How to Find Right Influencers via Keepface’s Influencer Discovery

With more and more brands investing in influencer marketing, influencer discovery becomes more complicated and diversified. The growing market generates new influencer categories and new audiences over time. And brands should stay up-to-date to nail the most effective influencer marketing campaigns.

 

In 2020, 51% of marketers say influencer-created content is more effective than brand-created content. So, finding the right influencers is half of a successful influencer marketing strategy. The more influencer resonates with your brand, the more successful your campaign will be. But finding the fittest influencer is not as easy as it sounds. 

If you’ve already defined your campaign goals, the next step is to dive into influencer discovery. It’s in your best interest to find and reach out to relevant influencers in the shortest time. Today we’ll guide you through how to streamline influencer discovery and outreach via Keepface’s Influencer Discovery. 

Let’s get started!

Search and find influencers

After logging in to your account jump in Discovery it’s just in the left corner. 

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Click Discovery and you will be directed to Search bar automatically. Below the bar, you can see the latest registered influencers.

Use Filter to get concentrated results for your campaign. Filter button is designed to find out the most relevant influencers by their category, audience size, engagement, social platforms, price range, country, and gender. And with the Upgraded Plan, you can even go further by filtering influencers’ audience search on language, location, gender, interests category, and age groups. 

 

Click Show Results next to Filter to get the results according to your filter. 

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Influencer names come with filtered results. In a few seconds, you will find your best fit influencers on the database. There are two view options, List and Grid view. You can choose how you want to see your results. 

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Overview of each influencer’s profile

Click View details to quickly see the overview of influencer profiles. You will be able to see the latest and most engaging posts of influencers, as well as their category, global and country ranking score, total audience, and media value. So you get an in-depth view of influencers without leaving the platform.

 

Dive into their Audience Analyze to see whether that influencers’ audience matches with your target audience. By looking at the latest posts you will have an overview of their styles and engagement of the recent posts beforehand. These are all necessary stats that will help you to decide whether the influencer is relevant to your brand or not. 

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Add influencers to your lists for later use 

On the right side of the section, you see Add to list. Lists are a great way to save your filtered results so you will save time while campaign planning. 

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You can either add influencers to the list you created before or Create a new list. Influencer lists help you in your future campaigns where you just choose the list and submit the campaign.

Say, you need a list of “Fashion micro-influencers”. Adjust filters accordingly and select influencers who you think are the right fit by clicking the box in front of each name.  Click Add to List (red button below Search Bar), choose the List and all the selected influencers will be added to that list. Or you can add influencers individually, just clicking Add to List (blue button next to Influencer Profile) and selecting the list. 

Your list is ready

You can reach your lists anytime by clicking Lists on the drop-down menu under the Influencer Box (see on the screenshot).

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Note that the number of lists depends on your Subscription Plan, so with a free plan, you can create only one influencer list. 

Creating lists before starting your campaign will save you a huge time, so when you create a campaign you’ll only need to add your brief, content types and add your list of influencers with a few clicks. That easy!

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7 Benefits of Working with Micro-influencers

In this day and age, as people are becoming more and more skeptical regarding traditional advertising methods, famous companies or smaller businesses need to reinvent their strategies and find ways to make their self-promotion more authentic. This is where so-called micro-influencers come into play.

A lot of brand names used to prefer working with famous celebrities with a large number of followers, through methods such as product placement, but over time people have become more apprehensive towards this promotion strategy. It seems like the tide is turning, and more and more companies seek for the increasingly numerous benefits of working with smaller influencers.

Difference between micro-influencers and celebrities

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Being an “influencer” has become the newest trend this century. It is a lifestyle many people turn to, and as an Awin study states, “social media influencer” is the second most popular career option for people aged 11 to 16. Anyone can be a social media influencer these days, although people tend to call people with less than 10,000 followers micro-influencers

 

These micro-influencers make up the majority of influencers on most digital platforms, and while their number of followers is small, their influence is quite big. In fact, because they have fewer follower bases, these small-time influencers have the tendency to be more engaged with their audience on a daily basis. This cannot happen with people with huge follower bases, as they cannot interact with all of them constantly. 

 

Another thing that sets apart smaller influences and social media celebrities is that the first category tends to be more relevant to a more specific industry. Micro-influencers tend to be experts in niche categories, and their audience is also made up of people interested in that niche. Bigger celebrities will not have followers that are as invested in specific aspects of their brand. 

Why do companies prefer smaller influencers?

1. Cost-effective

micro-influencers-are-cost-effectiveFirst and foremost, many brands nowadays turn to micro-influencers as opposed to celebrities because they are highly cost-effective. Celebrities tend to charge a lot higher fees for their collaborations, which is a lot of the times not worth it for the value of the work they can deliver.

 

Any brand should include micro-influencers in their business strategy, as it will give long term benefits for their budget. The same amount of money they put into a top-tier influencer to promote their products through a single post could be used to pay a larger number of smaller influencers. By doing this, brands have a higher chance to reach a wider audience, a more engaged audience, and thus allowing them to build a genuine fan base

2. Scepticism of the public over celebrity promotions

Not so long ago, promotions made by celebrities used to be highly effective. However, in recent years, the culture around celebrities seems to have diminished, as people became more and more skeptical. People nowadays seem to have become aware of the fake aspect of sponsored promotion, and instead prefer promotions based on actual preference. It is proven that once a smaller influencer crosses the line of 1 million followers on social media, most people will brush off their posts as sponsored deals rather than genuine passion.

3. They seem more genuine

authenticity-micro-influencersPeople with only a few thousand followers generally give the impression of being genuine, trustworthy people, as they provide more authentic and relatable content to their audiences. Fans tend to engage more with an influencer if they have a certain aesthetic to their content, if they connect to a more personal level and if their tone is authentic, friendly, and engaging. They can also spread the message a company intends to send in a cleaner, more genuine way. 

 

As they are sharing their personal content, micro-influencers show their appreciation towards their growing community more, and they are highly likely to attend certain events and interact with their followers by replying to their comments or messages. For someone whose posts get around 300 comments every day, it becomes increasingly harder to engage every single person on a personal level.

