Mediastreet
Tag

Influencer Marketing

Browsing
In News

Why Influencer Marketing Will Continue to Thrive

No Comments

By Reena Rai.

How have brands such as Glossier and Telfar cultivated communities of brand ambassadors to build brand loyalty? Reena Rai, Pinterest’s Creator Lead explains.

Influencer marketing is one of the most innovative facets of the digital marketing mix. It has evolved at a phenomenal pace over the last decade and is expected to grow to be worth $9.7bn in 2020. The latest evolution, Ambassador Marketing, sees brands engaging customers to create content, provide reviews and suggest future product lines, all while putting the spotlight on authenticity.

The need for authenticity and relatability is reminiscent of the early days of blogging over a decade ago. The majority of bloggers started their foray into digital publishing as a passion project on Blogger or WordPress, before expanding to social media platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube.

Marketers saw an opportunity to enhance their traditional marketing strategies by working with influencers. Engaging real people with a social following adds a layer of authenticity, while also helping to reach new audiences. One-off collaborations have led to long-term partnerships, turning influencers into ambassadors.

Super-influencer Lorna Luxe has been working with fast fashion e-tailer ‘In The Style’ since February 2019. Her first collection was the most successful launch in the brand’s history, with 5,000 units sold out in under an hour.

Paid influencer collaborations have proven to be a very successful marketing tactic, but fans and followers have become sceptical of how authentic these partnerships and influencer reviews really are. In 2018, the industry faced a further crisis in confidence after several leading influencers were caught buying followers and using bots to overinflate their engagement metrics.

This is why I believe Ambassador Marketing is a necessary evolution. Influencers undoubtedly play an important role in digital marketing, but brands can benefit from engaging grassroots fans to create a 360° approach. Consumer purchase decisions are heavily influenced by peers and relatable micro-influencers: engagement rates are much higher for micro-influencers and a recent study stated that 70% of millennials are influenced by social content from their peers.

Here are two compelling examples that illustrate the importance of engaging superfans as both a source of inspiration and to help build grassroots buzz.

Case Study: Glossier
Beauty brand Glossier is estimated to be worth a cool $1.2bn and much of the company’s success is attributable to Ambassador Marketing. Interestingly, Glossier was founded by Emily Weiss in 2014 and, before launching her brand, Emily was a blogger at ‘Into The Gloss’ which launched four years prior.

From the beginning, Glossier has placed customers at the heart of their brand strategy, with early customers engaged as brand ambassadors. Not only were customers encouraged to share social media posts with their products and signature pink bubble wrap pouches, but Glossier also relied on their brand ambassadors to share product reviews and tips.

By treating each customer as an influencer, Glossier has amassed an impressive amount of User Generated Content (UGC). This social amplification has earned the brand a huge following across their channels, with their largest audiences being on Pinterest (over 10m monthly unique views) and Instagram (2.8m followers).

Taking the concept of Ambassador Marketing a step further, Glossier also has an exclusive Slack group with 100 ‘superfans’ who are happy to provide feedback on the existing line and share ideas for new products.

Case Study: Telfar
Launched in 2005 by Telfar Clemens in New York, Telfar is one of the most exciting luxury fashion brands in the zeitgeist. Steadily building a buzz within the Brooklyn party subculture, Clemens has been collaborating with brand ambassadors since the brand’s inception.

While large fashion brands scramble to prove that they value diversity, Telfar’s founding motto is “It’s not for you, it’s for everyone”. As a black-owned luxury fashion brand which is unisex and affordable, Telfar is effortlessly inclusive. Clemens dresses friends such as Kelela and Dev Hynes, who in turn become brand ambassadors, wearing Telfar pieces and performing at the brand’s shows.

Telfar’s first handbag was a runaway success and the limited monthly drops have resulted in a cult-like following. Dubbed the “Bushwick Birkin”, the handbag is a prized possession which unofficial brand ambassadors share across social media in high-quality, editorial-esque shoots.

By engaging superfans and high-profile cool kids spanning the art, fashion and music worlds, Telfar is able to reinforce their brand values, extend their social reach, lean on their community for content creation and create a grassroots buzz.

As brands and agencies look for new opportunities to extend their digital presence and build brand loyalty, the most innovative strategy they can adopt is cultivating a community of brand ambassadors. Engaging with influencers as thought leaders in their niche only goes halfway. The most powerful advocates for any organisation are existing customers and fans. Genuine advocacy from an ecosystem of influencers and fans will help you to engage customers, build loyalty, and drive incremental brand visibility.

By Reena Rai.

CREATOR LEAD, PINTEREST

Sourced from iab.uk

Read More
By
In News

Blockchain Marketing: The 4 Most Effective Ways to Get One Project Known

No Comments

Sourced from yahoo finance.

