TRIBE’s Sales Director Sammy Major was recently invited to speak at the 2019 Customer Engagement and Loyalty Conference in Melbourne. She presented on the 3 ROIs of Influencer Marketing, using a recent Logitech campaign as fuel for discussion.
While ROI may not be as clear-cut in influencer marketing as it is for other marketing activities, as Sammy explored, there are tangible ways to measure campaign performance.
Key takeaways
1. SOCIAL LISTENING TO DRIVE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT WORKS
Logitech capitalised on the popularity of 2017’s Pantone colour of the year, Millenial Pink, to create a product that content creators could easily create beautiful pictures of, resulting in improved sales.
2. REAL CUSTOMERS DRIVE AUTHENTIC WORD-OF-MOUTH AT SCALE
Instead of blasting branded content to millions of people at a huge cost, Logitech commissioned 233 user generated posts which reached over 10 million people combined. Having real customers post content on its behalf, the brand benefitted from widespread word of mouth.
3. CUSTOMER-GENERATED CONTENT CONVERT BETTER IN PAID CHANNELS
Logitech pitted its own branded content against user generated content, and found that authentic user generated posts led to greater conversion.
4. VOLUME, VARIETY AND FORMAT ARE CRITICAL TO OPTIMISE CONVERSIONS AT SCALE
Instead of a limited amount of content distributed to one audience, influencer marketing allowed Logitech to generate hundreds of varying post types, each shared with unique audience groups.
Burning questions answered
HOW DOES THE REMOVAL OF 'LIKES' AFFECT HOW WE REPORT ON ENGAGEMENT IN INFLUENCER MARKETING?
Instagram’s July 2019 updates to Australian users was still fresh in conference attendees’ minds. So it came as no surprise that we received questions around how marketers can continue to report on the success of influencer marketing campaigns.
While the changes are still very new, and Instagram notes that the test is in “exploratory stages”, they’re also “thinking through ways for [influencers] to communicate value to their brand partners”. It’s highly likely that tools will be added in the future to make this easier. In the meantime, the changes will push creators to craft a higher standard of content, while prompting brands to seek out new, more meaningful metrics, such as sentiment, story engagement, saves, click throughs and swipe ups.
TRIBE will continue to report on Cost per Engagement (CPE), though we’ve always talked about this metric being one of many indicators that make influencer marketing successful. Our post-campaign reports also include sentiment analysis.
HOW HAS THIS AFFECTED TRIBE AND YOUR BUSINESS MODEL?
Put simply, it hasn’t really. We’re still working with brands and influencers in much the same way as before.
WHERE DO YOU SEE INFLUENCER MARKETING HEADING IN THE NEXT 5 YEARS
It can only go up from here! Take Instagram alone. It’s released a suite of exciting new features that are going to remove some of the common influencer marketing challenges around attribution and ROI.
With the recent addition of Branded Content Ads and Instagram Checkout, the platform is allowing brands to optimise their best performing content and helping customers make in-app purchases. These updates give creators a better opportunity to report on their tangible ROI (sales), and brands greater visibility into audience demographics and post analytics.
The fact is, people trust influencers more than they trust brands. Facebook reports that user generated content drives 6.9% higher engagement than branded content. So with platforms like TRIBE making it easier for brands to connect with talented content creators who offer word of mouth marketing at scale, influencer marketing has a bright future ahead in the coming years.
HOW DO I EASILY SHOWCASE THE VARYING ELEMENTS BRANDS SHOULD BE MEASURING SUCCESS ON? THEY ARE STILL SUCK ON SO MANY VANITY METRICS.
Yes, brands can get caught up on metrics like CPE, clicks, likes and sales. But getting obsessed with numbers like this can cause people to overlook other important metrics, like scale and reach.
Influencer marketing cuts away the need for brands to spend lots of time and money on producing a variety of content types. Instead, they receive specialised content from a range of talented individuals.
The other aspect is the pure reach of micro influencers. Accounts with fewer than 100k followers are extremely powerful and experience greater engagement than accounts with larger followings. They’re also able to target their followers more authentically than when a brand blasts its messages to a wide audience. 100 micro influencers could potentially have a far greater reach than one giant branded campaign.
The other aspect is the pure reach of micro influencers. Accounts with fewer than 100k followers are extremely powerful and experience greater engagement than accounts with larger followings. They’re also able to target their followers more authentically than when a brand blasts its messages to a wide audience. 100 micro influencers could potentially have a far greater reach than one giant branded campaign.
Download the presentation: using Influencers effectively
Keen to hear more? Great news! You can download Sammy’s presentation. It’s filled with lots of great stats and figures, and explores Logitech’s success story in detail.