4. Smaller influencers have more specific content

Micro-influencers tend to have a niche audience, meaning a smaller number of followers, that is more connected to the specific topics the influencers represent. These follower bases will tend to have a lot of people usually engaging in similar content, and part of a similar demographic profile, assets which are really useful for companies looking to promote specific products. 

 

“Smaller influencers often allow companies to target audiences interested in that niche. Not only that, but since the influencers themselves are familiar with that particular niche, they can provide detailed descriptions and recommendations for the products themselves. This makes for a better, more genuine promotion, which really helps in the long, as the relevance of the promoter to the brand is key in any marketing scheme,” explains Adam Kirrian, a social media writer at Assignment Writers and UKWritings.

5. It is easier to find genuine brand fans

micro-influencers-fan-baseWhen a smaller influencer is involved with a niche topic, chances are they may already be fans of the brand a company is trying to promote. This is particularly good for any business because it doesn’t take any time to convince them to help you promote your products. In fact, a lot of the times smaller influencers do promotions by themselves without the companies’ knowledge, so it is worthwhile to find someone who is already promoting the desired product. 

6. They are better to work with

Typically, micro-influencers tend to be more engaging on a personal level, which makes it easier for businesses to establish personal connections to them.  

“A lot of the times, businesses claim that smaller influencers go above and beyond to satisfy the needs of their client, as they show their gratefulness towards the people that notice them and value their work. They also claim that it is easier to contact them and that they tend to be more open to explore the tasks they are given and provide out-of-the-box content,” says Hillary Ian, a blogger at State Of Writing and Oxessays.

7. Great for small businesses and startups

startups-influencer-marketingUnlike big companies, which have bigger budgets and can afford to hire anyone to promote their content, smaller companies have to find cheaper options in order to compete with the big leagues in the market. This is not a problem since small business owners or startups can rely on micro-influencers who closely relate to their brand to work with, on a smaller budget. 

 

This is great for anybody who is just starting up in the business, as it no longer means that only big brands and names compete in the market. In fact, starting with smaller fan bases can be a good thing, as you establish your relevance to the market while building up a reputation among the consumers, without having to spend a lot of money on promotion. 

 

As it seems, there are many benefits to working with smaller influencers rather than people with large follower bases. Nowadays, people are becoming less and less interested in the traditional advertisements, resorting to Adblock software most of the time, so using micro-influencers can become the new, more creative method to reach your target audience, without seeming forced. 

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Top 10 Russian Micro-influencers to Follow in 2020

As one of the most effective digital marketing strategy influencer marketing is spreading to even new fields. With this on, marketers emphasize the role of micro-influencers for getting even more engagement, better brand awareness, and increased sales. 

 

In our previous blogs, we have given you the insights of US, Turkish, Chinese influencer markets. In this blog, we will get to know the Russian influencer market focusing on the micro-influencers you as a brand need to know and work with.

What does the Russian influencer marketing look like?

 

Influencer marketing is also widely spread in Russia. Different range of influencer niches such as travel, book, beauty, fashion, parents are among the popular ones. It is easy to find influencers of each audience size. And due to Lingua Franca, Russian influencers are also followed beyond Russian borders. 

 

In 2018, influencer marketing spending in Russia was $70 – $80 million out of $3.12 billion total digital marketing spendings. Although influencer marketing is 3-5 years behind Europe and the US, global makeup, technology, clothing, food brands are involved in Russian influencer marketing. 

 

Influencer marketing has mainly built on Instagram and YouTube. And influencer campaigns work best when they target young customers. 

Now, we will introduce you to 10 Russian micro-influencers from different niches. Let’s get to know the promising Russian influencers. 

 

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A post shared by ?ОРГАНИЗАЦИЯ ПОРЯДКА, ХРАНЕНИЯ (@mama.poryadok) on

The first influencer in our list is a mom blogger Irina from Tatarstan. She mainly posts on parenting, space organizing, and indoor house design. Thanks to creating engaging content she reached 72K followers. 

 

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The second influencer in our list is a photograph and makeup artist Elizabeth. With her outstanding makeup talent, she has reached 41K audience. If you want to visit the world of fairy tales then go with this makeup wizard. Despite creating strong looks Elizabeth is superb active on Instagram. 

 

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A post shared by Liza Klubnika ? Beauty Blog ?? (@liza.klubnika) on

The next influencer in the extreme makeup category is Liza Klubnika. With her incredible makeup skills, she brings her colorful soul into the face. From smokey eyes to concept makeups Liza creates different types of looks on her Instagram page. Her looks are also appreciated by global makeup brands like Urban Decay, Maybelline, YSL. 

 

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A post shared by ЛЕНА ГОЛОВА (@lena_golova) on

Let’s get a chick with a stylist. Lena is a professional stylist and owner of her clothing brand. Saint Petersburg based micro-influencer is followed by 77K people. Lena’s style is a combination of cozy and delicate dresses. 

 

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A post shared by Алексей Жирухин (@bepowerback) on

Now it is time to travel the world. Alexey Djyrukhyn is a businessman, marathon runner, and avid traveler. From East to West he passed 55 countries and every inch of Russia. Plus to his 28K Instagram account, he also writes blog posts about his travel adventures. 

 

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A post shared by Мария Бутба (@prosto.m) on

Continuing with the fashion influencers. Maria is a Moscow based micro-influencer with 53K followers. She perfectly combines modern fashion with classic elegance. Maria personates neutral outfits with dainty accessories, that’s what makes her style different. Pictured perfect angles on fitted backgrounds complete Maria’s aesthetics. 

 

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A post shared by Michael Shmelev (@michaelshmelev) on

Moscow based influencer Michael Shemelev is the next influencer in our list. He is a traveler and landscape photographer with 24K followers. While he travels he captures the beauty of nature in different parts of the world. See the harmony of colors through his camera. 

 

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A post shared by Илья Лютиков (@ilushkin) on

The next influencer category in lifestyle. Ilya’s content covers fitness, food, travel, skin-care. He always serves his audience with in-depth described tips for a happy and energetic life.