Technology and new ideas often go hand in hand. The challenge is often to express new concepts clearly and eloquently. This is where effective marketing comes into play.

PR and Content Marketing

Getting professionally written editorial content for your brand is a key factor in your path to success.

PR is an ongoing effort throughout the lifecycle of a company. Before the launch, you need a strong, concerted PR and outreach effort to reach all the major crypto sites. But even after, you need to keep the community informed and engaged with interesting new developments, partnership announcements, background stories, and news.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is essential in blockchain. There is no better way to get to new users, investors and clients where you have the most of their attention: in their inbox.

Always track and measure your email marketing. Many companies claim to have hundreds of thousands of subscribers in their list, but if you look at their email open rates, they are often below 1%. On CryptoCoin.News, we have an average open rate of over 25% because our readers did sign up to receive interesting crypto news.

Video Marketing

In the digital age, content is king. Video content is particularly adept at building credibility and authority for your token sale.

Successful companies have typically two types of video:

  • Explainer animation to give some background of your industry and your solution.
  • Interviews with the founders and company presentations by third parties.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a hybrid of old and new marketing tools. It takes the idea of celebrity endorsement and places it into a modern-day content-driven marketing campaign. Influencer Marketing works because of the high amount of trust that influencers have built up with their following and recommendations from them serve as a form of social proof to your brand’s potential customers.

In blockchain marketing, trust and authority building is a key component. That’s why Influencer Marketing is an important option in the marketing mix. Getting endorsed by the top YouTube crypto influencers can strongly influence buying and investing decisions.

Trust the Leading Crypto Marketing Agency

The team behind CryptoCoin.News has been active in online marketing for over 10 years, with experience in blockchain marketing since 2016. Trusted by over 150 clients, they know exactly which channels work for blockchain marketing. Paired with efficient, reliable and fast execution, CryptoCoin.News can be your partner for all blockchain marketing needs. Get in touch to schedule a free consultation at https://cryptocoin.news/advertise-with-us/.

Sourced from yahoo finance

Read More
By
In News

Online Marketing Tips That Actually Work

No Comments

By Evan Varsamis,

This year has been quite a roller coaster for marketers so far, and it’s still unclear how things will go in the next few months. However, when it comes to designing a marketing funnel, you can’t stick to your traditional methods anymore. You have to start thinking outside the box and picking up new techniques that can enhance your brand’s presence on the web. Online competition has grown massively over the last few years. It’s not just about being present on the web anymore. It’s about sustaining an omnichannel presence.

What Is An Omnichannel Presence?

Years ago, we used to think of online marketing as finding the platform that works the best for you and prioritizing your activities there. Today, with so many different platforms having unique structures, it’s even more difficult to figure out what works the best for your brand. It’s not about finding your best platform anymore. It’s about learning how to be present on every channel and make the most of it.

What works on Facebook won’t work on Pinterest. You have to figure out how to be present on both channels with equal effectiveness.

Now that you’re familiar with an omnichannel presence, let’s take a look at trends and online marketing tips that will help you sustain your business in 2020.

Cobranded Content

Every individual is loyal to a certain number of brands. As a marketer, if you can leverage that engagement by combining two brands, there’s nothing like it.

Sophia Bernazzani explained this concept beautifully on HubSpot: “One of my own beloved childhood memories was a product of co-branding: Betty Crocker partnered with Hershey’s to include chocolate syrup in its signature brownie recipe. There’s something brilliant about that co-branded product: It’s a fun way to marry two classic brands into one delicious experience for fans of baking and chocolate alike.”

So, to make your 2020 marketing work, you can connect with brands that appeal to you and use that collaboration as a marketing campaign. You could choose to go for video advertising or even audio influencing through podcasts or webinars. Either way, cobranded content can help you soar high with the help of loyal followers.

Micro-Influencer Marketing

If you have experience with influencer marketing, you’ll know why micro-influencers are the near future. Reaching out to big-time influencers is difficult, and you can’t expect them to review free samples that easily. So brands that are tight on budget can opt for micro-influencers who cater to their product niche.

These influencers have enough popularity to still be influential, and they also tend to have better engagement rates with their followers because they are less overwhelmed with sponsorship offers, which gives them the bandwidth to keep in touch with their followers. A study (paywall) from HelloSociety suggests that micro-influencers with around 30,000 followers have 60% higher engagement and are about 6.7 times more cost effective than influencers with more followers.

Nontraditional Social Media Marketing

Ever since we started social media marketing, we’ve primarily used Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. While these platforms continue to be the rulers in the industry, there are several others that are making their way up with the help of the younger generation. These platforms include Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit and Medium.

So when it comes to planning a successful marketing campaign, you need to think outside the box and come up with ways to work on every platform instead of sticking to just one or two. In fact, it may seem far-fetched, but TikTok could work for your brand, depending on what you are trying to promote.

