Influencer Marketing in Asia: An Interview with Aaron Brooks
Aaron Brooks
April 21, 2017
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Over the past week, we’ve delved into the value of seasonal marketing and the opportunity it presents for brands. We’ve taken a look at past successes we’ve seen from our clients, as well as broken down some different approaches to influencer marketing for this hectic time of year.
For this post, we want to leave you with some further inspiration, introducing formats that can make your campaigns feel more interactive, engaging, and dare I say—human.
The days of taking a simple product shot and including a purchase link are fading. It’s being overtaken by savvy brands that are leading with highly impactful content that allows them to take a more experience-based approach.
With that in mind, here are 7 ideas to bring your campaigns to life this holiday season.
Seeking inspiration through discoverability is inherent to how social users browse and consume creator content. This is especially the case in the awareness or early evaluation stages of product selection, where consumers are looking for new or novel gift ideas.
Curated gift lists and guides to ‘best-of’ style content are helpful for seeing what options exist out there. Consumers trust the creators they follow to curate products they think are truly worthy of gifting, so working across multiple creators can inspire exploration of your brand. Combine this with a time-bound offer or bonus gift product your chosen creators can put at the heart of their content for added traction.
Whether you’re in the fitness apparel, high-street or luxury fashion space, clothing hauls are many people’s go-to moment for fashion inspiration. Creators have proven they not only have a talent for product curation, but they’re also experts at using the native features of a social platform to put together impactful and entertaining videos.
These can be a great way of placing multiple products that all work together, into a series of digital assets. The audience engagement you get through the creator’s follower community will increase your chances of product consideration through to conversion. This is a particularly effective method for getting your brand on the radar of specific interest groups.
Every social user loves a ‘reveal’ moment, and the anticipation of an unboxing experience—especially for new or coveted products, creates natural buzz. Unboxing is great for any brand that wants to bring the shopping experience to life for the online consumer.
There are now whole channels dedicated to this format. As a brand, rather than trying to figure out the scripting, lighting, equipment and production values (among others) needed, why not engage a creator who produces this sort of content all the time? It can be a great way of immersing the audience into the product experience, and helping them get excited about the prospect of purchasing this for themselves or a loved one.
Reviews are a great option for almost any product category. This type of creator content also comes with the added bonus of being search engine friendly, as it’s one of the first things prospective customers will search for online when evaluating your product for purchase.
One tip: commissioning more than one creator to work on your campaign creates stronger social proof, as a range of opinions will likely result in a better balance of critique. Just make sure you allow your collaborating creators to speak truthfully and authentically about their experience. Consumers can spot a disingenuous review a mile away!
Creators who specialize in a niche are passionate experts in their field. They tend to have insider know-how on products, and it’s not unusual for them to maintain encyclopedic knowledge of a brand’s back catalog. From beauty and tech, to food and drink, tutorials and how-to content are an awesome way to show the true potential of your products. These can also serve as a more subtle alternative to a product review.
Having a creator show the best way to use your product through a demonstration, removes some of the friction points from a consumer’s decision making process. It also creates a reference point post-purchase, to allow the consumer to get the most out of the product, and build longer-term brand loyalty.
One of the more platform-native approaches involves creating a challenge-based activation that incorporates your products.. This one is highly suitable for food, beauty, fitness and even pets brands. Think of something fun, engaging and open to interpretation that your creators can have a go at and encourage their followers to join in with their own spin. A good example you can draw inspiration from is this recent viral food trend that emerged on social media overnight – the Weet-bix hack.
This one is clearly suited to the Christmas season. Every year different brands from across many sectors create a month of engagement and celebration with an advent calendar. It’s an effective approach to building interaction, promoting the brand in an ongoing, highly visible way and keeping a sustained cadence of messaging throughout the holiday season build-up.
Lots of different approaches you can take here; hiring different creators to promote a different product from the calendar throughout the month, or encouraging user interaction through sweepstakes type competitions. Alternatively, using a creator’s reach to promote your advent activity is an effective method of driving their followers to your platform or DTC site, to engage directly with the brand.
We hope this rundown has shown the value of seasonal marketing, shown how your seasonal tactics can work throughout the year, and provided you with plenty of inspiration for your approach this season and beyond.
Running every kind of campaign we’ve run through above couldn’t be easier when you’re using the Vamp platform. Ready to start your next influencer marketing campaign? Take a look at more of our success stories and get in touch with Vamp to book a demo.
