Influencer Marketing Can Produce Incredible Results, if Properly Managed

Despite the recent New York Times article exposing celebrities, athletes, and media personalities purchasing hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers, influencer marketing is more important than ever.

As RACKED recently stated, Instagram ads are basically infomercials for millennials. But they aren’t just infomercials for millennials, they’re infomercials for everyone. I was in a meeting with a client last week, and she shared the following statement, verbatim: “I go on Instagram to be told what to buy.” Think about that for a second…

“I go on Instagram to be told what to buy.”

Now, I can confirm that I, and pretty much everyone at Wallaroo, share this sentiment. Instagram (and other social platforms like Snapchat, Pinterest, and sometimes Twitter) has effectively replaced the ‘As Seen on TV’ infomercials of late night television. Priceonomicsanalyzed the 5 steps of an infomercial:

1. Create Awareness
2. Create Need
3. Create Urgency
4. Evaluate Choices
5. Resolve Final Risk

An effective influencer marketing strategy follows the same rubric. From tummy tea to sugarbear hair, from moons to fitness gear to makeup brands, the first time you’ll hear about most of the new products these days is via social media. Why? Because it works. It works very well.

Brands are Flocking To Influencer Marketing

Interest in influencer marketing has grown a ton of the last year.

While we still believe strongly in content marketing (and SEO – check this out!!!), the rise of influencer marketing cannot be denied. According to a recent study by Linqia, 94% of marketers who used influencer marketing last year found the channel to be effective, and budgets are set to double this year. Research firm L2 found that 70% of brands are working with influencers on Instagram. The rise of ad blocking and ad costs provide an additional reason to utilize influencers. Another study found that an influencer marketing campaign earned an average of $6.85 in media value for every $1 spent on paid media. Bloglovin (the largest conglomerate of bloggers/influencers) predicts that the industry will continue to skyrocket:

How to Run a Campaign, and What to Measure

Tracking ROI can be tricky with influencer marketing campaigns if you haven’t established goals/KPIs/metrics beforehand. But that goes for any type of marketing campaign. Tracking things like Cost Per Click, Cost Per Acquisition, and Cost Per Engagement can be measured effectively. Calculating your overall ROI is going to depend on your cost for the campaign, sales generated, sponsorship costs, product/giveaway costs (if applicable), etc. Having a strong analytics team/agency in place is key.

At Wallaroo, we prefer to work with what we call “Micro influencers“. We define micro influencers as an influencer that has less than 100,000 followers, and preferably under 50,000. What we’ve seen from these types of influencers is higher levels of engagement, more targeted followings, and better overall ROI. They’re also generally easier to get a hold of and easier to work with.

Ideally, an influencer campaign integrates with your existing social media campaign, your advertising campaign, and your content campaigns. Creating and running a cohesive strategy will set everything up for success. We’ve done many influencer campaigns for our clients, consistently seeing ROI’s of 10X+.

If you’re interested in learning more or want to use Wallaroo for your own influencer campaigns, contact us today!