complete guide to working with instagram influencers - by #paid
TRANSCRIPT
Your customers are following individuals they relate to and aspire to be. Those individuals, due to their compelling and influen<al social media presence, are known as influencers. Partnering with these influencers drives growth for your business and brand by cu?ng through the noise and reaching your target customer through the people they choose to follow and aspire to emulate.
This guide includes:
• How to work with influencers • How to pick the right type of influencer • Case studies including how one brand brought in 250K in
revenue with a 4K ad spend!
WHY INSTAGRAM INFLUENCERS?
1. RECRUITING Beyond finding talent, you need to vet their followers and confirm that their engagement is real. It is necessary to ensure that the influencers you choose have an audience that meets your target demographic. AMer a few years of recruiNng influencers for a variety of brands, we’ve designed #paid to help you be more efficient and effecNve in finding the right influencer -‐ and we’re excited to share our insights with you.
Some Instagram Influencers will have a point of contact in their bio, but the ways that you can work with them will vary from person to person. Some will work directly with your brand or agency, others will have an intermediary such as a manager. Once you’ve connected with the right talent and veXed them appropriately, you can start collaboraNng and creaNng content.
“Ve[ng that all of our influencers have authenNc, engaged followings ensures that our brands can feel confident about who they work with,” states Adam Robles, Head of Brand Strategy at #paid, who has executed campaigns with ranging from global brands like Pepsi to established small businesses, such as Yellow Shoes.
The most important aspect of all campaigns is being able to determine brand fit with the influencer so that your company’s message can be authenNcally communicated through their voice.
2. COLLABORATING
Working with influencers will typically involve a back and forth exchange of ideas around how to create the most compelling piece of content. This is the most important component of a successful campaign.
Maxime Houde-‐Shulman (aka @YourGirlMax), Head of Sponsorships at #paid and an influencer with extremely high engagement, explains: “When you change the voice of the influencer for the brand, it doesn’t work. Sponsored content has to look and sound like the influencer, because their followers have goXen used to their voice and have chosen to follow them because they like what they do.”
While it is possible to manage a dozen collaboraNons with influencers over email, it can definitely be a challenge. If you are managing your campaigns this way, we suggest using a simple CRM soluNon or a spreadsheet to keep notes.
3. CONFIRMING YOUR CAMPAIGN Once you’ve worked with an influencer to find the right way to tell your brand story through their authenNc voice, you have to confirm the photo, the copy, and the Nming of the post. One other element that is crucial to consider is ownership of the content. Just because you paid for a post to go up on an influencer’s Instagram account, doesn’t mean you can repurpose that content for your own markeNng needs. This factor should be outlined, in full, in your official agreement with the influencer. “We know it’s important to brands that they own and can reuse and repurpose the content produced,” says Adam Rivetz, “It’s why we’ve done all of the legal work to ensure that brands have all of the rights to the content influencers create.”
The other thing you must keep in mind is the importance of FTC Disclosure.“At #paid, we want to make sure that the brands and agencies we work with are protected from any potenNal negaNvity when working with influencers – it's one of the reasons we named our company aMer one of the five different mandatory disclosures suggested by the FTC for sponsored content.”
Maxime echoes this senNment. She agrees that, when done effecNvely, disclosing when content is sponsored doesn't hurt a campaign and can actually improve the audience’s percepNon of both the brand and the influencer. “On my page, whether it’s with #paid at the end or saying ‘Happy to be collaboraNng with,’ or tagging the brand…I think it’s important to let my followers know that I am being sponsored by this brand,” she says. “I did a campaign with Nike about two months ago and my followers loved it. They like to see me associated with a brand that’s already cool…as long it’s done in a transparent way.”
4. ANALYZING Since measuring the effecNveness of your campaigns is always the hardest part, your brand should outline the campaign goals prior to engaging with influencers. AMer you have assembled a crew of influencers, collaborated with them over email or in person, and approved and executed the posts, you need to review the campaign metrics to prove the effecNveness and ROI of the campaign. Establishing and measuring the metrics that maXer is the most important step in running a campaign, whether your goals are brand awareness or generaNng traffic for a specific product.
