Influencer Marketing: Awareness vs Revenue Campaigns

1. Introduction: Hey guys, I'm Chelsea Matthews. I am the founder of Matt Black were a brand marketing and creative agency based in Los Angeles. Um and I'm gonna talk to you guys today about influencer programmes, which is something that ah, we've been working on for many years and have watched the kind of transition of how these programs run and and really what you can expect out of them on. And so the purpose of this course is to really talk about the difference between awareness campaigns and revenue campaigns. In the early days of influencer marketing, it was kind of assumed that most things you would do would be revenue based. It was a newer space and there was a lot more, um, result, I think, in terms of how consumers interacted with influencers and how they responded to this kind of new form of advertising as being something that was truly holistic. But over time, naturally, consumers become more savvy. The followers of these influencers know when they're pushing an ad out or when they're, you know, really truly advocating something. Um, the introduction of things like legal requirements like hashtag spon or hashtag ad that clearly depicts that something's an ad starts to change with psychological behavior of how their followers and consumers end up interacting with that brand content. So the big conversation is around. You know what makes sense? If you're investing financial dollars into your influence or programs, what are you going into it for? Is it that you are totally okay with this being all about impressions and awareness, or is it that you really need for this program to drive actual sales? I will preface by saying that no program is 100% going to equate to sales. That is always gonna be the risk factor. The greatest thing you could do is just test a lot and get to understand which influencers really convert for you. Which audiences really convert for you. What kind of campaigns really convert for you. So it's a lot of testing, but hopefully you'll land on something that does start to put a formula together that you can lean on. Um, so again, as I mentioned, you know, we've spent many years Matt Black as an agency has been around for five years. But even prior to that in the space of influencer programs, when it was just bloggers then watched how that really transitioned into instagram influencers and YouTube, influencers and Pinterest influencers on DSO on. So far. So there's really kind of a lot of transition that's happened in the space. And there's still a lot of brands kind of scratching their head us to like what, exactly? To do, especially smaller brands that don't necessarily have the dollars and resource is to just throw at these, like sometimes risky moves. 2. Campaign Types: so I wanted to kind of start by first talking around like the general types of influence or programs that we could be looking at. So you can kind of just understand the general landscape of the types of campaigns that you might consider, um, the first would be brand ambassador programs. So ambassador programs are ones where you're really kind of like vetting an on boarding and influence or whether it's one or 10 of them to actually get fully integrated into your brand for a longer duration of time. So an example of that might be, you know, Army song with song of style. Um, you know, did a big deal with I believe it was Lemaire. And that was, Ah, one year contract. Almost in the same way that you know, celebrities might align with beauty brands and be a face to the company for a series of, you know, campaigns. Very similar. Typically more of, ah, high dollar investment, typically a smaller amount of influencers, typically ah, longer term duration of campaign, something that you're really looking at as being fully integrated into the brand and really nurturing this relationship with this person and really kind of getting a breadth of delivery bals from them. Um, the second would be campaign centric influencer programs those air really targeted around a product launch or, you know, an event or something that is shorter in duration. It has a very specific kind of focusing cause it might be really targeted around, you know, pushing sales or awareness around this new product launch or even just kind of general use of a hash tag. So these can be totally varied in the kind of approach you could be working with 100 different influencers for the duration of that campaign. Um, and you're kind of goals from that could be very varied, But that's typically campaign. Some trick program looks like the next kind of program that we look at. What is seating programs and seating is really kind of mailing campaign, so it's really thinking about mailing products to an influencer. You see a lot of these programs on instagram or YouTube on, and they're really focused around those Unbox ing's really beautifully curated kits that influencers will often share on instagram stories or take a really beautiful photo of. In some cases, those programs are paid because you want to guarantee that that person is either going to film that unboxing or they're going to share images of that box. And in other cases, it might just be kind of, Ah, you know, like a hope and pray like we are gonna invest the dollars into sending something really beautiful. We really feel that they're going to respond to a product like ours and love the kid, and we're gonna naturally get some coverage from that, whether that's them actually sharing, you know, the box itself. Or maybe it's just them using the product down the line and kind of getting into a good place with, you know, where they want to share it after they used the product for a duration of time. So that's kind of your seeding programs and one of the last kinds of influencer programs. This kind of content focused influencer programs, which I think is something that's a newer in the landscape today. It's something we've been doing a bit more of internally, but it's when you look Teoh, smaller influencers or creators as we kind of call them who maybe don't have a huge following but are really thoughtful in the kind of content that there creating, whether that's through photo or video, are illustrations. It's kind of an open book, but, um, kind of looking to those people to help you create the ancillary content that you need to keep your brand channels populated with lots of great content. And so, you know, oftentimes you're paying. Oftentimes they're not necessarily publishing, but you're really looking at it as you know, this kind of contents support that you need to keep your content super pumped. Um, so those are just a couple of the different kinds of influencer programs. Obviously, there's so many different ways that you can look at your influence, our approach in general. But that kind of is the general landscape. 