Influencer marketing is in the new center of digital marketing. It helps smaller brands to scale bigger by targeting possible buyers rather than spending huge money on TV commercials for large consumers. With the help of influencer marketing, small businesses can expand their sales and large businesses can reach out to broader audiences. The high ROI of influencer marketing is one of its great advantages compared to the average display ad. Also, influencer marketing ROI has proven to be able to blow online advertising out of the water.

Influencer marketing statistics show that 89% of marketers already find influencer marketing more profitable than other marketing ties. Successful influencer marketing is aimed to increase brand awareness, create a conversion, generate positive ROI and reach your target audience. 

What is the ROI of influencer marketing?

So, how the success of influencer marketing can be measured? Influencer marketing provides significant tangible as well as intangible return on investment for brands and is a growing trend for B2B. 

Tangible benefits 

Here include the total performance of your posts and the audience’s responsiveness to the campaign. It ensures profitable returns for particular amounts invested. 

Metrics like engagement, views, impressions, reach, conversion rates, etc. can show how your posts are performing. You can measure all of them with the help of in-app data insights that most social media platform provides. You may ask influencers to provide these insights.

Intangible benefits

Being less contrived than traditional methods is the key reason why influencer marketing works so well. It’s a great ability to grow loyal customers over time, build authenticity and trust, brand awareness, organic conversion, creative content and many more. 

Eventually, instead of creating more content, the clever strategy for businesses is to focus on ROI provided by influencer marketing as well as companions like employee advocacy and brand advocacy. 

How to measure ROI of influencer marketing?

Engagement, engagement rate, reach, impressions are the most-used metrics to calculate ROI of influencer marketing. However, none of these metrics exactly tell the true ROI. 

In order to estimate the true ROI of influencer marketing, brands need to consider pre and post collaboration sales figures, links to the brand’s website, keep track of ongoing campaigns. So read on before getting launched your next influencer marketing campaign. 

Here are several factors need to be examined for high ROI generating influencer marketing:

• The relevance of influencers with the campaign
• Partnership experience of influencers  
• Demographic features of influencers’ audience
• Using the right platforms for promotions
• Creating organic and engaging contents
• Using project-special hashtags 

Set achievable influencer campaign goals

First off, you need to decide what you want to accomplish. Defining the end goals is important for determining how you’re going to measure them. Some of the most common goals for launching influencer campaigns are: 

Increase brand awareness. Measuring the number of pieces of content produced and the total amount of impressions are two ways of measuring brand awareness. 

Lead generation. Leads may qualify themselves as subscribing to the blog or newsletter. 

Generate sales. Affiliate links to the influencers’ posts and discount codes help to record a more precise estimation of ROI. 

These are broad goals, however, for running a successful campaign you need to get more specific about your goals and which digital marketing techniques you’re aiming to use. This will also make measuring ROI easier.  

Share of Voice 

Share of Voice typically shows the percentage share of the brand’s paid advertising in the market. It reveals the performance of campaigns and allows you to benchmark your future marketing campaigns. 

Measure the share of voice by dividing a target metric that represents your brand by the total in your industry or market, then multiply that number by 100 to get the percentage of market share for that specific metric.

There are plenty of social media listening and analytics tools that measure your SOV relative to similar businesses. Mentions, hashtags, reach, impressions are metrics used to calculate the share of voice. 

Earned Media Value

Earned Media Value refers to the gains from various marketing channels, blog posts, word-of-mouth marketing, influencer marketing, brand mentions.

Although there is no exact formula for measuring EMV, the general formula is a product of impressions, CPM (cost per impression) and other specified metrics say, the share of voice and engagement depending on the project. 

One drawback of EMV is that it is a simplistic and unprecise method for calculating the true ROI of influencer marketing. Impression, reach are partial numbers, as they do not exactly tell us who viewed the posts while surfing on the social networks. For comprehensive measurements, marketers need more complex analytics.  

Influencer Media Value 

Influencer Media Value is a genre of Earned Media Value. It is the equivalent value of the advertised post. Thus, if IMV of a post is $100 it means the post would have $100 value as a sponsored Instagram post.

IMV helps to estimate the worth of influencers before engaging in collaboration. Obviously, profiles with a large audience generate high IMV. It shows the maximum amount which brands can charge for a sponsored post.

At the end of the project, brands need to compare IMV with the previous post’s IMV. A successful influencer campaign should generate higher IMV.  

Evaluate the results

Measuring the performance of the overall campaigns is not usually enough. You need to pick a group of influencers to start with and in the beginning track each influencer’s performance.