 

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A post shared by ПРОСТЫЕ РЕЦЕПТЫ НА КАЖДЫЙ ДЕНЬ (@edafood_) on

Marina’s Instagram is a great medium for food lovers. She claims you can prepare her recipes with only the products that are already in your fridge. Marina’s profile is dedicated to a wide range of cuisines. Add spice to your meals with her profile. 

#10 @mgugirl

 

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A post shared by Коуч Экспертов Алина Дунина (@mgugirl) on

Let’s finish the story in a sophisticated way. The last Russian micro-influencer on our list is book lover Alina. She massed 32K audience. Alina shares tips with her audience over emotional intelligence, problem-solving, self-esteem, perception mistakes, avoiding procrastination, ways to set new goals, simply everything you need to find yourself. 
They are only a few of Russian micro-influencers. To find out more use Keepface’s influencer discovery to unlock influencers from every category.

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The Virtual Influencer Phenomenon And What It Means For Marketing

Many people born in the 90s remember when the electro-pop band ‘The Gorillaz” came out. The group was presented to the public as a cast of animated characters that performed the music. Even though the band leader was the well known Blur frontman Damon Albarn, the emphasis was put on the animated band, they were the public face of the group.

 

Fast forward a few decades and people are more worried than ever about the prospect of AI technologies replacing humans. This has become apparent in a recent report that claims that even Instagram influencers will have to watch out for increasing popularity of Virtual Influencers creeping into their space.

 

Large brands such as KFC, Bed Bath And Beyond, and Louis Vuitton have all started to use Virtual Influencers in their campaign and many more companies will be following.

What is A Virtual Influencer?

 

The term Virtual Influencer refers to CGI characters created by people and corporations, often with AI elements, that act as the face for branding or marketing campaigns. In places where individuals would have expected to see humans representing a company or a product AI-based CGI avatars are beginning to take the stage.

 

“A Virtual Influencer can be thought of as a digital person, with a history, personality, background, and style that is created for the sole purpose of advertising a brand, product, or service,” writes Jane Fundon, a marketer at Academicbrits and Phdkingdom.

 

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A post shared by Miquela (@lilmiquela) on

Perhaps the most well known Virtual Influencer is Lil Miquela who has nearly 2 million followers on Instagram. In cyberspace, Lil Miquela is a 19-year-old half Spanish and half Brazilian girl who enjoys fashion and making music. In 2019 she teamed up with Samsung as part of their Galaxy advertising campaign. Lil Miquela is the first, and still most popular, virtual influencer around.

Why Use Virtual Influencers?

 

VIs are programmed and under the complete control of the owning company. Many times in the past corporations have contracted celebrities or sports stars to be the face of their marketing campaign only to have them say or do something that goes against the image the company is trying to put forward. Famous examples are Jared Fogel and Tiger Woods.

 

By having complete control companies feel they can better manage the risk associated with mass-scale advertising campaigns.

VIs are also flexible creations, they can be changed and modeled as needed to suit the current advertising culture. They are also independent of time, space, and commitments meaning it only requires a small team to put together a specific ad, photo, or video featuring their Virtual Influencer, whereas their human counterparts are not as readily available.

 

Imagine a celebrity, sports star, or pop music icon who has been contracted to represent a brand or product. To have them participate in a commercial, photoshoot, or video session it requires a great deal of foreplanning. These are busy people who have busy schedules. With VIs there is no need to be beholden to the schedules of others. They are ready to go at any time and any place.

 

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What Do Virtual Influencers Tell Us?

 

The rise of Virtual Influencers as a legitimate marketing tool marks a major shift in people’s attitudes towards advertising. “A recent poll showed that 54% of UK residents found virtual entities appealing on some level. The idea of having a digitized human represent products and services to the general public is not something that would have been well received even just a few years ago,” writes Gene French, a business writer at Originwritings and Nextcoursework. Virtual Influencers tell us that attitudes are shifting and that marketing strategies are evolving.

 

There is growing concern that the acceptance of Virtual Influencers and their rise in popularity is a symptom of a society that is growing up in cyberspace just as much as they are growing up in meat space. There is also the issue of perpetuating even further an idea of body image that is unattainable. Photos of models are often airbrushed and edited before they are made available to the public. With Virtual Influencers, they can be molded to fit any appearance the creator desires. Many have concerns about the long-lasting effects of this on the minds of the young generation.

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6 Ways to Use Influencer Marketing During the Quarantine

COVID-19 leaves marks on almost every industry. With the continuation of the quarantine, the world is getting more digitally connected. And marketers harmonizing with the new normal
Consumers do not expect brands to stop advertising, instead, they appreciate brands that avoid hard-selling, value their needs, and spread positivity. It is important to talk to the customers especially in this crazy time. 

 

As many brands are tightening marketing budgets for the coronavirus, influencers also feel the burden of it. But this does not mean influencers getting out of the market. Yet, with the unprecedented increase in the number of social media users, influencers see a 20% to 50% increase in the content views. 

Some brands create content on their own to engage with the followers. Why not make organic partnerships and show that you care about your community. With  influencer marketing, you add a human touch to your campaign. Influencers help to deliver your message in an authentic way and that is what we need these days. 

 

The brand and influencer relations are shifting to value creation. The influencer campaigns are becoming subtle and tailored to the quarantine conditions. Especially In times when homemade content is becoming popular. 

If you are an influencer marketer or plan to leverage influencer marketing during the quarantine, here are the ways to seize this opportunity, we will help you how. 

#1 Go with the flow – Live-streaming

 

Before starting your influencer marketing campaign always search where your audience spends their time now. As we mentioned before content creators on gaming, fitness, food see the highest hike. And streamline is getting even more popular with the jump in the number of live video content. This is where you should look at to reach your audience. 

 

Let’s consider the following case: as a consulting company, you partner with travel influencers and talk about how to tackle anxiety due to loss of jobs, financial insecurity during the quarantine.