Contextual Targeting

When you throw random ads at people, you can’t expect the click rate you desire. That’s because not everyone will want to see the product you are showing them. Instead, with contextual targeting, you can showcase your ads on pages with related information. People who see your ads will have a higher chance of clicking them because they are already interested in your product niche.

Programmatic Audio

With podcasts and audio streaming apps becoming more and more popular, they’ve turned into avenues for online promotion. The advantage of programmatic audio promotion is that it enables you to place ads in the audio content.

Depending on your preference, you can opt for ad formats such as companion, ad pods, or pre-roll and midroll ads. Currently, companies including Google, Rubicon Project, SoundCloud and the BBC offer audio advertising features.

Video Advertising

Every social network is focusing on video content. Many are even looking for ways to implement product shopping directly from videos.

Consider using traditional video advertising methods by placing your ads on YouTube. You can even work with brands on Facebook and Instagram to promote your products in videos.

Mobile-Friendly Emails

As more people switch to primarily using their smartphones, the entire email marketing industry will change. Email designs need to be mobile-friendly and minimal, and they must have the call to action (CTA) button in a place where the user can easily find it. Another crucial point is to avoid too much content in your email. You can always opt for a drip email campaign to send out information sequentially.

Augmented Reality (AR) And Virtual Reality (VR

If you are an e-commerce brand, chances are you’ve already heard of implementing AR and VR for better product discovery. By implementing these technologies in your marketing funnel, you may be able to draw the attention of people who hesitate to purchase online. Give them the opportunity to try out products virtually before purchasing them.

Having said that, it’s also crucial not to forget the tone of voice you use while implementing all your marketing campaigns. The world is going through a massive change in 2020, and it’s important to understand the emotion of your audience before you try to promote a product or service to them. An empathetic and genuine tone can always take your brand a long way.

Feature Image Credit: GETTY

By Evan Varsamis,

An entrepreneur and Founder/CEO at Gadget Flow, as well as an investor and marketing advisor at Qrator Ltd.

Sourced from Forbes

Read More
By
In News

What Pay-for-Outcome Models Mean for Affiliate and Influencer Marketing

No Comments

By Maura Smith

Throughout the past three months, with COVID-19 as a likely catalyst, influencers have been in trade publications frequently for perceived drama pertaining to seemingly abrupt changes to long-standing affiliate marketing programs. Journalists covering the space sought to understand the fallout between affiliate programs and influencers, campaign suspensions, and shifting compensation models. But as with everything in our space, understanding the truth is more dynamic than what may originally meets the eye. An evolution can be seen in retail marketers’ collective shift toward diversified programs and away from last-click overreliance. At the same time, influencers are responding to slashed upfront campaign fees by migrating to pay-for-outcome compensation models. These factors come together to seed a new relationship.

Over the last twenty years, affiliate marketing was heavily dominated by last-click coupon and loyalty publishers. But the affiliate marketing model made it too hard to assess the value of content creators and allocate compensation for their role in achieving a brand’s desired engagement—whether it be a registration or conversion. Affiliate technology was originally built to attribute compensation on last click. So for a long time, this system afforded no earning opportunity for influencers, simply because they were often the introducer touchpoint in the consumer journey.

As a result, the popular fixed fee monetization and commercial strategy around the creator marketplace was primarily developed as a defense mechanism.

For the dynamics between retail marketers and influencers to take hold, the affiliate industry needed to accelerate its evolution, to develop a way to prescribe value based on any given influencer’s explicit role in the consumer journey on the path to purchase, whether it be introduction or something more mid-funnel. The industry also needed to develop technology for precision influencer discovery, so that brands could find the right influencers based on specific attributes.

The welcome and collective move of brands and influencers toward pay-for-outcome models bodes well.

Now that affiliate technology is evolving beyond last-click publishers, there are opportunities for more sophisticated monetization. According to Pepperjam’s weekly indexing, over the last two months, content publishers, like influencers, have realized year-over-year gains not only in revenue performance but also in their percentage share of revenue across the affiliate pie. And brands are responding—by investing more on a variable compensation basis, upwards of 127% year-over-year. With measured and proven performance, affiliate tools are finally a real option for influencers—they present an opportunity for high-level compensation for playing a measurable role in the ultimate conversion.

Combined with other recent events like brands dumping their fixed-fee campaigns, this technology evolution within affiliate marketing has created an environment for influencers to readily embrace the pay-for-outcome model. Influencers certainly felt the impact of recent budget cuts, but there’s been a palpable realization that they can offset these losses with alternative revenue streams, like affiliate. This trend toward pay-for-performance models has persisted week over week, and we feel that this position as a primary sales and marketing channel will stick after the pandemic, having been put to the test during the most challenging of times.