With the unique discount codes and URLs, you can get the metrics for attributing sales brought in and track direct traffic coming from those influencers’ posts. 

Assessing the performance of each influencer will help you to filter out the poorly performing influencers and keep only the top-performing ones.

Repeat the process by running a short term campaign using the new mix on influencers – from your initial list and new ones. To track this ROI keep an eye on likes, shares, daily views, visitors to pages, comments and so on. 

It’s risk-free to run several short-term campaigns and keep filtering out low-performing influencers, so when you start a long-term collaboration with a chosen group of influencers, you’ll be setting yourself up for failure. 

Traditional marketing in China is losing its popularity because of the progress of influencer marketing. Although the social media ecosystem is different from the rest of the world, China has a very unique influencer marketing in terms of customized influencer platforms, credible influencers, high ROI sales and many more. Restrictions on almost all western social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube lead to the creation of a better influencer market. Closed influencer networks created a more interconnected influencer-brand-follower environment. Influencers otherwise known as Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) are essential factors in guiding the purchasing decisions of customers. 

Differences between Chinese and Western influencer market

Let’s start with understanding the main differences from the Western industry. 

First of all, influencer marketing or KOLs marketing as it’s called in China has more complexities and is more business-oriented. It entails tight integration with the e-commerce and supply chain. 

Credibility is another factor that differentiates the Chinese influencer market from that of the Western. Instead of gathering huge audiences, Chinese influencers have real-life followers who are inspired by the influencers and share their thoughts about products.

Fashion influencers in the West tend to advertise ready products for their audience while Chinese involved in the production process considering follower views on the product, its design and finally selling the ready products. 

E-commerce sites are transferring into social media which is one of the future trends influencer marketing in the US. Multifunctional platforms such as WeChat and Weibo bring together online payment, chatting and e-commerce interface that enhances influencers’ role. 

Media Matrix, a self-sustainable social media ecosystem, is a distinct influencer ecosystem where influencers invite and support new influencers on their channels which helps to expand the audience and to create more quality content.

Influencer Marketing is a $9 billion industry in China

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China is not only the world’s largest social media market – but it also owns an incredibly rich and diverse online landscape. Despite the differences between the Chinese and Western social media landscape, China is three to five years ahead of the rest of the world. The advanced functionality and integration of social media, digital payment and e-commerce have enabled business models that are yet to be explored in other countries.  

Rhunn is one of China’s earliest and most successful influencer incubators. The company which enables influencers to sell through e-commerce has runaway success to the point that the e-commerce giant Alibaba invested in the company leading the Chinese influencer industry to grow to nearly $9 billion. 

Chinese KOLs turn fans into sales

Chinese influencers mainly consist of columnists, reporters, socialites, video produces and photo & video bloggers who are extremely powerful with the ability to heavily influence consumers’ purchasing decisions on a level that their western peers can only dream of. We can categorize them as the following groups:

• Celebrities
• Experts
• KOLs
• Micro-KOLs
• E-commerce KOLs

Yes, there are E-commerce influencers in China. Because of the huge price gap between the mainland and other areas of the country. These KOLs are also entrepreneurs who have their own retailing channels. 

With many influencers in different segments, we can list a few most well-known Chinese KOLs here:

Becky Li 

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A post shared by 黎贝卡 Becky Li (@beckys_fantasy) on May 26, 2019 at 10:58am PDT

Having 3 million followers on Weibo and 4.5 million followers on WeChat, Li is one of the most powerful influencers in China. Dubbed as Goddess of Shopping, she sold 100 Mini Coopers with five minutes in her blog on WeChat in 2017. So, she is not our average digital influencer. 

Apart from collaborating with Western luxury brands Burberry, Armani, Rebecca Minkoff, she launched her brand over WeChat with 1 million renminbi of revenue. Becky stated that the key to her success is writing on the topics that interest her, credibility, promoting products tested on herself, considering customer reviews. 

Zhang Dayi

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Zhang Dayi started her fashion career as a model. Followers’ huge interest in her stylish clothes led Zhang to open her own stores. Her sales reached 100 million RMN on SIngles’ Day in 2017. With 20 million followers in total Dayi is a prominent figure in Chinese retail e-commerce.

The success of her first store on Taobao made Ruhnn create a new influencer-incubator-supply chain model. Instead of telling features of dresses, products, Li finds it better to communicate with followers, asking their opinion on her photos on social media. She believes that her followers love her because not only for her style but for her values and personality. 