#2 Micro-influencers are great mediums

With highly engaged content micro-influencers are still on top of influencer marketing. Considering that people are not going to make luxury purchases during and after the quarantine, micro-influencers are now even more approachable. It also gives impetus to low budget brands to work with the micro-influencers. You can dive into micro-influencer marketing here.

#3 Turn to TikTok 

 

In many of our blogs, we stressed TikTok as the future of influencer marketing. Now, quarantine is proving it, again. 

 

The global downloads for TikTok accounted for 12% between March 16-22. With one of the fastest-growing social media platforms, TikTok has over 500 million monthly users, 42% of those under the age of 25. 

 

Already many companies started leveraging TikTok including Apple. Plus to being active on Instagram and Twitter, Apple has recently created its official account on TikTok. Though Apple has been hosting ads in TikTok, it is not exactly known for which purposes the brand will use TikTok. 

It is important to keep marketing campaigns while not promoting the product features but how to do it during a time. The good case is beauty brand e.l.f Cosmetics that has been already engaged in TikTok since December 2019. The brand launched a campaign called #EyesLipsFace. Over 2 million videos had been created for the campaign’s song. Now e.l.f Cosmetics relaunching #EyesLipsFace hashtag. This time the brand took social responsibility with influencer marketing. During the campaign, influencers washed their hands while not touching their faces. 

#4 Go for ready influencer packages 

 

If you are under the limited budgets pre-built influencer campaign packages will work well for you. Pre-built packages are simply all negotiated and ready campaigns that will save you time and additional cost. You do not need to spend time on influencer search, agreeing on price or paperwork.

 

Influencers are agreed to post ready content. In this way, more audiences will be aware of your campaign without extra spendings. Check out ready-to-start influencer campaign packages here to see how it works in detail. 

#5 How about LinkedIn influencer marketing?

 

This is where you get most of your leads. 91% of marketers choose LinkedIn to create professional content. To boost offers effectively, you need to optimize your LinkedIn account, create eye-catching content which all takes time. Industry thought leaders have already built the community you need. 

 

LinkedIn influencers directly talk to your customers and are known for their authentic content. These people are actively sharing their experiences over different types of services during the quarantine. When they mention a product, it directly affects audience purchase decisions. 

 

Start your LinkedIn influencer marketing without further due. 

#6 Tackle COVID-19 with Facebook groups

Social media groups are a great way to reach your dedicated customers. With social media usage on the rise, the engagement in Facebook groups also increased. 

 

Do not just think about your brand group but also a different range of groups in your industry. Usually, members of these groups are not allowed to directly promote products or share links. Hence, influencers can play as your agent and raise discussions around the features of the products, share their experience, and many more. 

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3 Step Guide to Boost Your Online Game Player Base via Influencers in Stay-at-home Period

The coronavirus has hammered a lot of businesses, but it has lit a fire under others, including the online game industry. Its sales are soaring, but they could be even better. If you’re a game developer or publisher, one way for you to ramp up sales even further would be to use online influencers in your marketing. 

This is particularly true for small companies with limited budgets. Influencers can take big online game makers’ sales to the next level and help start-ups and indie games gain a foothold in the industry at a modest cost.

 

Before we discuss how to use influencers to increase high-quality traffic to your game, and achieve other goals you have, let’s look at what self-quarantining during the virus has already been doing for the industry.

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To start with, mobile game downloads jumped 39 percent globally in February as cities, states and countries began ordering people to stay at home to avoid getting coronavirus. In the United States, which has the world’s highest percentage of online game users — 72 percent of all mobile phone customers — online game playing spurted 75 percent at peak hours. Meanwhile, the gaming platform Steam saw a record 23 million users logging on. Turns out, all of the video gaming has actually been deemed a healthy way to stay connected to others during this period.

 

As good as these achievements were, online game makers and retailers could grab even more business by persuading current users to do more gaming and non-gamers to try their hand at it. And a key way to pull this off would be partnering with influencers

Most influencers would be glad to help because online game marketing would give them another source of income. Some would be especially eager because they have lost income from industries like travel that have been so hit hard that they decided to reduce their ties with influencers. So, what opportunities can influencers provide online game businesses, and how would you go about creating a partnership with influencers?
Here are some 3 Steps based on some of Keepface’s successful influencer campaigns with gaming companies:

#1 Target untapped-niche segments

With millions of people stuck at home, now is a great time to try to convince non-gamers to give it a go. 

After you decide on traffic goals, choose the right social media platform for your campaign. YouTube and Twitch are the most popular for gamers, but depending on your strategy and the audience you want to reach, you might want to try something else — like Instagram, Twitter, or Tik-Tok.

There are a lot of micro-influencers out there. You need to identify those that are the best fit for you.

Start with vetting them on social media. Identify those who have high audience engagement levels and the ability to persuade their followers. Target untapped niche segments like intellectual youngsters,  working women, or “experienced” fathers. ?

This means you need to find influencers who can appeal to different audiences. 

 

Remember: A potential influencer’s gaming experience is the last thing you need to worry about. ?

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#2 Launch an initial campaign

The next step is to make a trial campaign with a pool of selected influencers. Start with streamlined campaigns requiring minimal outlays. This can be as simple as putting a video link in an influencer’s storyAlso, send your proposal to a lot more influencers than you need so you will be assured of a good response. For example, if you need 10 influencers for a campaign, pitch to 200. ?

 

A good strategy for pitching to a lot of influencers at the same time is to join Facebook groups that many are members of and float your proposals there. You will be surprised at how many micro-influencers will bite. Connect with them and you will suddenly enhance your influencers pool. 

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In addition, many automation tools can help you reach out to influencers. One is ours — Keepface. Automated tools not only help you select the right influencers but also help you make tailored partnership pitches to them.
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Your pitch should consist of a concise but inspiring note that includes a description of your game, feedback from your clients, and an expression of how eager you are to work with influencers. Mention that you would like to do a trial campaign and, if the results are good, then begin a long-term collaboration.

Give them the content you want to be posted and ask them to do something simple in the first campaign, reward those whose posts performed well.

