It is no surprise to marketers that influencer marketing has grown exponentially over the last couple of years. In fact, the influencer industry is expected to grow by almost $7B since 2020.
Between a global pandemic, a potential recession on the horizon, and people spending more time on social media, shoppers are looking to spend their money on products they trust, while not breaking the bank. This shift means that more and more consumers are turning to creators (aka influencers) for helpful recommendations.
Subsequently, successful advertising needs to acknowledge the preferences and wants of consumers in a way that authentically communicates with them. Creators have established audiences that trust their opinions and content over that of brands. Their audiences use their content to look for product reviews and recommendations that make the most sense for them, before they buy. A growing number of brands are therefore investing more into their own influencer marketing strategies, especially on social media.
If you’re curious as to how to launch and refine your own influencer marketing approach, we’ve laid out a three-fold plan that will keep your creator strategies cutting-edge both now, and in the future.
1. Get familiar with what influencer marketing is and its benefits
Influencer marketing layers advertising onto the creator/follower relationship. Simply put, brands pay creators to promote their products or services to their social media followers. Influencer marketing provides a wide range of benefits to improve your bottom line:
With younger audiences (like Generation Z) increasingly consuming creator content on major social media platforms, tapping into influencer marketing allows for more organic and personalized marketing experiences, particularly through video content.
Many successful creators communicate with their curated audiences through short-form videos, which include formats like Instagram Reels or TikToks.
2. Match creators and content to your brand goals
Influencer marketing is much more complex than simply having someone with a high follower count talk about your brand on social media. Some influencers are more successful at boosting brand awareness, whereas others more effectively drive sales. As you consider the right creator, it’s important to ask: How does this creator match up with my brand goals? Not only do you need to keep campaign goals at the forefront of your creator selections, you also need to make sure those goals match with their audience.
Rise takes an audience first approach to crafting any marketing campaign. In order to find the right creator, we define the specific buyer journey and map out where in the shopping process the consumer is. This allows us to determine which creator, message, and type of content will resonate most, and tailor campaigns to reach buyers at the ideal time.
3. Add influencer marketing to your cross-channel, digital marketing approach
With influencer marketing and creators now part of your overall advertising vocabulary, your campaigns need to be set up to constantly push the limits of digital marketing performance. This involves finding the right platform partners, choosing the best measurement framework, and analyzing the data to constantly improve results and exceed goals. That’s a whole other blog though, so in the meantime, I will leave you with the below!
These types of campaigns are no longer siloed in the affiliate marketing space, but rather see the most success when viewed as part of an optimized, cross-channel strategy. Our teams at Rise have proven that creator campaigns provide a strong halo effect of performance onto other channels. This extends to more traditional affiliate partners, and other paid media channels that can be strategically placed to drive consumers down the funnel.
With the right creator, content, and measurement framework in place, you are ready to speak to your audiences in their preferred language and make smarter decisions with your marketing budgets!
Influenced to know more about Rise’s influencer and affiliate marketing approach? Contact us to discuss!