Chrison

Being a former magazine editor led Chrison to create a unique fashion blog. In contrast to other fashion and beauty influencers, Chrison has rarely shown his face off on social media. With a black background on his profile, he focuses on the content he writes rather than the perfectly edited photos.

Besides stylish outfits, his followers are interested in the quality of his writings. Thanks to aesthetic storytelling ability Chrison worked with luxury brands Fendi, Cartier, Gucci, Prada. 

Popular Chinese social media platforms

While there might not be the exact version of Western social networks, China has several social media platforms with similar and even better features. 

Chinese super app WeChat is a combination of chat, ordering, online payment sites. Its official accounts ease transactions between business people. The official account helps to directly connect to target customers, advertise products.

Once you have an official account, you can easily store, sell your products in an e-commerce panel. CRM functionality allows companies to manage contacts within official WeChat accounts. In recent years, the platform launched WeChat Advertising, which includes KOL ads, banner ads. 

Not just only WeChat, the other social media platforms like Weibo, Douban, and Douyin are also quite popular in China.

Weibo – the Chinese version of Twitter

With more than 500 million monthly users, Weibo is the second biggest social media platform in China. It is a micro-blogging site mainly resembling the features of Twitter.

Weibo amplified its functions by adding live streaming and short video channels. It also works with Alibaba in commerce and marketing fields. Enterprises can either work with influencers to promote your sales or set up enterprise accounts to interact with customers, display products, track sale process. 

Xiaohongshu – giant community e-commerce platform

Xiaohongshu is a luxury shopping platform comprising social media and e-commerce sites. The company is also known as “Little Red Book”, mainly serves young women by selling fashion and beauty products. Users can buy and share their reviews about products on the platform. 

In 2018, Xiaohongshu launched its own influencer marketing platform which connects brands with influencers. Global brands like Dior, Fendi, Channel, Gucci, Shiseido, YSL partner with Chinese KOLs to reach local customers. The company’s mission is to create authentic word of mouth advertising. The site gives rewards, earnings for active and quality content creators. 

When it comes to Influencer Marketing the fashion industry is winning big. Information about fashion spreads quickly, in other words, the effect of fashion is fast. But to stay up to date, it is important to vary in marketing activity. Fashion marketers should be in harmony with their target customers and reach the customer with accurate and complete information in order to target sales and profit. But…

How effective is Influencer Marketing in the fashion industry?

Turkey’s cosmopolitan cities are known as a hub of the fashion industry. In terms of disposition of sectors, the report states that beauty and make-up with 19%, fashion with 18%, travel with 13% and life and food categories with 12%. From local designers to international brands, Turkish fashion bloggers like to mix it up to create their own unique style as well as write about/photograph it effusively. 

According to the state of the Influencer Marketing Report in 2019, 25% of all sponsored posts on Instagram are related to fashion. With an audience willing to scroll and shop, Instagram has created exceptional opportunities for all fashion brands.

Both established fashion labels such as adL, Hepsiburada, Defacto, LC Waikiki and smaller brands are leveraging the reach and engagement of this visual platform. They attract and engage more people with creative Instagram Stories, branded hashtags, shoppable ads, and influencer-created content. In terms of usage of social media networks in Turkey, Instagram takes first place with 48%, followed by Facebook with 21%, YouTube with 16% and Twitter with 15%. 

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LC Waikiki ile bu bayramda çok şıksınız! ? #bayram #bayramlık #yaz #summer #lcwaikiki

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Let’s take a look at some of the Influencer Marketing campaigns in Turkey which leveraged Celebrities and Fashion Influencers. 

Trenyol “Chagla x Milla” Collection

Trendyol created its private collections called ChaglaXMilla, with the Turkish model and actress Cagla Shikel. The launch of the collection, which combines quality and trends that a woman wants for the summer months, was released at Happily Ever After. On the same day, the CaglaXMilla collection which was put up for sale on Modag.com got a considerable attraction. The brand created the collection based on the designs of its brand ambassador. 

Collection consisting of beachwear, bikini, kimono, blouse, lace skirts, prints, midi skirts, Spanish pants, tops, and leather jacket, was designed by Cagla Shikel.

MODGREY & Modest Fashion

MODGREY, a clothing brand for women that combines modern, stylish and elegant clothing styles with unique designs. Making a rapid entry into the Turkish Fashion Sector, MODGREY has opened Turkey’s first Modest Department Store that offers modern and modest designs in Istanbul.

