For new brands, growing awareness and gaining the trust and credibility of consumers are two of the most important yet challenging marketing objectives. As an added constraint, most startups don’t have the budgetary flexibility to activate mega-influencers and celebrities that have national attention at their fingertips. However, new research from ACTIVATE found that smaller-tier, more accessible influencers are a top choice for marketers – they enable brands to tap into niche communities and offer superior engagement rates.
Surveying over 110 brand marketers, PR professionals, social media managers and agency executives, we found that 64 percent of marketers are choosing to utilize micro-influencers very often, as opposed to larger creators, mega influencers and celebrities. We also found that more than 44 percent of marketers are repurposing influencer-created content following a sponsorship, a practice that extends the ROI of an influencer campaign and can help startups attain valuable visual assets for future marketing use.
While mega-influencer content rights are often negotiated to steep rates, those of smaller tier influencers are more affordable, as the influencers themselves also benefit from the added exposure.
With this in mind, when developing an influencer campaign, it’s critical not to feel constrained to the most popular creators, and instead think out of the box and consider what factors will be most important to the audience you’re specifically trying to reach. When being thoughtful about how you’re implementing influencers, smaller creators can be just as impactful as their larger counterparts.
Let’s go through some of the most impactful emerging influencer strategies, to grow awareness, without growing debt.
Key influencer casting strategies to drive targeted impact
The recent impressive growth of the entire influencer marketing space has led to a broad diversification in the kinds, sizes and specializations of social content creators, meaning there’s more to consider when building out your inaugural influencer program, and you don’t have to feel limited to existing influencers. Here are a couple core strategies we’re seeing take hold successfully in the market that specifically address startups’ needs in terms of growing awareness, establishing brand credibility and reinforcing a young company’s core values and commitments.
Image via Getty Images / filo
Real-life relevancy: Consider creators with real-life expertise by trade or interest
Part of the broadening that we’ve seen taking place in the market has included an expansion in terms of who qualifies as an influencer. Now, we’re seeing a reversal back to the traditional meaning of an influencer, someone who wields knowledge and value to audiences in a particular space and distributes that value through their own channels.
More specifically, consider reaching out to individuals who have a full-time job in trade, and post content with relevance to their specialization. This kind of content creator is often highly accessible, as they’re not the kind of cookie-cutter influencer that receives hundreds of brand requests a day, meaning their prior sponsorship saturation isn’t high.
Our recent research found that over 51 percent of influencers who turn down sponsorship offers do so because of existing competitive partnerships – so reaching out to less saturated creators offers more safety in this regard.
However, creators with real-life expertise are also a perfect fit for new brands looking to establish themselves as reliable thought leaders in a certain field. Interior designers, chefs, stylists, and dermatologists are all common examples of trade experts who are being increasingly tapped as influencers for the authenticity and value they offer audiences through their content in their specialized fields.
In fact, we’ve found so much traction in this strategy that ACTIVATE has begun segmenting curated communities of influencers that specialize in different areas, such as “fitness and trainer pros” or “wine connoisseurs” to make finding these trade experts more accessible to the many companies looking to utilize them.
A key element to the success of utilizing influencers with real-life expertise is the credibility by association factor. Young brands strive to be seen as a leader in their space but lack any history of success or reliability for consumers to see and therefore feel safe in trusting. By associating with industry experts, that credibility is immediately established.
This approach is also particularly effective in helping young brands get the attention of audiences that are already immersed in relevant hobbies or interests by choice by following experts in the space, therefore product awareness is being delivered directly to those who will care about it most. For example, for a new protein products brand, utilizing many personal trainers with small to medium-sized followings is an effective way to gain traction across a community that has guaranteed relevance to the product, and thereby is more likely to convert.
We saw with our recent research that using a multitude of influencers per campaign is a strategy that’s finding success right now, with nearly 35 percent of marketers selecting 5-10 influencers as the average number they implement per campaign. This is a great example of how targeted micro-influencer strategies can be far more efficient than wide-scale national campaigns with the biggest celebrity spokespeople if implemented strategically.
Another advantage of utilizing creators with real-life expertise is the versatility in the value they can offer your startup throughout the partnership. We’re seeing companies taking more advantage of influencer partnerships by diversifying the ways they’re working with creators.
Our research found that over half of marketers are working with influencers on seeding and sampling programs, and nearly 20 percent are using them as experts for focus and survey groups. And this goes back to a key point we’ve seen time and time again; the best influencer marketing partnerships are not transactional content-payment relationships.
Especially in the case of real-life experts, they can offer your company much more than just a post. From event appearances and meet and greets to providing useful feedback on early-stage products and offerings based on their knowledge of the industry, the value of this kind of creator extends far beyond the content itself and for companies with limited marketing budgets, should be leveraged as much as possible.
