Influencer Marketing Toolbox: Amplification
When you ask someone on the street to define a “social media influencer” they may mention Kim Kardashian, or someone similar. Celebrities who are famous for being famous can claim amazing reach but are mega influencers worth the high rate they charge? Sometimes…if the product is a perfect fit and the campaign plans to leverage the partnership beyond a quick social post. But, working with celebrity influencers does not make sense for most influencer campaigns. It is exorbitantly expensive, and heavily reliant on vanity metrics like “reach” to justify spend. If your budget isn’t ready for the Superbowl, you need to maximize spend to your target audience and optimize for the desired KPIs through targeted native amplification. Why?
1. Native Advertising: Building your influencer content plan to include blog posts and video content from micro-influencers, and utilizing targeted Native Ads is a highly effective digital strategy. You’ve paid influencers to create content because they are good at it. After all, that is how they built a following. They have an authentic voice that resonates within your target audience…so why not put that incredible content to greater use? Native Ads appear as sponsored content on established and trusted media outlets. This allows your influencer-created content to fall into the view of your target audience in contextually relevant places. Native advertising platforms allow sophisticated targeting parameters and flexible payment terms to match your KPIs at a controlled budget.One note of caution: do not try to “polish up” influencer content to look more like a glossy advertisement or read like an AP-style article. Part of the magic in influencer content is relatability, and most people aren’t professional photographers or copywriters. The photos and videos should be executed well of course, but they should not have a high commercial production value, as they will read as “ads”. The rawness of influencer content is valuable. Resist the urge to over-edit. Instead, spend your time creating compelling call-to-action copy and headlines that complement the influencer’s style while directing the audience to act.
2. Social Boosting – Cutting Through the Algorithms: Social media platforms are constantly evolving their algorithms to prioritize which content users are being served. Algorithms have made it more difficult for influencers who have built an audience over the last decade to get their organic content in people’s feeds, as more priority has been placed on paid This makes placing ad spend behind influencer content a smart play. You are able to narrow the target audience to those you have identified as most likely to convert through your market research or push out to a broad audience for general awareness. Another benefit of putting ad spend behind influencer content on Instagram and TikTok is the ability to add a link out and call-to-action button. Now, rather than being limited to swipe ups in stories or the old “link in bio”, you have easily clickable content that will convert.
3. Further Down the Funnel: Another strategic benefit of putting ad spend behind influencer content is the ability to retarget. Following a boosted influencer content campaign, you can retarget the audience that engaged with the content and serve them with yet another ad that helps move them through the funnel to conversion.
In conclusion, don’t limit your influencer marketing to only the influencer’s audience. Strong, organic engagement and relatability will always be paramount in influencer marketing, but smart and efficient forms of amplification will help your campaigns achieve more flexibility and ultimately, better ROI.