Two of the biggest questions we are asked when it comes to influencer marketing campaigns are: “How can we measure the ROI?” and, “Will this lead directly to sales?” It is important to address these concerns, as influencer marketing can often be treated with suspicion by old-school marketers who expect to measure campaigns the same way they do for paid advertising, or by brand managers who worry about the return on their investment.
Influencer marketing is a cost-effective way to reach a highly targeted audience of consumers, generate brand awareness, build audiences across multiple social platforms and ultimately drive customer action through digital influencers. With brands vying more and more for consumer attention, influencer marketing campaigns offer a way for brands to tell their story and create a conversation without just telling consumers what to do. The public no longer trusts advertising!
Influencer marketing does have the potential to deliver an impressive return on investment. The influencer marketplace Tomoson recently conducted a poll of marketing professionals that found that businesses averaged $6.50 in revenue for each $1 spent on influencer marketing. Thirteen percent of those businesses make $20 or more dollars for each $1 spent. Software company TapInfluence based on their collaboration with Nielsen found that means influencer marketing campaigns deliver 11x the ROI of all other digital advertising, creating $285 in incremental sales per 1,000 views. Tomoson also found that marketers rate influencer marketing as their fastest-growing digital customer-acquisition channel, largely outpacing display advertising and email marketing.
The fact is, creating beautiful content for your brand no longer needs to rely on expensive shoots and budgets to distribute the content. Instead, influencers handle both content creation and distribution for a much more cost effective rate to deliver the highest ROI possible. The key is collaborating with influencers on how to best incorporate trackable hashtags and links in ways that feel authentic to their feed and will resonate with a specific audience. This, combined with analysis to track upticks in website views means brands can analyse the impact of the influencer activity and tailor campaigns in real-time in a way traditional marketing cannot.
If executed the right way, influencer marketing campaigns can result in significant returns. But don’t just take our word for it. We have picked out two recent examples where influencer marketing campaigns have delivered success for brands:
A Legendary Movie Opening:
In 2015, comedian and popular Viner and YouTuber, Stuggy, created a Facebook video that generated buzz around the release of StudioCanal’s gangster thriller Legend. To emphasize the comedic nature of the film, Stuggy created a humorous video about meeting his fake twin. In just seven days the video garnered 1,100,000 views, 18,000 shares and established an engagement rate of 2%, which is 1.8% higher than StudioCanal’s average trailer engagement rate. Legend opened at Number 1 in the UK, and was the biggest ever September UK opening, taking more than The Wolf of Wall Street and Mad Max.
Hunger Cry Boosts Yogurt Sales By 12%:
Danio wanted to create a fun and disruptive campaign to persuade men to think of Danio yogurt as their preferred afternoon snack. Comedic YouTuber Anto Sharp created six videos letting out his renowned “Hunger Cry” at 4pm snack time, whilst enlisting his audience to create and share videos of the same. 400 “Hunger Cry” videos were shared and his videos resulted in 5 million views. Anto’s Facebook alone videos resulted in 3.3 Million Views. The ROI for Anto’s videos results in 97p per 1,000 Facebook Views compared to an average of 35 pounds per 1,000 Facebook views for paid media. Danio reported a 12% average increase in Danio yogurt sales as a direct result of the campaign.