#3 Measure and optimize your success

Make sure you have measuring tools ready that can determine whether your campaign is succeeding. If you’re achieving the targets and milestones you set, you will likely want to stick with your campaign content and influencer. If not, change either, or both. The main milestone for any game marketeer is the cost per install (CPI), which you will need to measure with each influencer. CPI is what you pay each time when a user installs your game. 

Give different download links to each influencer and compare the number of viewers, traffic, and the number of downloads that each generates. Use Adjust to gauge the performance of traffic coming from each influencer. 

Also, give instant feedback to influencers who are doing a great job. And start a second campaign immediately with your best-performing influencers. Try different types of content delivery formats — like live streaming, sharing, tagging friends, and calling for group games. 

Limit the time you devote to researching a campaign’s results. Start with one or two measurements, and add or subtract barometers as you need. Your goal should be to optimize campaigns one at a time, with particular focus on those that generate a higher return on investment.

If you are short on time and resources but still want to try influencer marketing, consider getting pre-built influencer campaign modules that you can launch immediately.

We’re here to help

We hope this blog has whetted your interest in the notion of using influencers to help you increase sales of your games and achieve other goals during a time when the stay-at-home economy is creating a lot of opportunities for the industry. 

 

Want to learn more about how to get started promoting your game via influencers? Check our limited ready-to-start campaign packages for gaming companies. 

 

More than 2,500 clients are using the Keepface platform, working with 30,000 influencers we’ve lined up. We’d love to help you take your success to another level during this global digital transformation period. 

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The Impact of Coronavirus on Marketing Industry

As one of the foremost human tragedies, Coronavirus is affecting the lives of the world population, endangering the health of hundreds of thousands of people, bereaving social freedom. It has also dramatic effects on the businesses in public and private sectors. It is difficult to define the true financial cost of the virus on the economy as the outbreak spreads day-by-day to new regions. 

 

Beginning in China and following in the world, leading technology, apparel, automobile companies have been compelled to shut down their factories, close sales stores, and lay off employees. The downturn put pressure on logistics, supply chain management, and shipment services. 

Businesses are canceled 

 

Lockdown due to the Coronavirus negatively affects the B2B market too. Major tech conferences, sports, art events are canceled causing billions of losses to the whole world economy. According to the US B2B marketers, in-person communication and tradeshows are the most effective channels for driving conversion and lead generation. Expected cost of cancellation of the biggest tech conferences is $1B loss

What does this mean for marketers?

 

It is vital to keep relations with customers in the first wave of the crises. Discounts, special offers are a good way to engage with current customers. 

 

However, not to exploit the fear people are experiencing, platforms like Google and Facebook are blocking any ad that might be abusing the situation. From the beginning of the outbreak, Facebook started to ban ads for goods like hand sanitizers and face masks. It also prohibited the sharing of misinformation causing panic, or about the cure of the virus.  

Some brands renovate delivering services 

 

Due to the increased online shopping Amazon focuses on the stocking and delivery of the essential products following the situation. The company prioritizes the delivery of household staples, healthcare supplies, personal care, grocery and baby products. Sales outside these categories are suspended up to 5 April, which can be extended.

Cut down in marketing budgets

 

According to the Econsultancy and Marketing Week’s survey, product and service launches are delayed to uncertain times. 55% in the UK and 56% in US marketers said that their marketing campaigns are under review or delayed. 

 

Besides the travel and hospitality, FMCG, restaurants, entertainment industries seriously stumbled in the first quarter and expected to continue in the second quarter, as well. Reduced ad spend on these sectors also cause fall off in the budgets of Google and Facebook. Considering the fact that in 2019, travel ads accounted for 10% of Google’s ads revenue.  Marketers anticipate a 30% to 45% drop in Facebook’s revenue because of hits on travel, consumer packaged goods, retailer and entertainment in the first quarter. 

Social responsibility

 

It is the best time to build public trust that will always be remembered. Through corporate social responsibility programs, companies take initiatives for the benefit of their employees and society. The different range actions include covering sick leaves of workers, helping the government to fight against the disease, producing face masks or hand sanitizers, giving food support away and etc. The American fashion brand Ralph Lauren donates $10M for the relief of the virus. The donation will go to the WHO fund, the corporation’s employees and cancer institutions. 

 

Several brands run different social campaigns to invite people to stay at home. The global franchise chane McDonald’s separated its golden arch M to support self isolation. The change in the logo is only made in the social platforms. Nike, which closed all stores in Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the US, launched Play inside, play for the world campaign. To prevent the spread of novel Coronavirus, Starbucks stops the use of reusable cups in its stores. Plus, it offers a 10% discount to customers who bring their reusable cups or ask to use the brand’s cups. 

 

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Despite its diminishing ad revenues, Facebook offers $100 million grants as cash and ad credits to 30 000 small businesses in 30 countries that it operates. Along with donating 10M masks to the citizens in the US and Europe, Apple launched a website and an iOS app that allow users to screen themselves for the Coronavirus. Another tech giant Google gave $800M mainly in the ad form to support the fight against the virus, including $20M in  Google Cloud for academic institutions and researchers, $200M for NGO and financial institutions, $340M for small and medium enterprises. 

Difficulties create opportunities 

 

With all complexity and obstacles, the virus challenges all markets to redirect their marketing and sales plans and utilize them to the current conditions. 

 

Time spent on social media has enormously been rising as more people stay-at-home to minimize the risk of the virus. Now people have “unlimited time” to produce and consume more content than ever. 

 

According to a report by Izea, 66% of the correspondents predict their social media usage will increase. Internet users believe that YouTube usage will increase by 64% while Facebook will increase 63%, followed by Instagram by 43% and Twitter by 34%. 

Remote working is a new era now

 

Several business events shifted online such as Google Cloud Next, IBM’s developers conference. The loss of face-to-face communication and the cancellation of social events creates a huge demand for online conferencing platforms such as SLAC, webinars. Slack said there is almost a 40% increase in the numbers of paid customers. Daily active users of Microsoft Teams more than doubled from November to March. It also added new features to the platform for telehemedice. 

 

The growing need for telehealth and teleconferencing accelerates the implication of 5G technology. 

