LLPR’s Account Executive, Amy Squires, shares her insight on how to maximise return from your work with influencers, while protecting and amplifying your brand voice and reputation.
Influencer campaigns are nothing new. While the platforms used have evolved over time, the premise remains much the same. Think of Coca Cola. The brand started using Santa Claus to give its product a push during the Christmas of 1931. The campaign was featured in many acclaimed publications including the Saturday Evening Post, The New Yorker, and National Geographic amongst others. So successful was the campaign, that Santa Claus is still the brand’s go-to ‘influencer’, or arguably now ‘brand ambassador’, for Coca Cola throughout the Christmas period.
Why was Coca Cola’s Christmas campaign so successful? It’s down to the brand alignment, storytelling capability, and relatability. Firstly, the persona of Santa Claus perfectly matches Coca Cola’s brand values, and mission of ‘inspiring moments of optimism and happiness’. What could be more optimistic and happier than the idea of old Saint Nick on his way down your chimney with a bunch of presents?
Secondly, Coca Cola successfully sold and continually reiterated the narrative that Santa Claus enjoys a refreshing Coca Cola during his Christmas journey, successfully pitching Coca Cola as the go-to refreshment for customers during this period.
Finally, using such an iconic and much-loved character gave credibility and weight to the message, and allowed audiences to connect with and relate to the influence.
Of course, there are other factors that play a role in the success of an influencer campaign, but without brand alignment, successful storytelling, and influencer credibility and relatability, your campaign will struggle to get off the ground.
So, how do you go about selecting the right influencer for your campaign? As outlined above, you’ll want to consider the following:
Brand synergy and alignment
Partnering with an influencer who’s aligned with your brand values and identity is crucial for success. It’s the key to building faith and authenticity in your campaign and lets your audience know that your values, are, well, valued. If your influencer doesn’t emulate or actively showcase and behave in a way that aligns with your brand values, it’s time to stop pursuing that partnership.
When collaborating with influencers, maintaining brand tone of voice and consistent use of approved language makes it easier for your audience to quickly associate the campaign with your brand. You’ll want to share your key messaging with your chosen influencer before commencing the campaign and ensure each of these messages are effectively covered within the content produced.
Relatability and credibility
Influencer relatability is fundamental to achieving buy-in from your audience. If an audience sees an influencer as a friend, trust and perceived authenticity are established quickly. To evaluate how well your audience may relate to an influencer, you’ll need to do a deep-dive analysis of your target consumers. This includes looking at, but isn’t limited to:
- Your audience demographic, including behavioural traits
- Geographical location (if relevant to your campaign)
- How they currently engage with your brand
- Social media behaviours, including most active periods
Ceating consumer personas, analysing competitor activity, and carrying out focus groups can be a good way to download this information.
Audience engagement
Does your influencer have an engaged audience? If not, you’ll probably want to give them a miss. It’s important to recognise that the number of followers an influencer has doesn’t necessarily equate to higher engagement.
There are some simple things you can do to assess engagement rates, including having a quick scroll through your potential influencer’s feed and comparing the amount of ‘likes’ or comments a post achieves to their follower count. For reference, it may come as a surprise that a ‘good’ engagement rate for influencers with over 100k followers is between 1-3%.
You should try and identify any bought or bot followers. Characteristically, these accounts leave spam-like comments, have inactive or empty profiles, or just appear to be inconsistent with the usual follower type for the account.
Gifted versus paid?
There are several factors to consider when deciding whether a gifted campaign or a paid campaign is most appropriate. Firstly, does your organisation have the appropriate budget for a paid campaign? If you’re unable or unwilling to fork out the going rate, which can vary depending on influencer size, don’t insult an influencer by lowballing significantly. Remember, being an influencer is often a full-time job, and you’ll want to tread carefully as to not burn bridges for future opportunities.
Gifted campaigns are lower cost but can be less effective. The deliverables are not contracted, so influencers are under no legal obligation to follow through with the content agreed. Having said that, it’s rare to see no content produced at all for fear of being blacklisted from future opportunities themselves. You’ll also have little control over the messaging and the way an influencer portrays your brand. Of course, you can provide as much direction and information as appropriate, but the fact remains that they are not legally bound to fulfil any of your expectations. You can mitigate this as much as possible by following the above steps when choosing your campaign partner.
Gifted campaigns are often seen as more authentic than paid partnerships. This is because audiences are aware that an influencer isn’t being paid to promote the brand, and therefore likely has a genuine affinity for the brand. Influencers that work on a gifted basis also tend to have a smaller but more engaged audience, so while you’re not necessarily reaching as many people as with a paid campaign, you’ll likely be speaking to those more likely to convert.
Paid campaigns are more expensive, but you’ll have much more control over the content, messaging, and posting schedules. Paid collaborations allow you to build in steps such as an approval process or revisions, so you can be sure that your campaign objectives are met and that your messaging is clear. You are also well within your right to ask creators for post analytics and performance data, so you can more easily evaluate the success of your campaign.
In summary…
Gifted campaigns:
- Lower cost
- Content is seen as more authentic
- Less control over content and messaging
- Unlikely to receive performance data
Paid:
- More expensive
- Content can appear contrived and inauthentic
- Direct control over content, messaging and posting schedule
- Access to performance data
LLPR manage influencer campaigns for a wide variety of clients in a range of industries. Could your business use some support with sourcing influencers for an upcoming campaign, or perhaps you just want to learn a little bit more about us? Please don’t hesitate to contact us, we’d love to hear from you!
