The secret sauce to amplifying your message and increasing reach within the current social media landscape is tapping into relevant influencers to create branded content and pushing ad budget behind their content.
Influencer marketing is one of the fastest growing industries and by 2020 is supposed to be a $10 billion marketplace. It’s no surprise, as many influencers — especially on Instagram — are raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars by creating sponsored content for brands. Before you think business should only work with models and comedians, it’s imperative to remember who is influential on social within your niche and vertical. There are influencers to work with across all industries.
The influencer marketplace is so hot. And for a variety of reasons.
Overall, influencers know how to produce content for the appropriate channel. For example, Snapchat influencers like Mike Platco and Mike Metzler truly understand how to create branded content on the platform. They utilize their storytelling capabilities by creating in-depth drawings, creating games, and crafting engaging content all within a 10-second disappearing Snapchat format. And, of course, thousands of Instagram influencers with 50,000 followers or more are promoting products and their brands with daily curated grid posts and Instagram Stories including unboxings, immersive brand experiences, product reviews and much more.
Because influencers are crafting superb content, they have strong communities that engage with their content on a regular basis. Because of this, marketers can tap into these communities. When brands partner with influencers, they can take their product to the next level.
A current challenge for marketers and media alike is that the algorithm favors paid content over organic. Facebook wants paid advertising to be the main avenue for marketers to invest in for their marketing campaigns. In doing so, organic content receives minimal likes and is not seen by many.
This is why the partnership between influencer marketing and paid advertising is the way to success. So what does this look like? Let’s take the fashion startup, Dote, which through their app has created the mobile mall where you can buy Gen Z brands like Brandy Melville, Abercrombie, and Forever 21 through the platform. Their audience is targeted to Gen Z females between the ages of 16-22 that shop at these stores. Knowing that influencers – especially YouTubers — are so integral to the Gen Z generation, they tapped into influencer marketing with their branded campaigns.
Recently, they took the top YouTube and Instagram influencers to Fiji or “Dote Island” where the influencers captured content for a week that was posted across social channels. With influencers like Emma Chamberlain who has 4.1 million Instagram followers on the trip, they’re able to scale their reach by utilizing influencer marketing. Additionally, since they had great content on their hands, they now have content for future paid advertising. By having the engagement and likes from followers, they can target the correct audience to increase downloads and brand affinity.
And, it’s easy too!
With Facebook, you can now advertise on both Facebook and Instagram all with Business Manager, and there are so many ways to take your influencer content to scale. Businesses can easily put ad money behind videos, photos, carousels with multiple photos, stories and much more using regularly targeted advertising. However, it’s best to use Facebook’s Branded Content tool which allows businesses to easily showcase the partnership with the influencer. And in doing so, the brand and influencer get exposure and insights on the CPM of the ads. From there, they can iterate on what works and what doesn’t to create better ad campaigns. Keep A/B testing and then your brand should be seeing high impact from your efforts.
This perfect combination of influencer marketing and paid advertising lends itself to garnering large engagement from your target audience that can drive a myriad of results that can impact your business in a positive light. By knowing who the right influencers are for your campaigns, thinking strategically about the campaign execution on the correct channels, and then amplifying that message with an advertising budget that will yield results will have incredible impact for your business.
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