Influencers are winning the hearts of consumers by storm all over the globe, so it may be no surprise that we are noticing that many brands are putting influencer marketing into practice. The main problem is that brands often have to spend a considerable part of their budget for each sponsored post by an influencer, something not everyone can afford.
That’s why some brands are actively searching for micro-influencers, basically everyday consumers with an above average social media following (somewhere between 1000 and 5000 followers). They tend to be less expensive, more flexible and easier to create a story around … however you’ll need to pick the perfect micro-influencer, or you’ll be spinning the wheel of fortune in terms of ROI.
Here are a few things that you need to keep in mind:
1. Identifying a credible micro-influencer
Your influencer program should be able to identify the most relevant micro-influencer, preferably someone who’s already a fan of the brand and will look more credible and trustworthy to your audience. Smaller influencers who already mention the brand on a regular base on social media might be just perfect for this.
2. Create a story
This might be one of the most important parts of your campaign: Making sure people enjoy the story, noticing your brand and researching your products. For the content to really reach out and resonate with your target audience, the influencer needs to tell a story that fits organically with the brand or product.
3. Focus on the right channel(s)
Making sure you’ll have the most return on investment is a basic numbers game: if you are communicating on channels where your target audience is active, you’ll create more chances to atract an audience that is 100% invested in your brand.
4. Be original
Make sure you execute campaigns in such a manner that the audience remembers the brand and eventually purchases from you.
CASES
When you partner up and start fine-tuning your campaign with micro-influencers, chances are big they’ll take your social marketing to the next level. Micro-influencers have the ability to reach your target audience and market your product in an effective, authentic way.
PSVR Backpacker
We currently live in a world in which countless new games and consoles are made readily available to us. Making it hard for the consumer to decide which one they actuallly should go for. This is something Sony quickly realized after the slow start of their PSVR headsets, so they promptly thought of a strategy to show it’s fullest real potential.
Playstation selected two YouTubers (Syroop for Belgium and Boris Lange for The Netherlands) who where notorious because of their love for gaming, handed them both a PSVR Headset, put together a road trip where they visited their audience – the PS fans – and showed the power of the PSVR headset during a classic game night. To top it off: the vloggers created video’s in which people could witness the gameplay and reactions during these game nights. Results? 12.8 million social media impressions, 16 facebook posts, 25 instagram posts, 216 instagram stories and a 93% positive engagement.
Macys Remarkable Shot
If you do a quick search of #Fashion on Instagram you will get a stunning 600 MILLION results. Something Macys noticed as well, which triggered them to create a campaign where their followers could take part in the glamour of becoming a fashion photographer .. through social media.
They set up a fashion shoot with set designers, models, makeup artists,.. but without the photographer. Instead they decided to do a live stream, and participating people could send in their screenshots they made. Macys selected those, created a social media campaign revolving around it and … credited their influencers who co-created it.
The brand hasn’t publicly released any official numbers about the campaign, but their instagram account received 4033 likes and 138 comments over as little as 6 photos.
Like my ride
Sometimes the perfect campaign .. just stumbles in your mailbox. Perfect example? Like my ride!
Hannes Coudenys, a blogger with a deep love for cars, approached car brands with a simple idea: If he got a car from them, he planned to drive 1KM for every like he got on his new “Like my ride” page. Mercedes agreed to partner up and Hannes quickly gathered more than 38.000 people to join his adventures.
TANGO SQUAD
In July 2017, Adidas set out to find the best football content creators to help represent their own football team “TANGO SQUAD“. These young footballers received access to exclusive content and events, which helped them to grow their own social media reach.
Stephen Cleary, the social media manager at Adidas, commented that “the biggest influencers waren’t necessarily the most authentic ones”, which triggered the start of this project. Their goal: Creating authentic voices deliver groundbreaking content.
The results? 13.5 million views over 12 episodes!
Conclusion
Creating the right story and evolving it into a win-win situation is key here. Whenever you find the perfect collaboration, it should be your goal to help the influencer grow as well, because they’ll be the ones delivering the ‘meaningful reach’.