3. Determining Goals: The next thing that I really think is important before you can really move forward in your influence or program is identifying what your goals are. Um and yes, awareness and revenue are gonna be two of those big pieces. But there are some other ones that kind of lie around that, um, typical goals from an influencer program are, um, audience growth and engagement increase. Um, again, the landscape has changed a lot, especially on instagram with new algorithms. But we used to kind of have a formula just based on best practice and some research. That was 1% of the total engagement. So the likes and comments that an influencer gets on their content will most likely convert to new followers on your feet. So that's actually a really small number. Um, and you know, isn't even a guarantee. But it is something that people are very cautious of when they're doing influence of programs. It's really about how do I boost my own channels by leveraging their audiences? The second is brand awareness, so brand awareness is pretty obvious. It's just about getting your brand out there, but having other people talk about it. But it really is. Most likened Teoh, you know, kind of the old world of PPR, which was really about impressions, and I guess it's not old world still today. But, um, you know, it's like when you get a print piece in a magazine, you have no direct correlation to how that drive sales. You could make assumptions based on spikes and traffic and things like that. But really, it's about the impressions. You're looking at those kind of programs, as you know, hitting millions of impressions or maybe billions of impressions. So that's another big piece of it. Um, the next would be sales and revenues we talked about So any sort of programs that are actually driving sales or some sort of revenue for the brand content development, which is what we just talked about that kind of last program type where, you know, it might be really hard for you if you're small brand to be producing, you know, high quality shoots all the time. But if you can lean on people in the community, whether influential or just really strong creators to help you do that, I guarantee you it's gonna be a much smaller fee. Our cost for you. Ultimately, it's not gonna be, is owned or is controlled. But it could certainly help. You kind of supplement in between your shoots. Um, and the last one is Web traffic and ad retargeting. So this is, you know, definitely kind of ties into the hopeful goal of sales. But if you look at, um, let's just take Instagram. For example, if you run an influencer program where someone is using stories to talk about the brand, if they have over 10,000 followers on INSTAGRAM, they do have the ability to do this white. But functionality, which means that they can actually drive people straight to your site. Um, that is awesome. Um, ultimately, your hope is that anyone who lands on your site will eventually convert into a customer or make a sale. That doesn't always happen. People often need to build trust with brands. And so that's where ad retargeting comes in. Ad retargeting is purely an ad method. Um, it's run through, you know, third party vendors who own ad space around the Internet. You give them a monthly budget, and essentially, what happens is any time someone lands on your site, that's a new visitor. They capture that data and they start to follow them around the Internet. I'm sure you all have It happened to you when you put something in your card and you're thinking about buying something and you ditch it and then you're like, Oh, my gosh, that she was following me all over the place. Why am I seeing it everywhere? That's because of ad retargeting. So that's really effective in terms of looking at just purely being able to capture that data when you were doing influence or programs. So those are some of the goals that you need to think about to really define what you're looking to get out of your influencer program. 4. Awareness Vs Revenue: So now let's kind of talk about the whole awareness. First Revenue. Um, if you are going to do an awareness campaign, you're gonna be focused on getting your brand in front of the right people. And that's your top priority. You are totally comfortable with potentially spending, you know, tens of thousands of dollars on Really, you know, a level influencers just because you want that brand alignment because you want that content because you want people to see your brand in those feeds on and then potentially, hopefully get all the ripple effect from there. But you're not expecting sales. You're going into it looking for impressions, looking for as much kind of visibility as possible. The kinds of programs that align with awareness campaigns based on kind of the goals we talked about would be the general brand awareness, and any alignment was influential people that you feel the brand aligns with. It would be focused on anything tied to social audience and engagement growth campaigns and then content development. So awareness you are really kind of just focused on, um, thinking about what you can garner from it that might not necessarily be completely driven to Web traffic or sales. But really, it's just about, um, having as many people see your product or your event or whatever. As possible. A revenue campaign is as it sounds, it's focused around driving sales and revenue. And so from those kind of goals that we talked about before, you'd be looking at campaigns that Dr Web traffic on DSO Web traffic campaigns would be swipe up programs from instagram stories. It would be, um, something through Pinterest that's really focused on driving to your site from a product sale. YouTube, Big One. Um, and then also the ad retargeting campaigns that we talked about, where you're really focused on like Okay, it's okay of all these people hop onto my site because of this swipe up campaign that we did. Um, I am not worried about them necessarily converting to sales yet, but I just want to capture that data so that I can make sure we're able to keep retargeted . I'm in the future 5. Which Is Better?: so which is better? Um, generally, you really need to go into this influence or landscape today with the assumption that you're gonna get nothing more than an awareness campaign out of it. It's just the reality of the industry. If you go into it and feel like a man, I'm investing $5000 into these influencers and I have to make at least $5000 back. Or like, this is really gonna put me in a bind. Don't do it. Find other ways. Just do a simple seating campaign and hope that organically people fall in love with what you send them. Um, it's not a guarantee and any influence, or today is going to tell you the same thing. Their greatest pain point. