Influencer marketing will be huge in 2017
I had a very insightful convo with Andy Carvell recently. Andy used to head growth at Soundcloud and founded Phiture, an awesome Berlin-based growth agency.
During his keynote at Growth Stack, he elaborated on the Mobile Growth Stack. The well-known framework for mobile growth evolved with the growth mindset. This evolution sparked my idea for this post.
The 2017 edition of the Growth Stack adds quite some new elements compared to its 2016 predecessor. A new kid on the block for the NY edition is, guess what, influencer marketing.
But first…
Influencer marketing has been around since the Marlboro dude, so it’s not necessarily a technology driven hack. This being said, tech does help quite a bit in scaling this particular growth activity. Services such as BoostInsider and Sharepop help connecting brands with relevant influencers without having to reach out one by one as an example.
Thanks to technology, influencer marketing is scalable, suited for experiments and data driven. Growth marketeers will approve :).
Play the influencer game without paying top Dollar
The misconception among quite some startups is that influencer marketing is a capital intensive growth effort. Something for post series-B (in startup lingo). However, I really don’t agree and strongly believe that playing the influencer game during the early days can mean exponential learning velocity. It’s something you should explore. Hands down, no brainer.
To get going with startup influencer marketing you need three things, (1) a number of use cases for your product, (2) access to blogger groups on Facebook and, (3) some basic understanding of thinking in partnerships. That’s it.
This is how I did it myself
For Look we identified a number of use cases . One is around ‘virtual travel destination discovery’. Based on early user adoption behavior we learned that quite some people use Look to discover a region or a city in a new way. In our case by asking people in certain geographical areas to shoot a livestream.
To further explore this use case we basically wanted eyes on the ground in a number of selected regions and cities. People with an eye for beauty, a propensity to share, a mobile first lifestyle and a passion for travel. Needless to say that travel bloggers matched our criteria.
As many starting ventures, we don’t have the bandwidth to start engaging with super well-known travelers. Luckily scarcity sparks creativity, so I started joining travel blogger groups on Facebook that focus on supporting upcoming travel talent. I hung around for a couple of weeks to better understand what the community was looking for.
Soon enough I noticed that quite some travel bloggers were looking for opportunities to increase their following and new ways of broadcasting that would set them apart from other travel bloggers.
Put two and two together
So I drafted a post called ‘Collaboration opportunity’ with an inspirational travel image and a clear C2A. Only a couple of hours after having dropped the post in a FB travel group, comments and email reactions started flowing in. One day later I was having Skype interviews with travel bloggers.
During each Skype interview I really focused on what we can mean for them and what their expectations are. It’s genuinely our intention to help and support these upcoming traveler influencers and build lasting relationships with them. During a second part of the conversation I told them more about Look, the specific elements of the collaboration opportunity and what we expected.
The outcome
We basically identified 10 travel bloggers who are working together with us in a non-monetary setup. It’s the start of a healthy and long term relationship based on common values. An experimentation mindset at both sides and a very casual way of communicating. What’s not to like.
So lesson here: Next time someone tells you Influencer marketing is expensive and difficult, you should disagree…
