What is influencer marketing?

The glossary at OnlineMarketing.de defines it as the use of authentic opinion-leaders with high reach in the community for marketing purposes. The para-social relationship built up between followers and the influencer allows companies to benefit from the credibility and the reach of the influencer in the relevant target group.

UBS has recently started working with prominent Swiss Instagrammers including Gabirano and Kikomedy to advertise its “UBS Generation” services for young people.

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As a rule, influencers communicate about broad subject areas or focus on a specific niche. There are now virtually no subject areas which are not covered by an influencer to match. One of the Swiss influencers enjoying real success at the moment is Basel-based Zeki Bulgurcu, who produces amusing videos in dialect about everyday life in Switzerland.

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By contrast, Grisons free-skier Andri Ragetti regularly treats his followers to spectacular videos showcasing his acrobatic skills. This particular video even earned him praise from tennis stars Novak Djokovic and Stan Wawrinka:

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How can companies benefit from influencers?

Many consumers perceive traditional advertising as annoying and actively avoid it. By contrast, influencer marketing does not interrupt users in their consumption of the media; instead, the advertising message is received ‘alongside’ their media viewing.

Companies can benefit in various ways from cooperating with an influencer. Potential benefits include …

• increased awareness
• increased brand perception
• increased brand credibility
• reaching new target groups
• increasing awareness of and interest in (new) products
• generating leads

Follow the 12 tips below to ensure that the cooperation generates benefits which are relevant to your business.

12 tips for success in influencer marketing

1. Define your target

As with any other marketing activity, influencer marketing should not be considered separately but should be integrated into your marketing strategy. You should therefore derive your target from your higher-level marketing targets. According to a recent survey, most companies use influencer marketing to increase awareness or sales. Once you have defined your target, select the relevant metrics. Based on these values, you can continue to monitor your success, tweak things where necessary and demonstrate your results afterwards.

2. Be aware of your costs and define your budget

You should be conscious that, alongside the fee and/or product samples, there are further costs involved in planning, image rights, content creation, advertising the posts and in deploying, monitoring and evaluating the campaign. In-house salary costs also need to be included in the budget for a campaign and are often forgotten. It is also worth noting that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to paying influencers. As explained in this article by “Ignite Visibility”, payment depends on a range of different factors. For example, the platform used, the reach, the interaction rate, the duration and nature of the cooperation, and the number and nature of planned articles.

3. Define your target group and its potential on social media channels

On a general basis, target groups can be defined, for example, based on socio-economic, geographic, psycho-demographic or other measurable behavioural characteristics. The target group for your influencer marketing could be the same as your existing target group. But influencers also offer the opportunity of reaching new target groups. Based on your defined target group, select the channels with the greatest potential for the market you are targeting. When selecting an influencer, make sure they are active on these channels. We are happy to help with channel evaluation. Most B2C companies use Instagram as a channel for influencer marketing, while B2B companies prefer Facebook and LinkedIn.

4. Check the influencer’s affinity with the target group

Once you have defined the target group, you need to find a suitable influencer who can demonstrate the greatest possible reach within the target group in question. In order to avoid wastage, it is worth noting that this is not about the influencer having the greatest possible reach/community, but about the greatest possible audience overlap with the target group.

5. Watch out for campaign compatibility and brand fit

The potential influencer and the nature of their platform presence must be the best possible fit with the planned campaign and your company’s values and vision. For example, it would not be a good idea to use a committed vegetarian for a barbecue campaign, even if the influencer’s audience overlaps well with the target group. You also need to make sure that the influencer can actually make good on the planned campaign. For example, booking a photographic influencer for an audiovisual campaign may produce sub-optimal results in some cases.

6. Involve the influencer in content creation

In order to maintain authenticity and not antagonise their own community, influencers need to be given a certain amount of freedom when it comes to content creation. You can give the influencer this freedom providing the framework conditions for the cooperation are clearly defined and you are convinced by the storytelling ability of the influencer in question. If this is not the case, we recommend checking the posts prior to publication. Alternatively, talk to the influencer about what kind of content appeals to their community and define the content together.

7. Watch out for exclusivity and existing deals

When selecting an influencer, make sure they are not already ‘saturated’ with other deals. If the influencer’s feed reads like an advertising column in a curated exhibition, it’s better to walk away. This also applies if the influencer has already advertised for similar companies or competitor products, as this could lower the credibility and impact of your campaign.

