The Right Approach to Influencer Marketing

What’s it all about?

Why are we here?

How can we make it more meaningful?

Does any of it really matter?

If your brand has been having an existential crisis about influencer marketing,don’t fret – you are certainly not alone.

With a year and over 100 influencer campaigns under our belt, we’ve noticed that brands, influencers and agencies have all adopted a different definition of what constitutes influencer campaign success. While the influencer is motivated by views, for brands it’s all about traffic and those precious conversions.

While influencer marketing is exciting because it’s a frequently evolving beast (at a pace faster than the new Gen 2 Pokemon), it’s important that everyone involved in the SushiVid shoal is swimming in the same ocean. So we thought it was high tide (*time) that we put ink to blog and set the ultimate in influencercampaign goals for you all.

• Improve brand advocacy

You know the old marketing mantra, people are more likely to complain about anegative interaction than compliment a positive one (95% vs 87% according to Marketing Charts). And when people complain, whenit can turn ugly pretty quickly. You only have to look at this piece from prominent blogger Four Feet Nine about the Grinch that Stole Chinese NewYear to see just how bad things can get.

So what’s a brand to do?

Enlisting the help of a brand advocate is a great place to start. As explained by webopedia: “a brand advocate is a person, or customer who talks favorably about a brand or product, and then passes on positive word-of-mouth (WOM) messages about the brandto other people,” (i.e. exactly the kinds of people you want talking aboutyour brand).

So if you haven’t already got these, enlisting the help a few influencers onYouTube, Facebook or Instagram is a great place to start to spread the goodwill.

• Expand brand awareness

Your brand may be plastered across billboards and buses, but ask yourself if that is really enough in the digital age? With the ability to comment on social media posts, brand engagement is everything; the brands that people talk about are the brands with the best social media teams – the ones who makewitty retorts and get their product in the day-to-day conversation.

Influencers also do a great job here. Just think of the McDonalds 3 Bite Challenge.

• Reach a new targeted audience

Whether you’re a startup looking to gain traction, or a business looking to expand into new borders, your primary goal is to reach a brand new audience. And while advertisements will take you to themasses, they don’t necessarily engender trust.

But that’s where influencers come in. As AdWeek explains, because influencers connect with their audience, the audience trust theirrecommendations, so much so that many consumers will look first to an influencer when making a purchase decision.

We saw this personally when a brand used SushiVid to hire Dikidi Channel for a popcorn tasting video. Not only did the brand get a great video, they got a visible amount of trafficfrom Indonesia.

• Raise your voice

Growing up you can probably remember your parents or grandparents reading their paper at the breakfast table, muttering occasionally about whatever they read. The paper set the agenda forconversation and people’s world views.

A beautiful tradition, but something few millennials will understand as they’ve had their fill of news before even reaching the breakfast table; in today’s world we can roll over, reach our phone and have the whole world at our fingertips (though let’s be honest, the world they’re reaching for is FB, Instagram, SnapChat or YouTube).

So, if you want your voice to be heard, you know where you need to be.

• Improve sales conversion

While we’ve brought up a whole lot of alternative goals, there’s no denying that improving sales conversion is the ultimate goal of any influencer campaign. Though the Malaysian market is still in conversion infancy, we are seeing some great conversion statistics; we had one influencer share a discount code to download an app and overnight there were 5,000 downloads. AMAZING!

Takeaways

Though the ultimate goal of any influencer campaign should be to improve sales conversion, influencers have so much more they can offer brands. If all parties work together with a focus on improving brand recognition, advocacy and raising its voice, then the conversions will come.

More tips and tricks on how to work with Influencers HERE.