Dan Kennedy – Personality In Copy

Salepage : Dan Kennedy – Personality In Copy
Archive : Dan Kennedy – Personality In Copy Digital Download
Delivery : Digital Download Immediately

Instagram Influencer Marketing: Three Steps to Harnessing the Power of Social Celebrities in Ecommerce

by a Special Guest Contributor

Jonathan Chan from Foundr Magazine is a special guest contributor.

Social internet has altered how we define “celebrities.”

Instagram influencers now hold the type of power traditionally reserved for Hollywood stars… at least when it comes to reaching new audiences, motivating followers to take action, and selling.

Just ask Crayola Canada. Last Christmas, the firm collaborated with Viral Nation on 22 influencer posts, which produced 4 million interactions and enough referral traffic to crash their ecommerce site. Or Lyfe Tea, which teamed with Shopify Plus client Kylie Jenner in 2016 and produced $280,000 in sales from a $100,000 influencer campaign… in only two days.

It is not what you know, but who you know, as the old adage goes.

But what if you don’t know who your “who” should be? How do you find the proper influencers? Which campaigns should I run? Most importantly, how can you go beyond vanity metrics to achieve ecommerce ROI?

Step 1: Get to Know Your Influencers (And Don’t Be Duped)

Influencers come in different forms and sizes. The emphasis is on sizes.

According to Forbes Councils member Joel Contartese, who has managed over $10 million in influencer expenditure over the previous two years:

“The one thing you must understand about influencer marketing is that stats do not always convey the complete picture.” After spending millions on ‘celebrities,’ I’ve seen greater results from influencers with a smaller but far more niched following than from the hugely popular ones.”

Organize your search on three metrics:

Relevance to your brand
Interaction with their audience
Total Number of Followers First, relevancy.

The most important aspect of any influencer campaign is choosing people that mirror your brand’s beliefs and ethos.

“It’s all about finding a fit: aligning your product with their brand.” There are only a limited amount of influencers who are suitable for your clients and your goods. Long-term partnership provides true value. A campaign is a story, not a one-time event.”

Examining the top Instagram hashtags in your niche will provide you with a big-picture perspective on which influencers to investigate:

A slew of influencer marketing tools are also available to help you find and collaborate with the Internet’s most popular artists. The three most noteworthy are Neoreach (pictured below), Revfluence, and Whalar.

As Braveen Kumar discusses in 6 Influencer Marketing Platforms for Collaborating with Internet Famous Creators:

“Because a social media following is something anybody can fake, influencer marketing necessitates carefully selecting real producers and structuring your campaign in such a manner that you get the most bang for your buck without jeopardizing the creator’s integrity.”

The idea is to conduct your own research and locate the overlapping accounts that your target personas are currently following.

How?

Select ten to twenty Instagram profiles that meet your persona criteria using Instagram’s inbuilt analytics or a paid solution like Iconosquare.

Click on each example profile to see who they’re “Following,” then scroll to the bottom of the list to see it fully enlarged in the overlay window.
Ctrl + A to select all, then Ctrl + C to copy the full list
Paste everything into a document as plain text. Highlight and erase everything above the first “Following” account name.
Copy and paste the remaining content into a Google Sheet.
Repeat this process for the remaining example personas, adding each new “Following” list to the same column. Eventually, you’ll compile a list of all the accounts your personas are “Following.”
To tidy up your Sheet, search and “Replace all” — Ctrl +F — “follow” and then “verified” with blank cells.
Sort column A from A-Z to eliminate the blank cells.
Insert a new row at the top and call it “Accounts” (cell A1)
Highlight column A, then go to “Data” > “Pivot table…”
Select “Add Field” in Rows, then “Accounts,” then uncheck “Show totals.”
Select “Summarize by: COUNTA” from the Values menu.
Return to “Rows Group by: Accounts” and pick “Sort by: COUNTA of Accounts” followed by “Order: Descending.”

The resultant Sheet will now rank all of the accounts your sample personas are “Following” and tell you how many of your personas are following each one:

(Note: to keep things simple, this example only includes data from three accounts; your real list would be considerably longer and display more overlapping accounts your personas are following.)

Nicole Mintiens made a short movie for this post that shows the Google Sheet process in action (with some color coding at the end for style):

1:48

Nicole Mintiens produced the video and photographs.

After removing rivals, you’ll know exactly which influencers to focus and contact.

Second, there is involvement.

The link between influencers and their audience is what makes them influential.

Choose three promotional postings to serve as a starting point. You may need to do some digging because certain promotional posts are not evident and are frequently removed after a campaign. Search for branded hashtags or URLs while you browse.

Image courtesy of Rachel Brathen

To calculate the engagement rate, add the amount of likes and comments received by each promotional post and divide by the number of followers. (This figure will differ from the real engagement rate, which is computed by dividing the total number of likes, comments, and saves by the “Reach” of each post.) Unfortunately, “Reach” isn’t usually a public number.)

To be more specific, Call The Tunes’ selection method includes gauging engagement for a variety of “content typologies.” This would imply:

Foreground: Face
Foreground: Product
Product Worn: Zoomed In Product Worn: Half Body Product Worn: Full Body Product Worn: Seated Third, total followers

Even with all of that data… it’s easy to be misled by the figures.

Earlier this year, Under the Influence evaluated “more than 500 top Instagram influencers to establish their average profits per post.” What they discovered was surprising: “generic engagement rates declined as popularity increased.”

Image courtesy of Under the Influence.

