3 Tips To Maximizing Your Infleuncer Campaign’s Effectiveness

Just as we adjusted and adapted at the beginning of the pandemic to new normals in our strategies, we encourage you to adopt the key lessons learned in 2020 for your upcoming campaigns, considering a potential economic downturn in the latter half of the year: larger flexibility around posting, leveraging influencers to create content for brand usage, and leaning into the strengths of influencer partners for campaigns that will bring you the most bang for your buck.

Marketing budgets often see cuts in times of economic uncertainty, which means we will all need to adjust our strategies to accomplish more with fewer resources. To do so, we advise refining your campaigns in 3 major areas: influencer selection, content strategy, and campaign optimization.

Enhance Your Strategy Via:

1) Thoughtful Influencer Selection

Your influencer selection needs to be deliberate and planned out. The farther out you can lock in influencer partners, the better prepared you will be, with plenty of time to develop campaign content and the ability to book influencers at their standard rates. Contracting influencers for long-term partnerships can help ameliorate costs while also building the efficacy of your campaign. We also recommend working with influencers who have proven track records with sales conversions (either through Instagram Shop or another affiliate program) if your goal is to achieve high sales conversions through influencer content.

2) A Defined Content Strategy

Focus on content types that will maximize your campaign goals. For Instagram, Stories are typically slightly less expensive than in-feed posts and can feature clickable links, ideal for brands with sales conversions top of mind. Short-form video is also a priority on Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms, with the ability to run them as whitelisted ads, a simple way to maximize return. 

3) Campaign Optimization

Ad amplification and usage can run up influencer fees, which is why we recommend adding these on to influencer campaigns on an as-needed basis as a way to pay for only what you will use. Contracting for extensive usage upfront might seem easier, but for brands looking to cut costs, you may end up paying more for content that ends up going unused. Instead, assess organic content performance and select the optimal content pieces for ad placements and additional usage based on how well they do.

What To Include (And What To Avoid) In Your Influencer Campaign Brief

Creative briefs should be less prescriptive & one-size-fits-all to allow influencers to do what they do best: creating content that tells a captivating and authentic story that speaks to their audience.

What creative briefs should include:

Scope of Work

The content requirements for the campaign, including platforms and post types. Consider a flexible scope that allows creators to choose content types they are best suited for based on social presence and consumer relationships across those channels.

Timeline Details

Set expectations for when drafts should be received, when content needs to go live, and how long amplified content will run (if part of the scope).

Do’s and Don’ts

What must creators absolutely include within their content? This could be brand tags or hashtags, photo requirements...on the other hand, is there anything that would trigger an immediate reshoot? Spell out any do’s and don’ts plainly so that there is no confusion on what the brand is looking for.

A Holistic Overview of Content Guidelines

Provide an overview of key talking points, visual requirements, and the overall storyline of the campaign. 

Examples of Content the Brand is Looking For

Examples of visual and caption content that the brand loves help illustrate exactly what the brand is seeking out of influencer content. While brands should not expect influencer partners to directly recreate example content, it helps give everyone a clear understanding of content expectations.

Want successful influencer content? Don’t do these things in your creative brief:

DON’T Provide a script or caption that influencers must read/post word-for-word.

Social media users are savvy to branded content and won’t be moved by generic, overly-branded messaging. Allow room for each influencer to tell a story through their content and make the campaign their own.

DON’T include frame-by-frame guidelines on what content needs to look like.

Likewise, a rigorous frame-by-frame outline of requirements will stifle an influencer’s creativity and prohibit them from making the content their own. Instead, provide a holistic overview of required talking points but allow flexibility for the creator to make their content unique.

DON’T require influencers to post on a platform or create a content type that they’ve never shared before.

Unless you’re activating an A-list celebrity to create their first post on a social media platform (think: Jennifer Aniston finally joining Instagram to promote the Friends reunion) we advise against requiring an influencer to post on a brand new platform or create a type of content they haven’t shared before. It’s why we recommend a flexible scope of work that allows the individual influencers to select the content types they are best at making. If your brand is insistent that every influencer partner post to a specific platform, do the research into suggested influencers ahead of time to ensure that each one has the ability to create that type of content.

Need help crafting your influencer campaigns? Lytehouse can help! Let’s work together.

4 Ways To Create Campaigns That Break Through The Noise

The pool of influencers has never been bigger, but that also means the competition for eyeballs is fiercer than ever before.

This means that the standard one-and-done Instagram post approach to influencer marketing is not going to have the same effect that it did just a few years ago.

So, what content will cut through the noise in 2021?

1) Embrace Long-Term Partnerships

For one, long-term partnerships are going to help you tell a story through weeks or even months. According to the popular “Rule of 7”, people need to see an ad interact with a brand 7 times before they remember it, so seeing an influencer speak about a product once and then never again probably isn’t going to have much of an impact on converting those views to customers. On the other hand, if an influencer constantly mentions a brand month after month, followers are more likely to remember the brand, take it into consideration, and finally purchase the product. By incorporating repetition into your influencer marketing strategy, you increase the likelihood for an influencer’s followers to translate into customers.

2) Lean Into Relevant Trends

Social media apps from Instagram to TikTok to Twitter thrive on trending content and viral hits. Creators hop aboard popular sounds and hashtags to make their content discoverable, taking trending formats and making them their own. When it makes sense for brands to do so, they can also join in on viral trends and give it their own branded spin.

