Influencer marketing has seen phenomenal continued growth in 2019. In fact, brands are now ready to make an even greater investment in their influencer campaigns and programmes and we can expect to see spend in influencer marketing surpassing $9B annually in 2020.
Influencer marketing is proven to improve brand awareness, change perceptions, increase demand for services and reach new audiences.
Making your influencers work for you
Once you have found topically related influencers, define the terms, conditions and objectives within both an influencer brief and influencer contract. It is then essential to provide a detailed framework for how the influencer will work with you and ensure that the legal details are accurate.
Start by activating the engaged influencers and then begin delivering influencer generated content and tie in the influencer campaigns with e-commerce and marketing initiatives.
Put benchmarks and safeguards in place to reduce the chance of a misunderstanding happening on what is being communicated, whilst ensuring targets are achieved. The best results will occur when both parties are aligned on every aspect, working towards a common goal. The influencer should bring knowledge of what works for the audience and you should bring the expertise on your product and offers.
Working in harmony
Influencer marketing is producing authentic engagements, extensive reach and unique content but it only works when it is married with e-commerce successfully.
Given that e-commerce spending budgets are up 115% for Q3 compared with last year and a considerable portion of these are being spent on Shopping ads, it seems the trend for this year is already wrapped up and under the Christmas tree. When an influencer is successfully married with e-commerce it creates powerful and shoppable ads and new formats that are leading the march on delivering formats and partnerships which will bolster sales in the final month of the year.
Shoppable ad formats which open a lightbox with the merchants’ electronics gateway embedded offer marketers the capacity to display up to 20 products in one format. The user makes their selection and is then prompted to add credentials and purchase the product. This can be done using Paypal, Stripe and Google Pay and the process takes just 6 seconds from click to purchase, as opposed to the average 6 steps for standard e-commerce purchase. More importantly, it can deliver up to three times the increase in sales.
Standing out in the crowd
Finally, if you’re looking for something else to set your digital advertising apart this Christmas, look at creative units which incorporate Whatsapp sharing into display ads. Users can share the brand, gift options and offers with personal contacts in Whatsapp accompanied by a pre-programmed message or start a new conversation directly with the brand, which is fantastic for viewer engagement. This type of ad yields an exceptional CTR of up to 4.54%, which is 22 times an increase in the average benchmark yields!
With Christmas fast approaching, it is essential to harness influencer and e-commerce solutions to deliver high impact and performance led marketing that keeps you competitive this festive season.