Our 2020 Approach To Influencer Marketing Success

While it may feel like the world of influencers and social media marketing has been around for a while, at the start of the decade, Instagram had just launched and was far from the massive social media platform that it is now. “Blogger” was the preferred term over “influencer,” and the fashion and beauty industries were still figuring out how to treat these digitally savvy newcomers. Influencer marketing has rapidly changed over the decade, and will continue to grow exponentially over the next ten years.

Here’s how we’re approaching influencer marketing this year:

Invest In Technology That Delivers Transparency

Influencer marketing is no longer the Wild West; it is a full-scale industry that has allowed for the emergence of an economy of apps, platforms, and technological resources that facilitate all aspects of campaign management. While the innovative content that influencers create is what drives this industry, the data behind each post is what empowers influencers and marketers alike to understand the effectiveness of each post or campaign initiative. 

As you make influencer marketing a crucial part of your digital strategy, it is important to invest in technology that tracks social media analytics holistically and accurately. We have seen an influx of technological platforms that promise efficient end-to-end campaign management from influencer discovery to campaign reporting. At Lytehouse, we've tested the majority of these platforms and invested in those that we strongly feel deliver.

Investing in analytical reporting tools will also ensure that you are working with influencers who have verified followings and authentic engagement. Now that there are industry standard benchmarks of engagement numbers, you can use reporting tools to identify potentially fraudulent followings and engagement.

Not only will these platforms help you manage campaigns, but it will also free up time and energy so that you can scale up your campaign efforts as well. Good technological tools only increase efficiency and productivity, so we highly suggest investing in these tools, or at least an agency like Lytehouse that has these tools at their disposal. 

When It Comes to Influencer Content, Pick a Side

As the influencer industry has evolved, we have seen two major types of influencer dominate in terms of delivery for brand clients:

• Art-focused: This type of influencer is creatively minded and features elevated, curated photo and video content. They more than likely work as a creative professional (photographer, graphic designer, editor, etc.) but their emphasis is on creating content that they feel is art. For the art-focused influencer, visual platforms like Instagram and dot com’s syndicated to Pinterest reign supreme. 

• Highly relatable and day-to-day: This type of influencer, on the other hand, emphasizes casual content, often created in real time with their phone. Their content is typically less polished than that of art-focused influencers, and there is more emphasis placed on establishing a strong, sincere, and oftentimes vulnerable connection with their audience. For this type of influencer, they do incredibly well engagement-wise on Instagram, but are also quick to adopt new platforms to better connect with their audience like TikTok.

Identifying the differences between these two influencer types will help you decide which direction to head for your influencer campaigns and initiatives, depending on the goals of your campaign. Are you seeking elevated content to feature on your brand channels? The art-focused influencer will help create and curate beautiful content for you. Are sales and impressions your main goals? Then you will find success working with relatable influencers that have proven conversion records. 

Maintain Creative Control

Your brand identity should extend to all aspects of your digital marketing efforts, and that extends to the influencers you activate. Think holistically about the message you are trying to convey across all your platforms and with your brand partners. Every single campaign, whether it’s a single social post or a yearlong ambassadorship, should tie back to your central brand identity.

When working with influencers, this means that you should be selecting influencers who truly align with your brand messaging, rather than letting outside trends and publicly displayed numbers guide your selections. At Lytehouse, we encourage our clients to develop creative guidelines that mirror their brand identities. 

At the tail-end of the decade, more and more of our clients have invested in social amplification: a service we provide and something we recommend all brands do to target the right audiences and optimize for conversion. When a brand is amplifying contracted influencers’ posts to new audiences, the visuals need to properly reflect the brands values and it's the influencers’ jobs to ensure that the content being amplified is an authentic portrayal of their own brand as well. This healthy balance of creative control — the brand's and the influencers’ — is crucial to influencer marketing success.

Scale Your Influencer Programs

The influencer world is only growing larger. With hundreds and thousands of individuals now identifying as “influencers” across social media platforms, brands are looking to scale their influencer marketing efforts to reach a wider swath of customers. 

Brands used to prioritize macro-influencers with millions of followers, but instead of spending a large budget on a single influencer, brands are realizing that they can reach more markets by spreading that same budget across a group of influencers with smaller audiences. Scaling your influencer campaigns is essential to maximizing target audience reach, with the added bonus of more content and economically testing new markets. The right technology platforms like the ones Lytehouse has access to make scalability possible, providing you with tools to discover the right influencers — whether it’s 10 influencers or 1,000 — and efficiently manage them throughout every step of the campaign process.

Adopt An Audience-First Approach

Traditionally, we have seen brands do the reverse: select specific influencers based on audience size and creativity in hopes of reaching a relatively high percentage of their following. When brands solely execute upon this strategy, ROI can’t be maximized because the brand is essentially shooting in the dark, hoping some people take notice. Sometimes this strategy works; oftentimes, it doesn’t.

Instead, define your target audience first by having a clear understanding of exactly who they are. Then, find influencers that speak to and create engaging content for this audience consistently. To do so, we recommend using technology to study influencer demographics and brand affinities. Once the influencers post on your behalf, amplify the content to further promote it (well beyond the influencer’s followers) to more consumers on social media that fit your target audience exactly. This approach to influencer marketing mitigates risk and maximizes ROI.