The brand intended to increase the digital power and brand awareness while collaborating with 21-year-old fashion influencer Sena Sever who is one of the pioneers of “modest fashion” in Turkey. Within the scope of the 5-month agreement with Sena Sever, the brand organized 4 different creations and many activities every month.

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Ne gömlekler yapıyorsun sennnnn @vesna_design ???

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By the end of 2017, to start introducing the 2017-2018 winter creations, the brand partnered with Sena Sever, who attracts a lot of attention in the digital world with her posts and style, to increase both wholesale and digital sale. The campaign introduced MODGRAY to her followers of more than 500,000 people in a natural way and to draw sustainable traffic to the brand’s online shop.

Do the influencers are really a choice over celebrities?

Research done for Marketing Turkey explored the effectiveness of collaborations with both influencers and celebrities comparatively. 

In the study (that is called DigitalheAD), brain dynamics and eye-tracking measurements were performed with 256 participants and the dynamics of 1000 TV ads and 38 ads on YouTube Ad Leaderboard were compared. The aim was to detect thoughts and emotions that could not be expressed via brain imaging. 

When the scores obtained in the study are examined, it is seen that Danla Bilic, who is famous for make-up blogging, have a more effective harmony. The same scores cannot be achieved when the target group is the Benefit brand, which is both known and economically distant to the target audience.

Similarly, Berkcan Güven, who feels more related to the participant of the study, and Puma accomplished more successful collaboration, while it is seen from the consumer’s brain scans that compliance with Guess, which has a more premium brand, is not so effective. 

The results of the study revealed that celebrities like Cagla Shikel who is well-known on TV performed higher than social media influencers if we measure the scores without brands. However, when we in terms of their relevance with the brand, it was found out that social media influencers have a higher effect on consumers’ purchase decisions. 

The reason for this difference explained as “consumers are the fans of a celebrity, but the friend of an influencer.”

In another example, Cagla Shikel whose wardrobe is more wondered by her fans because of both her physical appearance and fame on TV, seems to perform higher scores in collaboration with Trendyol (fashion e-tailer) than Danla Bilic whose expertise is on make-up.  

In conclusion, the study highlights the relevance of a particular influencer or celebrity to the strategy of the brand. While celebrities who are thought to consume luxury and premium brands can perform better with top brands in digital media, the brands that appeal to a wider audience may have more effective collaborations with social media influencers who are more connected to their audience and thought to be one of them.    

Recently, Instagram announced hiding “likes” that posts have accumulated to start the test as a way of creating “a less pressurized environment” on the app and to encourage users to focus more on the content than the number of likes. Initially, Instagram has been trialing a new formula in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand by concealing the number of likes a post has received. While the users who are parts of the test will be able to see likes by themselves, their followers will not. This is applied to video views as well.

And there’s been a lot of chat about whether or not this change will signal the end of the Instagram influencers. This change is not global yet, so we may not be able to analyze the whole effects, but one thing is certain that this move has the potential to dramatically change the commercial landscape of this platform.

What does it mean for Influencers? 

Somewhere along the line, the platform changed from casual posts, to precisely curated, well thought out, artistic creations invented particularly to get likes and comments, so, as a result of a change like this, it is expected that Instagram will turn to more “healthy” environment.

However, marketing experts say the changes could also further incentivize brands to put paid media support behind their influencer posts, and also to focus on Instagram Stories, the video and photo posts that are only live on Instagram temporarily.

The potential change could also mean that influencer content will need to become higher quality since users won’t be able to lean on the number of likes their posts are receiving when a brand considers working with them. Marketers will still be able to look at an influencer’s follower count, but that metric doesn’t mean much in the way of showing how “engaged” a user’s audience is. 

Youngsters vs Adults

From the adult influencers’ perspective hiding those numbers are like a pretty juvenile way to treat them and seem like something that would be perfect for users under 18 instead. The disappearance of the likes total has had little impact on their online life and they believe the company’s decision could increase users’ comfort by posting authentic material and displaying their creativity. In fact, likes have become so devalued that a picture of an egg holds the record for winning the most.

Compared to the adults, younger generations’ entire digital landscape has been defined by numbers and metrics.

Hilton, who has a personal account as well as one for his dog, the latter with more than 3,200 followers, added that he understands why Instagram is doing this. Hilton said his younger sister, who is in high school, is “obsessed” with likes. “It’s mostly for the younger generation, people in high school,” he said. “There is a lot of pressure. If someone has 1,000 likes and someone has two likes, that probably makes them feel not very nice.”

