Author: Mark

 

Unpacking the era of Influencer Marketing by Ronel De Kock, Media Planner at The MediaShop

Influencer marketing is a form of communication which identifies individuals that have influence over potential buyers, then focuses marketing activities around these influencers – mainly online.

This kind of marketing uses the influence or reach that an individual has on social media to create awareness or hype around a particular brand. This can be very beneficial for brands as it captivates audiences by using individuals that consumers know and trust. As a result, marketers are finding influencer investments to be not only worthwhile but necessary. Marketers are also choosing to embrace turnkey providers such as Indahash or Webfluential for managing influencer marketing programmes as well as influencers themselves.

In the last few years, influencer marketing has grown exponentially, from being a mere tactic to being an important part of a company’s marketing budget. A study by Linqia found that 39% of marketers were planning to increase their influencer marketing budgets for 2018 and research shows that influencer marketing can provide a 960% return on investment making it an integral part of any marketing strategy.

Globally this marketing tool is being hailed as the next big thing in the marketing industry with one of the biggest advantages being authenticity. The desired target market is more receptive because it is coming from an ‘ordinary’ person they have an established social media relationship with, making the product placement seem more like a referral from a friend rather than an ad.

There are two main types of influencers, those being micro and macro influencers. The distinct difference between the two is that micro Influencers are ‘everyday’ people with less than 10,000 followers. A micro influencer will often ‘apply’ to become an influencer. Platforms such as Tribe and Takumi are communities of individuals who pride themselves on aesthetic social media accounts. These kinds of people usually have a good eye for photography and promoting content.

Macro Influencers are the famous household names. These kinds of people are often celebrities who have tens of thousands or even millions of followers. They are approached by a brand to feature their product or service on their social media profiles, with a contextual caption mentioning the brand.

By using macro influencers, a brand is positioned in front of millions of people. It’s great for visibility and awareness.In a world of DStv catch ups and Netflix where people are actively avoiding ads, influencers fill the gap by speaking to a target market in a way that exposes them to your product that they can relate to without it feeling like an ad. At the end of the day, influencer marketing provides brands with a new age form of word of mouth.

So, now you know the difference, let’s go through the pros and cons of both. These are important to know, especially if your brand only has time (and/or budget) for one.

The Pros of Micro Influencers

They’re authentic: micro influencers work in a similar way to word of mouth – when they share a photo on Instagram of them enjoying a nutribar snack after a workout, you don’t question it (even if their photos are sometimes a little staged).

It’s often easier to believe that a micro influencer has actually bought or used a featured product. They tell you the nutribar is delicious and it’s high in protein, so you make a mental note of the brand.

This kind of authenticity attracts engagement, awareness and brand recall. So, the next time you go to buy a snack, you remember that extra yummy brand name you saw on Instagram (it looked so good!). It’s cost effective and more affordable than macro influencers.

Not all of the available influencer platforms give the brand rights to use the content thereafter. Takumi, for example, gives the brand full rights to usage after the photo has been posted. Other platforms like Tribe, charge the brand an additional fee to keep and use the image in other forms of marketing.

A micro influencer campaign is easy to execute and easy to use, while free online platforms such as Takumi.com and Tribegroup.com enable in-house marketers to take the lead.

The Cons of Micro Influencers

Capped visibility and reach – micro influencers obviously don’t have the vast followings of macro influencers, and with most influencer platforms setting a 10k follower limit, the visibility and reach of content is capped.

That isn’t to say this kind of content isn’t engaging – HubSpot reports that micro influencers, on average, receive 0.10% higher engagement rates than macro influencers.

Brands have less control over a micro influencer’s output. Often, the way influencer platforms work is that brands submit a brief stating what product needs to be featured, some information about the product and a general sense of how it should be represented. For example, an organic makeup brand might write a brief which explains why their product should never be shown in an environment of bold and brash colours or plastic materials. They may instead state all photographs must be taken in natural light, outdoors and must only feature neutral colours.

However, once this brief is written up, approved and sent to micro that’s it. The power is out of the brand’s hands. They often have little control over outputs. A micro influencer is trusted to post a quality piece of content, without any form of sign off from the client.

