Influencer Marketing: The Dos, Dont’s & Learnings (Part II)

TL;DR:

• Working with influencers needs to be a part of your larger strategy, not your only strategy
• Follower count does not equal to results. Dig deeper.
• Think objective and campaign first, influencer second. And please don’t blindly give 20 chefs your blender and ask them to come up with recipes to plug in your product
• Say it with me again- Every. One. Is. An. Influencer
• Influence is a tactic, not a leverage. Community is a leverage, not a tactic.

Oh hello, ladies and gents in Marketing, Brand Building… and general influencer enthusiasts. In my last post (incase you missed it, here it is), I shared my initial hypothesis around influencer marketing, and where I see this trend going. Over the past couple of months, we’ve worked on our own influencer marketing campaigns for LBB (specifically LBB Shop), and as a part of marketing and consideration campaigns we’ve run for brands on LBB. We’ve worked with folks with millions of followers, and we’ve worked with the fledgling up and coming folks as well. It’s also been awesome to see brands warm up to influencers in more ways than the usual free gifts and hampers strategy (which is STILL very 2012!)- there have been a bunch of fantastic campaigns done by brands on IG, TikTok & Twitter.

Here’s 5 NEW, and a few old, things I’ve learnt over the past 6 months

1. ASK FOR NUMBERS, ALWAYS:

I have been shocked, amazed and sometimes appalled by the lack of knowledge that influencers have about their own follower base (and the lack of interest from brand managers and agencies in asking for this). Once, I had to teach an influencer where and how to find their insights on Instagram (this person has been paid a lot of money by a lot of brands for promoted content. What are you doing, brands?!)

To legitimise this industry and give influencers the due they rightfully deserve, we’ve all got to start talking (and asking!) for numbers. Numbers needn’t- and in my opinion, should not- be how many units of my product did you sell. But establishing and measuring baseline metrics is key- for both the influencer and the brand in question.

The metrics that must be established in advance are:

1. Avg. views (compare this to their baseline)
2. Avg. saves, comments and likes
3. Avg. DMs per post
4. Avg. Reach per story
5. Swipe-ups per story

You must ask for demographic data, and verify the authenticity of their follower-base. The best way to do the latter, basis our experience, is ask them for how many DMs they get (external engagement on IG, FB is in any case on the decline) and average views per story (and compare this to their follower base). I don’t think any of this should overly encourage or deter you to work with someone; these are numbers that are good to know so you can be clear about expectations at both ends.

Most most importantly, be very clear of your objectives well in advance. Which brings me to…

2. THERE ARE MANY KINDS OF INFLUENCERS. WHO DO YOU WANT TO WORK WITH?

Influencers wear many hats- and the number of followers an influencer has needn’t necessarily determine the impact they’ll have on your brand. At LBB, we’ve worked with influencers with the following goals in mind:

1. To create content we can’t / don’t want to create in-house
2. Because they’re subject matter experts and/or enthusiasts in their field
3. Because our users are likely to follow them OR because our potential users are likely to be following them
4. Because they can potentially drive pageviews to your landing page (which means they have a large and engaged audience)

Here’s what we’ve done:

A. For Shop On LBB, we’ve worked with certain influencers with the goal of visual content creation. With this objective, the influencers we’ve worked have provided a certain realness to images, and have brought their own distinct taste and style in shoots. We’ve also worked on video content, images and content for our web and app platform, and powered the distribution ourselves.

B. In the case of subject matter experts and/or enthusiasts, we’ve integrated “influencers” into existing campaigns, with a very clear articulation of expectations from them. For example, for our #selfmade campaign, we worked with creative entrepreneurs- some of who had no great following- but that didn’t matter to our campaign objective. In this case, the more authentic the “influencer”, the better they align with your integration- follower base, engagement etc doesn’t matter. Other examples of this include campaigns LBB has run for Cadbury, Marks & Spencer, Figaro Oil (in the corporate segment), and emerging brands such as Fabnest, The August Co, Old Tree etc.

C. For a few large brands, influencers- especially in the food space- have been great at hosting events, pulling their network to offline activations, and adding to LBB’s community. We’ve in fact seen a few of them go out of their way for campaigns, and deliver great on-screen and in-person presence.

D. We also launched mini video shows with influencers. Find Home Hatke, Shop Hatke, In Good Taste with locally known experts on LBB TV.

One major learning here: pick influencers your users (current and prospective) are likely to be engaged / engage with, than someone who you as a brand custodian may like/prefer. Keep personal biases out!

3. THINK LONG TERM

I cannot emphasise this enough! We’ve worked with certain influencers across different objectives and outputs. With the same influencer, we’ve done content, videos, events, over a period of time. This ensures a couple of things:

• Your audience doesn’t get bored of the same face/name
• Their audience doesn’t get bored of seeing your brand/product tagged everywhere
• There’s something “new” for all stakeholders to look forward to

Space that collaboration out!

4. THINK…. HATKE

My favourite example here is what we did for Shop On LBB and Pooja Dhingra. Shop On LBB is our marketplace for unique, local, Indian brands and products. Though Pooja Dhingra is known more for her expertise as a chef and entrepreneur, given LBB’s positioning as a destination for ‘Easy, everyday fashion finds’, we wanted to work with someone for whom Fashion is a part of their usual/every day.

Pooja curated an edit of her favourite products- made by local, Indian brands- as a part of her pop-up on LBB.

Apart from of course pageviews and orders, what impressed us most about this campaign was audience expansion- especially in the plus size segment. We got fantastic reviews from users who were elated to find brands that make gorgeous merchandise in sizes over XL- and this exercise has promoted a bunch of them to develop collections and product lines for women and men over XL.

Pooja may not have been the most obvious choice for a fashion campaign, but she was most definitely an excellent choice for a campaign that highlighted how real women and entrepreneurs spend their every day, and easy ways in which their wardrobe can be elevated through with Shop On LBB. Authenticity goes a long way.

5. SORRY, BUT DON’T THINK SALES

Or at least, don’t work with influencers with the intent of purely generating sales. In any conversation I’ve had with influencers, brand managers and marketers, the common thread’s been that influencers don’t necessarily always drive sales- and shouldn’t be used or treated as an ad platform that does. This doesn’t mean they can’t drive sales- but are best to work with when that’s not the only objective.

If your objective is sales and orders predictably, what I’ve seen perform is working with multiple influencers at the same time for the same campaign; think the old school- buy TV spots across different genres, buy billboards pan-localities- way. Large brands with large budgets do this often and well, including Myntra, Amazon, and most phone companies during launches and sales.

Personally, I find this the most boring way to work with influencers. But that’s just my opinion :)

Finally, I think influencers are a new and innovative distribution channel; but I don’t see them as the ONLY distribution channel- especially as you scale. What’s helped us is in thinking about the big picture first, and working with influencers in a way that there’s value creation at both ends.

They’re not commodities, and what makes them worth reckoning with is their unique way of communicating to their audience- don’t take that away.

Hope this was helpful! Drop me your opinions/ counter-opinions in the comments below >