Here we are. Congratulations! You made it. Thanksgiving is over and Black Friday is here, what a beautiful time to be grateful for so many things in life. If you’ve been following our series about holiday marketing, you’re pretty much set for your Black Friday and Cyber Monday strategy. We’d like to end our fall strategy saga with the cherry on top of the cake: Influencer Marketing. Get ready because this is your last chance to get a piece on that shopping spree cake. Let’s talk business.
According to Shopify, 2017 holiday ecommerce demolished all records to date:
$1 billion every day Nov. 1-22
$1.52 billion on Thanksgiving
$5 billion on Black Friday
$6.6 billion on Cyber Monday
$108.15 billion overall
“Buyers from Influencer Marketing write more product or company reviews than the average consumer.”
— @globalwebindex
WOW. Are you speechless? Well 2017 was good money but 2018 will be bigger. Let’s talk about why you should double your efforts with your Influencer to close out the season.
Instagram Influencer Marketing Growth
The decline of traditional TV and the growth of social media have given rise to influencer marketing, now one of the fastest growing categories in advertising and projected to be a $5-10 billion market by 2020. Instagram is one of the most quickly developing segments of the growing Influencer Marketing market. But lack of transparency and reported metrics with regards to advertiser spend mean that there’s no official tally on the size of the Instagram Influencer market. So to estimate the size of that market, a projection based on research was created.
From micro-influencers making $50 per post to Instagram superstars like Ariana Grande that command half a million dollars per post, the Instagram Influencer market runs the gamut in terms of following, audience, and engagement; but it has even the biggest brands buying in. Target, H&M, Adidas, Samsung, American Express, Toyota, Fairmont, Microsoft, and many more brands are finding ways to partner with Instagram influencers to reach audiences.
Value your Influencer Content Higher than Ads (Because your Buyers Do)
Nielsen Catalina did a remarkable study comparing Silk Almond Milk purchasers exposed to influencer content about the brand to a control group that was not exposed to that content. For every 1,000 people, the influencer-content shoppers spent an average of $285 more on almond milk. The influencer content was 11 times more effective than banner ads in terms of driving real sales lift.
Well-constructed influencer marketing can drive sales, but the measurement must be built from the beginning. At times, correlated sales lift is the only realistic measure based on budget or limitations of the sales channel. And whether that correlation is “clean” depends on what else is happening in the marketing universe.
Massive Shopping, Massive SALES, Massive money spent. But brands are all about connection now, how that sale made that customer feel about the brand? Will the customer be spreading the word of a good sale through all their social media or will this purchase be just another thing that they bought because it was on sale. How does the brand feel about the sales? What about the upcoming new clients who are approaching by any content or influencer marketing strategy?
Powerful and Meaningful Strategies
Influencer marketing can help you attract new audiences, increase engagement, promote your products, and boost revenue. In fact, influencer-created content can also help you boost the conversion rates of your ads.
Influencer marketing can help you attract new audiences, increase engagement, promote your products, and boost revenue.
Photo courtesy of Rebecca Stice (@aclotheshorse).
Let’s review some powerful and meaningful strategies to give a quick twist to your brand in order to connect and engage more with your possible customers by using Influencer Marketing. Some of these we’ve mentioned before but let’s go through them with this point of view in mind:
Provide Creative Freedom: Influencers are a creative bunch. They know their audiences and their interests pretty well. If you’re overly restrictive with your content guidelines, rest assured that they won’t be able to deliver their best work. And that can significantly affect your engagement.
Be Generous: If you truly care about generating significant engagement from your Influencer Marketing campaign, you need to be generous. That includes, but isn’t limited to, compensating influencers fairly for their work. To create compelling content, influencers invest a lot of their time and energy.
Promote Unique Brand Stories: How you portray your brand to your audience is very important when you are trying to connect with them. Your messaging needs to convey your mission and values in a way that your followers can understand and relate to. In fact, 45% of a brand’s perception is derived from what the brand says and how they say it.
Leverage Micro-Influencers: Though micro-influencers have far fewer followers than their peers, they can help you drive much better engagement. In fact, 82% of consumers are more likely to follow recommendations from micro-influencers than an average person. Micro-influencers share close and trustworthy relationships with their audiences that help them influence people. That’s why many e-commerce brands consider working with them as one of the best influencer marketing tactics to drive more product sales.
So, as you can see, Influencer Marketing is only growing as brands see positive results. Instagram Influencer Marketing alone is expected to reach $2 billion by 2019. As those numbers increase across platforms so will the expectations be put upon content marketing teams by upper management.
So if you’re ready, stay ready because November is ending but December is coming and Christmas is just around the corner. We know we’re ready! Let us hook you up with a badass Influencer Marketing strategy, our #GNBSquad is HOLIDAY SALES ready and we can create for you. Take a look at our roster and see how we do.