The change will probably slow down the Instagram influencer world a little bit, a lot of young influencers now are using live videos, not static photos, to build their following. And they will definitely find a way around if the platform will apply this change globally.

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one of the best moments of my life ???

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How will it affect the brands who depends on likes on their Instagram posts to sell their products?

Likes are a huge part of Instagram’s business model and how they monetize the platform, so it seems like an odd move to make on a full-time basis.

Professionally, that might be a little harder to explain to clients and also to brands that it shouldn’t be an issue but it just means that they will need to use third-party metric platforms to see the actual likes moving forward.
Besides, as a business or brand, you will be looking for more than just likes anyway (as these can be purchased) when engaging influencers. There are way more metrics for serious businesses and influencers than just likes. 

On the bright side, this change may have the effect of drying up the economy for fraudulent likes on Instagram since they would no longer be as valuable when it comes to showing engagement. Plus, when it comes to the clients of major brands like Pepsi or McDonald’s, engagement is already less of a priority. Trialing an Instagram without likes is a small gesture that is not nearly as dramatic as it sounds, and it’s one that weakly waves at the problem, rather than doing very much to handle it. 

Influencer marketing is steadily replacing traditional advertising that consumers have already lost their faith. Smart marketers and brands choose to work with influencers to persuade the buying decisions of their audience. Depending on the number of followers, we categorize influencers into mega, macro, micro and nano influencers. In our previous blog, we have talked about things you brands should know about micro-influencers and how brands can take advantage of them. Now we will look at another type of social media influencers – the nano-influencers.

Who can be defined as a nano-influencer? 

Having an account with a large number of followers or being widely popular is not necessary to be an influencer. It doesn’t matter how many fan base influencers have, the only thing is needed is the ability to shift their fan’s behavior or thought process. Think about any of your family members, parents or siblings. How many influences do they have over you? Whether you admit or not, some of your decisions are the result of their influence and you are the audience of one. 

There is a predominant idea that the bigger the influencer, the better your results which are not always correct. A word from a nano influencer may have more impact than macro-influencers with thousands of followers.

Nano-influencers are defined as Instagram influencers with at least 1,000 and usually not more than 5,000 followers. Here we can specifically include Generation Z. Instead of traditional advertising and celebrities which have been grown to mistrust, they have more tendency to turn to the opinions of their online peers. Clearly, we are heading towards a trend where consumers, in particular, the younger generation, will increasingly rely on nano-influencers to assist with their purchasing decisions.

Here are some of their notable characteristics of nano-influencers: 

• A small number of followers
• High probability of not working with any brand before
• Appearing as a “friend” persona
• Very specific niche
• A higher engaged community

Reasons to choose nano-influencers

We used to praise social media influencers with hundreds and thousands of followers and give them a big amount of money to endorse our products. But making more unique and relevant advertisements and targeting the right audience is key to every successful marketing strategy. 

Nano-influencers achieve this by creating original and user-generated content. They usually have more niche content. That’s why brands can reach various segments and better position their products with the help of nano-influencers. These new niches are a good opportunity for brands to test the new product, to examine the reactions and to get feedback from the audience. This is also a good opportunity to open up a new market space. 

Just like your family members or friends, nano influencer is “normal” people with a nano-lifestyle. A nano-influencer is almost considered a friend by most of their followers. As they don’t use influencer marketing as their main source of income, they appear more relatable and approachable for a brand. 

Fewer followers = More engagement

State of Influencer Marketing 2019 research states that nano-influencers have twice a higher engagement rate on Instagram than that of any other influencer group. It has already proven that if the influencer has a larger audience their engagement rate decreases. Compared to a celebrity with more than a million followers, nano-influencers can engage about 8.7% of their audience, while this percentage for a celebrity is just 1.7%. 

In comparison with the mega-influencers, they have more category-specific audiences who are closely interested in their publications. Therefore, they can create a stronger relationship and one-on-one communications with their followers. They are more likely to reply to every comment and interact with the audience. They don’t simply reply with a catchphrase but give meaningful answers to their questions. As a result, these relationships lead to higher engagement and trust.  

Cost-effectiveness

In having a considerably large following, mega-influencers provide brands with a notably greater reach, but at a very high cost. However, leveraging multiple nano-influencers will have more influence than working with a mega-influencer with the same audience. Of course, there are more financial benefits of this collaboration. A few percentages of nano’s prefer monetary compensation, which means they are ready to collaborate with you in exchange for products or services which makes them more approachable for small businesses as well. 

