Ohh Influencer Marketing (The Secret To Making It Work)
Nowadays, influencer marketing is at the forefront of any brand marketers mind. What started out as a rare and highly unstructured marketing strategy, has now budded into one of the most popular strategies used by brands of all sizes. Anything from local mom and pop sandwich spots to huge multinational companies like Coca-Cola are using influencers to drive awareness and sales for their brand.
Just like any other strategy, in order to remain effective, influencer marketing has had to evolve in its approach. Static content like photos and blog posts used to be effective, and in some cases still is, but there’s a beast that is taking the internet by storm… video. In this blog, Hollywood Branded explains why your brand needs video content to dominate influencer marketing, increase engagement and stand out from your competition.
Why Video?
As a brand marketer, hearing that video content is more popular than static content may not be all that surprising. But, you may be surprised to find out just how big video content is in comparison to its less animated counterpart.
So, what is it about video that makes it more desirable than photos? To understand this, we must first acknowledge that in recent years, there has been a massive influx in brands utilizing content marketing and influencer marketing as one of their main strategies. This means that the general public is consuming more content than ever before.
With that said, according to a recent study by Webpage FX, 80% of the content consumed online by 2019 will be video. Why is that? Well, video has the ability to captivate our attention in a way that photos simply cannot. There’s something about seeing and hearing images move across the screen that fills our psyche with glee. According to that same study, people actually retain 90% of a message when conveyed through video. For a brand marketer, these are the types of retention numbers one can only dream of.
Okay, So Why Influencer Marketing?
First, let’s take a second to think about what makes influencer marketing so effective in the first place. Unlike other media sources, influencers thrive on the basis of one key factor - trust. It is the perceived level trust that influencers are able to build with their audiences that makes this strategy so effective.
People look at influencers as more of a peer, or friend, as opposed to someone untouchable like a celebrity. Because of this, people are far more likely to engage with their posts and in some cases, increase their desire to purchase the product, message or service that the influencer is promoting.
It's A Marriage
With that said, if you take influencers and video content and smoosh them together, it’s a match made in heaven. The ability to authentically convey your brand’s message in a way that will make its viewers retain 90% of the information presented is what any brand marketer could dream of. This is what makes video content created by influencers one of the most effective ways for a brand to get their message out.
When we think of videos, we often think that they need to be long in order for a brand to properly get their message across. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, sometimes the shorter and more concise a video is, the more effective it can be. At the end of the day, we are humans living in the digital age… our attention spans are often times no better than that of a gnat. Some of the highest converting video ads are no longer than 5-10 seconds.
Sure, in some instances, a longer video may be necessary. However, in these cases, there’s typically a shorter video that’s used to drive traffic to the longer video. A perfect example is the Colin Kaepernick led Nike commercial that broke the internet earlier this year. Nike used a small snippet of the larger video and delivered it through different celebrities and influencer to drive people to go watch the larger video on their YouTube page.
Tech Is Supporting The Video Craze
Companies like Facebook and Instagram saw the impending video craze and put tools in place to support it. For example, in 2017, Zuckerberg decided to put video at the forefront of his two major social platforms, launching functions like Facebook Stories, Facebook Live, Instagram stories and Instagram live. These offerings make it very convenient for influencers to record high quality branded content.
In addition to Facebook and Instagram, ad tech companies have built out algorithms that allow users to shop video ads produced by influencers. In doing this, brands are able to provide its prospective customers a path for frictionless purchasing. One of the main concerns that brands have with influencers is their inability to be effective sales drivers. (Side note: influencers serve best as a PR extension for brand awareness and content creation). But, with the recent developments, influencers are now able to more easily drive sales using their content.
What Does This Mean Moving Forward?
If your brand isn’t already using video content as one of its main content strategies, we suggest you get started. It can be as simple as asking your partnered influencers to create an Instagram story about your brand instead of just a static post on their feed. The conversion numbers that your brand will receive will be significantly better than photos.
When choosing an influencer to work with, be sure to pay close attention to the type of video content that they’ve created in the past. Just because someone has a high follower base doesn’t mean that they’re good on video. Look at the style of their videos and see if you think it will resonate with your consumer base.
Ready...Set... Go!
If you are ready to embark on your travels in the world of influencer marketing, you have two options: go it alone, or reach out to get an agency to help. Our team is always happy to provide thought starters and help with strategy, or assist (or fully activate!) your next influencer marketing campaign. Reach out to us to schedule time to talk with one of our team influencer specialists.
Check out some of our other blogs our team has written below:
- 4 Reasons Why Influencer Marketing Still Works
- 7 Secret Social Acronyms Brands Need To Know For Influencer Posts
- How Much Kim Kardashian Charges For An Instagram Post
- 8 Steps To Leverage Celebrity Talent To A Brand’s Advantage
- 3 Examples Of Influencer Marketing Gone Wrong
Interested in working with influencers? Then we have the course for you! Enroll in our Influencer Marketing School to learn how to best leverage influencers for your brand!
