Influencer Marketing in Australia
Like many other things in the advertising niche, influencer marketing has transformed from a luxury to a necessity. At first, it was the cherry on top of the cake. It wasn’t entirely necessary, but it made the digital marketing strategy better. Now, influencer marketing is becoming the cake itself. Without it, your marketing strategy suffers.
Today, we want to talk about the state of influencer marketing in Australia. Should you include the marketing technique in your strategy? In short, yes. In this guide, we’re going to address the new influencer marketing code in Australia, the trends with this tactic, and lots more besides.
Influencer Marketing Statistics
Before anything else, one of the best ways to assess the credibility of a marketing technique is to look at the numbers (especially if you need to sell the idea to the bosses upstairs!). Currently, seven in ten teenagers who subscribe to a personality on YouTube trust their opinion more than the opinion of a traditional celebrity.
Meanwhile, over 85% of women making a purchase log into a social media platform first. Often, guides like this one will tell you about the best platforms for influencer marketing from a business perspective. However, it’s also interesting to learn the favored platforms from influencers themselves.
One-third of influencers recently stated Facebook as the best platform for this marketing technique while around one-quarter believed Instagram to be the best. This being said, it doesn’t mean that other platforms don’t have value for companies. If you think that Twitter, TikTok, or another platform is the best route to your audience, don’t be afraid to explore this option.
Read More: Are Influencers Now More Prominent than Social Media Ads?
Other interesting facts are as follows:
- Of all the most popular beauty videos on YouTube, over 85% come from influencers as opposed to under 15% from beauty brands.
- Over half of all fashion and beauty companies set aside some of their marketing budgets for influencer marketing.
- Seven in ten consumers are encouraged to buy products after social media references.
Though all these statistics paint a portrait for influencer marketing, there’s still one that shines above the rest. For every $1 invested in influencer marketing, the average return for businesses in Australia is currently at $6.50 (this is a huge ROI!).
AIMCo (Australian Influencer Marketing Council)
When influencer marketing first entered the niche, it’s fair to say that there weren’t many rules. Eventually, this led to repercussions when businesses and influencers would hide their relationships (despite the latter making a commission on all sales). Thankfully, there’s now transparency, responsibility, and accountability when it comes to influencer marketing. Part of this is down to initiatives like AIMCo — the Australian Influencer Marketing Council.
Essentially, the body has introduced a framework for businesses and influencers to work within to ensure transparency for all consumers. The framework addresses four key areas:
- Disclosure — These days, punishments exist for those who try to be sneaky with their partnerships. Why? It’s deceiving for consumers — they can buy products recommended by influencers without knowing that these influencers are getting paid to advertise them (or mention them in a post!). With influencers making all partnerships clear, there’s now an authenticity to the process and consumers are always aware of when paid partnerships exist.
- Selection — The code also defines influencer selection for businesses — considering the number of people with a following over 15,000 on Instagram alone has reached 500,000, the vetting process is pivotal if a business is to get influencer marketing right.
- Reporting — An influencer may have mentioned your product in a YouTube video or Facebook post, but what impact did this have on sales and leads? For the longest time, businesses were left in the dark and they had to assume that the strategy was working. Thankfully, though problems still exist, there is now a framework for the sharing of data. Transparency allows all parties to assess performance fairly.
- Content Rights — Who owns the content? What type of content will you produce together? It’s important to have a clear understanding of content rights from the beginning.
Read More: Does Influencer Marketing Actually Work?
Types of Influencers
You like the sound of influencer marketing, but how do you get started? First, you need to understand that different types of influencers exist. Kylie Jenner is an influencer, but the likelihood of your small paper business working with the celebrity is unlikely. Therefore, you need to see where your business fits within the influencer spectrum.
A startup doesn’t need somebody with 10 million followers — the strategy will be expensive, and the influencer is unlikely to work with a new brand anyway. It’s important to match your business to the right influencer based on the number of followers they have. As the business grows, you can then target influencers with a larger following.
