Category: Influencer Marketing

Everyone wants a mega-celebrity such as Selena Gomez, Beyonce, and Cristiano Ronaldo (all of whom boast over 100 million Instagram followers) to promote their brand. But ask any influencer marketing agency, and they’ll all tell you that real power comes from partnering with micro-influencers. While big names sound exciting and flashy, micro-influencers with authentic, highly-engaged audiences can radically drive brand engagement for a fraction of the price.

Big names simply don’t have the time

Sure, they have a lot of followers, but major celebrities don’t have as much time to engage with growing brands for advertisement purposes. They often accidentally plug the wrong features or – worse – accidentally create a public relations nightmare that your team had not intended. Just ask Naomi Campbell, who accidentally copied and pasted a brand’s entire outreach email into her promotional Instagram post without editing it.

 

Get more bang for your buck

A good influencer marketing agency like BIGEYE, will advise you to spend as few marketing dollars as possible to get maximum output. On average, micro-influencers are 6.7 times more cost-efficient per click when compared with even relatively unknown celebrities. This figure obviously jumps dramatically depending on how much you pay an influencer to promote your brand. On average, a celebrity makes between $2,000 and $8,000 per branded social media post, compared with some micro-influencers who will gladly promote your brand for free if you let them try it and engage with them.

  

Micro-influencers drive better engagement

According to a study by Hubspot, more followers does not necessarily equate to more engagement from their audience. Instagram users with fewer than 1,000 followers generate likes 8% of the time, while users with 1-10 million followers earn likes only 1.7% of the time, with a wide range of decreasing percentages as the audience grows. This makes sense because micro-influencers target a more focused audience actively participating in a niche topic. Think: your local, celebrity yoga instructor whose class you attend every Saturday versus a large-scale yoga clothing brand such as Alo Yoga.

 

Authenticity goes a long way

If you are a small- or medium-sized business, protecting your reputation is critically important because you haven’t built enough goodwill in your brand to weather a PR disaster. An influencer marketing agency can help you craft meaningful content that speaks to your brand values and unique differentiators, while a micro-influencer can promote you in a real and authentic way. Because these influencers are usually hyper-dedicated to their blog or digital presence, they are often trusted sources of information or recommendations that big name celebrities simply can’t replicate.

 

To understand how micro-influencers can fit into your content and social media strategy to engage millennials and your local community, contact BIGEYE today. We are a top Florida marketing agency dedicated to building authentic brands through meaningful partnerships and cross-channel exposure.

We don’t want to ruffle any feathers, but bloggers and influencers are slowly (or not so slowly depending on who you ask…) starting to replace print advertising and editorial content. We aren’t saying that beauty magazines have become obsolete, but platforms such as Pinterest and YouTube have made it faster and easier for the average beauty maven to find the latest tips and tricks to stay looking fresh. Why wait for the latest issue of Allure or Vogue when you can log online and find the exact products, tools, and tutorials you need?

Influencer marketing makes for great partnerships:

Budding cosmetic companies can benefit tremendously from tag teaming the beauty world on the stiletto heels of lifestyle and beauty bloggers and influencers, such as Emily Schuman of Cupcakes and Cashmere who boasts a cool 260,000 Instagram followers. According to Social Media Examiner, she joined forces with Birchbox to promote several of their spring boxes. Birchbox is a new, monthly subscription box that sends beauty and lifestyle products to curious shoppers … and with just five Instagram photos of their May box, Emily touched more than 550,000 consumers and generated over 18,000 likes. For a new business, that type of exposure can literally make or break your success and the cost may be as low as sending a few products to your influencer of choice and letting her do her thing. By establishing reoccurring partnerships with influencer marketing queens and kings, your brand has a steady stream of reliable exposure directly to your target audience for a fraction of the cost of paid advertising. BIGEYE can help you identify and reach out to the right influencers to ensure the partnership is a mutually beneficial success, but the good news is … your influencer will do most of the work.

Product launches:

If you don’t have the bandwidth to establish long lasting partnerships, or sending swag to bloggers on a regular basis doesn’t fit your budget, consider using influencer marketing to promote a product launch. By sending products to influencers just before the official release, you can generate buzz around your launch before the product even hits shelves. For example, luxury cosmetic brand Peter Thomas Roth sent advanced samples of their new Rose Stem Cell Bio-Repair Gel Mask to Arielle Charnas of Something Navy, who posted about the mask the day of launch. Within 24-hours, the post had sold 502 masks and $17,565 revenue according to the LA Times. As your brand prepares for launch, consider using influencer marketing to augment your other marketing initiatives and support a more successful splash within the market.

