strategy Archives - Kingfluencers

Why You Need to Get Started Now to Achieve Success During the Holidays

Posted on December 1, 2021January 10, 2024 by Yoeri Callebaut

Many challenging endeavors require long-term, dedicated efforts in order to succeed. Whether climbing a tall mountain, defending a PhD thesis, or embarking on a new career, preparation efforts can’t be crammed into a weekend – or even a handful of weekends. Months of planning and dedicated effort must precede such achievements.

And if your brand wants to succeed and earn revenue throughout the holiday season, September and early October is the time to get started.

Work Now to Achieve a Successful Holiday Shopping Season

Spikes in sales don’t occur immediately at the exact time as ad spend, and ads take time to be created. Many brands also have longer sales cycles, resulting in further deferrals between campaign launch and revenue generation. Again, the time to act is now.

According to TikTok Internal data, DE, Oct 2020 – Feb 2021, TikTok users embrace shopping content around key holiday moments and build up anticipation for Black Friday and Christmas way ahead of time. To achieve a successful holiday season, Kingfluencers advises setting the foundations for long term success in the early fall season.

For brands who are prepared, there are numerous opportunities to boost revenue this coming holiday season. 86% of consumers have delayed big purchases such as a car, vacation, or home appliances over the last year. Additionally, many are engaging in ‘revenge shopping,’trying to make up for the consumption they missed during the pandemic and lockdowns by spending extra on things they want – a trend that is expected to continue throughout the end of this year. So as a brand make sure you capture these consumers’ attention and check in part of that spending as revenue.

Making Wise Marketing Investments

As September has drawn to a close, brands are embarking on the fall/ winter season, which includes many key shopping milestones. Testing and iterating now will set up your brand for success. Brainstorm, develop fresh content, test campaigns, and optimize so you can ramp up and build momentum through Christmas and New Year’s.

Influencer Marketing (IM) has the power to help brands generate awareness and earn consumer loyalty throughout different phases. It’s authentic and impactful and has excellent potential for interactive, engaging campaigns. With influencer marketing showcasing best-in-class ROI figures, it is becoming increasingly attractive for companies. IM has proven to be an efficient way to reach your target audience, and a powerful tool to help your brand get even closer to consumers.

With a holistic approach in the industry and the help of in-house AI-based technology, Kingfluencers is able to run influencer marketing campaigns that not only provide impressive reach but also drive conversions through continuous optimization in four phases:

Phase 1 (Sept – Early Oct) – Connect & Create
This month is the time for brainstorming and developing fresh ideas, both internally as well as selecting influencers and content creators to partner with.

Phase 2 (Mid Oct – Halloween) – Build & Execute
Build campaigns, and begin placing ads so you can gather the data needed to test.

Phase 3 (Nov Through Black Friday) – Test & Optimize
As you accrue data, test additional variables and make improvements.

Phase 4 (Dec Through New Years) – Reap Rewards… & Repeat
Making investments and building towards success can drive increased revenue through December, but the process of optimizing campaigns should also be repeated continuously.

Phase 1 – Create New Campaigns & Leverage Influencer Marketing to Connect with Audiences

As you begin to brainstorm new campaigns, leverage a variety of sources for fresh ideas. Influencers are often viewed as a vehicle for connecting to your audience. While they can do so effectively, they can also contribute their subject matter expertise and collaborate with you to develop creative campaign ideas. As subject matter experts, influencers are uniquely qualified to help your brand be more creative, bringing fresh, creative ideas no one else inside your organization may have thought of before.

Consumers use social media to discover products and services, and make purchasing decisions, often with the help of influencers as reliable sources of information. 87% of consumers made purchases based on influencer recommendations. When it comes to brands, products, and services to buy, consumers seem to trust shopping recommendations more from influencers than from family and friends according to a study from gen.video.

Getting started with IM and storytelling by partnering with the right influencers are vital tactics for connecting with your audience. The ability to select specific influencers provides exceptional targeting capabilities, although it can be a challenging process. Influencer choice must align with your brand’s message and values, as well as your campaign objectives. As you build an influencer squad, consider the following:

Conduct due diligence
Find the right match with the platforms of choice
Seek authenticity
Find the right degree of creativity
Aim for long-terms collaborations
Consider various influencer roles

Working with an influencer marketing agency can also help you make ideal matches. Because Kingfluencers has existing relationships with multiple influencers, we can also ensure your brand collaborates with reliable, trustworthy professionals. Contact us at Kingfluencers.

Example – Corona Beer: The Swiss Limetrack

To strengthen its presence in the Swiss market, Corona engaged with Kingfluencers to create an influencer marketing campaign boosting local appeal and connecting to Swiss consumers on an emotional level.

