the ins and outs of influencer marketing in 2016 · the impact influencers had on tresemmé during...

The Ins and Outs of Influencer Marketing in 2016

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Introduction // The Ins and Outs of Influencer Marketing in 2016

IntroductionEarning someone’s trust isn’t always easy. We come to the table with prior experiences that often dictate how willing or unwilling we are to open up and let a person into the inner circle. This same hesitation applies to the products we buy and the services we use.

I used to visit the same coffee shop every morning before work. It was this local café a block from my apartment, and the staff was friendly and helpful. But on one particular day, I entered around the same time, and the coffee I was served didn’t meet my expectations. It had grounds in the bottom, and the milk tasted kind of sour. When I asked for a replacement, the server served me a large cup of sass. I haven’t been back since, and now I only go to Starbucks.

Consistency is important in marketing, but it’s not the only differentiator you can leverage in marketing. Perhaps just as essential as a consistent product or service is the frequency of praise you get both internally and externally.

With the business world rife with competition, your brand marketing cannot tell a 360-degree story without the right storytellers. And more and more research shows that consumers gravitate toward social posts and editorial penned by people just like them, not a brand’s CEO, nor its awesome new advertising campaign that features Derek Jeter.

According to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, 63 percent of surveyed respondents indicated they trusted a “person like them,” 49 percent said they trust a brand’s employees, and 43 percent said they trusted that brand’s CEO. Without spending more than two seconds reading the last line, it should be obvious who needs to be telling your company’s story. Your customers and your staff.

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Table Of Contents // The Ins and Outs of Influencer Marketing in 20163

Table of Contents

Introduction 2

TheOuts:InfluencerStrategy 4Unilever’s TRESemmé 6

Fidelity 7

TheIns:EmployeeAdvocacy 9

HowDoesthisGetDoneToday? 10

There’sNoReasonYou’reNotInfluential 12

HowCanSkywordHelp? 13

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The Ins and Outs of Influencer Marketing in 2016 //

The Outs: Influencer StrategyEvery marketing team panders to the influencers in their field. The challenge is in identifying who within an industry is actually influential and who just has a lot of spammy Twitter followers.

In a May 2015 study by Schlesinger Associates for Augure, 84 percent of marketing and communication professionals worldwide said they planned to launch at least one program involving influencers in the next 12 months.

When the Altimeter Group polled marketers in Q2 2015, the independent research firm found that 35 percent of social media professionals worldwide said they had a mature or optimized influencer relationship management program.

And according to Tomoson, 59 percent of marketers are planning to increase their influencer marketing budgets over the next 12 months.

The Ins and Outs of Influencer Marketing in 2016 // The Outs: Influencer Strategy

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So in the next year, we’re going to see a higher volume of enterprise organizations leveraging people’s social influence, with a more sophisticated management process in place, and with a higher price tag for results. This makes influencer strategy easily one of the fastest-growing practices (22 percent rated it the fastest, according to Tomoson, the highest in the survey).

When a marketing tactic begins to show meaningful results, it’s not long before every brand is testing out ideas on its audience. Unfortunately, that means if you don’t already have an influencer program in place today, you’re behind, and you need to catch up fast.

In the B2B space, decision makers told the International Data Corporation that trusted peers and colleagues (95 percent) influenced their decisions more than trusted independent content (86 percent), and vendor content on websites (81 percent). More, RhythemOne found that the average earned media value from US influencer programs was 1.4x higher in H1 2015 than the overall average in 2014, at $9.60 of revenue per $1 spent. Twenty-two percent of respondents told Tomoson that influencer marketing is the most cost-effective online customer acquisition method today.


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The most interesting aspect of influencer marketing to me is that it’s a practice being used by businesses of all sizes. By logging onto Instagram, it’s easy to find retailers working with social celebrities to promote products concurrent to enterprise organizations partnering with YouTube stars. It’s a melting pot of influence out there, and no one is doing it better than Unilever and Fidelity. Below are two influencer-marketing examples worth studying.

Unilever’sTRESemméThe holding group has gone all in with influencer strategy, partnering with social media influencers to help generate conversation around core products, contests, and brand messaging.

In a recent case study produced by Crimson Hexagon, the organization sought to measure the impact influencers had on TRESemmé during a specific time frame in which social campaigns had launched. The firm noted that between July 1, 2014 and March 8, 2015, the brand totaled 21,438 posts on Twitter. However, between August 24thand 30th, the brand saw a massive spike in mentions and conversation. The majority of the new mentions came from the AmpUpYourStyle and VMA Prize Pack contest that launched during that time period, but what’s most interesting is who drove those mentions and spikes in social chatter.