Influencer marketing has taken on a life of its own, from “unboxing” videos from YouTube channel stars opening and showcasing new products to full-scale celebrity recommendations from the likes of today’s top stars. For traditional marketers, this new world can feel unfamiliar and difficult to navigate, but it’s just another day in the bloggersphere for digital natives. Millennials have grown up seeking information and product approval from their peers and role models on the internet and are primed to learn about your brand online. Click here to learn how BIGEYE can help your brand stay current with the most current trends in unpaid, digital marketing and how it can transform your marketing and publicity strategy into the hottest click trend to hit the market this year.

Influencer marketing is more impactful for travel and hospitality brands than almost any other industry because these emotional purchases can be tarnished by misleading photos (we love a good wide angle lens as much as the next guy, but come on people), hidden fees, and outdated information. 68% of consumers rely on review sites to help form their opinion on hotel purchases, so if your travel brand isn’t taking advantage of this incredible marketing tool – you’re missing out. Here are four ways an influencer marketing agency can get your brand in front of your customers and on the map today.

• Reviews, reviews, reviews: One of the most obvious (but important) ways an influencer marketing agency can support your brand is through social review sites. Whether you need help registering your travel brand, claiming your physical space in the digital world, or encouraging past customers to write, an agency can support you. Following up with customers and soliciting reviews is a great way to find out what you’re doing well and where you can improve. In the service-based world of hospitality, there is no more valuable information than this feedback. Hopefully, you can showcase what’s going well and encourage other people to visit. If things aren’t going well, studies show that brands that listen and correct the situation openly are considered just as trustworthy as brands that didn’t have problems in the first place, so don’t despair. As an added bonus, influencer marketing agencies can stay on top of new comments as they come in so customers feel you value their feedback.

• Claim your local listing: Claiming your local listing, optimizing it for local search results, and keeping this information relevant is the first step in search engine optimization. Without this, your business can’t compete. This is especially true in destinations where you are competing with a variety of other travel and tourism brands. Influencer marketing agencies can link your Google+ reviews, customer ratings, and social media to your local listing so your brand is easier to find and engage with. Letting an influencer marketing agency take care of this for you ensures that all of the tagging and targeting complements your other paid and natural search efforts. These three pieces need to be working in perfect harmony for the best results.

• Don’t forget about the bloggers: While sending bloggers on a free trip to your resort or providing them with a free feast in exchange for an honest review may seem like a huge expenditure for your brand, it can have a tremendous impact. Your influencer marketing agency can help you identify bloggers with the most clout and largest following of potential customers who are likely to take action. By strategically targeting the right social influencers, you can gain the attention of their followers who will want to share in the same experiences their favorite blogger is raving about. In other words, you’re getting word-of-mouth referrals on steroids. Top bloggers have hundreds of thousands of followers and tremendous sway within the market. The trick is simply finding the right ones. In addition to helping you identify the right bloggers, your agency may have trusted relationships with certain social influencers to ensure their content honestly frames your brand in the best light.

• Connect your influencers with an app: If there’s one thing social influencers love, it’s connecting with other social influencers. Let your agency create an app that informs customers about events, special promotions, and unique opportunities for your most valued customers. This type of loyalty program can become a unique form of networking when it also links users together to mix and mingle during these events or share in these opportunities. The SoHo Beach House is famous for this type of social promotion thanks to their on-site app, extensive list of events, and exclusive directory. Everyone wants to belong to something exclusive and your influencer marketing agency can make that happen at the touch of a button.

So what are you waiting for? Let’s get social together. Click here to learn more about how we can use your best customers to your advantage with a customized influencer marketing program.

More than 40% of consumers base purchase decisions on influencer marketing, such as seeing someone use a product on YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram, according to Twitter analytics. That’s a fancy way of saying: seeing is believing.
Whether it’s a yelp review, a blog post, a YouTube “unboxing” video, or Vine tutorial – you’ve probably consumed your fair share of social influencer marketing content. As a marketer, it’s hard to control the messaging your customers release into the wild, and even harder to generate enough organic buzz for anyone to take notice. That’s why working with an influencer marketing agency or social media influence team is so helpful when launching a new product.

