You want to give more visibility to your company? You want to reach a targeted audience easily and increase your sales? You want to develop your digital presence and use innovative channels?
Our team of experts will help you to set up an influence marketing strategy in order to establish fruitful collaborations between your brand and the influencers in French-speaking Switzerland.
Society is marked by the development of digital technology: we observe the online presence of an ever-increasing number of users and a very rapid evolution of the means of communication. This development affects all areas of the company and has notably changed the fields of digital marketing and traditional communication. From now on, to reach their target in a relevant way, brands use new channels.
Influence marketing is one of them, it has existed for many years, but has now become unavoidable with the development of social networks, digital communication and webmarketing.
What is influence marketing?
Companies that use influencers use their reputation and/or expertise in a field to distribute content about their products or brand to promote them. These influencers therefore use their power of persuasion, like opinion leaders, to influence and direct the consumption patterns of their communities towards a particular product or brand.
Before making contact with influencers, the company must first define its target audience and the potential buyers of its products or services. It must also define a budget based on its objectives. Then, it must find the influencers who have an audience that corresponds to the defined target. Finally, it must contact them and agree on the implementation of the collaboration. The choice of influencers must also be made based on the analysis of its data (engagement rate, traffic generated, number of subscribers) which are available on certain platforms.
Influence marketing can be very profitable for the influencer, but often the remuneration granted to the influencer varies according to his notoriety, the type of campaign and the platform used. This type of marketing therefore benefits both the brand and the influencers who find a way to make a living from it. Brands that do not want to remunerate influencers for creating content on their products are increasingly frowned upon by influencers. However, there are different types of compensation such as product donation, travel or participation in events.
The influencer will therefore create content for the brand by giving his opinion on the product or service. The goal is that the influencer can provide an objective view of the use of the product and its quality.
There are different means used to carry out influence marketing operations, of which the main ones are :
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Products and services offered
After having determined the influencers that correspond to the brand, the brand sends him its products free of charge. The influencer is then invited to try the product and share his opinion with his audience. He can be invited to share a post with the product using a hashtag defined by the brand. The brand can also offer him to test services for free and promote them on its YouTube channel in video for example.
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Affiliate Marketing
This practice consists of brands paying a commission to the influencer who promotes the product according to the number of sales it generates. For this, often, the influencer will share with his community a code allowing them to get a discount on the brand’s website. Since each influencer has a different code, the company is able to determine the number of sales generated by each one.
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Invitation to an event
For the release of a new product, it is interesting to organize a launch event. Influencers having developed their audience by sharing their daily life, they will also share this experience with their community. To ensure visibility, the brand can create animations or reserve a special place for them to take pictures.
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Contest
The influencer organizes a contest for his community to win a brand’s products. In order to participate, the contest is often offered with a number of rules such as subscribing to the influencer’s Instagram account and the brand. In this way, the brand will benefit from the visibility of the contest and potentially allow the influencer to increase its number of subscribers.
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Sponsored articles
The influencer undertakes to publish against payment content, a post or article for example, on your brand or a particular product. The content may be produced by the influencer himself or he may be required to follow a brief produced by the company. If the content of the article is well worked out, it can also allow the company to turn it into an SEO action and thus enjoy the benefits of the article for a longer period of time.
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Product placement
The majority of brands that use this method are present on YouTube. They will sponsor the content of Youtubers that are not necessarily related to the brand but are committed to showing the product in their videos.
The list is not exhaustive and there are many other influencing actions.
It is during these operations that the relationship of trust intervenes which allows a very important conversion rate since the consumer pays particular attention to the advice of the influencer: 82% of Internet users say they follow them.
There is also a mimicry effect that leads the consumer to imitate the consumption habits of his influencer since most of the time he follows people he admires or whose values he shares.
How do you manage your relationship with the influencer?
The relationship between the brand and the influencer is very important since a good relationship can lead to a very fruitful collaboration in the long term, on the other hand, on the other hand, it can be very damaging to the brand. In 2019, 49% of companies fear that an influencer will damage their brand image. To ensure a good relationship, there are a number of important criteria to respect.
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The choice of the influencer
A campaign can be a failure if there is a lack of authenticity in the message communicated by the influencer. It is thus necessary to ensure the relevance of the collaboration with him, its audience, its adequacy with the values of the brand. The goal is to obtain the most natural collaboration possible thanks to a very precise targeting. A bad association could lead to the opposite of the expected objective, i.e. a mistrust of the brand by potential consumers because the influencer’s editorial line is not in adequacy with the desired digital communication. It is therefore important not to think only in terms of visibility but to be interested in other aspects such as the tone used by the influencer in his speech in order not to create dissonance.
