Influencer Marketing Solutions to Generate More Sales

To stand out on the Internet and optimize their visibility, brands must rise above the advertising noise (accidental media exposure) and distinguish themselves from competing companies.

Influencer marketing allows for the promotion of products or services without the intrusive aspect of advertising. As the message is conveyed by one or more content creators to their audience, it appears more authentic and less promotional. This directly impacts customer purchasing behavior. Influencer marketing is therefore a real lever for online businesses to promote their brands and products on the Web, generate more sales, while providing reassurance to consumers.

Is influencer marketing a profitable strategy? How to identify the right influencers for your brand? How to contact these influencers? How to collaborate and manage relationships with them? And most importantly, what is the best influencer marketing solution available on the market?

Discover everything you need to know about influencer marketing to generate more online sales, as well as the different influencer marketing solutions that exist on the market.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer Marketing: Definition

Influencer marketing involves a brand relying on opinion leaders, content creators, or reference sites to communicate or promote its company, products, or services. It’s also referred to as e-influence.

Since the rise of social media, influencer marketing has taken an important place in brand communication strategies. “93% of marketing managers use influencer marketing”, according to a SocialPubli study, 2019.

Influencer marketing is primarily practiced on social networks, with Instagram and YouTube leading, and now TikTok, which is experiencing exponential growth.

Why integrate influencer marketing into your communication strategy?

1 – Everything You Need to Know About Influencers to Develop Your Influence Campaign Strategy

Different Types of Influencers to Serve Different Objectives

Depending on its notoriety, budget, and objectives, a brand will call upon different types of influencers. We distinguish 4 types of influencers:

• Nano-influencers: they have less than 10,000 followers in their community, with whom they are very close, their engagement rates are high. The cost is low, they often accept collaboration in exchange for free products;

• Micro-influencers have between 10,000 and 100,000 followers. Their audience is very segmented and their engagement rate is high. The quality of content varies significantly depending on the content creator;

• Macro-influencers have an audience between 100,000 and 1 million followers. Their audiences are multiple and they benefit from high visibility. Their content is of quality but their engagement rate is lower;

• Mega-influencers, with more than 1 million followers, are generally celebrities, athletes, artists, but they may have also become known solely through social networks like Instagram or through reality TV. They are professional influencers. They have a large audience, their reach is significant, as are their rates, even if their engagement rate is much lower.

Contacting and Collaborating Long-term with Influencers

The approach to contacting a content creator (or influencer) will differ depending on the size of their community. You must take the time to select influencers prior to your influence campaign, and this can take time. You indeed need to study their tone, their content, their community, their engagement statistics as well as their areas of expertise…

To facilitate this time-consuming step, you can go through an agency or sponsored influencer marketing solutions (Traackr, Influence 4 You), unsponsored ones (Trustt) or marketplaces (Octoly, Hivency). This way, you ensure that you only collaborate with influencers who have a real affinity with your brand and its products.

Over time, you can build lasting relationships with some of them. This is often more beneficial than “one-shot” collaborations.

According to a Hubspot study, “92% of consumers trust content published by an individual more than content published by a brand”.

With this recurring technique, the influencer’s community will be exposed to your brand repeatedly, which will develop their trust in your products. The benefit: improved visibility and awareness, as well as customer reassurance, and consequently, increased sales.

2- Influencer Marketing Solutions

In terms of “influencer marketing, several platforms compete to offer all-in-one solutions to help launch campaigns with influencers. With the proliferation of influencer marketing solutions, it can” be complicated to choose the solution best suited to one’s needs. Here are the different influencer marketing solutions available on the market and their characteristics.

Sponsored Influencer Marketing Solutions

Traackr

Traackr is a sponsored influencer marketing solution that supports brands in managing and measuring their influencer marketing performance.

Traackr is an AI-based solution that helps identify the most relevant influencers for the brand based on their audience, relevance, engagement rate, and ability to deliver measurable statistics. Traackr allows brands to collaborate with content creators through an interface to manage campaigns, measure their impact, and track results. In terms of pricing, Traackr offers monthly subscriptions to its clients based on the scope of their platform usage and their training and support needs. However, Traackr cannot guarantee campaign results.

Influence 4 You

Influence 4 You is an influencer marketing solution that allows brands to find influencers / content creators based on several criteria: their audience, profile (and area of expertise), content, and collaboration history. With the Influence 4 You platform, brands can contact influencers, track performance, and measure the ROI of influencer campaigns. To generate revenue, Influence 4 You takes a commission on each influencer campaign carried out between the brand and the influencer. Given the wide variation in content quality and influencer engagement, campaign success remains unpredictable.