Kingfluencers assembled an influencer team, The Limetrack squad, and built a sequence of creative activities and steps that allowed the influencers to tell a rich and captivating story over 3.5 months. Serving as protagonists, the Limetrack Squad took the audience on a magnificent summer journey, which included allowing every consumer to become the hero of their own story by following the influencer’s footsteps and giving away dozens of Corona kits via interactive challenges and contests – getting the winners ready to start their own adventures.

Picture: @f abiozing g for the Corona Beer campaign

Phase 2 – Build & Execute

Once you’ve established strategies, October is the time to get started with implementation and testing elements like messaging, influencers, and imagery. Halloween is a great occasion to feature, as the first fall/winter holiday in the ramp-up to Christmas.

Establish your unique goals, then measure SoMe results against them. You may want to drive a specific and measurable action, such as email signups or purchases. On the other hand, your social media campaigns may be driving awareness and thus your goals may be impressions and reach. The guidance of experts can help you determine where to get started, establish goals, and build structured plans to achieve targeted goals.

It’s important for brands to assess the outcome of campaigns and continually adjust to keep moving in the right direction as they work to build their funnel. Throughout October, continually gather data to establish a baseline so you can begin to measure changes. If your metrics are trending in a positive direction in response to your efforts, reinforce the factors that contributed to this. And when you view trends moving in the opposite direction, investigate and look at the whole picture. Initiatives that fall short are still important lessons learned.

Phase 3 – Test & Optimize, Which Takes Time

Black Friday is the time to capitalize on what you’ve learned in October and test further to optimize your campaigns in the runup to Christmas and New Years. Knowing which of your messages your target audience responds to enables you to dedicate marketing investments to the tactics that yield the best return on investment. And the only way to reach those conclusions is to test.

At Kingfluencers, our team of experts help brands put together and implement their ideal optimization strategies to maximize ROI.

A/B testing is a wonderful tool that lets marketers replace opinion with fact. When 2 distinct marketing tactics are executed, and 1 outperforms the other, brands can declare a clear winner and adapt future campaigns accordingly. However, you can only test 1 variable at a time. Conducting tests takes time to gauge results and there are limitations on how much you can condense this vital process. Much like training for a marathon, the preparations required for success simply cannot be crammed into a few weekends.

Based on insights gained in phase 2, you’ll be able to build an ideal influencer profile for your brand and better determine your audience’s preferences. This enables you to optimize overall costs by removing the lowest performing influencers and selecting additional ones that match your objectives. In phase 3, your influencer squad can unleash their creativity and experiment with new concepts such as topics, imagery, and calls to action.

Phase 4 – Reap Rewards… & Repeat

Making investments through the fall sets your brand up for success and drives increased revenue through the end of the year. As you’ve dedicated the efforts needed to sharpen messaging, build a solid influencer squad, and develop confidence in your squad’s ability to engage your audience, you’ll be able to reap rewards. You’ll be set up to launch campaigns during the holidays to drive revenue – at optimized costs. For example, have influencers lead live events that encompass memorable, consumer-engaging brand experiences, and even sampling actions for new products.

Of course consumer interests and trends change, making it important to continuously repeat the processes of optimizing campaigns.

Contact us at Kingfluencers to get started now by putting a winning end-of-year strategy together that will help your brand boost sales throughout key consumer moments between October and new year.

BONUS: Solutions to Test During October and November

Rather than throwing something at the wall to see what sticks there are many sources of expert guidance you can consider as you begin creating campaigns. TikTok, in particular, provides extensive information to brands based on their own research. Things users want include:

More Fun

According to TikTok, users want to see fun videos (e.g. discounts presented with trendy transitions or in collaboration with a comedy creator). Creatives tailored for Tik Tok are the winning strategy. On Instagram, add fun with filters and stories, which also bring a sense of urgency.

Creator Content

A survey by CivicScience found that nearly half of daily Instagram users have made a purchase because of an influencer recommendation. TikTok users want to see creators sharing branded challenges.

Evian-Volvic Switzerland worked with Kingfluencers to assemble a line-up of musicians and Swiss TikTok stars from dance and comedy to create the first Swiss music video specifically for TikTok. The video “Volli Kiste,” features tailored rap lyrics and has received more than a million clicks as of 2 September.

Discounts

Danielle Bernstein, founder of @WeWoreWhat, posted a survey to her 2.5 million Insta followers asking whether they would be interested in “discount codes for her larger partnerships.” 93% of respondents voted yes. 46% of TikTok users say coupons and discounts increase their likelihood of buying a product.

