Just imagine the setting: beautiful spring evening, fun and energetic crowd and, as a background, the river Thamesshimmering in the twilight. No, it’s not the beginning of a great film, but the description of the view from MEC’s London office on the Southbank, where SoAmpli and other selected industry professionals were invited to celebrate the launch of Wavemaker, a new venture that brings together content creation and content distribution in highly innovative ways.
Given the topic at the centre of the evening, it won’t come as a surprise that a number of extremely exciting guests were invited to share their experience about collaborations, storytelling and the power of influence in the era of social media. Whether discussing the topic with BBC’s Reggie Yates (@REGYATES), X-Factor’s sensation Fleur East (@FleurEast) or fashion YouTuber Fleur de Force (@FleurDeForce), the conversation revolved around a few vital themes for the current digital marketing scene.
Whatever the brand, product service or idea that brands want to promote online, the fundamental phases of any successful strategy are two: content creation, first, and content distribution, right after that. These days, as we’re constantly bombarded by information and messages from all directions, cutting through the noise is becoming harder and harder. In order to be picked up, messages not only need to be excellent and unique in the way they’re crafted, but also extremely relevant to the audience they are aiming to reach.
As the guests at the Wavemaker launch discussed at length, an incredibly effective way to ensure relevancy for your messages is to embrace influencer marketing. But, as it’s often the case in life, great things rarely come easy. In order for influencer campaigns to be very effective, there are three golden rules that we should all keep in mind…
1. Who do you want to reach?
Influencer marketing success stories all begin with a good strategy to identify and nurture meaningful relationships with the “right” influencers. What do we mean by “right”? Well, these are popular individuals who are a natural fit for your target audience, people that are already talking and operating in the online community that YOU, as a brand, are looking to engage with.
2. A is for Authenticity
Once you’ve identified the right influencer, the one that will help you reach the perfect audience for YOU, it’s important to spend some time thinking about the message that you’d like the influencer to help you convey. A campaign that rings “forced” or unauthentic won’t be effective, so it’s very important to approach this stage of the relationship as a conversation, rather than a simple business negotiation. Keep in mind that influencers have built they’re follower base through a unique and personal approach that people have come to appreciate and trust. That same approach needs to be recognisable in any influencer’s promotion in order for it to “stick” with the target audience. Long story short: don’t approach influencers with a locked brief – let them add something personal to it. You’ll both benefit immensely from it!
3. This is what success looks like!
“If you don’t have metrics to support it, it never happened”. It may sound like a harsh attitude, but it’s the only one that can help you replicate successful strategies or quickly amend wrong assumptions. As conversations with influencers develop, think about what is the ultimate results you’d like to gain from the collaboration, and how you will be able to measure them. Those beautiful metrics called KPIs come in all shapes or forms, so it is extremely important to track the ones that are truly significant to your brand’s most critical goals.
SoAmpli turns sales teams into social selling stars, increasing sales and powering brands. Sounds interesting? Let’s have a chat: https://soampli.com/contact/demo