Influencer Marketplaces

Hivency

Hivency is an influencer marketplace that allows brands to collaborate with influencers to promote their products or services. Brands can find influencers based on their field of activity through Hivency’s algorithm, which works by analyzing data from influencers and brands to match them. The Hivency marketplace also offers project management, campaign tracking, and reporting tools to measure the performance of each influencer campaign. Hivency generates revenue by taking a commission on each collaboration between a brand and an influencer. This commission varies depending on the collaboration and services used. However, since Hivency is an intermediary, the quality of collaboration between the content creator and the brand remains unpredictable.

Octoly

The influencer marketplace Octoly is an influencer marketing solution that aims to connect brands with content creators on social networks such as YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Brands can select influencers based on their niche sector, audience, and engagement to promote their products. Octoly provides brands with tools to manage influencer marketing campaigns, particularly regarding briefs for content creation and performance measurement. Octoly generates revenue by charging brands for the use of the platform and by taking a commission on payments to influencers.

The Non-Sponsored Influencer Marketing Solution Trustt

Trustt is an all-in-one SaaS community engagement software: it allows brands to install an ambassador program on their website, in order to run ambassador campaigns (also called “missions”) and offer content creators and interested consumers the opportunity to receive products / test their services or organize brand events.

The benefits and uses are numerous:

• Gathering complete consumer insights through the questionnaire addressed during the campaign application (knowledge of the target audience, information on expectations and needs, as well as consumption habits);
• Launching product missions or event missions, public or private (by invitation);
• Ability to distribute “mystery product” missions before launch, to test the formulation and receive complete feedback;
• Selection of the most qualified ambassadors for the mission: content creators (sorted by their audience, engagement rate, information on their area of expertise, etc.) and engaged consumers (sorted and filtered according to their questionnaire responses);
• Management of product shipping, automatic email follow-up tools;
• Mass collection of authentic and comprehensive text or video reviews on product pages and/or e-retailers;
• Distribution of high-quality UGC on social networks: Instagram posts / stories, TikTok or YouTube videos, blog articles, etc.
• Provision of a community CRM to segment, map, and identify all sourced contacts (influencers, ambassadors, newsletter subscribers, champion customers, etc.).

Here is the type of UGC video reviews produced by ambassadors and content creators using the Trustt solution, to be added under product pages or used for converting Social Ads:

3 – Increasing Sales, the Primary Objective of Influence Marketing

Influence Marketing and Sales Increase: Key Figures

Generating online sales has become the primary objective of influence marketing. According to a 2019 Rakuten study, “80% of consumers have already made a purchase following an influencer’s recommendation”. As a result, “66% of brands plan to increase their budget dedicated to digital influence marketing strategy” (Influencer Marketing Hub study, 2021) as the return on investment is better than with traditional media.

With influence marketing, 1€ invested brings in an average of 18€ (2018 figure). The ROI of influence marketing is therefore particularly profitable, namely 11 times higher than that of other media and marketing channels.

These figures speak for themselves; influence marketing has become an essential medium for generating more sales. The reference platform for influence marketing is the social network Instagram, with a dual entry for sponsorships and content: posts and stories. 97% of marketing managers invest in this social network and 79% on YouTube, which is the 2nd most important influence platform. Note: 34% of Instagram users have purchased a product following an influencer’s advice!

Generating More Sales with Influence Marketing: Tips

Here are some recommendations to maximize your return on investment and generate more sales through influence marketing:

• Combine your influence marketing campaigns with media campaigns on social networks: for example, retargeting campaigns of influencers’ followers;
• Favor long-term partnerships with influencers: you will benefit from more attractive rates, and the repetition among followers will have a positive impact on your brand’s top-of-mind awareness;
• Opt for content co-creation with influencers: going further in the relationship with them allows you to benefit from quality content, more incentivizing for the purchase decision, such as a detailed product review,
• Share the content produced by influencers on your social networks to amplify their reach and strengthen the connection with them;
• Moving beyond social media to amplify the impact of collaboration with influencers: co-creating a product with a content creator, organizing an event with identified talents…;
• Follow marketing trends and social media trends to reference them, whether it’s a popular hashtag, a new feature on a specific social network, a song, or a specific format (unboxing, before/after, dance, etc.);

With these tips and best practices for influencer marketing, you’re ready to launch high-performing influence campaigns to generate more online sales and increase brand awareness. Remember to track your KPIs to evolve your influencer marketing strategy if necessary and find the ideal solution!