Visual Appeal

Many top social media channels, such as Instagram, are visual mediums, so your posts must look great. Hootsuite advises, “You don’t need professional photography equipment, but your photos and videos do need to be sharp, well-lit, well-composed, and in focus, at a minimum… Great photos are nice, but if they don’t tell a story, or get viewers excited, they’re not going to engage followers.”

All the Key Info

Include it all within a single video: price, discount, where to get it.

Social Commerce

90% of online shoppers are also using social networks today. You can optimize by including clever shoppable features and working with brand advocates to boost reach. Shoppable features on social media are helping drive an ongoing rapid rise in social commerce, particularly with younger generations. Social commerce differs from social media marketing in that users are able to make purchases directly through social media networks, rather than being redirected to an online store. With features like swipe up, linked shoppable product catalogues, livestream shopping, and temporary flash promotions, it has become increasingly easier to make the link between social media storytelling and revenue generation.

Inspiration

For many consumers, social media has grown to become the predominant source of inspiration and guidance. Social media and influencers are now where people turn for new products to try, fashion trends, and hot new tech. In terms of what makes people buy a product, recommendations from friends and family have declined in importance, dropping to the third place.

Author: Yoeri Callebaut, Co-CEO and Chief Growth & Marketing Officer @ Kingfluencers
Yoeri has been a strategist and marketer for over 14 years and worked for the most part of it for B2B brands, focusing on starting new ventures or pushing young organizations to their next development stage.

TikTok in Switzerland

Posted on April 28, 2021January 10, 2024 by Yoeri Callebaut

According to Statista, TikTok’s user base in Switzerland amounts to around 1.7 million users in 2021 and is growing fast. The platform is known to be the place for brands to reach and connect to Gen Z audiences. We’ll cover best practices and what successful brands are doing.

What is TikTok?

Considering TikTok was the most popular and most downloaded app globally in 2020, and so far in 2021, you’ve probably already heard of it. TikTok was originally released in the Chinese market in September 2016 and became available worldwide after merging with another Chinese social media service, Musical.ly, on August 2, 2018. As the world’s most downloaded app in 2020, TikTok is available in over 150 countries and has over 1 billion users. TikTok users are younger, with 60% being Gen Zers. About one third, 32.5%, of U.S.-based TikTokers are 10-19 years old.

TikTok has been strategic in recruiting and compensating content creators, knowing that they’re key to the success of any platform.

TikTok has recently created a $1 Billion Creator Fund. This money will be paid by TikTok directly to its creators in an effort to further solidify its relationships with influencers.

TikTok’s Swiss Audience

The Swiss “import” most of the content they consume. Swiss creators account for only 23% of all video views in Switzerland.

Why TikTok for Brands?

TikTok empowers brands to communicate with younger generations in a way that captures their attention: through creative short videos. TikTokers are highly engaged.

Some good news is that the high engagement rates include brands as well. Incoming engagement on brands’ social posts has increased during the pandemic, and TikTok users are increasingly active when interacting with brands online. The following average increases have occurred across all networks and industries:

44 more engagements received per day
7.3 more engagements per post per day

TikTok users are also 31% more likely to engage with brands than users of other platforms.

TikTok‘s unique algorithm allows it to tailor content to the users‘ preferences in a detailed and accurate way. Among the 4 key reasons TikTok will grow and broaden its appeal in 2021, it’s the easiest platform algorithm for users to train to feed them content they love.

Some excellent news is that not only are people present and active on TikTok, they’re not shying away from ads. According to Adweek,

Fortunately for advertisers, Gen Z doesn’t mind being advertised to—as long as campaigns demonstrate inherent entertainment and brand values they can get behind.

Not a day goes by that TikTok isn’t in the news. TikTok is also growing substantially, having grown 37.5% in the year 2020. The social media powerhouse is constantly releasing new features and functions.

What Can Brands Do on TikTok?

TikTok is the new battleground for the hearts and minds of consumers, now and for the future. While the platform may be particularly popular with a younger audience, brands of all kids are still striving to connect, including Porsche.

TikTok is also the first digital entertainment platform to sponsor the UEFA EURO 2020 European Football Championship. “TikTok is looking to cement its position as the home for football fans to share their passion for the game, following a number of football clubs across the world signing up to the platform and creating content for its fans.”

For brands looking to connect and engage on TikTok, many of our social media tips apply, such as:

Keep it relevant

Make campaigns interactive

Prioritise the human

Display your values

How are Brands Getting Creative on TikTok?