Grow your future ambassador

They are enthusiastic and easy to work with. So they are growing faster than any other group of influencers. It is more likely that in the near future they can become micro-influencers or even macro-influencers. So it is a chance for brands to grow their army of ambassadors. 

They are more like “friend figure”

Nowadays, consumers exposed to promotional content every day, so they can easily identify them. However, nano’s feed is not filled with paid content yet, therefore they are able to provide a sense of authenticity.  A recommendation of a brand or product from a friend (or a nano-influencer who provides that level of friendly intimacy) will bring better conversion rates than a paid advertisement. 

Finally, before starting to leverage nano-influencers brands should consider that they don’t have much experience in advertising. So they are going to need more help, advice, and control from brands. Brands can help by giving a detailed brief and not interfering with their way of interaction with followers. It is also necessary for nano’s to have a general understanding of the brands they collaborate with. Not having a thorough understanding may risk the brand’s message being fragmented.

The term “amazon influencer” appeared after The Amazon company run an affiliate program to help people to make money. This affiliate program run by Amazon for two years, allowing social media influencers to get a commission on products that are sold and earn a cut of prices generated from Amazon links within Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Twitter. 

This is a cost-effective way for sellers to reach potential customers

Amazon’s Affiliate program became so popular that, the company decided to slightly take it several steps further and in 2017, Amazon Influencer Program was created. Unlike Amazon’s affiliate program this new program is more exclusive as it lets anyone link to products for the small number of commissions. The program is open to qualifying consumers who have YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts.

Creators say that revenue from the Amazon Influencer Program can vary from a few dollars to $1,500 a month. Commission rates range from 10% for Amazon’s private-label fashion line to 1% for video games and consoles.

Why Amazon started this program?

Amazon realized that social media influencers with large audiences could broaden its reach by promoting products. They also realized influencers were searching for better ways to partner with brands to monetize their fame.

At first, Amazon took a risk by knowing that influencers would take advantage of the program, giving misleading reviews to products just to make money. But, that’s not how today’s young influencers work. Influencers don’t necessarily promote products because they know followers trust their opinions and crave discovering relevant brands. Influencers are also keenly aware of how Amazon bans fraudulent reviewers. And those young, rising stars don’t want to make it onto that list.

How does the program work?

It’s pretty similar to how Amazon Affiliate works. Users can build links and shopping ads, and then integrate them onto their own websites or blogs. When people click on that link and buy a product, the affiliate gets a commission on the product. The amount of commission depends on what type of product was sold.

The main difference between Affiliate and Influencer programs is that, with Amazon’s Influencer Program, people have to apply to be “using the social media account in which they’ll have the most influence on their followers, while on Affiliate program anyone can sign up and get started. 

There’s no guarantee they’ll get into the program. If you don’t qualify right away, Amazon encourages you to come back in the future as the eligibility requirements may change over time.

Here are some of the eligibility requirements:

• Broad audience. However, there’s no precise number that has been stated by Amazon. 
• How much they engage with fans with posts, and how many/which social media platforms they engage on. Again, there are no exact numbers, but rather that Amazon wants to see you have a noticeable presence.
• Your content is of a high standard. Amazon’s looking for influencers who post quality material, and not just trolling comments to get a reaction out of people.
• Lastly, they also want to see that there’s relevance for themselves. Amazon needs to see that the influencer chosen will also benefit themselves.

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 How successful the program is?

The program is a win-win for both influencer and Amazon. The company gives you countless social sharing tips on all platforms, including podcasts and Snapchat, plus examples of real-life influencer campaigns.

As the program is relatively new, it is a little difficult to quantify the success of the program for brands. There are some gray areas at this point when collaborating with influencers. If a brand decides to work with an influencer, will the influencer feature that brands on his or her storefront? Even with the complexities, studies show that influencers have generated billions of dollars of revenues for brands. Other surveys say that most marketers are trying to assess the ROI of working with influencers.

It is expected that the global gaming market is going to surpass $180 billion in revenue by 2021 which means a 30.6% increase from $137.9 billion in 2018. In the last few years, gaming has grown more significant on existing platforms like YouTube and Facebook, but it has also spurred the creation of live stream gaming platforms, like Twitch and Caffeine.tv. As these gaming platforms are in competition, most gamers are maximizing their presence across multiple gaming platforms. The gaming industry is diversifying rapidly, so brands interested in collaborating with the leading gaming influencers need to keep up with the changing tides.

