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Digital was the movement of the early 2000s. Today, digital mobile is the new black. According to an analysis by Cloud Rock Asia, 3.5 million people in Singapore are on Facebook. Of these 3.5 million users, over 90% or 3.2 million access Facebook via their mobile devices. Following this trend, 1.9 million people in in the country are Instagram users, bearing in mind that Instagram is optimized and predominantly accessed on mobile devices. With social media reigning the marketing arena, brands are now pumping huge marketing dollars into influencer marketing. Touted as a more ‘native’ and ‘genuine’ approach to social media marketing, it often begs the question: Am I doing it right? Read on to find out how to bring your A-game to influencer marketing, as well as the pitfalls and how to avoid them.
Do not err on the side of judgement, thinking that engaging someone with 100k followers for your social media marketing campaign will yield better results than engaging someone with a smaller following.
Instead, focus on getting ‘quality’ influencers who are effective in their campaigns. One way to find out if the influencer is not just a pretty face is to do a quick look through the comments section of their social media posts. Engaging and effective influencers generally have more comments that are not just compliments but actual comments / questions about the brand / product they are promoting.
Some may call this ‘stalking’ but it is important to ‘study’ the potential influencer to make sure that his / her personality fits your brand image and value.
Case in point: Scott Disick’s BooTea campaign on Instagram
With a 20.1m following on Instagram, it is no wonder BooTea wanted notorious playboy and alcoholic Scott Disick to be a part of their influencer campaign to promote their product. They probably should have seen the red flags with Scott Disick constantly being in the public eye for his crazy parties and immoral behaviour. BooTea, however, still went ahead with their decision to engage Scott, and truth be told, it wasn’t a good move at all. Just take a look at the screenshot of his post below.
It is clear. He made no effort to edit or personalise the post. This negatively affects BooTea as influencers are a reflection of the brand. Being an influencer is synonymous with being a brand ambassador.
Similarly, you do not want to engage someone who posts pictures of themselves in animal fur / leather to be an advocate for a PETA campaign.
Sometimes, getting an influencer who belongs to the same age group as your target audience may not be the right strategy as it all boils down to his / her followers. If your brand / product is targeted at teenage girls, someone like Taylor Swift, whose followers are mostly girls aged 13 - 18, would be the most relatable to your target audience. However, follower age group alone is not enough to determine the right influencer for your brand. You must ensure that the influencer’s image is fitting to your brand.
Don’t just stop at an instagram post - move on to blog posts, videos, event activations. Once the audience has placed a face to the brand, the effectiveness of subsequent campaigns with the same influencer will be amplified, leading to a greater ROI for your marketing campaign.
Tesla combines social media and video marketing in the following post:
The Instagram post functions as a teaser or prelude to their main content, much like how an eDM works for content marketing.
Above all, don’t bend the rules. All the effort of researching, strategising and planning will go to waste if you do not comply with the regulations. You do not want to risk your brand receiving bad press for non-compliance, or your post being taken down for similar reasons.
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