For brands which are inherently visual, such as fashion or makeup, coming up with ideas for posts can be straightforward. But what would a bank post? Well, PostFinance, one of the largest banks in Switzerland, which belongs to Switzerland’s national post service, has found success on TikTok. They share a mix of funny home office videos and short videos showing their services. PostFinance has also shared many HR marketing videos, displaying their work environment, which should help position them as a sought-after employer.

Ceylor Switzerland, the most popular condom company here in Switzerland, uses humor accompanied by current, pop music to inform the public of the importance of always practicing safe sex. This creative brand makes posts that are clear to non-German speakers that there’s no reason to avoid using these condoms because they might be too small.

How Can Brands Drive Conversions & Sales on TikTok?

In a recent study, about half of users said they discover new products through advertisements posted by a product or brand.

A large audience is great, and a large, engaged audience is even better. And best of all when the platform makes it easy for that audience to act and convert to customers within the platform <- That’s a formula to surpass other leading social media platforms.

The platform is investing heavily in its social commerce and features to help brands advertise. The TikTok Pixel, a small piece of code that you place on your website, helps you find new customers, optimize your campaigns and measure ad performance.

On 27 October, 2020, TikTok announced a global partnership with Shopify, an e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems, to help merchants create and run campaigns geared toward TikTokers. The partnership makes it easier for Shopify merchants to tap into the creativity of the TikTok community, be discovered, and optimize their marketing campaigns.

Some Surprising TikTok Trends

While TikTok’s largest demographic is Gen Z, older users are becoming increasingly active. TikTok shared new data on this growing trend. “Every day, millions of parents, teens, grandparents and in betweens come to TikTok to share snippets of their day-to-day life. Here’s what’s unique: often, the whole family participates together—even teens don’t shy away. It used to be a challenge getting everyone to sit still for a photo; now we see perfectly choreographed dance routines from the whole family, including grandma.”

TikTok also notes that parents are sharing “tips, tricks, and in-depth knowledge.”

How Can Brands Get Help? Kingfluencers’ Full-Service Approach

We are here for you – from strategy to execution and optimization, including:

TikTok influencer marketing
TikTok ads/performance marketing
Social commerce optimization

Kingfluencers makes great brand + influencer matches, drives successful campaigns such as Joung Gustav posting for Samsung Switzerland’s #Samsungs21 campaign, achieving 346K views. Mimoza Lekaj shared a fun dance video for Dosenbach, retailer of trendy shoes, accessories, and budget-friendly sportswear, reaching 54K views.

#Samsung21 Campaign

Author: Megan Bozman, Owner @Boz Content Marketing

Effective Marketing in COVID Times

Posted on March 4, 2021January 11, 2024 by Yoeri Callebaut

The COVID-19 pandemic has, of course, raised many challenges, including some unforeseen issues, such as the coin shortage in the US and excess in the UK. We’ve probably all grown weary of hearing empty platitudes about “how we’re all in this together.” But some good news is that business hasn’t stopped, but rather shifted and marketers need to shift with it. In this article, we’re sharing some specific examples of a few marketing tactics, such as social influence marketing, which can help during “these challenging times” and give your brand an image and revenue boost.

The New Life Online

The pandemic drove people to move even more of their daily lives online, beyond shopping and work. A New York Times analysis of internet usage published on April 7, 2020, revealed that our behaviors shifted, sometimes starkly, as the virus spread and pushed us to our devices for work, play, and connecting as well as discovering novelties. Even prior to COVID, social media played a huge role in our lives With almost 4 billion users worldwide, the role of social media in our lives is constantly growing. Social networks have surpassed search engines as the go-to product research channel for Gen Z since 2019.

The Challenge of Less Foot Traffic

As stages of lockdown and reopening vary worldwide, businesses everywhere are challenged with less direct contact with their customers. As consumers shift to making purchases online via ecommerce and social commerce, the online space is becoming increasingly crowded. The shift to online eliminates geographic boundaries, which provides consumers with increased options, but also increases competition for businesses. These changes make it harder for brands to stand out and get their message across.

Social Media, the Rising Storefronts

Now more than ever a brand‘s social media profiles have become one of their most essential storefronts. Making sure the brand pops out and appeals on social channels is more important than ever, and not just to maintain and enhance the brand image. With the ongoing fast rise of social commerce especially among millennials, and even more so Gen Z, social media is becoming a prime sales channel. In the fashion sector, for example, social media in Germany already generated sales of EUR 3.4 billion in 2018. Social commerce usually takes place on the move, i.e. via smartphone or tablet, as social media offers are preferably used via mobile devices. Especially brands that target these consumer segments can win a lot by making sure their social media presence is optimized to cash in on the movement and avoid losing out to competitors. Revising one‘s social media strategy and tactics all the way to the inclusion of clever shoppable features and creative influencer marketing for example is bound to be a very rewarding exercise when done properly.