 

According to the Appsflyer’s report, there is a 15% increase in organic non-gaming app installs starting from mid-February. The non-gaming app categories mainly include communication, finance, health & fitness, news, a utility which means people turn their social habits to online presence.

Spike in online gaming industry 

 

Social distancing makes people gather and entertain on online games. Video gaming companies either extend or introduce new promotions. In China, total game downloads in Apple’s app stores made a 27.5% increase that is a 12.1% rise in revenue. According to Douyu’s streaming index, games like “Honor of Kings”, “League of Legends” and “Playerunknown’s Battleground” now are twice as popular compared to 2019. “Honor of Kings” reached 63 million views during the New Year holiday.

 

In the US there is 75% upswing in the number of online game players. The largely damaged Italy sees a 70% increase in internet traffic which is mainly contributed by the gaming industry like “Fortnite”, “Call of Duty: Warzone”. Steam reached 22.5 million all-time user peaks during last week.

What is happening to influencer marketing in the meantime? 

 

It is important to engage with the audience during this hard time. Social distancing is largely overwhelming fashion, lifestyle, travel influencers whose content is mainly based on outside activities. 

 

Due to economic stagnation and slacking consumer behavior in different fields, lots of clothing, entertainment brands are constrained to withdraw or delay their partnerships. But, this will not cause the influencer marketing to go away.

 

We all know it is not the right time to pose in the perfect looking outfits at social events, holiday travels. At the same time, we see an increased number of social media usage, and engagements rise up. It is an opportunity to create useful and educational content and rebuild trust with the followers. As authorities who influence our lives, they can call people to understand the situation and follow the guidelines, spread positivity, advise on activities to effectively spend our time at home.

The different types of content such as streaming daily vlogs to show how they use their time well in these hard times, adding movie and book recommendations, distant learning programs, and home recipes. It will also help to reform the market in a more authentic and communication-based nature. 

 

Gaming, fitness, yoga and wellbeing influencers are the most followed categories in the stay-at-home period. Psychology experts are the next category people feel the need in self-isolation period. Changing living habits, fear of health issues, and financial uncertainty in many traditional works make people seek to keep physical and mental balance in a sedentary lifestyle.

Challenges with uncertainty 

 

It is early to voice the precise amount of economic loss. Continued uncertainty hinders to define needed actions to be taken. Drop-in the main spheres of the economy makes brands alter their marketing, sales strategies, and set new budgets. 

  

Although negative consequences of the Coronavirus virus is expected to continue in the upcoming months, a positive lesson that we learned in these days is global lockdown opened a new and ongoing stay-at-home economy. The vast majority of businesses more or less can perform the same results as in the in-person working. Now it is possible to serve food, grocery, health care kits to millions of people at the same time. Purchasing habits of people will not be the same as the pre-break period. 

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Don’t Make These 5 Common Influencer Outreach Mistakes

An essential step in any influencer marketing campaign is appropriate and effective outreach. Influencer outreach is essential in running a successful campaign, so avoid the following common mistakes:

1. Reaching out through the wrong platform

It is important to reach out to potential influencer partners on the right channel – the best contact method is often simply through email. Though social media is the popular choice for other types of communication, email is more demanding of response and makes the conversation easier to track and reference later. Social media can be cluttered for this kind of business conversation, but useful for sending a message pre-pitch to ask how best to get in touch about your idea. It is also always safe to go through the business account, not personal accounts.

2. Not having clear campaign objectives

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Establishing your campaign objectives is essential in building the foundation for the rest of the project. Depending on what you hope to gain specifically from this campaign, you will need to use the appropriate channel (i.e. social media platform) and at the same time the right influencer.

A social media influencer will have their own personal strengths, which you will need to be aware of and select them according to whether these things will help you in reaching your campaign goals. Communicate these goals with your influencers so everyone is on the same page and the campaign will be more successful.

3. Picking the wrong influencer

Having a clear list of criteria for finding the perfect influencer to head your campaign is vital, as well as knowing how these requirements are prioritized.

It is important to remember that an influencer’s number of followers isn’t everything – audience engagement is another influential factor to consider. Small, niche followings can be just as valuable as larger, mainstream audiences, even more so, if chosen and applied effectively. Daniel Hardison, a business writer at Ukwritings and Academized, says: “These things contribute to creating a presence that will drive sales and promote brand visibility.”

Thorough research and clear goals are both crucial in this stage of the process – you need to ensure your values align and that you have the same or at least overlapping audiences.

4. Writing a generic, long-winded, or just bad pitch

When it comes to writing your pitch, use personal details and specific connections between the brand and the influencer to make it more effective. Never use the same template for multiple pitches, or, even worse, send the same pitch as a mass email.

Also, remember that the pitch is just that – it isn’t your entire plan and doesn’t need to include every detail about your business, it is simply the hook. Be concise and try to get to the point quickly. Communicate the vital information clearly, the basics, and include the next step you would like to take.

Wayne Smith, a communication manager at Boomessays and Bigassignments, says: “Framing is everything: you want to pitch an offer to them, like you are doing something for them, rather than asking them to do something for you. Your pitch needs to sound like a unique opportunity that will benefit them as well as you.”

5. Taking things too personally

When it comes to getting turned down, it is important not to take things personally. The influencer could have any number of reasons for declining your offer, most of which have nothing to do with you, your brand, or even your campaign pitch. If their response is lacking in details or reasons, it may be reasonable to enquire as to why they chose to decline and whether they are giving you a hard no or just a ‘not right now’. Of course, this shouldn’t ever come across as a bitter plea, begging to know why they rejected you – instead, make sure you frame this line of questioning as constructive advice to help you with future pitches.

Finding the right influencer for your marketing campaign can make all the difference when it comes to building your brand image and audience and increasing sales. So, it is extremely important to ensure your outreach is perfect!

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9 Challenges of Influencer Marketing: What brands can do about it?

Although influencer marketing is a relatively young industry, 89% of marketers find it more profitable. Plus to its benefits, influencer marketing has challenges, as well. Lack of regulation in influencer marketing creates new challenges for marketers and brands who seek to use it on their marketing strategies. 