Okay, so how do you find social influencer marketing champions?

Think of your influencer marketers as your brand champions, enthusiasts, and experts. If you sell beauty products, they should be the first people to grab your products from the shelves and the first to post a makeup tutorial on YouTube. If you’re a restaurant owner, they should be the first to review new menu items and enthusiastic evangelists within the local community. You get the idea. But how do you find them?

An influencer marketing agency can help you determine which platforms are best for your product because you won’t be able to have a strong presence everywhere. Certain platforms are more naturally aligned to different industries or product types. For example, Twitter is very popular within the technology sector, but far less popular in the hospitality market. Your agency partner will guide where you invest your time and resources to ensure the right people are seeing your efforts.

They can also help you identify people who are already using your brand and understand what motivates them to write blog posts and share your content (hello, product samples and gift certificates). Influencer marketing agencies are familiar with the wide array of tools that support customer relationships and loyalty so they will have a few tricks up their sleeves to jumpstart your program with your budget and needs in mind.

We have a social following…now what?

Once you build a place where social influencers can congregate and share ideas, it’s time to test the waters with a product launch. Make sure you already have a foundation of followers before using influence marketing to unveil a new product so you can measure the impact of your efforts. Remember, if a tree falls in the forest and no one posts it on Instagram, it never happened.

Your agency will take care of three critical elements of your product launch:

      1. Defining your audience: They will meticulously target the types of social influencers who will be most beneficial to your launch and use market research to contact them or engage them with your brand.

      2. Determining launch placement: This may include sending product samples, hosting a “soft launch” for key influencers, organizing a Q&A panel, and much more. Although you may want your influencers to post online, chances are, you’ll need to do something to get their attention first.

      3. Tracking results: Building a community or curating social media can require a surprising amount of manpower and resources, which is why tracking your ROI is so important. Your agency can determine the value of your effort through metrics such as ad equivalency value (AEV), social reach, and engagement.

But the most important thing to remember is that influencer marketing takes time. So click here and learn more about some of the programs we have built for clients just like you, and let’s start thinking about how to build your social program today.

One thing is clear. Millennial consumers’ media usage pattern leans heavily on social proof, user-reviews, and non-traditional marketing techniques when forming purchase opinions. Millennials don’t need some advertising executive to tell them what they like; which is why digital marketing firms such as our Orlando-based agency have had to find new ways to balance the media mix and create compelling content that harnesses authentic, user-generated material to build trust rather than relying on hard-sell techniques.
Investing in user group communities, review sites, social sharing, and blog posts from your industry’s tastemakers are all great places to begin filling your media mix with user-focused content. These platforms are an opportunity to engage with your best customers, seek feedback from those that need support, and generate referrals. Another tool we love is the power of influencer endorsement videos.

YouTube is the second most visited site aside from Google, and video is one of the fastest growing and most engaging channels available in the digital marketing world. When combined with the powerful support of a super user or popular v-logger, you can’t go wrong. The trick is crafting the perfect endorsement video. Trust us, they are not all created equal. 

Figure out where your influencer video fits in your audience’s media usage pattern:

Assuming you are creating an influencer endorsement video to generate more sales, it’s important to choose where you will showcase this video strategically. Understanding your audience’s media usage pattern will help you do this. Keep things simple by partnering with your Orlando marketing agency to determine the best placement and channel exposure for an endorsement based on your audience’s media consumption habits. Our agency can determine exactly where your audience is surfing, which devices they are using, and how to effectively expose your endorsement in a way that fits into their natural media usage pattern. If you attach a spend to your video, an agency will also help you negotiate the best rates and ensure your distribution is on point.

If you choose to place your own video, start by determining what platform you want to use. The most common and popular video platform is YouTube; but Vimeo, Vine, Meerkat, and SnapChat (to name just a few) all offer a variety of options for quick social endorsements. We recommend having a feature length influencer endorsement that lives on YouTube accompanied by supporting social material across other platforms. The next question you want to ask is whether you will feature this video on their platforms or yours. The best answer is to go with whichever has greater influence or a bigger audience. You may even choose to expose the video on both if you and your endorser are happy with this arrangement.

