Influencer marketing isn’t really new, but it’s an increasingly popular way for brands to market their wares.
Basically, the term means, people of ‘influence’ sharing content about your brand or products with their audience.
And the reasons to use influencer marketing are pretty convincing:
- Increased website traffic,
- Gain access to highly targeted and engaged audiences,
- Increased credibility bestowed by virtue of the influencer’s recommendation.
Does it work? Yes – extremely effectively! Here’s how.
So how do you ‘do’ influencer marketing?
I thought the best way to demonstrate how to run an influencer marketing campaign would be to give you a case study!
My client, Casey Allen, founder of Chasing Case online clothing boutique, has used influencer marketing with outstanding success.
Chasing Case is a recent start-up, having launched only in July 2017. Here’s her story…
You sell women’s fashion – what’s your point of difference?
Chasing Case is the online store to come to when you want to look good and feel great. Where you can find practical fashion with a modern edge.
Whether you’re heading to brunch with your girlfriends, or play group with your little one. To do the weekly food shopping or to cocktails after work.
Chasing Case has the right outfit for the right occasion. Our clothes are about practical, affordable, everyday fashion that is chosen to compliment the lifestyle of the modern mum.
Why did you choose to work with Influencers?
It’s widely talked about in digital marketing that your customers need to trust you before they will buy from you.
I started working with influencers within the first few months of launching my business as a way to build trust and rapport with my customers through the influencers I chose to work with.
Influencers were also a way to build brand awareness, get traffic to my website and convert those visitors to traffic.
Plus, the influencers I work with also provide images of the clothing I send them. I get to use these images in my own content marketing (to post on social media, include in email campaigns and feature on the product pages of my website).
How did you choose the “right” influencers to work with?
The most important thing I’ve found is that the influencer shares the same target market as my brand.
I also look closely at the engagement rate of every influencer I work with, paid and unpaid.
By that I mean that I look at the level of engagement (likes and comments) on their social media posts as a percentage of their total following.
This gives me a sense of if their following is authentic and is likely to generate authentic followers and customers for my brand.
I find paid influencers generate the greatest amount of website traffic and sales of the featured product.
I tend to sell out within a week of the product I feature in a paid campaign.
I also track data on traffic, sales and conversion for 48 hours from when a paid influencer features my brand in their post and that way I know what return on investment I get for working with each influencer.
What were the campaigns you ran?
I usually run 2 to 3 paid influencers campaigns each month and this generates around 1/3 of my monthly revenue.
From time to time, I’ll pay a little extra to the influencer to feature my products in their blog and email campaign to their database.
I also work with 2 to 3 unpaid influencers each month in exchange for good quality images that I can use on my social media pages.
While they don’t generate as high an ROI, they’re great for brand awareness and building a following on my social media accounts.
What were the results (good & bad if you’re keen to share!)?
The results vary for each campaign.
I’ve learnt that a successful campaign is dependent on having the right product featured on the right influencer at the right time.
For my brand, I know that statement pieces like dresses and tops perform best so I tend to feature them mostly.
The best result I’ve had was for a recent campaign that had a return of 12:1.
That is, for every $1 I spent on the influencer fee I got back $12 in revenue!
This kind of campaign usually results in around 100 new authentic followers too.
I’ll take those results any day!
These days I tend to work with influencers that have a following of around 20K as it seems to generate the best ROI for me.
When I was starting out I went to an influencer with a much larger following, around 80K.
While this was great for brand awareness, the feature cost me over $400 and I only sold 1 unit of the featured product.
I took away some key learnings from that experience. For example, that you need to ensure the product you’re featuring is the right one AND that you’re website is converting well.
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Hi, yes i have used influencers a couple of times with great success but key to this was, like you mention, check engagement not just follower numbers. Also i have learnt the hard way that when an influencer contacts me sometimes they just want a free product and it leads no where .
So true (re freebie seekers)!
What I’d like to know is how to find the right influencers, and at a reasonable cost? There are so many out there and it seems their prices vary widely.
I would first try approaching the ones you like directly. Alternatively you can always go through an Influencer agency like Tribe.