What are the challenges in influencer marketing?

 

According to the study conducted by Mediakix, one of the biggest challenges of the marketing industry is spotting fake followers and inauthentic engagement. This is followed by social algorithm changes that make content less visible and building an always-on strategy instead of one-off campaigns. Let’s look through those main challenges of the influencer marketing industry and what brands can do about them.

Fake influencer activities

 

The number one thread in influencer marketing is the growing number of inauthentic influencers with fake followers that increase brands’ concerns about finding the right influencers to work with. Fake bot followers are made to inflate follower numbers and engagement. The aim here is to deceive brands and followers as a trusty channel. Pretty much all social platforms are victims of these fake followers. 

 

Unfortunately, influencer fraud costs millions of dollars to brands. According to the 2018 report by Points North Group, of the $744 million that brands spent on influencer marketing, $102 million was wasted on fake followers, including Unilever’s brand Dove. Yet no brand was as seriously affected as Raw Sugar Living. The same report showed that 46% of the brand’s influencer marketing budget was eaten into bots and paid followers.

 

Fake followers are not only a challenge in the influencer marketing industry, but many marketing agencies also suffer from the same fraudulent activities with their digital ads such as fake impressions. 

 

Luckily, as we already mentioned in our previous blog, there are several methods to spot fake followers like checking influencer growth rate, reading post comments, communication between influencer and followers, and using influencer analytics tools to analyze influencers’ profiles.

Rising influencer marketing costs

The next challenge ahead of brands is the rising cost of influencers. As the demand and industry grow it gets more complicated, more efforts and tools are required to leverage.

 

How much does the influencer marketing cost? It is a partnership fee that you pay, comprising the type of the content, the influencers’ creativity, campaign duration, influencer engagement, or agency fee. Rising influencer cost is also associated with the bot followers which are used for pretending big influencer profiles in brands’ minds. But does paying more to influencers raise your ROI? Brands need to effectively measure relevant metrics and ROI. 

 

What to do?

 

Seemingly low-cost marketing channel in influencer marketing is micro-influencers. Individuals with a small but very active number of followers have more engagement rates and trusty profiles. Micro-influencers are approachable, credible, and generate more engagement rate, 22.2 times higher conversions than the other influencer types.

Changing algorithms

 

Algorithm is pretty much how the social media platforms operate. First of all, changing algorithms might change engagement rates and your posts’ visibility. From the positive side platforms change algorithms for supporting quality content, and users who post authentically and frequently.

Facebook’s new algorithm for example, amplifies personal accounts’ posts rather than business accounts. So, it allows brands to leverage influencer marketing easily on Facebook or think of Instagram’s no like change. The new model helps brands not to be deceived by bot likes, to work with authentic influencers, and to support paid posts on Instagram. 

 

Brands have to set their marketing plans based on the existing algorithms. As these algorithms change regularly, brands should adopt new marketing strategies and optimize them according to the changes. These changes put influencers forward who are authentic and have higher engagements, so that brands can easily work with credible influencers. 

In-house team, agency or influencer marketing platform? 

 

The following challenge to overcome is deciding on in-house team or agency to run influencer campaigns. Considering third party costs on one side, and time spent on influencer search and campaign management on the other side. 

 

After working on influencer market brands move their influencer marketing management to the internal team. Getting accustomed to the market aspect motivates brands to work solely instead of partnering with influencer marketing agencies or platforms. Despite specialized agencies, database tools, the high budget, and needed experience, marketers committed to run influencer campaigns with an in-house team. 

 

Influencer marketing agencies work on the campaigns from the influencer finding to the campaign management. They built reputation and trust in brands and influencers’ eyes have expertise. By maintaining relations with influencers and brands, agencies get to know the market well. 

 

Influencer marketing platforms give brands influencer accounts with relevant metrics and post statistics. On influencer marketing platforms, companies can easily register their brands, filter influencers by different categories, create campaigns and get reports at the end. Along with influencer marketing software, employee advocacy, and influencer analytics tools, Keepface offers influencer lists on different niches. AI-powered products have influencer profiles, performance data, audience analytics, and different other features.

Following trends

 

As long as brands expand their influencer marketing they should go along with changing trends and reshape their strategies. Here includes responding to on-going trends in a creative way, the emergence of new influencers, allowing UGC, building long-term relations with influencers.

Employee advocacy

challenges-of-influencer-marketing-employee-advocacy

While influencers act as trusted agents on behalf of your brand, your employees are even more credible party to promote your brand. Employee advocacy is a smart way of promoting your brand without spending extra money and time. The practical knowledge of these people helps to increase trust and deliver your message even more clearly. The issue with employee advocacy is empowering low-reach people to spread your brand awareness. But if effectively run, employee advocacy can turn followers into real customers. 

 

Keepface’s Employee Advocacy Tool is designed to amplify your social voice. The tool will help to enhance internal and external communication, keep control over brand voice on social media and report on which platform you perform best. All you need is to set up an employee advocacy campaign and manage it in a single place.

Enhancing content marketing

 

Content marketing is a modest way of presenting your brand on social media. The important part of building trust is expressing who you are with the help of quality content. However, creating quality content is the rising challenge of content marketing alone. Consistently writing content can lead to neglect quality. Highly experienced brands, pages with a relatively large number of publications sometimes can fail to deliver their messages, cause misunderstanding or just not get enough attention after all. 

 

What about combining content marketing with influencer marketing? 

 

Instead of writing long content to publicize your brand, prepare short texts that are plausible for the influencers you picked up. You cannot expect a high reputation from influencers without quality content. 

 

Simply, you can create content for giveaway campaigns, video, podcast or social media takeovers, branded posts and ask influencers to optimize it in their style or provide influencers with all the text to prevent extra efforts and misleading by influencers.

Increasing video content 

 

In a world where mobile phones are used as cameras, video content sharing became even more popular. As videos are eye-catching and they generate more engagement. Not surprisingly, algorithms in social platforms also support video content. According to the report, 72% of customers prefer to learn about products and services from videos. Preparing video content requires more time, efforts and in-depth information to share. 