Connecting with Consumers is Key to Standing Out

Successful brands are those that are able to connect with consumers and create a relationship. Telling stories to create more emotional connections drives a stronger, more appealing social media presence.

Building such connections is crucial to standing out from the crowds. Connections lead to conversions short term, as well as long-term loyalty and even advocacy. This cycle of turning customers into advocates is described by Hubspot as the “flywheel,” a circular process from attract, to engage, to delight, where customers feed growth.

Creating Connections in COVID Times With Fitting Content

In hard times people look for hope, support, strength and leadership. Strong omni-channel (digital) content that captures people‘s emotions and showcases a brand‘s social engagement can be a powerful tool to make your brand stand out and win over the hearts and minds of consumers just that little bit more. Some marketing during COVID undeniably fell flat when a company’s message just wasn‘t credible. However, there were also admirable examples, such as Ford. The auto manufacturer created a series of ads to explain how they have met global-scale crises in the past, creating an image of solidity and reliability. Some of the new ads also beautifully conveyed how the brand is fighting COVID-19 by manufacturing medical equipment in short supply.

Say It With Influencers for Increased Impact

Influencer marketing can make people feel closer to your brand and develop a strong preference for it.

92% of consumers trust an influencer more than any form of advertising
87% of consumers made purchases based on influencer recommendations

Influence marketing provides an agile, real time communication channel with consumers. Additionally, brands are mainly discovered online, through influencers, making this an important part of your marketing mix. Even more powerful is the combination of emotion-driven storytelling and content creation by influencers, adding authenticity and credibility to the mix. This successfully drives traffic to your social channels and website, generating valuable opportunities for lead generation and sales.

Aligning with Consumers’ Values

As consumers search for purpose, they’re increasingly looking for brands that align with their values. Like many challenges, this can also be an opportunity. Brands can use influencer marketing to get their purpose and value proposition better known and stand out, while successfully promoting new sales channels. By clearly demonstrating their unique values, brands can connect with an expanded group of consumers and build strong relationships with the potential to last.

For example, Kingfluencers worked with the oldest insurance company in Switzerland to create a campaign in which sympathetic influencers created their own damage sketches and included calls to actions for the community to participate. More than 500 sketches were created, resulting in over 550,000 impressions and 80,000 website visits in a short time-frame, along with a 3.01% engagement rate.

Social influence marketing is quick and agile. Such a campaign can be developed and launched in a matter of weeks to drive revenue prior to the end of the year.

Stay Agile and Expand Your Reach

Social influence marketing delivers reach and real impact on consumer decisions fast and efficiently. Give your brand a face people can relate to, elevate your advertising spending by adding credibility and authenticity to your message. Social media channels also enable you to reach audiences that aren’t easily reached via traditional marketing. The reach of Instagram is well known, and TikTok is particularly popular with Gen Z, the generation brands are struggling to connect with.

Holistic Approach to Influence Marketing

Social influence marketing is a broad area that includes more than professional influencers and content creators. A wide range of individuals can serve as effective influencers and contribute to your marketing efforts, such as:

Employees

Most likely, many of your employees are already advocating your brand publicly. You should channel and grow that enthusiasm.

CEOs and other leaders

Your leadership team is part of the face of your brand. Their role as social influencers is becoming increasingly important

Consumers

User-Generated Content (UGC) from brand fans and advocates can be very valuable, and boost community engagement

Each of these groups can be powerful influencers, but, when effectively combined, the result is synergistic, delivering a massive impact.

Leverage Your Existing Advocates — Including Employees

Example of a real-life success story

One tech company chose Kingfluencers to run a workshop for selected employees who were passionate about their work and active on their own social media. Kingfluencers taught the 15 influencers how to optimally stage the products on social media and create emotional textual content to achieve the highest possible performance. The results included 89 content pieces posted with a 23.44% engagement rate and more than 62,000 direct impressions.

What are the strengths of influence marketing? How and why does it generate positive ROI? Read this article providing a deep dive into why brands should do social influence marketing and learn more about the topic.

Author: Yoeri Callebaut, Chief Growth and Marketing Officer at Kingfluencers

What Are the Strengths of Social Influence Marketing?

Posted on March 4, 2021January 11, 2024 by Yoeri Callebaut

Ecommerce and social commerce can open your potential customer base to the entire planet. Unfortunately, they also expand your competitive landscape by the same margin. Influence Marketing (IM) can help you tackle such challenges and generate positive ROI. We’re diving into how and why.

