INFLUENCER

How to Effectively Use the World's Most Powerful Marketing Tool

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Influencer marketing is a constantly evolving practice, that when done correctly, is the most powerful form of advertising. Many companies understand the need for influencer marketing, but don’t understand the complexity behind the process, which could end up costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The most effective influencer marketing campaigns are those

targeted at a specific audience that influencers have a direct connection to.

The alternative equates to a shot in the dark.

Relevance is key when it comes to any kind of marketing. The way to get relevant using influencer

marketing is to know exactly who you’re targeting.

What it is, how to do it, and why it’s forever changing advertising as we know it.

Where do they live?

How old are they?

Male or Female?

What kind of personal interests

do they have?

Take a few moments to develop a detailed persona of the person you’re most interested in targeting.

Companies that don’t understand the importance

of demographic targeting are prone to waste money on

campaigns, reaching an audience that doesn’t resonate

with their product.

The kind of authentic, organic content that is produced

with effective influencer marketing is impossible to replicate

in traditional advertising spaces. All of those Coke

commercials with smiling people in straw hats and short

sleeve button down shirts are attempting to recreate

exactly what is done effortlessly when an influencer posts

your product.

68% of B2C brands‘mostly’ or ‘always’

ignore social media brand

posts

The most significant difference between traditional

advertising and influencer marketing is the consumer’s

perception of who is talking to them. With traditional ads,

people feel skeptical because they know the message

is coming directly from the brand. They know they’re

being sold.

When the consumer sees a sponsored post on Instagram,

they are more receptive because they are familiar with

who’s posting it. There is an inherent trust because of the

interpersonal nature of the medium.

With attention being diverted from

traditional advertising spaces (TV,

Radio, Billboards) to posts on Instagram,

Snapchat, Vine, and increasingly

Periscope, brands are at risk of being

left behind if they don’t embrace this

new form of marketing.

Think about it- almost all the people who

watch TV have their programs recorded,

so they can skip through the commercials.

And when they can’t, guess where their

eyes go when it’s commercial time. That’s

right- their phones. It’s becoming clear

that the easiest and most direct channel

to send your brand’s

According to a report done by Forrester.com, “Mobile has bumped TV as America’s First screen. People with a

mobile device now spend an average of 2 hours

and 57 minutes on them each day, putting phones

ahead of TVs.

The End of TV Ads Dominance:

message to young eyes is social media.

In fact, in 2013, “For the first time,

marketers spent more to advertise on the

Internet (a total of $42.8 billion) than they

did for broadcast television. (MediaPost)”

In 1941, Bulova Watches ran the first

television advertisement ever. Despite

being a revolutionary idea at the time, TV

ads quickly became a social norm and

would dominate the advertising space

until recently. Now, fast-forward 58 years

to today where (albeit less and less)

advertising on Instagram is the

revolutionary way of advertising that TV

was when Bulova did their ad in 1941.

DAILY USERS

Twitter’s newly released Periscope doesn’t offer force-fed ads just

yet. However, that hasn’t stopped brands from searching for a way to advertise on the live-stream

platform. Both Wendy’s and Nestlé have begun to take advantage of the app, enlisting influencers

to share their live stories using their products.

(see above)

With the number of users growing over 25% per quarter, there is no mobile

marketing platform as powerful as Instagram.

Despite Instagram’s powerhouse position in the mobile media advertising space,

Snapchat has been making some innovative strides in their marketing viability.

The recently released 3V lets advertisers create content optimized for mobile

devices. 3V stands for Vertical Video Views: Mobile video that doesn’t force you

to either turn your phone on its side or suffer through video in a minimized box.

According to a survey done by comScore 71% of Snapchat’s users are between

17-30 years old. If you want to target the younger generations of the world,

Snapchat is the place to do it.

With more platforms optimizing for advertisement, the choice to avoid

influencer marketing altogether could be very costly for your brand.

