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Influencer marketing is a growing industry catching the eye of brands from all types of industries looking to scale and separate themselves from the competition. However, some campaigns are more successful than others… duh. And that’s not by accident. Some brands implement extremely successful influencer marketing trends into their campaigns through strategic planning and finding the right platforms. We’ll go over some of the top influencer marketing trends that great campaigns have followed and the brands that experienced great results because of them.
Micro Influencer Gifting
Some brands tend to believe spending more means better results. And while it makes sense for some, that’s not the only way to receive the return on investment that can put brands in front of the right audience.
One of the emerging influencer marketing trends that has changed the way brands strategize for their campaigns is micro-influencer gifting. Micro-influencer gifting provides an avenue for brands, especially smaller ones, to gift smaller influencers their product in return for sponsored content. When implementing, it’s extremely important for brands to choose the right influencers who will be excited to post about a company that fits their personal brand and audience.
Influencer Hunter & Quevos Chips
With the goal of increasing brand awareness, Quevos Chips chipped looked to influencer marketing to help. Instead of spending huge amounts of marketing dollars, Quevos reached out to NeoReach to develop the best strategy to move forward with a campaign. As a result, NeoReach worked alongside Influencer Hunter, a trusted influencer marketing agency, to develop a great campaign through influencer gifting.
Looking for more top agencies like NeoReach and Influence Hunter? Check out the best influencer marketing startups here.
Given their healthy persona, Quevos’ strategy consisted of reaching out to micro and nano influencers whose brands revolved around fitness, health and wellness. After activating roughly 280 influencers, Influencer Hunter and Quevos added an extra incentive of commission on sales the influencers brought in, along with sending out multiple 6-packs of their products. Those that drove the most sales through their unique code were invited to become long-term brand ambassadors. Talk about creativity!
Overall, Quevos’ following increased by 100%, acquired 20,000 unique site visits and brought in a total of $25,000 from the campaign with only a $1,500 monthly budget. What a great way to incentivize healthy living!
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Audio Podcast Blasts
With Instagram being a huge success for so many brands and becoming a staple for influencer marketing trends, newer brands looking to go into the influencer marketing space seem to overlook other great platforms such as podcasting. Emerging as a new popular form of content in the past couple of years, and even more so during quarantine, podcasting is a non-traditional form of social media that some brands have used to reach audiences they might have been able to reach otherwise.
Podcasts were originally known for their ability to reach “busy” consumers, those who are always on the go and needed an avenue to listen to their content rather than watch. As more and more influencers started developing their own podcasts alongside their mainstream content like YouTube (such as Logan Paul) brands got creative and strategized campaigns through podcasting.
Hello Fresh
Already a huge player in the influencer marketing field, Hello Fresh looked to diversify its campaign even further by staying on top of the newest influencer marketing trends. Having already partnered with huge Instagram and YouTube influencers such as Jessica Alba and David Dobrik, Hello Fresh saw the opportunity with podcasts to reach audiences who may not be video watchers. Partnering with VIEWS, Zane & Heath Unfiltered, and several others, Hello Fresh was able to expand their brand awareness even further and compete with a plethora of other food delivery brands through a strong online presence.
Think this might be best the platform for your campaign? Check out the fastest growing podcasts you should consider here.
Competitive Nature
Whether it’s winning a game or getting crazy prizes, people all around the world love competition. An emerging trend that’s been making waves in influencer marketing is launching competitions to get fans engaged and excited. Some brands have gotten extremely creative with competitions, so much so that the prizes have risen to cars and large sums of money.
But it doesn’t have to be that way in order to be successful, competitions prizes can be something like a brand goodie bag for the best dance that tagged the brand. Throughout the pandemic, people have been longing for some sort of human interaction and this brand had the perfect answer.
Basketball Arena & MrBeast
Basketball Arena is a phone app founded by Masumo during quarantine. As a company with some experience under its belt, Masumo wanted Basketball Arena to be its biggest launch yet, and what better way to it than work with one of the largest YouTubers out there, MrBeast. To do it, Basketball Arena ran a competition in its app where the user with the most wins within a two week period would win $50,000! To bring even more excitement and attention to the game, Masumo brought on MrBeast who blasted the ongoing competition within one of his viral YouTube videos, and tacked on an extra $50,000 in cash prizes.
With the help of MrBeast, the campaign successfully brought in over 2 million new users and reached millions more through the viral video. Even a month after the competition has ended, the game is still ranked in the top 150 games on the app store.