Earning Consumers’ Love, Respect, and Adoration

IM has the power to help brands generate awareness and earn consumer loyalty. Consumers use social media to discover products and services and make purchasing decisions, often with the help of influencers as reliable sources of information. When it comes to brands, products, and services to buy, consumers seem to trust shopping recommendations more from influencers than from family and friends according to a study from gen.video. All studies into the topic also conclude that almost all consumers trust influencers significantly more than advertising.

Social Media, The New Storefronts

90% of online shoppers are also using social networks today. Shoppable features on social media are growing, helping drive an ongoing rapid rise in social commerce, particularly with younger generations. A brand’s social media profiles have become some of their most essential storefronts.

Among millennials and Gen Z, social media is becoming a prime purchasing channel. In the fashion sector, for example, in Germany, social media already generated sales of EUR 3.4 billion in the fashion sector in 2018. On average, each user in Switzerland spends 1 hour 18 minutes per day spent using social media.

To capture sales opportunities, it’s vital to stand out on social channels. Brands that target these consumer segments stand to gain by optimizing their social media presence to cash in on this trend and avoid losing out to competitors. You can optimize by including clever shoppable features and working with influencers to boost reach.

Influence Marketing is Authentic and Impactful

Throughout the customer journey, IM can be used to effectively nurture your leads and customers. By providing depth, creating meaningful connections, and inspiring trust, IM drives measurable results instantly as well as overtime. IM can provide ongoing, credible nurturing, as opposed to most marketing touchpoints along the consumer journey like regular advertising or agency visits. From creating awareness and enhancing your brand image to boosting consideration and pushing conversion, IM nurtures your audiences in a uniquely effective way.

Influencers are deeply connected to communities and are more trusted. In fact, 92% of consumers trust an influencer more than any form of advertising. The credibility of influencers makes their contributions impactful in these communities. IM also showcases real-life examples as opposed to staged ads that consumers understand are fabricated.

Additionally, influencers can activate and maintain engagement in communities through various formats such as videos, contests, challenges, games, and even leading live events that encompass memorable, consumer-engaging brand experiences, and even sampling actions for new products.

Influence Marketing. Influence Marketing is Authentic and Impactful

Tip: Use social influencers to increase and improve your online community engagement. From growing the number of followers on your social media accounts to boosting reach and ensuring your audience remains engaged with your brand, influencers can provide a tremendous boost to your success on social media. Why not do an influencer Instagram take-over for a week or stimulate online conversations with influencers as moderators or post authentic and creative fan- or employee-based product tutorials?

Influence Marketing is Effective at Targeting Your Audience

Influence marketing can make people feel closer to your brand and develop a strong preference for it. 87% of consumers made purchases based on influencer recommendations. Social media platforms can effectively target a variety of demographics, such as moms on Facebook, millennials in Instagram, Gen Z on TikTok, and professionals on LinkedIn. When combined with the ability to select specific influencers, IM provides exceptional targeting capabilities.

IM is particularly effective at targeting Generation Z.

85% of Gen Z learns about new products on social media.
45% of teens use Instagram to find cool new products
75% of Gen Z prefer to buy online, including directly on social media
73% of Gen-Z shoppers want brands and retailers to connect with them about new products and promotions through Instagram

It’s also becoming increasingly easy to measure attribution of social media investments in order to accurately calculate ROI. With influencer marketing showcasing best-in-class ROI figures, it is becoming increasingly attractive for companies.

Influencer Marketing Captivates

As consumers strive for purpose, they seek out brands that demonstrate shared values such as fair labor practices, social responsibility, and environmental sustainability. Brands must work to earn consumers’ trust and build favorable public opinion. These values must be communicated clearly, while consistently remaining authentic.

With social media, you can tell stories to create more emotional connections that drive a stronger, more appealing social media presence. IM has the power to unite people and drive engagement, in particular, through contests and challenges.

While influencers are an effective vehicle for connecting to your audience, they can also contribute their subject matter expertise and collaborate with you to develop creative campaign ideas. Creative ideation can be done either independently by an influencer or together with brands.

IM also allows brands the possibility to work with many diverse groups, providing access to a wide variety of audiences, including niche audiences. This can boost a brand’s image and increase appeal to the diverse range of people many brands serve today. The powerful effect of ‘giving your brand a face people can relate to‘ helps to explain the success of IM.