This is where the gaming influencers shine. To elaborate we’ve collected a few examples of influencer marketing campaigns on gaming channels in Turkey.  Influencer campaigns entertain, inform and reward applications and strengthen the ability to establish an emotional connection to the brand while providing product experience. 

Influencer ads:

– Have a viral effect

– Strengthens the brand message

– It allows you to be noticed in digital clutter.

– Provides positive product/brand experience.

– Strengthens brand awareness, and engagement.

– Creates loyal customer communities.

How can gaming influencers help brands?

Numerous gamers have started live streaming their game performances and have garnered millions of followers. These gamers have massive reach and engaged audiences who are interested in gaming. Which makes them the ideal target market for gaming companies. And these influencers can help you reach that market.

A lot of gaming brands are now collaborating with influencers to promote their products, but not everyone is doing it right. Not every campaign gets the desired results. Here are some successful influencer marketing campaigns in Turkey that were on point.

Burger King’s campaign with gamers

One of the world’s biggest fast-food hamburger chain Burger King operates in Turkey since 1995 and has more than 650 restaurants. Adopting the strategy of “We should be there where our target audience is”, Burger King embraced the e-sport which is increasingly popular in recent years to target the younger generations and developed a Pro-gamer menu for gamers. 

TrueView for Action and Bumper video formats were used on YouTube with the collaboration with Digital Media Agency SEM. For the campaign, there was created an entertaining commercial in the concept of a challenge with the participation of Batuhan Sergen (Quincy10) who is a well-known gamer in Twitch. 

All communication of the campaign was supported only through digital channels in collaboration with professional e-sports players. YouTube was chosen as the main channel for the promotion of the Pro-Gamer menu. By positioning YouTube in this audience-specific targeting, the campaign achieved a high performance of 616% ROAS.

The brand achieved a 153% increase in website traffic and a 19% growth in online sales after the campaign started. Compared to the previous period, sales revenue increased by 84% in the TrueView For Action campaign in comparison to the same product performance.

Gilette’s collaboration with gamers

Gillette is increasing the support for e-sport, which has been a rising trend in recent years and is becoming increasingly popular, especially among young people. 

In 2018, Gilette has gathered 5 gaming influencers together and formed “the most popular e-sports team of Turkey”. For the campaign with Gilette, one of the biggest sponsors of sport and e-sports categories,  YouTube gamers Tuna Akshen (Pintipanda), Mete Ozbey (Easter Gamers TV), Tolgahan Turkben (Oyunbros), Dora Ozsoy (Stratera), Serdar Mercan (Oyun Konsolu) came together and took part in 25 videos during the 6 month with the hashtag #Gilettegibi. The Campaign achieved 11M impressions, allowing the brand to reach the right target audience. 

Casper Excalibur Series commercial 

Casper has released a new commercial for the Excalibur Series, which promises gaming enthusiasts maximum performance and uninterrupted gaming pleasure.

The company shot a commercial of the G670 model of the Excalibur Series featuring a renowned by the game enthusiasts, Bogac Soydemir (aka EducatedEar) from the Post42 team. By making Bogac Soydemir the face of the commercial was a strategic step to speak to not only the gamers but also huge auditorium of over millions of fans on YouTube. 

Bogac Soydemir gained fame for his editing skills and the YouTube show, “funny videos” which became a famous show through his ideas and creativity. Although he is a gamer and commentator best known for his Twitch live streams, he is also famous for a rock band named “Yok oyle kararli sheyler”. 

In this ever-changing digital marketing landscape, healthcare companies also need to find innovative ways to reach their audiences. One of the most effective tools is Influencer Marketing. 

Association of National Advertisers reported that 75% of advertisers opt to use influencer marketing and, and as it is successful 43% of them expect to increase their spending on it over the next 12 months. Influencer marketing is referred to as the ability of one person or campaign to form customers’ purchase decisions.

Influencer marketing isn’t just for the beauty, food, and fitness industries that usually come to mind. It can work in medical tourism too. Finding individuals who are passionate about your company, organization, or product is vital as people put more trust in user-generated content than content created by a company or brand.

What is Medical Tourism? 

Medical Tourism refers to people who travel the world to get medical treatment rather than for fun. While in the past, people were traveling from less-developed countries to developed countries to get proper treatment, now the opposite is true. Nowadays, people tend to travel to developing countries to obtain cheaper medical treatment. It is mostly for surgeries (e.g., cosmetic), but people may travel to countries where treatment is the most understood.

