned is not always an end to itself. 

Thus in your business marketing strategy steps, you need to pause and analyze your primary goal for involving an influencer. Some of these goals could be:

• To increase your own brand social media following.
• To capture a new audience through brand awareness.
• To drive sales and business leads.

Develop a specific communication strategy for any of these goals without a general one unless under special circumstances. This critical component should point you in the direction of the right influencer for that marketing strategy. 

#3 Failing to Measure Results in the Marketing Strategy

To gain a return on investment (ROI) in your marketing strategy, measure the effectiveness of the influencer campaign vis-à-vis the set goals and objectives, ensure that each objective ties to a measuring metric, and link the results. 

If, for instance, you aim to drive traffic to a site like Lightning Link, insert tracking links on the website. The tracking helps you understand if there is any new traffic to the site resulting from the influencer’s posts. 

On the other hand, if gaining more social media followers was your primary goal, use relevant social media analytical tools to gain some insights. At the end of it, the results help you analyze your marketing strategy and learn from any mistakes in future influencer engagements. 

#4 Ignoring the Few Posts by Micro-influencers

While celebrity influencers have millions of followers, micro-influencers rake in between 1000 to 100,000 followers on social media. We recommend that you target both types of influences but with a balance on the volumes of their postings for your marketing strategy. 

Develop a marketing strategy whereby a given number of micro-influencers will post a certain number of posts per day and for a certain duration. The repeated posting will result in the audience remembering the message or call to action much longer.

#5 Sitting Back as Influencers take Center-stage

Once you came up with a clear marketing strategy for online business and identified an influencer to champion it, you should not take a back seat. Influencer marketing requires that you walk with the influencer throughout the marketing campaign.

If you identified the right influencer for the products, you would expect that inquiries, comments, calls, and reactions would be on the rise. Practically, it is nearly impossible for the influencer to respond to all these inquiries. It is at this point that you kick in and address the relevant questions concerning your brand. No matter how long it takes, keep track of the post, and respond to queries. 

#6 Treating Influencer Marketing Strategy as Actual Sales

A big mistake made by businesses that hire influencers for their marketing strategy is assuming that influencer marketing is actual sales. In the real sense, influencer marketing strategy is just that; marketing. 

Influencers could help drive traffic to your website or social media platforms, which would make most of the time drive sales. As marketers, you need to involve them in your marketing strategy so that they own the process and become persuasive in their pitches. 

Conclusion

Finally, social media influencers have become a big hit, and if tapped into correctly coupled with a proper marketing strategy can magically create the much-needed sales leads and traffic.

Do you know of any other mistakes made in influencer marketing strategies? We would love to hear from you in the comment section below.