This article was contributed and sponsored by Pepperjam.

By Maura Smith, CMO, Pepperjam

Sourced from eMarketers

Read More
By
In News

How Smaller Brands Can Use Influencer Marketing to Connect With Consumers

No Comments
By Madeleine Streets

Marketers came roaring into 2020 with plans to spend heavily on in-store experiences and brand activations such as pop-ups and parties. But with a large number of Americans still facing stay-at-home orders, industry experts are observing a shift to a different marketing approach: influencers on video platforms.

“Many small- to mid-size apparel brands are focusing in on three platforms: TikTok, YouTube and Instagram,” said Clayton Durant, founder and managing partner at consulting firm CAD Management. “Quarantine has bumped up the amount of time spent on these platforms.”

Influencer marketing is not new, but the financial strain felt by many consumers is changing the way brands approach it. Durant said traditional advertising campaigns are no longer deemed tasteful nor are they driving the meaningful engagement required to convert sales. Instead of glamorous, aspirational images, consumers want meaningful, authentic content from sources they trust. Increasingly, that means social media micro-influencers.

For many brands, partnering with a series of micro-influencers is becoming a more reliable source of marketing than traditional campaigns. These influencers usually have 50,000 to 2 million followers on social media, but speak to an engaged audience with more followers than many top celebrities. They are also less expensive to partner with.

“Many of these influencer deals give the brand the most amount of leverage in the transaction, allowing the brand to get a better ROI,” said Durant. “If you handle micro-influencer campaigns right there is more of a ‘partnership’ feel to these transactions; many micro-influencers are going above and beyond their deal points.”

Finding the most cost-effective marketing approach is more critical than ever, with many brands suffering from sales drops. But the disappearance of live marketing has also allowed for the redistribution of resources to social media, SEO and influencer campaigns. Durant believes that investing in these partnerships now could also pay off in the long term, as brands and consumers adjust to the new retail landscape.

“I expect brick-and-mortar foot traffic to take at least a year to get back to ‘normal,’” said Durant. “To make up for the loss of foot traffic, brands are going to turn to platforms like YouTube, TikTok or Twitch to create one-of-a-kind virtual shopping experiences that mimic walking in the store. That is where partnering with influencers to host digital store experiences could be quite powerful.”

TikTok, one of the pandemic’s success stories with 315 million app downloads this quarter, has also observed this shift. The platform has recently launched an ad format for influencers, enabling its more prominent users to include “shop now” links in their videos. For brands to capitalize on this feature, though, they will need to partner with that select group.

Feature Image Credit: Shutterstock

By Madeleine Streets

Sourced from FN

Read More
By
In News

How Influence and SEO Can Drive Customer Experience

No Comments

By Lee Odden.

We talk a lot here on Online Marketing Blog about influencer marketing and one of the benefits of incorporating the voices of influencers in brand content is not often covered: customer experience.

What’s the connection between CX and influence? A big part of customer experience is trust and many customers simply do not trust brands or advertising.

That’s where adding credible 3rd party voices to brand content comes into play. Brands that want to deliver the most relevant, engaging and actionable experience for their customers will often incorporate external experts that already have the attention of the audience that brands want to reach.

Partnering with relevant influencers to co-create content can open doors for brands trying to engage hard to reach and increasingly skeptical audiences. Those content collaborations can also help deliver an experience that is more credible and trusted than brand content alone.

Of course, simply including influencer quotes in brand content is not enough. In order to optimize brand content to be more trusted, influencer contributions must be genuine, authentic, and ultimately impactful.

The starting point for influencer collaboration success begins with brands identifying specific topics of influence. Those topics need to be aligned with what customers care about so that when the brand identifies and engages with influencers on those topics, they are authentic to customer interests. Influencers that understand firsthand what buyer goals, pain and interests are in the context of solutions the brand offers can be critical for content collaboration that is genuine and impactful.

Another part of influencer and brand authenticity is disclosure. If the influencer has been compensated in any way, they need to disclose the relationship as sponsored or as an advertisement. If the content is relevant and engaging, the disclosure will not be a distraction.

Boosting the credibility of B2B content with influence can be complemented with making sure that content is findable. That is where the intersection of SEO and influence come into play.

Search engines like Google have realized long ago that delivering the best search experience correlates with successful advertising engagement. That means the left side organic results and ads alike need to be the best answer for customers.

For brands, delivering a great user experience in search means understanding searcher intent and providing content that meets those expectations at the very moment of need. Modern SEO best practices do exactly that: provide highly specific, useful information that is relevant to the purpose of the customer in solving their problem or meeting their need.

For optimal SEO performance, those best answer content experiences should be delivered with relevant, fast loading pages that are mobile friendly and deemed credible by other websites that link to them. Even better, is when that content is optimized for trust with relevant 3rd party experts.

