Influencer Marketing

Do You Know How Much Should You Pay Your Brand Influencers?

February 11, 2021 by Erika Heald Leave a Comment

Consumers’ trust in brands continues to decrease year-over-year, and they actively find new ways to avoid company advertising. This presents a challenge for marketing teams, as they now must explore different ways to connect and build relationships with their audiences.

It should come as no surprise that people most commonly turn to their friends, colleagues, and family to inform their purchasing decisions. But another avenue has become increasingly influential in shaping consumer purchasing habits—brand influencers.

Although some marketers have questioned the value of influencer marketing, these engagements have proven to be a powerful and potentially cost-effective way to expand a brand’s reach:

Marketers who implemented an influencer marketing campaign saw an average of $6.85 in media value for every $1 spent on paid media.
63% of consumers between 18 and 34 say that they trust what influencers say about brands much more than what brands say about themselves.
58% of consumers surveyed said they have even purchased a new product because of an influencer in the last six months.

To maximize the potential results from an influencer marketing campaign, marketers need to understand what value they can expect from influencer marketing, the different types of influencers available, and how much to pay a brand influencer.

Determining the Value of an Influencer Collaboration

Before racing to sign on a high-profile influencer to partner with your brand, your team needs first to identify your brand’s goals and objectives for the influencer relationship.

When developing your initial engagement plan, ask your team these questions to build out your program goals:

What do we hope to gain by partnering with this influencer?
What do we expect of the influencer in this partnership?
Do we want a long-term engagement or just a single campaign?
How does this influencer’s audience differ from our existing audience? Do they reach a niche audience we have yet to tap into?
What do we want this influencer’s audience to do as a result of the collaboration?
How will success be measured? Are we looking for a direct financial return or something else?

New Research Makes the Case for Retail Influencer Marketing

August 30, 2017 by Erika Heald Leave a Comment

By now we’re all pretty clear on the fact that consumers trust word-of-mouth from their friends and peers a lot more than they trust brand marketing. That’s why so many brands have thrown significant sums of money at retail influencer marketing programs. But does spending thousands of dollars for Instagram posts have any ROI? Maybe. New research from Experticity says retail influencer marketing has a positive impact on the bottom line, though perhaps not the way you might think.

New research from Experticity says retail influencer marketing has a positive impact on the bottom line, though perhaps not the way you might think.

Experticity’s research isn’t focused on third-party brand influencers. Rather, it’s focused on the impact of influencers on the sales floor itself. Turning individual retail employees into expert influencers by providing brand education led those retail employees to sell 69% more than their peers. Those employees who completed six or more Experticity brand sessions sold 123% more than their peers.

This research makes the case for better employee onboarding, regardless of the vendor, in addition to identifying a distinctly profitable influencer audience for brands.

The Challenge: Tracking Offline Influence

When I was in college, I worked for a large music and video chain store. My employee onboarding consisted almost entirely of being shown how to operate the register and where various items were on the floor. Record labels did send the occasional promo item our way, but everything went to the store manager’s attention. Which meant that even though I was probably responsible for the bulk of the store’s Depeche Mode import sales, It was highly unlikely I’d ever see any promotional materials for other artists I’d probably have liked and been happy to suggest to my customers.

The challenge in all of this is how to connect brands with retail influencers. As marketers, we’ve gotten good at spotting micro influencers from their activities online. But how can we spot them when the bulk of their influence is happening one-on-one in the store? It will be interesting to see how we rise to this challenge.

For more details from the research, check out the Experticity infographic:

Influencer Marketing

Determining the Value of an Influencer Collaboration

The Challenge: Tracking Offline Influence

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