BIGCOMMERCE + THE OUTLOUD GROUP
Updated: Nov 14, 2019
the power of YouTube influencer marketing
OUR OWN BRAD HOOS TALKS ALL THINGS YOUTUBE INFLUENCER MARKETING WITH BIGCOMMERCE. HERE’S A BREAKDOWN:
While reading the whole blog post is recommended, we wanted to share a quick summary!
FIRST, LET’S START WITH A CLEAR ANSWER TO A COMMON QUESTION: WHAT IS INFLUENCER MARKETING?
Influencer marketing is word of mouth marketing at scale. People trust what influencers say and which products and brands they recommend. Their audiences are extremely engaged and accessible -- not sitting behind the Netflix paywall or browsing with the “help” of an adblocker.
That being said, it’s really important to set your campaign objectives. Depending on whether you are focused on driving acquisition, building awareness, or looking to do both, you’ll want to work with influencers on different platforms.
ONCE YOU’VE ALIGNED ON OBJECTIVES, IT’S TIME TO THINK THROUGH METRICS AND THE TYPES OF CONTENT YOU WANT TO PRODUCE.
While we have an entire YouTube series (Thinking Outloud) dedicated to the topic of optimizing influencer campaigns, it's important to understand that influencers have a strong and unique connection with their audience and every campaign must honor that relationship.
One thing that we commonly see with brands that are engaged in influencer marketing is the creation of “direct response” ads -- which includes a unique link (or promo code) to the brand’s site. Therefore, Youtube as a platform offers both a visual branding opportunity and attributable traffic to your site. It educates consumers about your brand while driving conversion at the same time.
We won’t try to cover everything that’s needed to run a successful influencer campaign in one blog post, but Brad does dive into four brand examples of Youtube Influencer Marketing done right in the BigCommerce post. With just a little imagination, I’m sure you’ll quickly start to see how your brand could benefit. These examples include Warby Parker, KiwiCo, Lowe’s and 23&Me.
Lastly, the blog contains reminders about creative control in the business, the ins and outs of identifying and pitching Youtube influencers, how to avoid the 5 most common pitfalls when using influencers (hint: they are not celebrity endorsers), and 7 ways to measure the success of a campaign.
WHILE WE’VE BEEN EVALUATING INFLUENCERS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF BRANDS, IT'S IMPORTANT TO KEEP IN MIND THAT SUCCESSFUL PARTNERSHIPS ARE A TWO-WAY STREET.
Influencers need to feel like they are benefitting significantly from association with your brand. This means creating a way to ensure the influencer is excited to work with you -- it might be personal experience or a strong rate -- but whatever it is, it’s important for influencers to be genuinely excited about the brand.
Check out the post on BigCommerce if you've made it this far and haven’t already and remember that at the end of the day, authenticity is most important to any influencer campaign.