To reach out to these real-life trade experts, offer a personalized and genuine message describing your interest in working with them, a little bit about your brand and what you foresee the partnership looking like. Because these individuals usually hold full-time jobs in trade, be sure to be specific about how you’d like to work together and what it would entail on both ends of the partnership.
When working together, keep in mind that they’re likely to need more guidance and clarification throughout the process. Be sure to be as specific and clear as possible surrounding all content guidelines, contracts and payment processes to ensure both parties are on the same page.
Hyper-local influencers: Activating creators that are geographically relevant for your target audience
Image via Getty Images / DisobeyArt
For startups with upcoming launch events, tours, or pop-ups, considering geographically-relevant creators can be far more impactful than simply reaching for the largest influencers you can afford. In fact, local influencers are a perfect tool for young brands seeking to dramatically grow awareness in specific areas.
You might be wondering – aren’t all influencers local to wherever they’re based? Not exactly, local influencers are content creators whose audience is primarily in the same centralized location and who’s content is uniquely tailored to that community.
These creators have strong ties with their respective localities and offer a highly targeted way to spread awareness in a particular location. They vary in cost depending on their size but as many cater to niche local followings, micro and nano-local influencers can be activated together to create an effective location-specific campaign.
So, when planning promotion for your startup’s first launch event, consider which social media creators have influence in the area, and whether you can tap several together to create a cohesive, and impactful drive of interest for your event.
These kinds of influencers represent a perfect way to maximize creator partnerships by taking it beyond just content creation. Since they are already located in your target area, you can take advantage by bringing them into your events or retail locations to share the experience with their audience.
Not only does this positively affect consumer sentiment towards your brand and reinforce the partnership, it also helps create a deeper relationship between your own marketing team and the influencer that can be incredibly valuable for any future collaborations together.
Mission-driven influencers: Utilizing creators aligned with a specific philanthropic cause or social initiative
In recent years, the growth of social activism by brands has been remarkable. Companies like Nike have shown just how much landing on the right side of a social issue can pay off with consumers, and topics like sustainability are now a constant conversation for brands in every sector.
With that in mind, it’s no surprise we’ve been seeing a notable increase in demand for content creators that advocate for specific philanthropic causes and social issues. On the flip side, we are also seeing incredible interest from influencers to work with non-profits or mission-oriented brands that align with their personal values.
These mission-driven influencers are particularly effective for companies looking to reinforce their brand values and dedication to social movements like sustainability, political activism and the like, as we’re seeing is increasingly important for many new brands today. For startups that are already coordinating activations such as planting a tree for every sale or giving away product to communities in need – influencers that align with this mission thematically can help shed light on these positive brand commitments to consumers.
For influencers committed to certain causes and issues, a brand partnership that aligns with these goals may have value to them beyond monetary compensation as well. Influencer and founder of Haute Hijab, Melanie Elturk said, “for me and the greater work I do in normalizing the hijab, brands offer much more than monetary compensation. When they share my posts on their social channels or even on their website, they’re helping me in my quest to normalize hijab in the mainstream.”
Startups balance a lot of challenges trying to get all of their brand messaging out to consumers at once and establish “who” the company is. Unfortunately, sometimes this means important aspects of their brand values and social commitments can often get lost in the copy.
Right now, social cause marketing is not only a positive impact factor that makes consumers feel good about supporting your company, it’s also a point that should help to foster additional awareness and press. Aligning with a creator that already has a channel to an audience who cares about the same issue as your startup, is the perfect way to get your name out there.
When beginning a partnership with mission-driven creators, there are a couple key points to keep in mind. First, issue-conscious creators typically only partner with brands that truly live and breathe a cause, and this is because they have the trust of their audience to maintain.
Similar to startups leveraging real-life trade experts and benefitting from that association, influencers are wary to partner with brands around social missions because they could be negatively impacted by the partnership if the company doesn’t stay true to their commitment. So, if you’re looking to partner with a sustainability influencer, be prepared from the outset to discuss how your products are sustainably manufactured, and your goals for minimizing the environmental footprint of the company for the future.
And it’s a two-way road, brands should also be conscious of creators. As we recently saw with Ariana Grande’s sponsored Starbucks drink recipe, consumers will readily call out both brands and creators if a partnership does not ring as authentic, especially so if there is a social-good component. So, when reaching out to social-mission influencers, do your homework, see if they’ve partnered with other brands and check out their engagement with their audience.
The value of a lifelong partnership
Influencer marketing has experienced such growth in popularity in recent years because it’s an effective way to sustain the attention of today’s niche audiences who prefer a recommendation from a real and influential person to a traditional advertisement. Audiences choose who they follow based on emotional connections and this human element of influencer marketing cannot be overstated in value.
For startups, the best time to begin influencer partnerships is early on when they can provide you the credibility, growth in awareness and foundational user base that is critical for young companies to succeed. By fostering deep relationships with creators who really believe in your brand and product, you end up with influential brand advocates who can provide assistance and advice throughout the life of the company and can grow alongside it in the partnership.