How to use Influencer Marketing as a long-run tool, not as an onetime traffic spring.
As a self-designated digital native, the internet was something I grew up with — and altough social media wasn’t that big at this time, I soon realized how influential it will get. Social Media and its Influencers wield tremendous impact on their audiences behavior. An impact brands clearly want to make use of, but why do so many companies fail?
I’m Joe and I just turned twenty-one. During my last year in high school, I started working for the Berlin based E-commerce company called KoRo Drogerie. Within my first weeks as an Online Marketing layman, I learned so many things about this space that I was able to run two truly successful Influencer campaigns on YouTube doubling the company’s revenue in roughly 3 months. This September I became part of the LA based Photo-App Swell with which we provide instant opinions to millions of people. In Swell, Influencer Marketing has been a great and effective instrument to reach thousands of potential Swellers with minimum expense. I’m totally convinced that Influencer Marketing works for almost every company when they care about a few major points. What is truly important about it?
Overall Strategy:
A great campaign needs an even better planning. Without a strategy, setup and goal your campaign is about to fail. Think about whom you want to reach, what the effect should be, also think about where you want to spread the word & wheter you want to create short (pictures) or long content (videos)? I immediately saw the huge potential and opportunities YouTube provides me as an Online Marketer. I mean every platform has its benefits and drawbacks, but especially in the beginning, YouTube is in my opinion the best platform to start with and mostly the only one, companies don’t have their own precense on. Besides that, we found out that pictures aren’t as effective getting users to take immediate action like downloading our app. There’s no certain rule, find out which platform works best for your product and you’ll have success.
Indentifying the right Tastemaker:
This is something companies often undervalue— having the right influencers for your campaign is crucial and will save a lot of money. Just reach won’t do anything. Imagine you’re the CEO of a real estate startup and you’re about to do a collab with Justin Bieber, one of the most influential Social Media personalities at the time. Do you think his primary audience (girls from 12–16) is interested in a product like that? probably not. Think about the audience and then decide which influencers fit to your brand and online prescence.
In Swell we truly place importance on building long-lasting relationships with partners. We treat our Swell Heros (that’s how we call them) like customers, truly want them to love our product and even involve them into our development. If they don’t like it, they’re not going to place our product the way we want it to be and it mostly comes of really inorganic. Building sustaining partnerships is definetely the core element in our current Swell Hero Campaign. It’s no banner ad, it’s a long term thing.
Engage with your partners
Sharing is caring. Show interest in what they are doing, comment on posts they recently uploaded or even share their content. We even organized small events on our terrace where we invited our Heros to take part and to have good talks. Some of them became great friends and Niki, one of our first Influencers, even started working for us. Be nice, create additional value and grow big together. That’s the way I think Influencer Marketing should happen nowadays.
So you see that these and more factors can influence the success or failure of your campaign. If you have any questions about this topic, just drop me a line — I’m happy to help you with your next campaign.