60MPHOTOSper day

75 million

DAILY USERS

2.5B

likesclicked daily

300Musers around

the world

Demographic Composition % of Leading Social Networks

Source: comScore Media Metrix Multi-Platform, U.S, Age 18+, Dec 2014

16% 22% 19% 18% 15% 10%

14% 21% 22% 18% 16% 9%

19% 22% 21% 18% 13% 7%

23% 26% 19% 15% 12% 4%

28% 23% 17% 15% 10% 7%

45% 26% 13% 10% 6% 1%

AGE 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65+

You sure can. This approach includes hiring your own team to research and reach out to influencers, hoping that

they will respond to your posts and promote your products. Choosing this approach, you gain by developing

real relationships with influencers. However, you sacrifice the opportunity to access the analytic platforms of top

influencer marketing agencies. This means less relevance, less control of what the influencer posts, and ultimately,

less return on your investment.

Other issues include price per post fluctuations that can be difficult to manage when working with a small pool of

influencers. From 2014-2015 our average price per post doubled. In addition to rising costs, tracking things like

cost per engagement is difficult with larger scale campaigns. Finally, managing a 500-post campaign can get very

messy on an excel spreadsheet.

Can you do it yourself?

The benefits of working with an Influencer marketing company:

Creative Department: Our creative department focuses on the aesthetic strategy

of your campaign. They work diligently on crafting a brand message that fits the

look of the influencer’s content. They work with influencers to create an image that

shows how your product fulfills consumer needs. It can be as simple as casting

Influencers who can integrate the product/brand into their lifestyle, or as complex

as triggering emotional responses using psychological cues.

Campaign Management: Most influencer marketing agencies have a

department dedicated to guiding you through the campaign, making sure

it runs as smoothly as possible.

When you sign up for a campaign at InstaBrand, you’ll be assigned to one of

our account managers who will be your point of contact throughout the process.

It is their responsibility to make sure the content being created holds true to your

brand’s message and the influencer’s natural aesthetic. They provide you with

daily & weekly updates on your campaign, so that you can retarget in real time.

Consider them your bridge to the influencers.

Analytics: In this day and age, analytics are one of the most important aspects of

any endeavor. They allow you to track the effectiveness of your time and effort.

Attempting any kind of marketing campaign without proper analytics will lead to

wasted dollars and a lack of future direction. InstaBrand differs from its competitors

in that we have our own, built-from-scratch analytics platform that you get access

to when you sign up for a campaign. Track follower growth, followers by location,

engagement, and who is seeing your posts so that you know where your message

resonates the most. You’ll know how to prioritize your marketing efforts in the future

on top of what you gain from the campaign itself.

Overall, our biggest concern is matching you with the right influencers, guiding you

through a smooth and seamless marketing campaign so you not only grow your follower

base and awareness, but also understand how to more effectively connect with those

consumers in the future. You can absolutely recruit influencers on your own, but at a

heavy cost in time and effort. Influencer Marketing is quickly becoming the most powerful

way to advertise, and now is the time to take advantage.

1 Coffee, Patrick. “STUDY: 68% of Social Media Users Ignore the Brands They Follow.” Adweek. Adweed, 26 Feb.

2014. Web. 24 July 2015. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.adweek.com%2Fprnewser%2Fstudy-68-of-social-users-ignore-

the-brands-they-like%2F87264%3Fred%3Dpr>.

2 Jennings, Rebecca, Christine S. Overby, and Alice Bresciani. “Reaching Young Consumers With Social Media –

A Social Computing Report.” Forrester.com. Forrester Research Inc., 24 Apr. 2008. Web. 22 July 2015.

3 Sullivan, Laurie. “Internet Ad Revenue Hits $42.8 Billion In 2013, Surpasses Broadcast TV.” Mediapost.com. Media

Post Communications, 10 Mar. 2014. Web. 23 July 2015.

4 Kafka, Peter. “Here’s the Chart That Explains Why Media Companies Are Obsessed With Snapchat.” Recode.net.

Vox Media, Inc., 26 Mar. 2015. Web. 22 July 2015.

5 Johnson, Lauren. “Nestlé Will Be the First Brand to Run a Sponsored Periscope Stream.” AdWeek.com.

Adweek, 19 June 2015. Web. 22 July 2015.

6 Johnson, Lauren. “Wendy’s Enlists YouTube Stars Rhett & Link to Put a Twist on Livestreaming Will It Work like

Meerkat and Periscope?” Adweek.com. Adweek, 18 June 2015. Web. 18 July 2015.

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