Choosing the right topic for the millennial media usage pattern:

Another reason why it is important to understand your millennial audience’s media usage pattern is to guide the type of topic you want your endorser to cover. A good influencer endorsement will likely fall into one of the following categories:

• How-to videos and walk-throughs:

  How-to videos and walk-throughs often show the features or functionality of an app or platform, help prospective customers understand how to use a new product that has little or no competition, or educates customers about how to use a difficult tool. The value of these types of endorsements often show that seemingly difficult products are actually simple, or incredibly effective, when used properly. Your influencer should be able to clearly boil down your product’s use case in a language that the average consumer will understand.

• Unboxing and product showcases:

  Although it may seem somewhat strange, there is a huge market for videos that showcase the experience of unwrapping – or “unboxing” – an item and previewing that product’s look and feel. This type of endorsement adds a level of authenticity to claims of quality. For example, toy companies and electronics brands rely on this type of endorsement to help generate excitement about new product releases or to illustrate the unique value and quality of their products in highly competitive markets.

• Extreme usage or testing:

  A great example of extreme use endorsements would be an influencer using a high-powered blender to dissolve a cell phone. Although no average consumer would purchase a blender with the express intention of destroying their cell phone, this endorsement shows that the blender goes above and beyond user expectations. After all, if it can blend a cell phone, it can probably handle those kale smoothies with ease. Having an influencer generate this content adds an extra layer of trust to confirm that the use case isn’t a simulation or exaggeration.

• Storytelling:

  Storytelling is best used for service endorsements rather than consumer goods. An influencer endorsement of a service provider often blends personal experiences that capture their audience on an emotional or human level to show why an intangible product or experience is important.

Choose a topic that naturally aligns to your target audience’s organic media usage pattern. For example, millennials are more likely to choose a brand that contributes to the community in some way or that is connected with charitable efforts. Knowing this, you can choose an influencer whose endorsement tells a story about why your product or service is changing their local community. 

Find the right influencer and tone:

Similarly, make sure you choose the right endorser for your product. There are plenty of people who will be eager to enjoy their fifteen minutes of fame, but not all influencers will resonate with your target audience. Ask for referrals or invite super users to tell their story, but don’t promise any exposure until you are certain they are a good fit for your brand. If in doubt, lean on your local agency to help find the right influencers for your product or conduct some scrappy user testing to determine whether that influencer will be well received. If you are having trouble finding an influencer to volunteer, you can also research top industry tastemakers or bloggers and exchange products for endorsements; but be careful that all compensation is disclosed and follows appropriate legal guidelines. Your local Orlando marketing agency can guide you there. Finding the right influencer helps you strike the right tone for your product and ensures you will get the most exposure you can within a given market segment. 

Don’t shy away from the bad:

Although we wouldn’t necessarily recommend leading with any influencer endorsements that show your brand in a negative light, sometimes taking ownership of mishaps, making apologies, or acknowledging faults alongside a powerful influencer can serve as a balm to quell a negative reputation or solve public relations snafus. Strong influencer endorsements that discuss your brand’s evolution can also be effective when repositioning your product. For example, Buick’s recent campaigns featuring alternative bloggers and indie rockers has helped shake the brand’s stereotype of being a car for old people. The trick in this type of influencer endorsement is attracting your new audience or solving a reputation problem without alienating your old customers.

For ideas on how influencer endorsements can revolutionize your brand, click here. We have years of experience using video to add credibility to a wide variety of industries and products and are ready to help you do the same.

Every morning, we recommend starting your day by centering yourself in your industry. Go ahead, grab a cup of coffee, skim your inbox to make sure there are no emergencies, and then set aside 30-45 minutes to read a few posts from the best industry blogs and content marketing influencers. Like watching the news or staying informed of current events, reading up on the latest trends in content marketing will help you stay fresh, inform you of upcoming trends, and provide inspiration for your next marketing campaign. To help get you started, we’ve curated seven (sometimes surprising) blogs from content marketing influencers that you shouldn’t miss. 

1. For the Content Marketing Influencers: Marketo

Marketo’s blog is filled with industry-leading experts providing insight into everything from the most savvy landing page trends, to inbound marketing tips, to thought leadership, and everything in between. In addition to Marketo’s own marketing automation software, their posts highlight tips, tricks, and tools to power and streamline your marketing department.

Why we love this blog: Each post has actionable, tested insights into the marketing world that provide tangible ideas and suggestions on how to improve your bottom line.