Over the three day spike, TRESemmé’s Twitter handle received a 4 percent increase in followers, the brand was mentioned in more than 960 posts, and the #tresemmehashtag was used more than 6,450 times. Over the broader time frame measurement, 36 percent


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of TRESemmé’s total conversation includes at least one of six influencers tracked within the company’s influencer program.

TRESemmé was able to generate a massive volume of new social chatter by partnering with no more than six Twitter influencers. This proves that a sophisticated influencer program doesn’t need scale, it simply needs working relationships with people who can actually sway followers to action. It’s important to have a clear sense of a person’s relevance and resonance on social media platforms. A large number of followers won’t generate results if the messaging misses the mark, so recruit wisely.

FidelityIn highly regulated industries, marketers run up against insurmountable obstacles. It takes a savvy team and unique technology to find creative and kosher ways to reach and connect with customers on an emotional level.

At Skyword’s Content Rising Summit in June 2015, Fidelity’s EVP, Retirement and Investing Strategies, John Sweeny spoke about a unique “conversation engine” it developed with the help of its partner Traackr.

A conversation engine is defined as a series of processes and methods applied to promote a brand’s point of view in online conversations.

Fidelity’s journey toward influencer strategy started with 2008’s financial crisis. The company realized that major media publications like CNBC and The Wall Street Journal were talking about the crisis, but they weren’t speaking to individuals. Investors wanted to hear from Fidelity directly.


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To handle this challenge, Fidelity hired an ex-journalist to launch a three-stage program:

1. Get Fidelity’s point of view out about the crisis.

2. Make Fidelity’s content more accessible by making editorial part of a representative’s dialogue with their clients.

3. Go beyond the walls of Fidelity by leveraging Web influencers.

When it came to the influencer step, Fidelity had to not only identify influencers to track, but also the topics those people were discussing on social media and that Fidelity had a POV on. From there, the Fidelity team began to feed its unbiased content to influencers and saw immediate pickup and traction. This also created opportunities for Fidelity executives to guest blog on influential blogs to further the organization’s reach and messages.

From this initiative, the Fidelity team built in-house expertise, learned how to operate in a highly regulated environment, balanced earned media and paid media, and aligned its content strategy with relevant social channels. The business has continued to use the “conversation engine” methodology to further solidify relationships with a community of influencers and reach audiences across emerging social channels.

Working with external influencers can yield major results. But in 2016, brands will need to learn how to balance external and internal influence by mastering employee advocacy, too.


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The Ins: Employee AdvocacyOne of the biggest lessons we have learned in my two years at Skyword is that my ability to earn the trust of and credibility with my colleagues will affect my content strategy’s success exponentially. It is absolutely essential to give internal stakeholders ownership of some aspect of a business’s content marketing program by asking them to contribute editorial content regularly and sharing published information on behalf of the organization.

Leslie Poston, social media editor at McKinsey & Company, in an interview with TopRank Marketing, said, “Marketing must let go of social media ‘the concept’ and help the rest of the organization utilize social media ‘the tool set.’ Brands continue to miss opportunities in human resources and recruiting, customer experience, assistance, customer care, social good, education and other instances where they could use social tools to reach more depth and relevance—to be truly useful.”

The Ins and Outs of Influencer Marketing in 2016 // The Ins: Employee Advocacy

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How Does this Get Done Today?According to the Altimeter Group’s “2015 State of Social Business Report,” employee advocacy is growing in importance this year. Forty-five percent of surveyed marketers said it was a top objective this year, compared to 16 percent in 2013. The research firm also noted that as employee advocacy becomes a more universal marketing objective, only 3.8 percent admit to having a scaled, enterprise-wide program in place.

A big reason why enterprise organizations haven’t been able to scale their employee advocacy programs is lack of process, research, and technology. Data from Mindshare and Dynamic Signal found that 81 percent of senior leaders say they consider themselves “company advocates.” However, only 37 percent of those surveyed say they share company content across social media, and 74 percent say they feel that they’re missing out on company information and news.

A concrete employee advocacy programs gives enterprise marketers another method for distributing branded content. These internal influencers can often have robust and leaned-in social media networks. Developing a solution for 1.) Distributing content to advocates 2.) Measuring its effects and 3.) Rewarding those who impacted ROI is key to brands’ success next year.

Unfortunately, employee advocacy isn’t as easy as you might think. An effective program requires a fluid process that can adapt to new challenges and rewards those employees for remaining active in the program.

The Ins and Outs of Influencer Marketing in 2016 // How Does this Get Done Today?

