Last week I have virtually attended Influencer Marketing Conference. Every year I try to keep up to date with what’s new in HR, employer branding, social media, and influencer marketing – a relatively new domain, which I still discover with curiosity. This year the most well-known local specialists such as Sabina Știrb –  marketing director Huawei Consumer Business, and Oana Bulexa – Managing Partner MSL The Practice offered useful ideas and advice for collaborating with influencers.


1. Is it still worth talking about strategy and healthy things? Yes, it’s worth it because if we don’t talk about things and if we don’t plan them anymore, we will end up doing many campaigns without a well-defined beginning or an end, they don’t achieve the results we want and then we wonder why this happened?

2. Influencer marketing becomes more and more important in the marketing plans of Romanian companies, but it is still treated as an experimentation strategy; it is not valued as it should be.

3. In Romania, influencer marketing still often based on an insufficiently rigorous process, on top of mind choices (and not on tools that make your life easier with data about influencers), on undeclared expectations, on undefined objectives, and on irrelevant results.

4. Tools that make your life easier, providing information and data about influencers: 2Performant, Tagger Media, Traakr, CreatorIQ, Webfluential, Mocapp, Speakr, Upfluence, AspireIQ, SocialBook, Neoreach, Klear, Peg, IndaHash. Some tools help you find the most influencers in one place, others give you lists with small influences, lists with celebrities, or check if influencers have fake accounts and fake followers.

5. Directory platforms help you with the following advantages: discover influencers according to criteria, management of the campaign (you give the briefs, you get the deliverables), management of the contractual relationship, and, in the end, you get data about your campaign.

6. Bidding platforms help you with the following advantages: brands create a brief, influencers bid for briefs, brands accept influencers they consider appropriate, and they collaborate according to the brief.

7. 2 perspectives to consider in influencer marketing:

1. Short-term solution as it happens in Romania. Companies don’t have a red thread even if they develop 10 campaigns with influencers marketers per year, there is no long-term strategy, based on brand objectives.
The influencer is a media touchpoint through which we send a promotional message and get punctual reactions from the consumer.
The benefits for the consumer:
– The consumer has the chance to keep the information in mind as he sees the information to more influencers
– He finds out about a product, about a more advantageous offer that he decides to access in order to discover more details
Disadvantage:
Sometimes due to the commercial content, the consumer doesn’t know what to do next, he can no longer keep up with the suggestions of the influencer. He doesn’t know if the influencer really uses the products or just promotes them.

Short term = I Want Now = Pokes the consumer to generate immediate reaction = One Night Stand

2. Long-term solution – we want to grow the brand, to build awareness. Through long-term marketing influencer we show that we do not just create a product, but we make efforts to understand our audience, their problems; it’s all about the desire to do something with our audience.
The benefits for the consumer:
– He better understands the brand’s mission and values
– He resonates with the brand
– The brand and its products are now at the top of his preferences.

Long-term = I Want it Forever = Engages the consumer to build a long term relationship

8. Which one do you choose: a short-term solution or long term? Which one is the best?
To be successful in influencer marketing, we need to look at both. When creating an influencer marketing strategy you need to have a balance. Sometimes you ask the consumer something, you make him an offer, a promotion, other times you don’t ask him anything, you just want to reveal the brand, to be better known.

9. End-to-end influencer marketing approach in influencer marketing in Publicis Group, combining technology and experts:
Strategy + Planning -> Identify + Analyse -> Manage + Activate -> Measure + Optimise – > Amplify

10. Popular Influencers. Some useful tops:
The most appreciated post on Instagram: Speak & Stefania (313,5 Million likes for the moment of marriage proposal)
Top musician: Inna
Top sport profile: Simona Halep
Top Youth Account on YouTube: Selly
Top Tech Account: George Buhnici

11. How to classify influencers, according to Huawei:

12. Each category of influencers generates a certain type of content:

13. Communication split in influencer marketing:

14. Influencer Marketing Objectives and how to use influencers depending on these objectives:

15. Insights Info

Think forward 2021:

Food for thought:

• Treat strategically and not just tactically influencer marketing. See the big picture, the big picture and after that the small picture. Look at a year as a whole, don’t stay focused only on what you have to do tomorrow
• Choose smart brand influencers and make sure they are brand advocates. It’s a complex effort to find them. It’s a mix of technology and human know-how, no one can do the job on their own. Build a healthy and credible relationship with them if you want to get real relationships from their community.
• Credibility is not automatically transferred from influencer to brand. If we collaborate with an influencer with great credibility in his community and push him to create content that the consumer rejects, our efforts are in vain. Every time the influencer creates content, his credibility is tested. A slippage of credibility affects both the influencer and the brand.
  
  How are you going to collaborate with influencers in 2021?

Credit Photo: Helena Lopes (pexels.com)