Effective Content Marketing is about delivering useful information where, when and in the formats that are most meaningful to buyers. Optimizing content for effective discovery, consumption and action according to buyer preferences relies on insights for each of those outcomes. How buyers discover solution content, their preferences for content format, device and topic and the triggers that will motivate action are all insights that can lead to corresponding metrics such as Attract, Engage, and Convert.

For example:
Attract: Organic visibility of target topic content with a high click through rate from Google search results to brand content
Engage: On-topic content consumption, interaction, engagement and low bounce or abandon rates
Convert: Visits that result in relevant action: Subscriptions, downloads, trials, demos, inquiries, sales, referrals

While the marketing world is focused on the many obvious approaches to improving customer experience, those that understand the value of content that is optimized for findability and credibility will realize even greater benefits.

By Lee Odden

Sourced from TopRank Marketing

Read More
By
In News

6 Essential Influencer-Marketing Truths Every E-Commerce Brand Should Know

No Comments

By Lucas Miller.

More than a few companies have been burned by the wrong approach. Make sure yours isn’t one of them.

Influencer marketing is becoming a fundamental part of many e-commerce brands. In fact, in a recent survey, 92 percent of marketing agencies confirmed its effectiveness. So if nearly everyone agrees it’s important, what do e-commerce brands need to know about this hot topic so they can best take advantage?

1. Influencer marketing reaches further.

Traditional marketing channels have brought success to many companies for decades, but as times change, those channels do not reach as far as they use to. Influencer marketing is able to connect to customers on a deeper level than traditional marketing was ever able to. Even better, it’s capable of accomplishing this on a limited budget.

Customers are unlikely to pay attention to advertising that they believe to be inauthentic. They are much more likely to trust a real person over a brand. This trust is important to build, because many customers will leave a brand they believe is disingenuous.

The price tag for an influencer partnership can vary, but there are options for any budget. In the past, a company could spend millions of dollars to create an advertising campaign that connects with customers. Unless your influencer is a high-profile celebrity, you will not need that kind of cash. If you’re trying to keep costs down, there are many low-profile influencers that can be hired for a fraction of the cost of an ad campaign while still effectively bringing in customers. The ROI for influencer marketing is significantly higher than traditional marketing.

2. Influencers must be relevant.

When finding an influencer to partner with, you must find one with relevance in your industry. It doesn’t matter if a potential influencer has a million followers if their audience is not connected your products. Find someone that resonates with people who will also resonate with your brand.

One individual who certainly understands the principle of finding relevant influencers is Josh Elizetxe, founder and CEO of Snow. Elizetxe is an entrepreneur and internet advertising veteran, and during a recent email conversation about influencer marketing, he told me, “Finding the right partnership lets small companies take on big companies. It allows tiny startups to become lucrative, long-term businesses. It’s all about using the internet to your advantage.”

3. Micro-influencers reach targeted audiences.

The best strategy for using micro-influencers is to segment your customers and choose which segment you want to target, increasing the efficiency of your marketing efforts. Dunkin’ Donuts used the micro-influencer partnership strategy this past year. They also used nano-influencers, which are people with even smaller followings but high influence among that following. Dunkin’ was able to generate $300 million in coffee sales alone with this strategy by  capturing the attention of younger audiences and appearing more relatable to highly targeted groups.

4. Authenticity is key.

In influencer marketing, authenticity is the number-one priority. It’s important to find influencers that truly believe in your product. Customers can see through an influencer who’s promoting a product for a paycheck. This kind of promotion won’t drive sales, and it may even give your brand a bad name.

In 2016, Bootea, a weight loss-shake brand, partnered with Scott Disick, a reality star with a large Instagram following. Unfortunately, Disick copied and pasted the instructions from the brand into his post, and his followers immediately knew the promotion was sponsored. It’s important to find an influencer who will not only appear authentic, but also be authentic.

5. Platform choice is strategic.

There are many platform options for influencer marketing, but it’s imperative to choose one that’s right for your industry and your product. You must understand what platforms your target audience is using and which people on that platform they trust.

Most brands think of Instagram when talking about influencer marketing, but any platform where you can build a large following can be a good choice. Many influencers have gained large followings through YouTube, blogging, Pinterest and, more recently, TikTok.

The most popular platforms are not your only option, though. In fact, sometimes you can reach customers more effectively through less-popular outlets with less competition.

6. Quality matters.

Younger companies, especially new e-commerce brands with small budgets, are frequently tempted into partnering with the least-expensive influencer. Be cautious when doing this, however, because the quality of an influencer’s following matters. Newer influencers sometimes are not as influential as they seem.