Influence Marketing is Effective at Driving Sales and Brand Loyalty

IM is uniquely advantageous in having measurable performance stats that are at least as good as traditional advertising, but with many additional benefits. CPM and cost per lead can be very effective and competitive with other online marketing. As an example the Kingfluencers team ran a campaign in autumn 2020 in Switzerland for a leading consumer electronics brand, obtaining a CPM of CHF 19.06 with a reach of over 2.5 million and almost 291.000 consumer engagements.

Contrary to traditional online ads, IM also helps you develop credibility and trust. Regular advertising is often not trusted and disliked. It’s outright hated by Gen Z. However, IM remains effective. According to the State of Influence 2020 Report, “Despite the decrease in the overall quantity of sponsored content, audiences remain engaged with these posts, especially on Instagram and TikTok.”

Generation Z account for 40% of global consumers, and about 32% of the global population, edging ahead of Millennials already

Influence Marketing is Fast and Agile

Some big consumer spending moments are still yet to come in 2020, including Black Friday, Christmas, and New Year’s. Brands have numerous opportunities to boost revenue but must prepare now to capitalize on these times.

Fortunately, a creative strategy for an IM campaign can be developed, set up, and implemented in a matter of no time. Here at Kingfluencers, we collaborate with all social media platforms and create smart, omni-channel and multi-format campaigns in less than a few weeks.

One excellent example of an agile approach to IM is Chipotle. The American restaurant chain was already active on TikTok prior to the COVID pandemic and worked with influencers to promote their delivery service. Their keys to success included a steady drumbeat of challenges on TikTok, partnering with young influencers with large platforms, and aligning content with relevant culture references.

Rich Choice of Formats

Social media platforms offer an ever wider variety of options both in terms of types of posts that are possible as well as content formats that are supported. From images to stories, video, live streaming, Instagram TV, and so much more. This gives influencers a rich arsenal to captivate their audiences with. But it doesn’t stop there, the options allowing people to interact with content as well as convert reach to sales have seen a real boom recently. With features like swipe up, linked shoppable product catalogues, interactive contests, temporary flash promotions, etc. it has become ever more easy to make the link between influencer content and revenue generation.

And with Kingfluencers, IM is Predictable!

With most marketing efforts, it is very difficult to accurately estimate results. But machine learning technology is changing that. Leading providers like Kingfluencers understand that combining the power of IM with innovative campaign management technology can substantially increase campaign efficiency and drive improved outcomes. Kingfluencers took this a step further with the predictor module, part of our in-house, state of the art IM platform. This module can accurately predict the outcomes of campaigns on parameters such as estimated impressions, reach, engagement, interactions, and conversion, based on unique campaign parameters.

Influence Marketing Fits Perfectly in Your Marketing Mix

Influencer marketing can fit in with your other marketing disciplines, especially social media and even performance marketing*, and elevate your key messages. This high level of compatibility is valuable, as it can reinforce all your marketing efforts in driving traffic to the content assets and web presence you’ve already built. Content creation can flow both directions, as you can reuse and repurpose content created by influencers as part of your IM campaigns. Increasingly, brands are seeing that content generated from IM campaigns can enrich or even replace traditional content across various channels. The IM-generated content has higher engagement levels and more positive consumer reactions than other content types. It can also very well help gather new leads, just like in the case of a campaign done by Kingfluencers for one of the oldest insurance companies in Switzerland, where the efforts generated over 80’000, convertible, campaign landing page visits.

Author: Yoeri Callebaut, Chief Growth and Marketing Officer at Kingfluencers

The Magic of Creativity and Authenticity in Content

Posted on March 4, 2021January 14, 2024 by Yoeri Callebaut

We’ve known that “Content is King” for over a decade, but content must be creative and authentic to effectively captivate and engage audiences. By taking a creative, authentic approach, brands have the opportunity to connect with their audience and drive measurable results.

Authenticity is Vital and Consumers Notice It

Consumers want to support brands that embody their own values. They expect brands to be authentic in their operations as well as marketing. As written in Inc., Gen-Zers, “want to see authenticity in marketing, including proof and a culture to back up claims of strong company values.” 67 percent agreed that ‘being true to their values and beliefs makes a person cool,’ and they feel the same about brands.

Additionally, brands must not only show authenticity but also operate in accordance with the values they espouse. “If a brand advertises diversity but lacks diversity within its own ranks, for example, that contradiction will be noticed.”, explains McKinsey and Company.

Connecting with authentic influencers is one effective way to engage audiences. Influencers can also help your brand to be more creative, bringing fresh ideas no one else inside your organization may have thought of before. According to the Swiss Influencer Marketing Report 2020, about half of the marketing managers surveyed estimate the return on investment of their influencer campaigns to date to be higher than with alternative forms of advertising.