8. Check follower engagement and quality

Make sure that the influencer’s followers also interact with the content posted. Hypeauditor has calculated that, depending on the number of followers, there should be different standard values for the average level of engagement on Instagram:

• 1000 – 5000 followers: 5.60%
• 5000 – 20,000 followers: 2.43%
• 20,000 – 100,000 followers: 2.15%
• 100,000 – 1,000,000 followers: 2.05%
• Over 1 million followers: 1.97%

It is also important to establish not only whether the content is interacted with but also who is interacting with it. For example, if the majority of comments for a Swiss influencer are in Indian languages or in Spanish, this suggests that follower numbers have been artificially boosted. You should also check that the followers are genuine users. If the followers include lots of accounts with no profile picture or bio which are following an improbably high number of profiles, this should set alarm bells ringing.

9. Define the framework conditions for your cooperation

As well as the content, you also need to define the framework conditions for the cooperation. If you want to use a specific hashtag for the campaign or make sure your brand hashtag is used in the posts, this is something you need to specify in advance. In order to avoid any legal disputes, the influencer must also specifically state that the post is advertising. The advertising statement must be clearly visible with having to click on a “Show more” button. Before embarking on any cooperation, we recommend clarifying the current legal regulations on advertising transparency with a solicitor.

10. Set out the agreed services in a contract

Your planned cooperation must be framed in a contract to avoid nasty surprises along the way. The important points for a contract of this kind are:

• Duration and purpose of the cooperation
• Cooperation framework conditions in terms of content, format and visuals
• Number, type and publication date of posts
• Remuneration and payment terms
• Usage and image rights
• Confidentiality and competition clauses
• Procedure in case of illness or other impediments
• Compensation and work processes
• Reporting requirements

11. Ensure a long-lasting effect for your company

The purpose of the campaign should be a long-lasting effect for your company. If you succeed in diverting users reached by the influencer’s post to your profile or another of your channels, you can benefit from these users after the campaign has finished. You can effectively re-target users who have visited your profile or your website with posts or adverts and eventually win them over as customers. We would be happy to tell you more about “Re-targeting”. For example, you can attract users to your account and your website using campaign-specific discount codes to be redeemed in your online shop.

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Par exemple, vous pouvez attirer des utilisateurs vers votre compte ou votre site Web en leur proposant des codes de rabais liés à la campagne et qu’ils pourront faire valoir dans votre boutique en ligne. Pour attirer durablement des utilisateurs, nous vous recommandons de créer votre propre compte d’entreprise sur le même réseau social que celui sur lequel votre influenceur est actif. De plus, vous pourrez promouvoir la publication originale de l’influenceur sur Facebook et bientôt sur Instagram. Vous pourrez ainsi accroître la portée de la publication auprès de votre groupe cible. Dans ce cas, la publication comportera une information mentionnant le partenariat rétribué avec votre entreprise.

12. Vérifiez l’efficacité et le succès de votre coopération

Après avoir lancé les activités, vous devez maintenant observer les performances. Idéalement, vous aurez entré votre hashtag de campagne et le profil de votre influenceur dans un outil de social listening de manière à pouvoir suivre le bon déroulement de la coopération. Une fois la campagne terminée, il convient d’analyser la coopération en fonction des objectifs assignés à la campagne. Selon l’ampleur et la complexité de celle-ci, vous devriez vous accorder suffisamment de temps et de budget pour inclure un contrôle détaillé des résultats – il s’agit après tout de déterminer si la campagne a obtenu l’effet escompté en s’appuyant sur des bases sérieuses.

Nous sommes à votre disposition pour vous aider à planifier, à concevoir, à mettre en œuvre et à débriefer vos campagnes de marketing d’influence.

In order to attract users on a long-term basis, we recommend having your own company account on the social media platform on which the influencer is active. You can also advertise on Facebook and Instagram by sharing the original post from the influencer. This increases the post’s reach within your target group. If used for advertising, the post contains information about the paid partnership with your company.

12. Check the effect and success of your cooperation

You should monitor performance after the campaign starts. Ideally, you should have saved the campaign hashtag and the influencer’s profile to a social listening tool so you can keep an eye on the correct progress of the campaign. When the campaign has finished, it should be evaluated based on the campaign targets defined in the cooperation. Depending on the scope and complexity of the campaign, you should allow sufficient time and budget for a comprehensive success analysis with a view to providing sound evidence of whether the campaign achieved the desired effect.

We would be happy to help with the planning, design, implementation and success analysis of your influencer marketing campaigns.

Conclusion

Influencer marketing can help you to achieve your higher-level marketing targets. By taking enough time to select an influencer and plan and produce the concept, you are laying the foundations for a successful cooperation with an influencer.

If you manage to attract users to your own social media account or website, you can then benefit even after the campaign. Sound analysis of success closes the circle and serves as the starting point for further influencer marketing campaigns.

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