Impostors are one of the biggest issues businesses have encountered when looking for low-cost influencers. It’s common for aspiring influencers to buy followers, which makes them appear to have a high level of influence when they don’t. To avoid this problem, read through potential influencers’s content. If engagement levels are lower than expected, some of the followers may be fake or simply unengaged. And in e-commerce, credibility and active engagement are, quite simply, everything.

Feature Image credit: supersizer | Getty Images 

By Lucas Miller

Founder of Echelon Copy LLC

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

Read More
By
In News

‘Definitely a concern’: Influencer fraud is on the rise again on Instagram

No Comments

By Kristina Monllos.

Influencer fraud continues to be a problem for marketers, particularly on Instagram, per a new report.

Despite the company’s efforts to rein in influencer engagement fraud, a report from influencer marketing measurement firm Instascreener has found that fake engagement on Instagram is on the rise again.

According to Instascreener’s data, initially in May after Instagram removed the likes and comments of users from third-party apps, fake influencer engagement rates declined from 1.7% to 1% on certain accounts with the least authentic audiences. But from September to December 2019, the fake engagement rate for those accounts increased from 1% to nearly 1.2% because some influencers who report fake engagement rates were able to figure out workarounds to circumvent Instagram’s methods.

According to agency executives and brand marketers, the problem results from the fact that engagement has been prioritized as the a top metric of success for influencer marketing. Some media buyers and brand marketers say, however, the engagement rate should be considered as only one of many metrics. They said they need to do deeper research to figure out if their influencer marketing practices are working. And marketers said they need to ask influencers to share more of their data directly with advertisers and agencies.

“You can’t necessarily count on Instagram to solve this fake follower program,” said Sean Spielberg, co-founder of Instascreener. “Fake followers and fake engagement is kind of like an arms race. When Instagram creates a new fancy algorithm to detect fraud, someone immediately begins working on ways to get around it,” he added. “Then fraud creeps up again. It won’t ever go to zero if brands and agencies wait for Instagram to solve the problem.”

Instagram did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Media buyers told Digiday they are not instructing their clients to pull back from using the platform or influencer marketing. That’s reflected in Instascreener’s report: In 2019 companies spent $1.9 billion on influencer marketing in the U.S. and Canada, with $1.4 billion of that going to influencer marketing on Instagram. Yet, as much as $255 million of the $1.4 billion spent on Instagram was lavished on accounts with fake followers, per Instascreener.

“Engagement fraud is definitely a concern amongst brands and agencies alike,” said a media buyer at a digital agency who requested anonymity. “That said, we have not recommended — nor do we typically see — brands shying away from influencer tactics solely because of engagement fraud concerns.”

Instead of shying away from influencer marketing, media buyers and brand marketers are deeming engagement just one factor in their decision to select influencers to work with rather than the sole reason. “We still use engagement rate as a metric of success,” said a marketer at a major consumer packaged goods company that uses influencers.

“All of us marketers are trying to figure out what is the right metric in the space,” she continued. “We look at likes and comments diagnostically, but we have much more advanced measurements that are closer linked to sales that we leverage as well.” This marketer declined to share which advanced measurements her company relies on to measure the success of influencer marketing.

“Engagement is still an important metric because we want to make sure that our influencer partners are driving conversations with their followers about our brands,” wrote Kristin Maverick, 360i’s vp of social and influencer marketing at 360i, in an email. “We dig into comments to see if the brand is resonating with an influencer’s audience and driving consideration and conversion.”

She added, “But, we also look at other metrics to tell the full story. We use a mix of tools such as tracking sales data from DCM tracking on our clients’ e-commerce sites, discount codes and paid social results.”

Vickie Segar, founder of influencer marketing shop Village Marketing, said the engagement rate is the wrong measurement for marketers to use in measuring  influencer marketing effectiveness. Instead, Segar said marketers should ask influencers to share story views and sticker taps. Segar’s clients also use affiliate codes, enablingmarketers to attribute sales data to influencer marketing.

“Influencer marketing is an industry where people are so confused by the scale,” Segar said. “It’s really hard to look at an influencer and understand what they are doing [for a client]. Marketers need to ask the right questions to fight fraud. Ask for screen grabs of past stories and [length of] story view averages. Ask for one from last week and a month ago.”

Other media buyers said that agencies and advertisers need to adjust how they think about influencer marketing altogether. Instead of using influencers’ on Instagram to realize a direct sale at a particular moment, companies should keep a more “long-term focus” and use influencers’ activity to understand more about their brands and what their consumers want, said Lauren Dubinsky, director of social media for The Variable. That’s something the Clorox Company might be trying to achieve right now as it develops an influencer advisory council.

Shifting their focus to analyze longer-term metrics could be critical for marketers. “In the world of influencer marketing, brand and creator relationships are still key,” said the media buyer. “If a brand can find an advocate who they know has a qualified, passionate audience, engaging in long-term relationships with that creator can lead to better content and confidence in knowing their dollars are not being wasted.”