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IBM miscalculated the challenge of running an ongoing employee advocacy program with the launch of its own gamification strategy. The enterprise organization sought to award points to employees who participated in the advocacy program as a way to encourage participation through friendly competition. The more employees posted and contributed content, the more points they’d receive. However, participation rates quickly wore off as a simple point and reward system wasn’t enough to sustain employees’ interest long term.

At the Content Standard, we see similar results. An initial contest or challenge will draw immediate attention, participation, and excitement. But try and launch that same program again next quarter, and interest is hard to come by.

Employee advocacy must be as adaptive as any other marketing strategy. By planning ahead, aligning games and contests with seasonal trends, with desired rewards, and other altruistic rewards will help pique employees’ interests throughout the year.

Another struggle many enterprise marketers run into is finding the perfect solution for communicating the guidelines for a given employee advocacy program and adopting a technology solution that organizes this program into a fluid system. Employee advocacy isn’t effective if a marketing team is only able to win over the developer team down the hall—they need to reach the developer team across the country and the newly established European team across the Atlantic.

The Ins and Outs of Influencer Marketing in 2016 // How Does this Get Done Today?

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There’s No Reason You’re Not InfluentialBy now you should be convinced that influencer strategy, combined with savvy employee advocacy programs, will become an important way for you to distribute all of the great content you produce in 2016.

Your brand has the potential to become the influencer in your industry—the organization that compels its audience to buy products, adopt new slang, and post ridiculously thirsty social media updates online. The only thing holding you back is lack of focus. So, get your head in the books, feet on the pavement, and let’s see you do something original for once in your life.

The Ins and Outs of Influencer Marketing in 2016 // There’s No Reason You’re Not Influential

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How Can Skyword Help?The world is changing and consumers are more empowered than ever. How can you keep with the changing digital trends and compete for dwindling consumer attention? With content, it’s easy.

Skyword moves marketing leaders and those who create content for them forward. By embracing a sustainable, scalable approach to original storytelling, Skyword liberates brands from ineffective marketing practices and inspires them to create deeper connections with their audiences.

The Skyword Platform makes it easy to produce, optimize, and promote content at any scale to create meaningful, lasting relationships. Skyword also provides access to a community of thousands of freelance creatives, an editorial team, and content strategists who help move clients’ content marketing programs to new levels of creative excellence.

Formoreinformation,contactSkywordtoday.+1.855.Skyword +1.855.759.9673

Sources:

1. “Tapping the Internal Trust Surplus to Rebuild Credibility” via Edelman http://www.edelman.com/insights/intellectual-property/2015-edelman-trust-barometer/trust-across-industries/trust-in-employee-engagement/

2. “The State of Influencer Engagement in 2015” via Augure http://www.augure.com/blog/state-influencer-engagement-20150618

3. “Influencer Marketing Study” via Tomoson http://blog.tomoson.com/influencer-marketing-study/

4. “Does Your Marketing Influence B2B Decision-Makers?” via eMarketer http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Your-Marketing-Influence-B2B-Decision-Makers/1012927

5. “How Big Is Influencers’ Influence?” via eMarketer http://www.emarketer.com/Article/How-Big-Influencers-Influence/1012904

6. “Two Approaches to Influencer Marketer” via Crimson Hexagon http://info.crimsonhexagon.com/two-approaches-to-influencer-marketing-case-study

7. “Digital Marketing Priorities for Major Brands in 2015” via TopRank Blog http://www.toprankblog.com/2015/10/digital-marketing-priorities-2016/

8. “The 2015 State of Social Business: Priorities Shift from Scaling to Integrating” via Altimeter Group http://www.altimetergroup.com/2015/07/new-research-the-2015-state-of-social-business-priorities-shift-from-scaling-to-integrating/

9. “Dynamic Signal’s New Platform Allows Global Companies to Scale Enterprise-Wide” via Nasdaq GlobeNewswire http://globenewswire.com/news-release/2015/07/28/755630/10143445/en/Dynamic-Signal-s-New-Platform-Allows-Global-Companies-To-Scale-Enterprise-Wide.html

10. “Results from Deploying a Participation Incentive Mechanism within the Enterprise” via IBM http://watsonweb.watson.ibm.com/cambridge/Technical_Reports/2008/TR%202008.09%20Body%20%20Results%20fro%20Deploying%20a%20participation.pdf

The Ins and Outs of Influencer Marketing in 2016 // How Can Skyword Help?

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[email protected] www.skyword.com

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+1.855.SKYWORD +1.855.759.9673

[email protected] www.skyword.com

http://www.skyword.com/contentstandard/

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