Micro-Influencers — This tends to include people with up to 100,000 followers. With so many people in this group, you can select an influencer within your niche because this leads to resonance with the audience. While reach is small, it’s an authentic relationship and cheap to implement.
Macro-Influencers — Next, these people have between 50,000 and 500,000 followers. Rather than everyday people, like in the micro-influencer group, macro-influencers tend to be YouTubers, bloggers, and other personalities. Engagement per post falls from a maximum of 50% to anything up to 20%, but topical relevance increases. For instance, a business selling clothes can partner with a fashion YouTuber.
Mega-Influencers — Here, we reach athletes, actors, musicians, and other celebrities with over 500,000 followers. Although engagement falls between 2% and 5%, these influencers have tremendous reach and are almost brands in themselves. However, resonance is low compared to micro- and macro-influencers.
Types of Content
As well as different influencers, there are also different types of content, and this is important to know if you’re just starting to use this marketing technique. You may have more control than you realize.
Influencer-Generated Content — As the name suggests, this is content produced by the influencer, and it’s what most people think of when they consider influencer marketing. Ultimately, the influencer creates the content working within the parameters that you set. As a business, you’ll want to review all content before it goes live to prevent reputation damage (don’t forgo this step because a simple mistake from the influencer could harm the reputation of the business!).
Co-Developed Content — This time, the influencer and business work together to create content. Though this sometimes works, there’s also a risk of convoluted content where too many cooks spoil the broth, so to speak.
Brand-Generated Content — As you’ve probably guessed, brands develop this content, and there are pros and cons to the strategy once again. While you might think that full control is a great idea, remember that this isn’t your audience. Nobody knows the audience of the influencer better than the influencer themselves. Therefore, the content tends to be less personalized and not as impactful.
Read More: The Effect of Live Streaming on Digital Marketing
Getting Started with Influencer Marketing
All that’s left to discuss now is the process of implementing influencer marketing into your wider marketing strategy. You need to lay the foundations before anything else, and this includes deciding an incentive and defining success.
Choosing an Incentive
What incentives you offer an influencer comes down to the type of influencer, brand affinity, exclusivity, and other factors. In other words, does the influencer have similar values to the business? Are you going for a micro-influencer, a mega-influencer, or something in between?
Currently, macro-influencers and mega-influencers normally require cash payments while micro-influencers are open to recognition, VIP treatment, and other rewards. VIP treatment includes the following:
- Gift cards
- Discounts
- Free trials
- Product giveaways
- Contest entries
- Experience boxes (useful for unboxing videos)
- Early access
- Exclusive content
- Priority services
Defining Success
What do you want to achieve from influencer marketing in Australia? Don’t just invest some money into an influencer and hope for the best. Instead, review the analytics and decide whether success means reach, engagement, conversions, clicks, or something else entirely. The word ‘success’ is often thrown around, but it means different things to different people. Consider your definition and you’ll know which metrics and KPIs to track moving forward.
Read More: Marketing Campaigns Meet AI: Best Optimization Practices
Influencer Marketing Platforms
To finish, it’s useful to know that influencer marketing platforms exist to help businesses introduce this modern technique. Here are some examples:
Facebook Brand Collabs Manager — Launched back in 2018, this is a marketplace whereby brands and influencers meet on Facebook. As a business, you can learn about different influencers before then connecting with them to start the vetting process.
Influitive — This Canadian company was developed to connect businesses with influencers to build long-term relationships. Influencers are keen to offer product feedback, testimonials, referrals, and more.
Intellifluence — With over 85,000 content creators, this is a great way to find qualified candidates to help the brand in the coming month and years.
#Paid — We return to Canada for influencer-generated content, machine learning, automated workflows, smart software, optimization, and accurate audience targeting.
Read More: eCommerce on Facebook: Setting Up Effective Facebook Purchase Campaigns
Other leading tools include:
- Popular Pays
- Tapinfluence
- The Right Fit (Australian)
- Tribe (Australian)
- Group High
- FanCentro
Read More: Is Influencer Marketing Still Kicking?
