I recently had the pleasure of hosting a webinar with two impact.com partners: Lydia Perrin, Affiliate Specialist at B&Q, and Julia Salume, Influencer Marketing Lead at Moburst. There’s always so much to learn from our partners, but on this occasion, I wanted to boil it down to eight pearls of wisdom:
1. Influencers need to go where brands will find them
Discovery is the first part of the process, but it is also perhaps the most critical, and influencers need to be aware that different types of contractor can have very different methods.
Lydia’s team at B&Q employs a couple of different techniques, using a mix of influencers that are variously obtained through agencies or recruited via impact.com’s partnership marketplace.
When you are looking for appropriate partners, the partnership management platform is great for filtering by various macros, such as geographical location. Lydia Perrin, Affiliate Specialist at B&Q
B&Q doesn’t tend to engage influencers that reach out for a collaboration, she added. "There’s simply not enough time in the day to triage everyone and see if they’re a fit."
2. Performance is often worth more than sheer scale
In contrast, Moburst is always keen to hear from influencers that see value in working with its clients, and has repeatedly used certain influencers that have proved a hit across various client accounts.
Julia doesn’t view follower numbers as hugely important. "The focus is mainly on performance," she said. "We’d rather use a smaller creator with higher average views than an influencer with a huge following but less impressive engagement rates."
3. Money matters
One sticking point both Julia and Lydia repeatedly encounter is influencer payments. Lydia said, "Quite often, creators aren’t as financially organised as they should be. Before engaging an influencer, marketers need to ascertain whether the creator is VAT-registered, and where they are geographically located for financial compliance reasons.2
Julia noted this has often been a problem with influencers just starting out, "or micro-influencers with little experience of the partnership economy."
4. Get the brief right. Repeat: get the brief right
Briefing a campaign correctly in the first place saves infinite amounts of trouble down the line. "From the get-go, it’s critical to have a solid brief for the campaign that will prevent loads of back and forth and endless questions from both brand and influencer," said Lydia. "Being ultra-clear on budgets is also critical, as are expectations regarding deliverables."
Being clear on usage rights from the start is also essential, Julia notes, as is agreement on content amends/revisions and - in the worst case - when is it acceptable and appropriate to call for a redraft or reshooting.
And while a clear and thorough brief is vital, it also needs to leave enough space for a creator to pick it up and run with it. "One of the greatest challenges when engaging an influencer is working collaboratively to create a fantastic product," said Lydia. "The key is to trust the creator to deliver a brand's message authentically, but in their own way. A content concept is a great way to ensure everyone is on the same page at the beginning of a campaign."
5. Major on metrics
Analysis is a critical part of any digital marketing campaign, and influencer marketing is no different. "Influencer marketing is a consideration channel," said Julia. "Consumers need to be exposed to an ad three times before taking action, so I look for the metrics that indicate an audience is after more information as a result of the content. If it’s a YouTube video, for example, I look at watch rate; if it's IG Stories, I look at the click-through rate."
B&Q uses engagement and reach metrics, but it also looks at web traffic and generated sales. "They essentially mirror the KPIs that a traditional affiliate programme uses," said Lydia. "We get much of the performance data through the impact.com partnership management platform, but I also recommend creators supplying their own performance metrics to have two versions of the data."
6. Creative freedom for creators: a principle that bears repeating
We touched a little on this earlier, but it’s a hugely important topic. If brands could do what creators do, they wouldn’t need creators. So give your talented partners room to breathe.
"Working with creators is about finding a middle ground where a brand is happy with a campaign’s message, but the creator feels the content they’re producing is authentic to them," said Julia. "Brands that are too heavy-handed in trying to control an influencer's output will strain the relationship, while also facilitating content that is compromised because it lacks a creator's natural authenticity. Lose-lose, in other words."
7. The three things brands look for in their content
It’s simple, according to Lydia. "There are three things that brands want their content to be: high-performing, cheap and beautiful. In reality, most of the time you can only get two of those things, so you need to decide which are the most important. For example, if you need to quickly produce Black Friday content, and you want it to perform and look great, it’s unlikely to be cheap." And needless to say, if you want it cheap, it might not be beautiful - unless you’re willing to sacrifice performance, and who is?
In summary
In a sector that has been empowered and liberated by technology but which relies inherently on the appeal of real people, some tech developments can enhance, while others may jeopardise the very essence of what we’re doing. Julia and Lydia agreed that the role of bots and AI in influencer marketing should be very limited, especially when it comes to content creation. "Losing the human touch is dangerous and it means you risk both credibility and authenticity," said Julia. "Keep your content human-created."
Copyright 2024. Featured post by San Sareen, Regional Vice President EMEA at impact.com. Thanks also to Lydia and Julia for their time and expertise. Find the full schedule of webinars here.