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

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

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

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

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

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

“Activia”s campaign for Ramadan 

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

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

“Hello Fresh”s approach

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

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

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

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

“Youfoodz”s strategy

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

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

How to nail your influencer campaign

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

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

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

Show the origin of food

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

Promote in-person events

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

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

Be part of a greater brand

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

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

Seasonal influencer planning

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who are micros

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

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

Who are macros

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

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

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

Micro vs. Macro: Know the difference

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

Engagement rate

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

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

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

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

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

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

Authenticity

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

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

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

Let’s look at one example.

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

 

 

 

 

 

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

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

Reach

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

Affordability

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

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

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

Relevance

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

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

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

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

Making the final decision

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

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

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

“Malibu Drinks campaign”

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

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

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

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

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

“Halo Top’s ice-cream campaigns”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tips to influencer campaigns for summer

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

Events

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

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

Product reviews on mainstream social media

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

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

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

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

Collaborating with micro’s

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

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

Explore beyond YouTube and Instagram

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

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

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

Go long-term

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

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

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

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

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There are 2.77 billion social media users from all over the world, scrolling their news feed right now. According to Forbes, depending on their engagement, each account with more than a million followers earns $50.000+ for one sponsored post.  A study has found that working with micro-influencers (having followings of 30.000 or fewer) is more profitable for marketers.

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Influencer marketing is a professional bond between a brand and an influencer. But who are those gorgeous creatures? Influencers are able to operate independently, creating their own beneficial contents and integrating a company’s advertising specifications into it.

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Keepface Influencer Marketing Platform has recently gained a strong partner in its seed investment round, raising US$ 150K from 500 Startups – one of the most active seed-stage venture capital firms in the world.

 

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