In many cases, you put your trust in the quality of influencers recruited by an influencer platform and ‘get what you’re given’.

ROI is often hard to prove. Performing a micro influencer campaign can be great for getting your product in front of lots of different people – but while visibility, reach and engagement can all be easily measured and reported on, it can be somewhat harder to directly attribute influencer engagement to direct sales. This is because influencer posts are great for driving awareness, but not at directing site traffic – especially as Instagram doesn’t allow links to be posted in captions.

The Pros of Macro Influencers

Brands have more control when running a macro influencer campaign. They can often choose the exact celebrity and give them precise instructions on what to post, meaning the outcome can be almost predicted.

This control also enables brands to build a stigma or reputation around their product – for example, a cast member of Made in Chelsea may support the ‘luxury’ representation of a product, whereas an Olympian may support strong, robust and professional connotations.

However, this can go wrong – take BooTea for example. The diet brand asked Scott Disick to feature their product on his Instagram (see below caption).

 

A campaign that results in something like this can shatter a brands’ authenticity.

ROI in a macro influencer campaign is often easy to define, well, easier to define than that of a micro campaign, at least. This is because many brands will set up a unique offer code for a macro influencer campaign. The influencer will then post this along with their content. This makes it easier to attribute sales to a precise post or macro campaign as brands can easily track how many times an offer code was used online.

The Cons of Macro Influencers

People don’t believe or trust macro influencers as product placement is often obvious, and not very authentic.

People can see through a devised Instagram post, and therefore trust the content less. While this kind of marketing is great for reach and awareness, people often don’t trust that the influencer really uses the product.

Macro influencer campaigns are more expensive. These celebrities will also generally require much higher payments than micro influencers.

One piece of content from a celebrity influencer could cost you an astronomical amount, depending on their status and follower count. If you’re thinking of getting the Kardashians involved, you better have a worthy budget knocking about. Believe it or not, these endorsements now make up around 25% of the Kardashians’ income, demonstrating just how expensive they can be.

Although their audiences might be bigger, and your content will therefore see a much higher reach, you may also be able to get a lot more out of lots of single posts with micro influencers, as opposed to one expensive macro influencer post.

Macro influencer campaigns are a little harder to execute as they’ll often take longer to organize, and may require a PR agency. Getting hold of a celebrity or their manager is one thing, but standing out amongst many other requests, is another.

Celebrities can also be picky with which brands they endorse, so demonstrating how your product will raise their profile and personal brand is also important.

So, which one should you go with? Both macro and micro influencer campaigns have their pros and cons, but in most instances, I’d choose a micro campaign. Authenticity is so important – Millennials, in particular, crave it.

If your budget allows, it is recommended to trial both a micro and macro influencer campaign, starting with micro to elicit a response. Report on which does better in order to develop your future strategy. Assess your KPIs and choose accordingly.

 

 

How to get the best out of Radio Advertising: from both a messaging and a media strategy perspective by Margie Knap, Senior Strategist at The MediaShop

Let’s face it; traditional media is here to stay. TV will always be part of our daily lives. It’s the wind down medium in the evening and the escapism of the daily grind. Out of home will always form part of the urban and rural landscape, it’s not going anywhere. And radio – the news jingle will always get us to reach for the volume button, our favourite song gets us singing along and we associate and empathize with DJ’s.

Radio has strong and enviable offerings: reach, immediacy, frequency, geographic targeting, day part targeting, language targeting. Turnaround time is fast and production can be relatively inexpensive.

So how do marketers get the most out of their radio campaign? Making radio work for your company requires strategy, skilled media buying and engaging creative.

But what makes a radio ad engaging?

The creative and media strategy process starts with a clear understanding of your brand, your audience and the targeted goals you wish to achieve – whether measured in cost per leads, cost per orders or just a bump in website traffic!

Let’s start with that dreaded phrase THE BRIEF – you may roll your eyes, but THE BRIEF is a necessary element for the success of each and every campaign.