By Kristina Monllos

Sourced from DIGIDAY

Read More
By
In News

How This Social Media Agency Is Revolutionizing The Influencer Marketing Landscape

No Comments

By Cheryl Robinson.

Is influencer marketing becoming a strategy of the past? Are influencers worth what brands pay them to endorse their products? 

LMS, an influencer and social media agency, founded by Denise Lambertson, chairwoman, with partners Tim Lambertson, co-CEO, and Kelli Reyes, co-CEO, has proven that influencer marketing is providing the startup community the power to reach a larger audience. What sets LMS’ strategy apart from other agencies is the fact that all three partners’ experience in the entertainment industry before starting the agency has driven their business decisions. Before introducing brands to influencers, the product has to align with the influencer’s values and a product that they will actually use. The endorsement of products from the influencers needs to be authentic.

Established in 2009, LMS operated in the influencer marketing space before the term was coined what it is today. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, just in the last 12 months, 320 new influencer marketing-focused platforms and agencies entered the market, and the 2019 industry is estimated to have reached $6.5 billion. For LMS, it has over 35 thousand influencers in its network, and in 2019 alone, its influencer campaigns have generated over 30 million impressions and 1.3 million engagements.

“We quickly realized that influencers were not willing to work with brands who did not have a well built out social media account, specifically on Instagram,” Tim explains. “Instagram was a validator for the quality of the company. We started hiring and building out a social media team.”

“That’s what people get excited to share,” Denise adds, “is something that they’ve discovered and they love. When you’re talking about really big brands, that discovery element is kind of gone. Also in this era, there’s a lot of mistrust of those big brands. The consumers, and therefore the influencers, are like, ‘what is this new, cool thing that is taking the place of this product that in my life I’ve grown to mistrust by this company that I no longer feel connected to?…How is this company doing it differently? I love it so much. How can I share it?’ That just lends itself really well to the startup community.”

All the partners understood the value of networking and building a positive reputation. It has been through their connections that they have built the cornerstone of their company. Prior to LMS, Denise interned for a film production company owned by Madonna before transitioning over to Madonna’s team as her executive assistant. During her time as an intern, she met Reyes. At the time that they met, Reyes was already working for Madonna’s manager.

Reyes explains, “I was really drawn to the tour industry. I had never really thought about that for myself. I ended up staying in music and touring with different artists for several years on the artist side. During the mid-2000s, brands were really starting to get smart about implementing themselves into tours, especially seeing the experiential space in the concourse; you have a captive audience before the show and intermissions to be able to talk to them about your brand. I was working for Maroon 5, and Verizon sponsored the tour. After that, the brand team came to me and asked if I would like to manage tours from the brand side.”

Tim’s experience in entertainment began as an assistant in a management office. He then started handling licensing deals for A-list musicians and other artists on the roster. Part of his responsibility was doing A&R (talent scouting) to expand the client roster. On the side, he worked as a digital marketer for a Grammy Award-winning DJ production duo and ultimately began working at a record label. When Denise had the opportunity to move to London while working for Madonna, Tim moved as well. While on a music video set, he met Tracy Anderson, a professional fitness trainer. He left the record label and managed Anderson’s enterprise, everything from fitness DVD’s, production, and studios to business management and appearances.

After transitioning out of Madonna’s management team, Denise consulted for various startups, which made her realize that companies were more interested in who she could connect them with. Her experiences with startups sparked the idea of connecting brands with celebrities.

Fast forward to the end of 2019; the partners have grown their company to over 40 employees and have orchestrated some of the largest endorsement deals in the industry from the Beyonce and WTRMLN WTR deal to the Ellie Goulding and CORE partnership. The LMS programming contributed to the acquisition of CORE by Keurig Dr. Pepper at a purchase price of $525 million. The partners facilitated a partnership between Jillian Michaels and Thrive Market. The promotion generated by Michaels’ Thrive Market activation generated 60 thousand registrants within 60 days.

Throughout the years, LMS has had to pivot their approach to employee retention, reframe the company’s story, and how they initiate the conversation between influencers and brands (mainly how they set the clients expectations). With each pivot the partners focus on these essential steps:

  • Don’t wait for the perfect moment to pivot. There’s never going to be a perfect moment. When you’ve mapped out your course, have some money in the bank and feel scared, that is the moment to leap.
  • Be prepared to run. You can’t pivot and then gingerly walk towards your goals. You have to be ready to sprint.
  • Take the risk. Learn to fail quickly and move on. The risks take you further along the path of your goals than remaining in the comfort zone.

“I think that our failures have led us to be able to be more risk-takers,” Tim concludes. “I think in business where we are right now, especially on the forefront of marketing and digital marketing, if you’re not willing to take a risk, and then have that backfire, or fail in a way, then you’re going to be missing what the latest greatest thing is. This whole business is risky.”