URL: http://blog.marketo.com/

2. For Growth Hackers: Conversion XL

We had the pleasure of listening to Peep Laja speak at the BeHave Online Conversion conference in Austin, Texas and have been fans ever since. Peep’s no-frills, down-and-dirty framing of what makes digital marketing work is as entertaining as it is useful. He cuts through the marketing jargon and helps you prioritize which growth levels to push on your site without getting overwhelmed in what can feel like a never-ending optimization list.

Why we love this blog: Peep has a proven track record of success and translates his knowledge into heavy-hitting “must-do’s” while delighting and entertaining his audience.

URL: http://conversionxl.com/blog 

3. Aspiring Marketing Influencers: Kim Garst

Imitation is the highest form of flattery, which is why we love reading (and trying to imitate) Kim Garst’s blog. As one of Forbes most recognized content marketing influencers, we hope to harness a fraction of her experience into insights and ideas of our own. Kim’s posts focus on the evolution of social media and how to take advantage of upcoming trends in this space.

Why we love this blog: Kim’s blog keeps you informed of critical social marketing changes in everything from Google’s ad words campaigns to Facebook’s newest acquisitions and what to do about it. You’ll never miss a beat again.

URL: http://kimgarst.com/blog/

4. For Social Media Junkies: HootSuite

One part marketing blog, one part BuzzFeed post, HootSuite’s content marketing site is filled with fun facts and tips on transforming your social marketing campaigns. This is a great, lighthearted site to start your day and inspire ideas about how you can start thinking outside the box. Although HootSuite tends to focus on social media trends, there is a ton of great information about other marketing disciplines and digital insights.

Why we love this blog: It’s fun! And useful. It’s a great way to ease into your day and spark a little humor and curiosity before getting down to business.

URL: https://blog.hootsuite.com

5. For Inbound Marketing Fanatics: HubSpot

Whether you’ve heard of HubSpot thanks to their longstanding reputation as inbound marketing leaders, or Dan Lyon’s recent satire Disrupted, a tell-all novel about his time working at the organization, the bottom line is: you’ve probably heard of them. Love them or hate them, HubSpot knows their stuff. They understand what engages audiences, how to peak users’ interest, and drive traffic. Trust us on this one.

Why we love this blog: HubSpot consistently provides content that can have a profound impact on your success as a marketer. The clean, easy-to-read, educational material is always on point and timely no matter what your functional role is.

URL: https://blog.hubspot.com/

6. For Surprising Big Data Insights: OKTrends

Although it isn’t a traditional marketing blog, we love OKTrends (brought to you by none other than the OKCupid online dating site). The reason we include this blog in our daily lineup is because almost every post discusses how big data and analysis fuel the site’s success. It inspires us to think about where we can look for data trends, how we can creatively tackle segmentation problems, and pose new questions about what our customers say and what they actually do.

Why we love this blog: It keeps us thinking about data in a non-traditional way and reminds us to continuously ask “why” no matter what our customers are doing. We include this as a compliment to more traditional analytics and industry blogs so we don’t get stuck inside the marketing box.

URL: http://oktrends.okcupid.com

7. For a Little Inspiration: BizWomen

In addition to our local Business Journal branch, we recently discovered the BizWomen arm of this renowned news and community site. Subscribe to your local Business Journal and stay plugged into your local community to understand how competition is evolving and how industry trends are impacting your local market, while keeping up with upcoming partnership opportunities. For a little extra inspiration, tack on the BizWomen blog. You’ll see posts about national entrepreneurs, start-ups, and innovative projects from women all over the nation. It might just inspire you to work on your freelancing or start that Kickstarter campaign you’ve been talking about for years.

Why we love this blog: Every once in a while it helps to see someone else succeeding to know your dreams can become a reality. Draw inspiration from these high powered women and industry experts to fuel your own passions.

URL: http://www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen

Knowledge is power, which is why we love starting our day with this ritual. Aside from keeping your content marketing process sharp, it’ll give you a wealth of information to power brainstorming sessions, spark networking conversations, and make informed decisions about your brand and business. Even if you don’t have time to do this every morning, making reading content marketing influencers part of your regular routine frees up time outside your day-to-day work to think critically about your business and generate new ideas.

For more industry related topics and content marketing influencers, view more of our blog posts here.