Road to 2020: 5 Influencer Marketing tips to ace New Year

Julie Kriegshaber from Chtrbox traces the journey of digital marketing in 2019 and shares influencer marketing tips that will help brands get it right in 2020.

The influencer marketing industry is moving so quickly, and what worked in 2019 is old news already. With Instagram removing likes, TikTok and regional platforms on the rise, advancements in AR and technical capabilities, and new sponsorship disclosure requirements – 2020 is shaping up to be a whole new world. At Chtrbox, we’re happy to see Influencer Marketing grow & evolve, and are sharing our lessons and influencer marketing tips for you for a successful 2020.

Rethinking relationships with influencers

Influencers are masters of creativity and know their audiences better than any algorithm. Opening up your brand guidelines to allow influencers to have more fun is a sure-fire way of gaining more memorable and engaging content.  

And have you thought about how versatile influencers are? They can do so much more than posts – they can co-create your brand, attend your product launches, and partake in your other marketing assets, including TVCs and hoardings. 

Multidimensional, long-term repeated influencer use builds trust with audiences; as well as comfort and authenticity with the influencer when speaking about the brand.

If 2019 was about trying out
influencer marketing as an “add-on” experiment, we think that 2020 will show a
key shift in how to deeply integrate influencers across marketing plans and
that they will increasingly become the base for holistic marketing strategies
to a digitally savvy India.

The
bottom line:

• Consider giving open briefs to
  influencers that allow for their creativity to shine through, not just how to
  replicate your brand’s creative hashtag
• Look at long term partnerships with
  influencers (with considerations beyond digital) for both marketing &
  financial ROI
• Leverage your influencer marketing
  company to work on retainer to allow for smarter influencer retention and
  onboarding based on learnings and relationships as well as cost efficiencies
  (among many other benefits)

Evolutions in identifying & measuring real influence

A good starting point is to understand your influencers’ audiences and engagement history, as well as their bot followership and engagement. Based on objectives, we then recommend a blend of an organic v/s boosted campaigns to reach target audiences in the most meaningful way. 

For measuring performance, we recommend looking at sentiment analysis and product mentions, studies on who is engaging with content, and ultimately participation/click-throughs/downloads/conversions or brand recall studies depending on the objective.

In 2020, we’re looking forward to
having more data-driven conversations based on quantifiable learnings to
continue fueling investments in influencers.

The
bottom line:

• Ensure you are running measurable campaigns, and design lookalike experiments to try out variables, including testing reach & engagement ROI on organic VS boosted content
• Understand who is engaging with your content; not just overall audience reach demographics

Also read: Road to 2020: Content Marketing the 2020 way…

Rise of the regional

Yes, the younger regional audiences are very much online, and it is now possible to tap them. We’ve all seen Tiktok’s success in reaching tier 2/3 audiences, and now there’s the rise of Helo, ShareChat and other regional platforms – as well as regional influencers on Youtube and Instagram as well.

Co-created content with these top regional voices will play an integral role in mass-market brands, which will also be highly cost-effective due to the nascent stage of branded opportunities for these segments.

The
bottom line: Don’t assume that just because someone acts in regional movies, or comes from a specific region that their digital personalities and audiences too would be regional. Look at their content & data, subject matter and ultimately audience demographics, and who’s engaging with their content in order to make smart influencer choices. There are thousands of regional influencers who are KOLs and experts in Hindi, Tamil, Telegu, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi, etc

Small but mighty

As social commerce becomes more prevalent, where we’ve also seen big wins has been through our nano and micro-influencer programs that tap thousands of student ambassadors, moms or working professionals networks. Who better to recommend a product with trust than someone who you know and can relate to? With new capabilities to run scaled campaigns in the thousands; paired with unique links for attribution and easier conversions via swipe ups in stories – don't underestimate the power of the everyday man and woman!

The
bottom line:

• Are you truly optimizing for your specific objective? Are you getting a better ROI with 2 macro-influencers vs 1000s of nano influencers?
• If you looking to run sampling or trials, surveys or conversions – think small to think the scale.

King Video & The Importance of the Millisecond

The video will continue to rule all this year in all snackable forms from jingles to dance-offs to contest challenges and how-to videos. We know consumers lose interest after 10 seconds; meaning you need to achieve what you wanted to communicate down to the millisecond! Effective planning and creative concept trials are a must before going live.

The
bottom line:

• Should you have videos professionally produced or supported? Can it be used as another brand asset?
• Video Stories on Instagram is very cost-effective! All content conceptually disappears (or gets buried with new content) after 24 hours, so don’t worry that you won’t be able to show-off your Influencer’s Story. Save it & re-use it on your channels while tagging the influencer. Try out new formats of Stories on YouTube, Facebook, and even Whatsapp if relevant

We’re
also excited by the following trends we think will shape influencer marketing
in 2020:

• Engagement driven by technical innovations: While stickers & polls took off in 2019, we’re really excited to see new campaigns leveraging AR filters for fun, gamified & most importantly memorable, engagement (For example the recent Which Disney Character are you? filter that just went viral)

• Required sponsorship disclosures: The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI)
  looking at regulated influencer marketing ad disclosures, creating new opportunities
  for gaining authenticity and trust

• Growth of new influencer mediums: We see the rise of podcasts, Pinterest, Snapchat and other
  platforms as potential new highly-targeted ROI effective influencer marketing
  mediums

This article piece is authored by Julie Kriegshaber, COO, Chtrbox.