In other words, greater does not always equal better.

Again, it boils down to math: a 2% engagement rate from an influencer with 500,000 followers will still reach 7,750 more people than a 15% engagement rate from someone with 15k followers.

However, larger does not imply better in terms of engagement rates. TravisHawley, VP of Business Development & Partnerships at Viral Nation, explains:

“Fans frequently ‘like’ posts because the creativity is appealing or because it is from someone they admire.” Some influencers can easily persuade people to like or remark. Some cannot.

“Some can persuade individuals to conduct social actions such as following, screenshotting, or reposting. Some cannot. And some can genuinely convince folks to click and buy. There are several levels of impact and participation.”

What’s the bottom line? After you’ve done your own research… Make careful to obtain previous marketing data from the influencers you choose, most notably:

Actual engagement rate
Cost per engagement
Engagement styles

Creating the correct list of influencers might take some time. However, for long-term ROI, getting to know your influencer before reaching out is crucial.

Step 2: Pitch Your Influencers (And Don’t Be Afraid to Be Creative)

Now that you’ve built a list of influencers, it’s time to contact out.

Most, if not all, influencers are eager to collaborate with businesses and assist them advertise their products. However, like with any other commercial partnership, it’s doubtful that you’ll be able to acquire something for free.

The most apparent option is money.

Prices for posts may range from a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on what you want them to accomplish, the size of their following, and their degree of participation.

Long-term collaborations, such as Kristina Kazan’s with L’Oreal last year, can be worth $1 million or more.

According to a recent Mediakix report, influencer marketing on Instagram is estimated to reach a massive $1.07 billion this year alone, with a projected rise of $2.38 billion in 2019.

There are lots of additional innovative leverage opportunities for individuals with a bit less budget.

Instead of cash, a popular alternative is to provide your influencer free articles or items in exchange for a shoutout.

How?

“Begin with a direct Instagram message,” advises Zach Benson, Founder of Assistagram. “Just let them know you’d want to collaborate.” Keep your DM brief, straightforward, and conversational. Include the required accounts, a direct request, and your trade.”

Here’s one of the messages Benson has previously used:

That single DM resulted in a slew of micro-influencer posts:

Send an email for more complicated marketing. You might not be able to keep it brief, but make sure your demands and directions are clear. Here’s another example from Benson, this one for the Dubai Department of Tourism:

Pura Vida Bracelets follows a similar approach. Griffin Thall, a co-founder, explains:

“Our staff scours Instagram for creators and influencers who suit the tone of our brand.” We interact through email and gauge their interest in a ‘trade for product’ or compensated partnership in exchange for images, posts, IG stories, IG lives, account takeovers, and giveaways.”

When dealing with influencers, bear in mind that everybody has their own unique flair. To ensure consistency, give a creative brief or perhaps a moodboard of what you’re looking for in a promotional post.

In addition to payment, online store Lo & Sons provides free items to influencers with over 100,000 followers in return for promotional postings.

Finally, another potential point of leverage is to establish recurrent competition.

While you may not be able to recruit multi-million dollar influencers, you may attract “micro-influencers”: anyone with a following of less than ten thousand.

According to research, 82% of customers are extremely inclined to heed the advice of micro-influencers. These micro-influencers will not only be incentivized to participate for a chance to win the reward, but they will also profit from the visibility they will receive from an official brand.

S4S (share-for-share) postings are another low-friction option.

S4S articles, as the name suggests, seek influencers or companies in your industry to share your content in return for you sharing theirs. Match follower numbers and engagement rates to ensure a fair exchange of value.

Even competitors can be tempted. Look at how Frank Body and Mecca Maxima use their accounts to promote each other’s products.

Finally, you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to build an effective Instagram influencer marketing strategy. Take a step back and consider what you currently have to give. You’ll be shocked at how much you can do.

Step 3: Create Your Influencer Campaign (And Make It Loud)

The simplest fundamental influencer strategy is brand exposure.

If you’re preparing for a product launch and want to raise excitement and interest, this is a highly successful technique. One of our Instagram Domination students used Instagram to generate anticipation for the debut of their Kickstarter campaign.

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls went on to achieve nearly $675,000 in fundraising in four weeks, becoming the most supported campaign in the Publishing sector in Kickstarter history.

The most straightforward way an influencer may drive greater exposure for your company is to offer you shout-outs by prominently promoting your product or brand in a post.

Alternatively, you could be more discreet and simply ask them to tag your account in the photo and give you a shout-out in the capton.

This is an efficient technique to increase your Instagram followers and push quality leads to your Instagram sales funnel. However, it might be difficult to track and quantify the actual consequences of these sorts of articles.

Structure your campaign to involve influencers temporarily shifting their Instagram bio link to your product page to encourage direct purchases to your brand.

This strategy shortens your Instagram sales funnel and minimizes the number of steps to purchase. For tracking, offer each influencer a unique promo code or use a UTM parameter abbreviated with a custom bit.ly.

Finally, the “thunderclap” technique involves numerous influencers giving you a shout-out or promoting your goods at the same time.

Daniel Wellington appears to have hired hundreds of influencers to promote their new Daniel Wellington Classic Petite Watch, each with their unique discount code.

You don’t need to contact hundreds of influencers for your thunderclap technique to succeed. Enlisting a couple dozen micro-influencers by handing them free merchandise is more than enough to make it heard.

More information: O2O trade

Instagram Influencer Marketing is All About Knowing Who Your Audience Knows

More from Categories : Internet Marketing