Experiment and Determine What’s Most Effective

Experimenting is vital in the quest for authenticity. Marketers cannot just assume they know what people want to hear — they must get the facts. Test ideas and gather input from a representative sample of your audiences. As you test, vary not only the content of your message, but a wide variety of attributes, such as:

Channels: Email, social media platforms, Point of Purchase (POP) displays
Themes: Current events, holidays, leisure activities
Topics: Individuality, environmental sustainability, social justice
Media: Text, videos, images
Social media formats: lives, stories, IG TV, Tiktok and reels videos, interactive polls, forums

Step outside the box.

Creativity and Authenticity. Experiment and Determine What’s Most Effective — @thefashionfraction for Samsung Switzerland Campaign

The accessibility of measurable results enables marketers to shift gears quickly and further boost the most successful campaigns. Additionally, working with creative experts such as Kingfluencers can infuse additional creativity into your experimentation repertoire and boost your outcomes.

Highlight Sustainability

According to a Facebook-commissioned study of 11,300 people across 11 countries, 68% of Gen Z expect brands to contribute to society. Influencer marketing can be an effective medium for brands to highlight their positive efforts, such as environmental sustainability. Kingfluencers ran a campaign with Evian highlighting the brand’s sustainability efforts with the hashtag, #bottlesmadefrombottles. Posts from influencers including Elvira Legrand achieved engagement rates as high as 4.15%.

Patagonia, an American manufacturer of outdoor clothing, pays a “self-imposed Earth tax,” 1% of sales, to support environmental nonprofits working to defend our air, land, and water around the globe. The company also leverages user generated content to build strong connections with consumers. As one Patagonia fan writes on Medium, “I love when brands use photos from their fans or ambassadors. I think it does a really good job of creating a relationship between the brand and the consumer, and makes them feel like they are appreciated by the brand… By posting the photos and giving credit to the photographer they [Patagonia] are not only getting breathtaking photographs, but also making their customers feel like part of the family.”

Make Campaigns Interactive and Collaborative

Brands that are more creative achieve better results, specifically:

Increased engagement
More conversions
Better customer loyalty

Social media, in particular, provides brands with the unique opportunity to make campaigns interactive and collaborative. By incorporating user-generated content and encouraging participation and interaction, campaigns become conversations rather than brand monologues.

For example, CoverGirl partnered with eight TikTok influencers to boost product awareness among Gen Z. The campaign encouraged audience interaction with the content by incorporating lip-syncing, one of the central engagement drivers on TikTok. The #CleanFreshHype branded campaign generated over 6.5B impressions and a 5.7% engagement rate.

User Generated Content and Other Sources

While influencers are an effective vehicle for connecting to your audience, they can also contribute their subject matter expertise and collaborate with you to develop creative campaign ideas. Creative ideation can be done either independently by an influencer or together with brands.

Additionally, social influence marketing includes more than professional influencers and content creators.

A wide range of individuals can contribute to your marketing efforts, such as employees, CEOs and other leaders, and consumers.

User Generated Content and Other Sources

User Generated Content (UGC) from brand fans and advocates can be very valuable and boost community engagement.

Most influencers have a high degree of specialized expertise. Their dedicated focus helps them earn big followings. As subject matter experts, they’re uniquely qualified to bring fresh, creative ideas to your brand’s marketing.

Creativity thrives on many platforms such as TikTok, helping the most creative users rise to the top. By tapping into their creative energy, you can collaborate to generate content that hits the right notes and truly engages.

Influencers Can Generate Content, Connect with Your Audience, + Both

And, of course, influencers can serve as channels to connect with your audience, sources of content creation, or both. For International Women’s Day, Microsoft leveraged one group of renowned adventure photographers for content creation and another group of established social media accounts to distribute and promote the images. The campaign, which aimed to encourage young girls to work in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), featured photographs accompanied by authentic stories. The posts were sponsored on five of National Geographic’s Instagram channels, reaching 91 million total followers.

Kingfluencer’s own Chief Influence Officer Anja Lapčević, commented on the role of influencer marketing in making connections and forming relationships.

The nice thing about our work is that we always create relationships. The same principle applies here as in a love story: if the chemistry and values are right, the result is love. Love from the influencer for the brand and back results in the love message to the consumer. We want to work with this principle, and I look forward to many more love stories at Kingfluencers. But as it is in love, the way there is not always easy. Not every relationship has a happy ending and therefore we are constantly working on it. Because we believe that in the end every pot will find its lid.

Author: Yoeri Callebaut, Chief Growth and Marketing Officer at Kingfluencers