“When we first started out, we kept everything in spreadsheets. We had spreadsheets with followers, engagement, clicks, and formulas to assess effecNveness,” Bryan Gold, co-‐founder of #paid, recalls. “Over Nme, we’ve managed to bake the most important metrics into a single dashboard that makes our lives – and our customers’ lives – much easier.”
How to collaborate with influencers for brand new campaigns.
COLLABORATE AND LISTEN
When you start working with influencers as a brand or agency it’s important to have a clearly defined idea of what you want your content to be. At #paid, we’ve found the most successful brand partnerships with influencers involve a collaboraNve process between talent and brand needs. Instagram influencers have built their followings and their value by knowing what resonates with their target audience over Nme. EssenNally, as a brand looking to communicate with an influencer’s following, you want to make sure to do it in their voice. The most successful campaigns are those that incorporate the brand’s personality with the authenNcity of the influencer.
1. DEVELOP TRUST When launching a campaign for your brand, it's important to trust the feedback you will get from the influencers you are working with. This is important for two reasons:
• They know and understand their audience beXer than anyone, and can quickly determine how to get your message to resonate with your target audience
• They are equally invested in the success of the post— they want to engage their following WITH your brand message because engagement and reach are their currency
2. LEVERAGE CREDIBILITY AdverNsers and marketers who understand that they can’t simply put a predetermined message in front of a bunch of consumers and garner business tend to have the most successful influencer campaigns. Audiences have chosen these Instagram influencers to be a part of their daily habits; it is as close as a brand can get to collaboraNng with someone who has over a million friends who care about what they have to say.
3. CHOOSE WISELY The three types of influencers you can work with are: Lifestyle Influencers, Point of View Influencers, and Persons of Interest. Depending on your product, these three types of influencers could have very different perspecNves on how to promote your product.
It’s important to take a good look at all of the influencers you are thinking of working with and taking the Nme to understand their strengths and weaknesses before starNng a campaign with them. Depending on what you are selling, different types of influencers will be more appropriate than others.
Lifestyle Influencer Point of View Influencer Persons of InterestTo learn more about the difference types of influencers you can work with, keep an eye out for our upcoming whitepaper.
LIFESTYLE
Lifestyle Influencers have followers that care about them, the products they use, and what they consume. In other words, their followers follow them to fulfil catharNc and aspiraNonal desires.
POINT OF VIEW
Point of View Influencers show the world as it exists through their eyes. They are incredibly adept at capturing the essence of their environment and what is in front of them. Their followers are interested in seeing the world through their eyes, and are typically tasteful, aspiraNonal, and creaNve.
CELEBRITY
Celebri6es are famous for reasons beyond their digital presence, like an actor or musician. Their endorsement carries a very different value to your brand, and their followers typically view them as a celebrity who is less relatable than a Lifestyle or Point of View Influencer.
How Frank and Oak succeeded by le?ng influencers use their own voice
CASE STUDY
For the last 6 months, Frank and Oak has been working with influenNal Instagram influencers through #paid. Their brand has had tremendous success in giving our influencers enough flexibility to express themselves while also promoNng their key brand messages.
In their biggest campaign to date, Frank and Oak reached over 500K consumers and drove over $250K in revenue through a crowdfunding campaign to open pop-‐up stores in the USA. They conNnue to use #paid to work with a broad cross-‐secNon of influencers with both large and small followings.
The key to their success? Giving each influencer creaNve control over the content while ensuring that their goals are always met.
GENUINE BRAND ENGAGEMENT
@SAMMYEASTERLING gets his Followers excited about @FrankAndOak
DOWNLOAD CASE STUDY
Working with Influencers to amplify exis<ng campaigns
AMPLIFYING
For brands and agencies that want to Ne their Instagram influencer campaign to exisNng campaigns, it is important to find the balance between the current creaNve direcNon and the input of the Instagram influencers you choose to work with. In the case of amplificaNon with a pre-‐exisNng campaign, collaboraNng with influencers has more to do with how to spread a pre-‐determined message, than craMing a new one.
