MAKING YOUR INFLUENCER PARTNERSHIPS PERFORM
Influencer marketing is unpredictable. In fact, the worst mistake you can make is trying to have an “X + Y = Z” style strategy. It does not work. Yes, there are tried, tested and demonstrated ways of working, but there are rarely guarantees of the results an influencer can produce. This pressure to perform affects both brands and influencers, especially as the penny has dropped that vanity metrics such as total following or generic engagement rates really prove little in commercial terms. When a piece of content barely creates a ripple, let alone a tidal wave of engagement, sales or new followers, it’s a disappointing experience.
But it doesn’t necessarily mean that the internal strategy was poor or the creative concept was weak – social media users are real people and there are myriad reasons why something doesn’t resonate with them. However, these reasons can for the most part be foreseen and considered at briefing or prep stage. Here are our five tips to make brand content shine, no growth-hacking required.
1. Choosing the Right Partnerships.
It goes without saying but choose brand partnerships wisely! And it goes for both sides. We still see brands selecting the influencers they want to work with because of a personal affinity or because they’ve heard from industry peers that they performed well for another brand. Talent selections should never be personal, it’s about understanding how authentic the alignment will be for audiences between the brand and an influencer.
We often see brands getting het up over damaging long-term relationships by “leaving someone out” who they have known for a while. In cold, hard terms: if that influencer doesn’t produce commercially viable results, it’s time to move on. To get a deeper understanding of alignment, brands need to understand how an influencer’s audience intersects with their own and take a long-term approach that considers more than basic engagement rates.
But the desired target audience and realistic audience are different things. Remember to consider prohibitive factors like price point and availability when asking an influencer to promote a product. As an example, if an influencer drives a lot of sales for high street brands, it doesn’t mean they are suitable for the luxury market. Whilst they clearly have an audience ready to spend, the value of the product clearly has an impact and should be worked into the brief to allow the influencer the best chance at sales conversion.
Choosing the right partnerships also means that influencers should be giving brands the right information. Reach and engagement on organic content is not the benchmark for paid partnerships and only establishes unrealistic expectations on both sides – instead, we recommend using relevant paid campaigns to get an accurate measure of what an influencer can do in the right context. Remember that paid content nearly always has a lower engagement rate than organic. It’s not the influencer’s fault, it’s that audiences are still getting used to viewing social media advertising as a trusted recommendation.
2. Introduce the Campaign.
Just as brands need to take a wider view of their influencer strategy and stop treating it as a performance marketing channel, we see immeasurable value in influencers also taking a long view when creating campaign content.
It sounds simple, but any type of preparatory or even unboxing content to introduce a partnership and prime followers for a review creates a wider, more authentic narrative for the deliverables. At One Roof Social, we try to work with influencers who have already worn/used the brand organically before suggesting they are involved in paid work. It’s not rocket science; it shows genuine interest in a brand so that the advertising content it’s seen as simply an opportunity for influencers to get paid.
It makes for more authentic partnerships, meaning followers are more likely to take action (engage, purchase, sign-up) when presented with a call-to-action. Remember that anything outside of the deliverables isn’t open to approval by the brand, so influencers can create ad hoc spontaneous content without waiting for the go ahead. It’s often organic work like this that affects the results of the paid work further down the line.
With this in mind, brands should make this as easy as possible to achieve. If you know you have a paid campaign coming up in a few months’ time, get in touch with influencers now to let them know work is on the horizon and explain that you are looking for talent who regularly endorse you off their own back. Of course, this has to be explained tactfully – you should never use this as a way to increase the amount your brand is mentioned unless you genuinely intend to follow it up with paid work.
3. Delivering Content That’s Easy to Approve.
On to the campaign itself, there are a number of ways that both sides can make the process as painless as possible.
Complete every element (including caption) before sending deliverables to a client or approving.
Collate all content and tick off every element in the brief when reviewing to see if any messaging or detail has been missed.
Remember that IGTVs and grid video posts need a cover image.
Videos needs to capture a user’s attention in the first two seconds as they scroll past. Introduce a hook at the beginning to capture as many eyes as possible.
Allow sufficient time for approvals, particularly when going via an agency. We suggest two working days.
When sending Stories for approval, remember that once the frames are downloaded they need to be created again from scratch before posting. Otherwise, clickable elements (like tags, hashtags) will not work and the image size will compress, risking low-quality content. It also stops all text being taken in by Instagram’s algorithm.
4. Keep Posting to Keep Engagement Up.
Once campaign content is live, we would always encourage influencers to continue posting content as they usually would throughout the rest of the day. Put simply, the algorithm does have a chronological component. So, if you post a campaign on Stories in the morning there is little chance followers who only check Instagram after work will see your campaign. By regularly updating your feed, you’ll keep getting bumped up to the top of their watch lists.
In addition, sharing any feedback from your followers can be really helpful and it’s clearly an authentic boost to your recommendation. It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy because followers are more likely to check out content because it’s been endorsed by the engagement of other users, and the algorithm is more likely to promote it for the same reason. It’s a two-way street that creators should explore.
5. Understand What Success Looks Like.
A content brief from a brand should always explain whether the campaign is focused on sales or reach/brand awareness (the two main KPIs for evaluating influencer marketing). Please note that these are two very different things, and whichever focus you pick requires a different style of content.
This cannot be effective if decided retrospectively and should be shared with influencers so they can understand what success might look like. If content doesn’t perform as they hoped, then an influencer can take steps to boost overall performance and therefore the likelihood of a long-term partnership.
A simple yet effective way to do this is adding Stories using the tracked link or offer code to a highlight. Even doing this temporarily means that followers can return to the content and continue to interact (and rack up sales) beyond the 24-hour window. If influencers post anything extra we recommend always tagging the brand, capturing the content and ideally sharing the insights – the more data to support the success the better. Campaigns don’t end when the content is live.
For brands, it’s absolutely crucial to look out for extra value delivered by influencers, and creators should flag any extra effort they go to as reposting the tracked link or mentioning the discount code again means higher exposure to the offer and better penetration.
We would never advocate for an influencer not being fairly paid for their work. But the fact of the matter is that how a campaign performs can be affected by the influencers themselves. When, how and where content is posted has so much impact on how audiences react so we advise taking an active part in the success of a campaign. If you are asked to push a campaign in a style, timeframe or manner you don’t have confidence in you must bring it up with the brand before the content goes live. It pays dividends as clients will come back again and again.
If you want more advice on influencer marketing strategy, get in touch with the team at hello@oneroofsocial.com, or look out for our upcoming e-book, The Foundations of Influencer Marketing. Sign up to our newsletter here for more updates.