Authenticity Matters
Have you ever looked at a larger influencer promoting a brand and said “This doesn’t really fit?”. Well if you’re like me, you see it quite often. Some brands decide they want to go with larger influencers who are on the “rise”, even if their audience and personal brand don’t fit, just to reach a wider audience. However, that’s not necessarily the key for success if its costly and the return isn’t what you’re looking for.
As social media users have begun to understand the landscape even more, they’re starting to appreciate the authenticity that separates the influencers and brands from the majority. And by authenticity, I’m referring to instances where influencers and brands aren’t a good fit. For example, the new food subscription delivery craze has become a huge participant and benefactor of influencer marketing. However, at times, we see influencers who constantly eat junk food within their Instagram stories or their videos; that’s not very authentic. But some brands have it locked in.
Dunkin’ Donuts & Charli D’Amelio
Charli D’Amelio has risen to the top of social media through her viral TikTok’s over the last year, and one thing her fans know about her is her love for Dunkin’ coffee. Obviously appearing on Dunkin’s radar, they saw the opportunity to cement a partnership with the teen star for the long run. According to reports, Dunkin’ has seen a whopping 44% increase in sales since the partnership, talk about authenticity playing its part!
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Hashtag Madness
When brands launch campaigns, they seem to look straight at mainstream influencer marketing trends like picking growing influencers rather than the little things that can truly define a brand. Creating new hashtags to go along with a campaign can create both excitement and engagement with an audience, helping turn a good campaign into a great one.
Netflix & Cobra Kai
As a huge company with a multitude of shows and campaigns under its belt, Netflix is no stranger to the world of influencer marketing. With the launch of its latest season for Cobra Kai, Netflix partnered with NeoReach to launch a viral campaign through TikTok with an eclectic roster of influencers to spread the word.
To add some flare and creativity to a well-developed roster, each influencer paired the hashtag “#CobraKaiChop” to their videos. This sparked massive engagement, fun competitions and huge amounts of excitement for the show helping the campaign bring in 2.75X in ROI, and 4.6 billion views on the hashtag. Cobra Kai hit the top charts of Netflix as a result, and the campaign recorded one of the best ROIs of 2020.
https://www.tiktok.com/@zacharyyryann/video/6910650070727675142?sender_device=pc&sender_web_id=6914400053143700998&is_from_webapp=v1&is_copy_url=0
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Platform Stacking
While some brands can definitely benefit from using a single social platform for their campaigns, influencer marketing draws great results when the content is diversified. Using multiple platforms to advertise a brand can expand reach, and spread brand awareness to audiences you won’t get from one social media app.
This depends on the brand, but with TikTok being a huge player for the younger audience, YouTube having content for users of all ages, and Instagram constantly growing, why not hit all three? Finding influencers who have a huge presence on all platforms is rare (and costly), but strategic planning can allow campaigns to succeed beyond expectation.
IMC Toys
As a well established toy brand, IMC Toys had to find new ways to cope with the changes caused by the pandemic throughout 2020 and wanted creative ways to advertise. With the help of NeoReach, IMC Toys was able to roll out an amazing influencer campaign spreading across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and even Pinterest. The campaign far exceeded the expectations of IMC, recording a 1.6X return on investment and reaching millions of customers. In an industry full of big players, IMC was able to find huge success in influencer marketing through innovation and creativity with a great agency right behind them.
Useful Content over Wordy Ads
As I said before, authenticity is what really drives content in today’s society. Nowadays, it seems every third post in another sponsored ad, and users are getting sick of it. It’s not necessarily the ads we are sick of, it’s the lack of useful content. However, some of the best campaigns that separate themselves from the rest are those that find the right mix of words and content.
Bigelow Tea
In an industry stacked with large name brands, Bigelow needed to find a way to differentiate itself from the competition. Rather than take the typical route of blasting ads, Bigelow reached out to lifestyle bloggers and health enthusiasts to promote the benefits of tea, healthy living along with the brand itself.
In doing so, Bigelow took a bunch of pressure off the creators to allow them to express themselves in different ways, provide great content for their audience and also support the brand. I think it’s safe to say that Bigelow found a “healthy” way to get recognized and increased sales by 18.5% as a result!
Going Forward
Influencer marketing trends are continuously evolving and changing as the influencer landscape grows. With no signs of stopping, influencer marketing is proving time and time again to be the key to success for businesses and brands from all types of industries. To keep with everything new in the space, make sure to check out our other blogs here!