Step One: The Creative Brief:

• The clearer the brief, the better the messaging is likely to be.
• Your ad is important to you, the marketer. Remember though – listeners don’t tune in to listen to ads. Listeners are busy and they are easily distracted.
• You have limited seconds to get a message across – those first 10” are vital. If you don’t grab the attention within those first 10”, forget it.

Step Two: The Messaging Idea:

• The idea must be clearly understood and stimulate and excite the audio senses to stir the imagination. There is no luxury of beautiful graphics and Instagram worthy pictures. Close your eyes and listen if it works.
• We say that radio is the theatre of the mind, but don’t leave too much up to the listener’s imagination. People don’t want to work too hard to connect the dots.
• The dialogue, the script, needs to be short, punchy and to the point and needs to engage the listener.
• Be careful of direct translations in other languages, key messaging can be lost in translation. Roses are love to some people but mean death to others.
• Cut through that clutter with a single-minded concept that stirs up emotions.
• Where possible and appropriate make your messaging relevant to current and trending news issues, but tread carefully!
• If you are giving away prizes, cash prizes are king.

 Step Three: Production Values and Cost:

• Your creative agency needs to look for talent, new writers who understand and get radio. Voice talent for best messaging delivery.
• Production is still relatively inexpensive so change the execution as often as required to keep your messaging fresh and keep it out of that all too dangerous “wallpaper” territory.
• Be very wary of using too many voices as it can be a very costly exercise, eg 9 ALS stations with 2 voices per script = 18 voices!

And what are the media strategy guidelines?

 Step One: Media Penetration:

• Radio is the ultimate mobile medium to reach captive commuters stuck in their vehicles, taxis, trains or buses.
• Understand and tap into your target market’s listening habits, morning and afternoon commute, school lift time, school sports on Saturdays or gospel music on Sundays.
• Understand the penetration of each radio station, each one has their regional strengths and weaknesses.
• Don’t, just don’t, flight below required threshold (reach vs frequency) weights. If you do your message will not cut-through. So determine up front what your strategy is and what element is more important: lots of people vs lots of messages.

Step Two: Station and Target Market Match:

• Choose a DJ to represent your brand based on your target market likes, not on your personal preferences. Stay on top of DJ line-ups.
• Establish a definition of success: do you want to raise awareness; want sales or more feet through the door.

 Step Three: Cost of Radio:

• Don’t just think about cost per thousand or cost of reach. Think about creating a connection with your consumers.
• Listeners love to be engaged, so look beyond the traditional 30” generic message : include competitions, live-reads, call-ins, event association, outside broadcasts and give-aways.

 Step Four: Radio 360:

• Engagement, engagement, engagement.
• Include a listener call to action to increase engagement with your brand.
• Radio continues to evolve within a 360° space. Work with this and leverage all the assets that a station has to offer along with the on-air messaging.
• Lastly, do not allow stations to “back-fit” you into their existing competitions. If they don’t work for you, make the stations work with you to deliver an exceptional campaign.

Final word, a great brief and effective media strategy led to the below award winning campaign:

Dove ‘Self-conscious’

Agency: Ogilvy & Mather London
Creatives: Simon Lotze, Miguel Nunes
Producers: Victoria Smith, Sarah Hall
Sound engineer: David Gritzman, Gramercy Park and H&O

 Script:

VO: The more someone makes you think about your body, the harder it becomes to ignore.

Your tongue, for example. Usually, you hardly notice it’s there. But when I mention it, you can feel your tongue bumping against your lower front teeth. The tip’s just resting on them. You notice your tongue feels just a little too long for your mouth. And you notice it never really lies still. You move it about constantly, without thinking about it. Backwards and forwards. And from side to side. Suddenly, it feels strangely wet and heavy in your mouth, doesn’t it?

A few seconds ago, you hardly noticed your tongue. But just one message ensured you can’t stop thinking about it. Now imagine the hundreds of messages girls are exposed to every day, subtly changing the way they think about their bodies.

See how you can help at selfesteem.dove.co.uk. Dove. Be your beautiful self.

https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/top-10-radio-ads-2016/1418495