Feature Image Credit: Founders and Partners of influencer and social media agency LMS. From left, Kelli Reyes, co-CEO, Denise Lambertson, chairwoman, and Tim Lambertson, co-CEO. Leslie Hassler, 2019

By Cheryl Robinson.

Sourced from Forbes

Read More
By
In News

It’s All About The Money: The Rise And Fall (And Rise Again) Of Influencer Marketing

No Comments

By Danielle Wiley

There’s no other way to say it: If you’re doing influencer marketing in 2019, there’s a decent chance it sucks. And it’s time for an honest conversation. So, let me restate: There is a lot of bad influencer marketing out there. The industry is full of celebrity-level social media personalities who charge a fortune for insincere product endorsements, blatant cash-grab posts that come across like low-budget commercials, and brands that are dazzled by follower counts rather than real engagement. And this is not likely to change unless we get back to what made influencer marketing amazing in the first place.

Back in the early 2000s, the notion of social networks hadn’t taken hold yet. Blogging-specific resources and platforms were on the rise, however, and I was one of many who embraced these emerging technologies in order to share my thoughts and connect with like-minded people online.

Typepad, Diaryland, Diary-X, LiveJournal: We used these platforms to carve out spaces for expressing the joys and frustrations of our daily lives. Many of us were young parents, and blogging was more than a hobby — it was an outlet, a way to access a digital village of support and commiseration. This so-called “mommy blogging” trend eventually paved the way for today’s influencer marketing industry.

There was a sort of magic to those early days of blogging when sharing one’s innermost thoughts with the push of a button was a novelty rather than a given — from swapping war stories, intimate confessions, moments of hilarity — and talking about recent purchases in mind-bending detail.

It doesn’t sound particularly exciting now, but this is when brands started paying attention. Because these conversations were driving sales. Suddenly, a recommendation from a well-read blog could empty a store’s inventory overnight. Because product reviews and recommendations were a natural extension of blogging. And it was fun — fun to try a new moisturizer that a stranger in Iowa loved, or a baby carrier worn in a photo that everyone pounced on (“Wow, who makes that?”). It was fun to discover new things, or even better, solve someone’s problem with a pitch-perfect suggestion.

When did it stop being fun? No question about it: when money got involved. As blogging matured and changed, so, too, did the options for monetization. First came the banner ads, which mostly lurked in website sidebars before creeping into more intrusive locations. In 2006, BlogHer announced its blog ad network at its San Jose conference. It probably sounds crazy now, but that launch was incredibly controversial at the time. Many of the women in attendance felt that monetization was going to kill everything that was special about the community. If I’m being honest, I thought those cynics were being ridiculous. But sure enough, display advertising gave way to sponsorships, and before you knew it every confessional blog post seemed to include an awkward brand segue. Some were pretty lame, too: This sad story about my dying grandma brought to you by ChompsGood Dog Food!

Fast-forward to 2019, in our highly-connected world brimming over with clickbait, #ads and #sponcon. Personal blogging has largely evolved from long-form essays to mobile-friendly listicle posts and image-centric social media content. An entire industry has risen around online personalities promoting products. But this industry is going to suffer the same fate as traditional advertising if we can’t recapture some of the reasons that made it successful in the first place.

These days, consumers are growing weary of endless endorsements and celebrity-level influencers shilling everything from laxative teas to dubious-sounding island music festivals. People are suspicious of influencer fraud, and frankly, we’re tired of seeing Instagram models perched on inflatable swans hawking flavored seltzer water.

It’s time for brands and influencers alike to make influencer marketing fun again. How does this happen?

Step One: Find the passion. Find the passionate people — creators and brands alike — who give a damn about forging real connections and providing actual value to engaged audiences. Find the people who care more about relationships and less about follower numbers.

Step Two: Forge partnerships that actually make sense. Look, if you’re Pepsi and you want to work with Kendall Jenner, fine. (Just maybe don’t trivialize a serious social and political movement while doing so.) But most brands should be looking for influencers whose interests and values align with their own.

Step Three: Stop the BS. Stop the flat tummy product shout-outs, the poor (or missing) FTC disclosures, the cringingly overly-staged photos, and the accounts that are more about advertising and less about authenticity.

Influencer marketing doesn’t have to be one more bummer byproduct of an overly-commercialized internet. Just like the old days, influencer-shared recommendations and brand messaging can be a natural, enjoyable part of our content consumption rather than yet another disruptive, shallow ad experience. Make audiences the priority and deliver something of value, and the money will follow.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Danielle Wiley

Founder and CEO of Sway Group, an influencer marketing agency in the SF Bay Area.

Sourced from Forbes

Read More
By
Load More