When your brand is looking to influence the purchasing paXerns of consumers through someone else's voice, the most important thing to do is solicit feedback as early as possible so your campaign can ebb and flow in order to conNnuously resonate with your intended audience.
1. SELECTING INFLUENCERS When selecNng influencers for a campaign your agency has prepared, it is crucial to focus on establishing brand fit as well as campaign fit from the onset. Find influencers that have already shown an authenNc affinity towards the campaign you’ve designed for the brand. It’s not enough to find influencers who are brand users or ambassadors, they should also be aligned with your specific content or key message.
2. DEMONSTRATE SOCIAL PROOF FOR THE CAMPAIGN Influencers want to be a part of the larger picture. With an integrated campaign that is mulN-‐plavorm and mulN-‐dimensional (reaching other audiences via mediums such as tradiNonal media, PR, or other social networks) it is important to show the influencer that they are contribuNng to something that is already awesome.
When they are working on a campaign that already has tracNon and authenNc engagement and their role is to amplify it, it’s far more effecNve to get influencers excited and want to become a part of the bigger movement. Excitement is contagious and, when they care about the campaign, influencers are able to amplify your viral brand message authenNcally.
3. STICKING POINTS AND PARAMETERS Remember: while it is important to give arNsNc license to the influencer you are working with, you have to balance it with the core objecNves of your campaign. Figuring out the most important elements of the campaign in advance, your “sNcking points”, will help give influencers an idea of what they need to do in order to meet your objecNves. This includes specific imagery, social tags and hashtags.
Example of S6cking Points •The product’s branding must be in clear sight • The product’s name must be included as an acNon the influencer is taking (drinking x, wearing y)
• The brand has to be tagged @brandname • #brandstory needs to be included within the first 100 characters • There must be a call-‐to-‐acNon for followers to use the #brandstory
EssenNally, parameters are the range of expectaNons you might have and where you will be willing to compromise if the influencer has ideas that are outside of the original scope of the campaign. Understanding your parameters is the other half of ensuring that your campaign is successful. Parameters will help guide you and the influencer’s discussion around what can be done to make the campaign more engaging to your target consumers, and what should be leM out.
Example Parameters: • The ways in which the product can be integrated into the influencer’s lifestyle— elements of that lifestyle reflected must be family friendly
• The ways in which the brand prefers to receive praise from the influencer as being something they use, and trust— the influencer has license to interpret what that means for their own audience
• AddiNonal hashtags must be approved by the brand in advance
4. PROVIDE ACCESS TO AS MANY CAMPAIGN ASSETS AS POSSIBLE When you give the influencer you are working with a preview of the underlying message, you want to communicate clearly and offer them opNons with regards to the brand assets they can incorporate into their posts SomeNmes influencers will have different perspecNves than marketers, and will want to use assets that otherwise wouldn’t be used. If these are items that you have already invested in and are on-‐brand and on-‐message, let them have it and be creaNve! Let loose a liXle bit and let the influencer do what they’re good at -‐ they’re the experts in reaching their audience, aMer all.
The result? AuthenNc brand engagement with followers. Our influencers “inspired”, “moNvated”, and “moved” their followers with the stories they chose to tell, while also totally nailing the brand message.
How AXE leveraged the authen<c voice of Instagram influencers to amplify their #SelfMaker Campaign
CASE STUDY
In one of our favourite campaigns, an agency had created a series of videos around a number of influenNal entrepreneurs and entertainers that were all Axe #Selfmakers. #paid helped them partner with a number of top influencers to amplify their message through Instagram. They gave arNsNc license to the influencers they worked with, and allowed them to incorporate their message however they wanted. Their sNcking points included the hashtag #SelfMaker and a call-‐to-‐acNon to check out the videos.
This campaign resonated with each influencer’s audience for two reasons: the influencer could choose which #SelfMaker story they posted, and they could choose how to narraNvize the post. By giving license to Instagram influencers, Axe Canada was able authenNcally engage a broad cross secNon of communiNes on Instagram.