 

Editing is an important part of video sharing. A clear, polished video is more likely to attract more viewers and brands. We have seen lots of influencers quit YouTube due to the long hours needed for making and editing videos. Also, for brands sponsoring video content is pricier in comparison to photo or story posts. 

 

Approaching video content as a challenge ahead, brands can sponsor video tutorials or invite influencers for product promotion videos. Preparing video content allows influencers to signify their creativity, share emotions and spur their audience for communicating.

Competition in existing social media platforms

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Saturation of the influencer market leads marketers to look for new places. As the number of influencers increases, content becomes repetitive in existing platforms. Moving to new channels is challenging for marketers, in terms of brand compatibility with app features, finding the relevant influencers, getting accustomed to the app usage. The good thing is social platforms support easy communication, creativity, and attract the young generation.  

 

The increased number of users drives the marketability of platforms. Take the example of TikTok, from clothing to the gaming industry, global brands either enter solely or collaborate with influencers.

 

Another new channel to leverage influencer marketing is podcast. Authentic influencers with a dedicated audience allow running a cost-effective influencer marketing strategy. The rising popularity of the podcasts opens new doors for brands who are strong-minded on influencer marketing. 

Eventually, all these challenges are connected like a chain. Marketers need to clearly define the goals of influencer marketing strategies and apply them to overcome these.challenges. 

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How to Build Data-Driven Influencer Marketing Strategy

According to the study, 65% of brands plan to increase their budget on influencer marketing in 2020. As more brands start to use influencer marketing, the need for a data-driven approach is increasing. The aim of data-driven influencer marketing strategy is to measure the performance of influencers and how the campaign is going. Thus, data is driven by influencer profiles and used to grow the effectiveness of your investment and estimate the ROI later. In simple words, data-driven influencer marketing is estimating ROI based on the relevant statistics and data taken from the influencer discovery until the end of the project.

Data-driven marketing is for covering all the insecurities brands see and in turn, offer better solutions. Data-driven influencer marketing takes several steps such as influencers discovery, building relations, campaign management, and reporting. Before partnering with influencers, it is important to scan influencers’ profiles, analyze their demographics and branded posts.

Define your goals

All strategies start with defining your goals. Do you want to drive awareness or brand loyalty via influencer marketing? 

 

Identify what you want to achieve with this campaign and how you plan to manage it. Depending on your goals you decide on platforms, influencers, and content. If your goal is to increase brand awareness, you do not focus on the sales part but the brand mentions, product reviews. But if you want to generate more sales paying influencers is not enough, you need to give coupon codes, special discounts for influencers’ followers. 

Find influencers

 

After deciding on your goals, the next step is finding influencers. As the number of influencers increasing day by day this phase will take your time. You need the ones who are already in your target audience and have that audience. Successful influencers in your niche have more fame and more sponsored partnerships. At the beginning of influencer marketing, macro-influencers referred to as the best channel for high ROI while now micro-influencers with less than 50K generate more engagement rate and ROI.

Fake influencer activity is another reason to leverage data for advanced influencer search. To deceive a large audience and high engagements influencers do not avoid buying bot followers and likes. This is why finding the right influencers takes beyond demographics, industry, and quality content of influencers. Marketers suggest working with the market experts, agencies and audience analytics tools like Keepface to reduce the time spent and money. 

Decide on the right platform 

Well investigated research allows picking the right platform in terms of content, project goals, region, and etc. Instagram is the number one platform for the number of sponsored posts and the most impactful channel among social media platforms. Keeping in mind that ⅔ of marketers will spend on Instagram for influencer marketing, it can direct brands to optimize their projects for Instagram. However, the saturation of existing markets helps brands to appear in the new platforms with new ideas. TikTok is the second most downloaded non-gaming app in 2019 after Facebook.

Drive data for the on-going projects

 

Now that you found the right influencers and released the campaign on the right platform, your goal is to reach the target customers at the highest possible rate. To optimize your marketing campaign, you can divide the project into parts and periodically evaluate the relevant metrics. AIDA – sales funnel model is a great way to measure performance. AIDA is an acronym that stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. In essence, the AIDA model proposes that in order to move the consumer through a series of important steps from brand awareness through to action marketing messages need to accomplish a number of tasks. Let’s see what are these tasks and how they can be applied for influencer campaigns.

Awareness

 

The awareness part is about introducing the product, grabbing your customers’ attention. The simple way to evaluate the project in this round is to check the campaign post, read comments, consider negative and positive views, and analyze how influencers are interacting with followers. This is the only time you can impact the campaign results, expand the reach.

 

Look at different metrics, like Engagement, Cost per Engagement, Cost per Impression. As the aim of data-driven influencer marketing is to create engagement, focus on authentic posts to reach maximum potential. Higher engagement lowers the cost per engagement. The low cost per engagement implies your every dollar spent smartly. Higher engagement also generates higher impression which in turn, means low Cost per Impression. 

Interest

 

In the Interest funnel, to keep track of the project add links to the posts to direct customers to your landing page or website and give URLs to influencers to know the best performers. Look at Click-Through Rate. again, higher the CTR means you are working with the right influencers. Following CTR, estimate cost per clicks.

Desire

 

Now that you the average number of people are eager to buy, increase the visibility of your product, and provide more information. Successful management of this part will lead to getting more customers to find your product a good fit for their desire or to see the solution for a specific problem they are experiencing.

Action

Following all the steps,  check the conversion rate to see which proportion of the visitors made a purchase from the campaign. A higher rate of conversion shows your influencer worked well to direct your potential customers to real buyers. Further, estimate cost per acquisition to see how much each customer action costs. In the end, all these metrics are considered to evaluate ROI. 

Keepface solution 

 

Because of the time and volume of data marketers recommend third party help. Marketing agencies and influencer marketing platforms know the touchpoints of the market and have the required expertise. Keepface has different tools such as Influencer Analytics, Influencer Marketing Software that provide a full-service influencer database to brands. The tool gives all the metrics and data about influencer and project performance, helps to monitor and optimize all active campaigns, and give reports at the end of all campaigns.

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