Over the past year you may have heard the term “influencer marketing” floating around the marketing and blogosphere worlds.
This relatively new form of guerrilla marketing has emerged from the intersection of public relations and social media, where the focus is less on the target market as a whole and more on a subset of individuals who maintain a strong social presence, whether that be online or offline. An influencer can be a journalist, blogger, academic, guru, or – sometimes – a celebrity. Many influencers have large numbers of followers and due to their social clout, have the ability to impact your business and your buyer’s decision-making process.
Why Does Your Brand Need Influencers?
For one simple reason: it drives powerful word-of-mouth marketing. When you align with an influencer, not only do they bring their audience, but they also bring their audience’s network as well. Because of the loyalty of their audience, an influencer has the ability to drive traffic to your site, increase your social media exposure, and help sell your product via word-of-mouth marketing.
Who’s doing it?
While some companies don’t want to let go of their outbound marketing practices, an increasing number of companies in the fashion/lifestyle, beauty, automotive, and food/beverage verticals have increased their focus and attention on influencers. Here are two recent examples:
Acura ILX
Late last year, Acura gave six influential millennial bloggers a new Acura ILX o drive around for a week, in return for them sharing their experiences online.
Acura identified trending influencers from within each of their consumer segments, and delivered a car and personalised experiences for each. For example, they sent LA Latina lifestyle blogger ‘Queen of Swag’ on a week-long Disney road trip, to test out the car.
The influencers blogged, tweeted, and YouTubed their experiences, and because they had such huge, highly mobilized audiences, the #WeekWithILX campaign spread like wildfire.
2. Cointreau
Triple Sec liqueur brand Cointreau created social media buzz about their brand ambassador, Dita Von Teese’s visit to India, where she launched her own cocktail CointreauSutra, but rather than launching a general social media blitz, they focused on Fashion, Luxury and Lifestyle influencers on Twitter and Facebook.
They reached out to ten influencers and a handful of bloggers (with 1000+ daily pageviews) to get the word out about the new cocktail. They enticed influencers to come to CointreauSutra parties and meet Von Teese, and then share their experiences with their online social networks.
At the end of the campaign, Cointreau enjoyed a whopping 7,480,171 reach across Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere.
Hotcow is a non-traditional creative agency that specialises in experiential marketing that goes viral. Our campaigns generate buzz through crowd participation, PR and content sharing. Contact us on 0207 5030442 or email us on info@hotcow.co.uk.