We can use the health tourism term as a broader term for traveling that focuses on medical treatments and the use of healthcare services. It covers a wide field of health-oriented, tourism ranging from preventive and health-conductive treatment to rehabilitation and curative forms of travel.

If you want to start leveraging influencer marketing but don’t know where to start, keep reading to find out more how it is being used in marketing and promotional campaigns to reach prospective traveling patients, insurers, employers, and referring physicians is changing digital marketing.

Who can be an influencer in Medical Tourism?

Healthcare influencers could be everyone from healthcare professionals who are actively online to celebrities who talk openly and frequently about their health. 

A physician or dentist refers a patient on to a specialist they know or respect or that they’ve read about in a journal article, etc. 

A sports or cinema celebrity or public figure gives a glowing review of your service after being a patient at your facility.

Travel influencers who urgently need healthcare service, and finds your clinic more reliable. 

Choose influencers wisely 

Similar to all other marketing verticals, pick influencers based on their relevance to your brand values, their influence with your target audience and their desire to, in fact, be your influencers.

Consider who they are, what their story is, and why they are in health. If you’re going to work with actual health care providers and professionals, be sure to verify their credentials. The last thing you want to do is a partner with the wrong influencer. One who claims to be a doctor, but actually lost their license years ago, can ruin your reputation. 

Trust is more important 

Last but most importantly, medical tourism marketing involves consumer trust. Trust is imperative in the health care system, as people need to put their faith in the recommendations of their doctors, pharmacists, and other health care providers to feel their best. Trust is also imperative in influencer marketing. Consumers need to be able to rely on the words and advice from the people they follow online.

How much will it cost?

What brands pay those influencers can range from a few hundred dollars to a couple of million dollars, depending on the influencer, the platform, and the product. 

Not all influencers charge a fee. But you can pay an influencer for their time and effort to create original content about your brand or that mentions your brand, but you cannot instead pay them a percentage commission based on closed sales as a result of what they wrote. 

Some influencers promote exclusively on one social media platform. The platform chosen will impact the price charged by the influencer. More platforms are equal to higher costs. For one reason, the same content doesn’t work on all platforms interchangeably. The best influencers know this and create original content specifically for use on each platform, tailored to each platform following. If you are a small medical clinic, going with micro-influencers will cost less and have a closer relationship with their audience, so their brand recommendations will resonate with more of their followers.

How could Influencer Marketing be beneficial for Healthcare outlets?

This helps our clients to increase trust and credibility in the market in their segments such as hospital, clinic, or a diagnostic. Influencer marketing can enable and empower hospital in providing utmost care to patients, thereby creating the brand identity.

It creates long-lasting growth and provides a competitive edge in the market. 

An influencer who you want to work with doesn’t have to be a single person or a person at all – Take Genentech’s #NotOneType campaign as an example.

The biotech company teamed up with Giuliana Rancic, Living Beyond Breast Cancer and ThirdLove to take a closer look at breast cancer because “breast cancer is not a one-size-fits-all disease.” A website was launched to serve as the center for educational information like breast cancer types, quick stats, and questions to ask. A pop-up experience was also launched in SoHo, NYC to provide an opportunity for further engagement and education.

View this post on Instagram

Hey #NYC friends! Join us today in #soho. We are teaming up with @thirdlove and @giulianarancic to launch #NotOneType and encourage others to learn about the different types of #breastcancer.

A post shared by Living Beyond Breast Cancer (@livingbeyondbc) on Apr 17, 2018 at 8:56am PDT

Conclusion

Hospitals, Clinics, and Diagnostic centers can easily use and implement influencer marketing to increase the popularity among the people to drive more patients through influence. Healthcare companies who can engage patient communities and start a transparent dialogue are the ones who will rise above the rest. 

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

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

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

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

Live Video Marketing

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

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

• Live videos are effectively used in the following cases: 

• Q&A and conversation with the audience 

• Q&A and customer support

• Product introductions or special annoncements

• Live events 

• Backstage and behind-the-scenes streaming  

Data-driven Marketing

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

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

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

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

Benefits of data-driven marketing are: 

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

Affiliate Marketing 

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

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

1. It is challenging to recruit affiliates. 

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

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

In fact:

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

Targeting “Generation Z”

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

Ways you can target “Gen Z”

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

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

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

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

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

Here are the essential benefits of AI for Digital marketing: 

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

Influencer Marketing 

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

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

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

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

5 things for a successful influencer marketing strategy: 

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

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

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