We’ve spoken in the past about the benefits of collaborating with Influencers as part of your Social Media strategy, particularly Real Life Ambassadors or Micro-Influencers rather than Celebrity Influencers.
There’s been extensive research lately into Brand Influencers and their incorporation into Brand strategies from Influencer Marketing firm Linqia. The US based agency has conducted a study across a range of marketers from a variety of industries to find out just how effective Influencer Marketing is, and the results throw up some interesting insights:
- Insta remains the key platform for Influencer Content with 68% of marketers choosing it over Facebook
- Snapchat (which is aimed at the younger teenage audience) is ranked in LAST PLACE behind YouTube, Blogs, Pinterest and Twitter for Influence
- 57% of Marketers have found Influencer created content to be more effective than brand created content, with 39% planning to increase their influencer budget over the coming year
Influencer content is also being seen as an effective alternative in the targeting of ad-fatigued consumers on Social, a point which has been highlighted in the news recently with the announcement from cosmetics company ‘LUSH’ that they’re stepping away from their own Social Media accounts in favour of using influencer marketing! (link to news piece) The brand advised they’re ‘tired of fighting the algorithm’ and want to ‘cut out the middle man’ in communicating with their customer base. Lush UK is abandoning its UK Social Media accounts completely in 2019, choosing instead to use Influencers to get their ‘voice’ across, as well as live chat and video on their website.
This is an interesting choice especially as an article in The Drum noted that “in 2018, Lush’s Facebook and Instagram channels garnered more than 10m video views. These accounts had an average of 42% growth, month on month, indicating success in reaching audiences with its content on the surface.”
LUSH clearly recognise that account growth and Influence are too very different things and whilst the brand may indeed be withdrawing from direct involvement in Social via its own branded accounts its increased investment in Influencer Marketing is surely a sign that its commitment to Social Media as a key brand communications medium is being renewed rather than downgraded?
Will other brands follow suit? As investment in Influencer Marketing increases will Social Media budget shift away from Paid or a direct, organic, community management-led approach to fund Influencer-generated reach and engagement? We’ll keep you posted.