Take Nathan Apodaca’s insanely popular TikTok video of him skateboarding while drinking a jug of Ocean Spray cranberry juice while Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” plays. The video was viewed over 78 million times, spawned countless remakes, and even got multiple Fleetwood Mac band members to join TikTok to talk about the unexpected reemergence of their 1977 hit. When clothing brand KJP put a preppy autumnal spin on Apodaca’s video, they received over 5 million views. KJP’s take on the “Dreams” video worked because they tied it into their brand personality and made it their own (in this iteration, the skateboarder is wearing one of KJP’s pumpkin sweaters and has a carved pumpkin head; the cranberry juice is replaced with a preppy classic, a Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte). The organic plug of Ocean Spray came full circle for Apodaca, too: Ocean Spray turned Apodaca’s video into an official #DreamsChallenge trend and also gifted him with a brand new truck (plus all the cranberry juice he could ask for).

3) Capitalize On Authentic Moments

Which brings us to another opportunity for innovative marketing: take advantage of authentic moments in the space when you see them. When TikTok’s biggest star Charli D’Amelio was constantly sipping iced Dunkin’ Donuts drinks in her popular dance videos, Dunkin’ saw the opportunity to partner with D’Amelio and created “The Charli”, a signature drink that fans could order at Dunkin’ locations. Because the partnership stemmed out of D’Amelio’s natural love of the coffee, it proved to be a major success. It also required minimal effort on Dunkin’s part, as they didn’t need to develop a new product, just market Charli’s signature order.

Other food companies have taken this approach in recent months, like McDonald’s with the Travis Scott meal. With both of these campaigns, the brands noticed natural affinities and transformed those into official partnerships, and because D’Amelio and Scott were already fans of Dunkin’ and McDonald’s respectively, their audiences saw these partnerships as natural progressions rather than disingenuous, money-motivated collaborations. 

4) Do It For The Meme

Similar to capitalizing on trending content, Instagram itself declared 2020 the Year of the Meme. Their year-end review highlighted the most popular memes that took the Internet by storm last year, from the Dolly Parton Challenge to Tiger King to relatable jokes about working from home in quarantine. Such memes succeeded on Instagram not only because they were witty and clever, but because they were inherently sharable. Shares and saves have become increasingly valuable analytics to monitor on Instagram and other social media platforms, and we suggest this be one of your key metrics to focus on when developing your social media content strategy.

Take the recent proliferation of Bernie Sanders memes: one iconic photo of the Vermont senator donning his favorite Burton jacket and a pair of hand-knit mittens sitting by himself at President Biden’s inauguration became an instantly viral meme that flooded the internet in record time. Here he is, joining the cast of Sex and the City as the fourth member now that Samantha isn’t returning for the reboot. Here he is with fellow meme icon Guy Fieri. In fact, one man even created a website where you could insert an inauguration Bernie into any photo you desire, should inspiration for a meme strike (and over 9 million photos were created on the site in the week that it was live). Or you can transform yourself into the mittens-wearing senator with an Instagram Story filter. You get the idea.

As a case study, the Bernie Sanders memes encapsulates so much about the content that succeeds in 2021: it tied into a timely event, was easy to transform and turn into a trend where everyone could add their own spin on the image, created for hilarious memes that were highly shareable, and the image itself was incredibly relatable. Who among us hasn’t felt like a curmudgeonly old man looking moderately annoyed with everything after this past year? 

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Gone are the days of obsessing over magazine-quality photography and vague three-word captions. Social media users want content that is sharable, saveable, and relatable; in other words, content that educates, entertains, and inspires. With every new social media post and influencer campaign in 2021, ask yourself how each piece of content is achieving one of these 3 main goals and you’ll see your brand grow and foster a community of its own.

For more on the latest social media trends and where the influencer marketing industry is heading, download our State Of Influencer Marketing 2021 report. 

3 Ways To Maximize Influencer Campaign Success

You’ve spent valuable time and money on your latest influencer campaign. Now it’s time to make the most of it.

Here are 3 ways that you can maximize the results of your influencer marketing campaigns.

1) Secure Usage Rights For Brand Channels

You’re already contracting influencers to create content on behalf of your brand, why not utilize that content for brand-owned channels and digital ads as well? Internet-savvy consumers tend to prefer influencer-created content over branded imagery, so utilizing influencer-created content can help increase clicks and sales conversions. Note that usage and amplification may increase an influencer’s fee and should be discussed in the contracting phase of a campaign.

For more on using influencer content on brand channels, check out this blog post.

2) Strategically Amplify Influencer Content

The right content amplification strategy is the secret to a successful influencer marketing campaign. Whitelisting (which we break down in detail here) can extend the reach of your campaign beyond just an influencer’s existing audience, exposing your brand to new, like minded users who may also be interested in your brand. In addition to targeting lookalike audiences, you’re able to customize copy, imagery, and calls-to-action for whitelisted posts, ensuring that you can achieve a number of KPIs and test out different strategies until you find the perfect formula.

3) Re-Partner With Successful Influencers

When you find an influencer partner who exceeds campaign expectations, it’s time to brainstorm the next partnership! As the industry becomes more saturated, finding and fostering strong relationships with influencers will become essential to long term success. Continuous partnerships will also help build trust with the influencer’s audience, as they’ll see the influencer returning to your brand time and time again and be encouraged to do the same. Join forces with your best influencers to help support new launches and marketing initiatives on a regular basis and utilize them as brand ambassadors.

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Let’s plan your next influencer marketing campaign together so we can ensure all your goals are met. Connect with us here.