To make your choice, there are platforms that make available the data collected on influencers in order to carry out an in-depth analysis of their profile.
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The preparation of the collaboration
Another success factor is the preparation of the collaboration between the two parties. Indeed, some influencers now denounce the unprofessional practices of the companies that contact them. The consequences can be very bad since this person denounces to a targeted audience and the brand can lose potential customers.
The preparation around the collaboration helps to avoid problems of understanding between the parties and to create a long term sustainable relationship. Collecting information on the influencer is essential to know in detail his personality and thus personalize the contact. The influencer will be more inclined to accept the partnership if he or she feels understood by the company in question and if the products will be well accepted by his or her community. He or she will not risk losing the trust of his or her audience with a product that does not suit him or her.
The best way to guarantee a smooth collaboration is to formalize all the elements on a collaboration contract, for example the duration of the campaign, the number of posts, the frequency of publications…
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The respect of its autonomy
Brands are used to having very strong control over their communication and marketing. Integrating influence marketing can be difficult since it has a part of spontaneity reserved for the influencer (which will vary according to the type of collaboration). This is where the success of this marketing lies since it allows to maintain authenticity and especially transparency with the consumer. Most influencers want to maintain the trust of their community and are therefore very resistant to produce a smooth and approved discourse upstream by the brand. In order to be sure to have a healthy relationship with the influencer, giving him/her autonomy and credibility allows him/her to show respect for his/her work and this is highly appreciated.
If the first criteria for the choice of the influencer is done correctly, then the company does not have to fear a high level of autonomy of its influencers.
Brands and influencers may find it difficult to set up collaborations and to understand how influence marketing works, so there are agencies specialized in bringing these two parties together, such as our agency influenceurs.ch.
Why use influence marketing?
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Better visibility
Knowing that 61% of consumers interact at least once a day with an influencer, it is important to know that influence marketing generates a lot of visibility for brands, especially if the campaign is carried out with relevant targeting. And 58% of professionals see an increase in their visibility thanks to influence marketing. (Sources: Rakuten Influencer Marketing global survey 2019 / infographic 84 Influencers Marketing Stats)
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Better efficiency
82% of professionals consider the leads generated by an influence marketing campaign to be of higher quality and 94% of marketing professionals consider influence marketing to be effective (source: Influencer MarketingHub)
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A high conversion rate
61% of consumers do not hesitate to click on a sponsored link recommended by an influencer to learn more about the product and 56% of Internet users say they made a purchase after seeing a publication posted by an influencer they follow. (source: Rakuten Influencer Marketing global survey 2019)
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An excellent return on investment
The ROI of influence marketing is 11 times higher than that of traditional advertising and generates an average of $7.65 for every dollar invested. (source: Infographie The Influencer Marketing Revolution)
Why call upon our marketing agency for the implementation of an influence marketing strategy?
Influence marketing is therefore a tool that allows to set up an effective marketing strategy and is used by a large part of companies (large groups/SMEs…). It allows to get in touch with a qualified audience in a more human way, to be able to create an innovative communication and to increase the digital presence of a brand.
In addition, the experts of our platform for connecting brands and influencers, Influenceurs.ch, will be delighted to offer support through our training on influence marketing. Do you want to implement an influence marketing strategy in your company or improve your web marketing strategy with influence marketing?
FAQ: influence marketing
What are the types of influencers within influencer marketing?
We find a specific name to classify the different types of influencers. Here they are:
- Nano influencers (between 1000 and 10,000 followers). A small community with a lot of interaction and a high engagement rate.
- Micro-influencers (between 10,000 and 100,000 followers). Specialized in a particular field with an engaged community.
- Macro-influencers (between 100,000 and 1 million subscribers). A very large community, sometimes international.
- Mega-influencers. These are public figures with sometimes millions of subscribers and a very large audience.
What are the best platforms for influencer marketing?
You’re probably wondering what are the best platforms for influencer marketing? Here are a few ideas of platforms that can surely help you:
- HypeAuditor
- Favikon
- Reech
- Findly
- Revfluence
- Heepsy
What are the statistics on influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing has been growing more and more in recent years. Brands have realized the power of this strategy to grow their business.
Here are some statistics on influencer marketing according to Hubspot:
- By 2022, the influencer marketing market would be worth $13.8 billion, 20 times more than in 2015.
- A positive review encourages 94% of Internet users to consume
- 87% of buyers have been convinced by an influencer to buy a product