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, is when brands come to them and are super heavily focused on the r A. Y like Well, how many sales am I going to get from doing this with you and how much traffic you consent to my site? You'll find that most influencers air really protective of that information for several reasons. One is because it isn't always directly correlated you know. Oftentimes we as consumers will see somebody talk about ah, product or a place that they've been or something like that. And we might not in that exact moment, hop over and buy that product. We might wait till we see it again, or just all of a sudden start to put things together and then, you know, maybe 30 days down the line, you decide to go buy that product and truly that influence or did influence you in your interest in it. But it might not have been directly correlated to that specific campaign or ad that they ran. So that is kind of my approach to that. Um, I really think you need to think of influencers as the new PR. I think we all know that the media industry is changing a lot. Print is sadly having a lot of trouble on DSO If you think about how am I gonna continue to kind of create that same kind of momentum and that voice in those impressions like influence, are really kind of the new space for this kind of exposure for your brand event place, etcetera 6. Case Studies: So I want to quickly just walk you through two quick case studies, um, that I think, are a good example of the awareness campaign and then a revenue campaign. In 2016 we ran a year long campaign for kitchen aid. It was all around the launch of their new mini mixer, which is kind of like their hero product within the kitchen realm. Um, and they came to us with the goal of awareness, what they really wanted. Waas, you know, billions of impressions. They wanted a bunch of great content that they could use in their campaigns, their advertising on. And they wanted to create really beautiful events and video content that could surround thes influencers. So our approach waas, focusing on a multi tiered influencer strategy that ended up encompassing 50 influencers, 10 of which were are Tier one, our top kind of ambassadors. Those people got a year long contract from kitchen aid. We focus on a really integrated program with them. They were the face of a lot of the campaign. They hosted a dinner like there was all of these elements around them being really, really tied into the brand on the campaign they posted consistently over the course of a year. Then you had your tear to. Those people were kind of creating all the one off content recipes stuff, you know, maybe they were like, 50,000 followers or less, um, contributing to our blogged, being kind of actively talking about the brand, but only over a short period of time. And then we had our tier three who are really kind of thought leaders in the food and beverage space. So they might be chefs that had 500 followers on instagram but are so truly integrated into this community that we really wanted their voice to be a part of it. So we made out of lean on them for content development. But we would have lean on them for, uh, recipes and insights that we could add to this media platform to be co hosts and events that we were doing because of their kind of influence in the community that they're in. So it's very multi tiered. Um, what we got out of it was an international footprint we touched. Um, I think almost all of the areas of the United States wants are of the of the world, Um, we garnered over three billion impressions, and then one of the biggest takeaways for the brand was that, as part of the scope of contract they had full in perpetuity, use of all of the content that these influencers create. And we all know that a lot of these people are creating incredibly beautiful content. Eso for kitchen aid to be able to own that content and use it for really as long as they want, was a huge, huge value to them in the financial investment that they brought into this campaign. So it's a good example than awareness campaign. Um, sure, they garnered sales, but it was never even a part of the ask, Um, and then a revenue case study that we have is for another smaller skincare brand called Old Fat and M D. This is actually program we ran years ago, and so it's not necessarily anything that's the most fresh today, but it's still something that is truly relevant in the way that you can think about, um, a revenue campaign. But on a creatively small budget, they were launching a sunscreen product, and they didn't have a big budget to do anything. So what we decided to do is focus on ah value driven program with to really influential instagrammers and bloggers. And what we did is we basically sent them away for a weekend in Santa Barbara and in Palm Springs, obviously warm sons out here laying by the pool fully integrated into the sunscreen story. We paid for those weekends for each of them separately. Um, and at that kind of a low cost of really just incurring hotel costs and dinners and things like that, we were able to garner extensive amount of coverage from those influencers throughout the weekend. They provided a thana beautiful content, featuring the product that we were able to use on our own channels. And a small investment of less than $1000 garnered more than 250,000 impressions for the brand in that weekend in a short term period and almost 10,000 in sales for the product. So while that wasn't necessarily as specifically driven to like a swipe up campaign or ad retargeting, because this is something that we did several years ago before those things even existed, Honestly, um, it was something that was just a strategic way of spending dollars to think through how you can align with people by creating value in their lives in the same way that they're creating value for you. 7. Project: So the kind of tie a bow on this conversation. I want to kind of put a project in front of you guys to do on your own time. Um, ultimately, what I want you to do is select three influencers. I want you to scan their feeds, and I want you to look at any campaigns that you can catch. You can choose your platform. I would I would personally recommend YouTube or instagram. It's it's gonna be the easiest to see. Um, but just look for any maybe hashtag ad or hashtag spawn or hashtag sponsored content or just anything where you feel like they're tagging a brand and it might perceive it li be a sponsored post. Um, and then I want you to assess whether you think that that content or that campaign was tied to an awareness campaign or revenue campaign and see if you can spot the difference 8. Conclusion: and so that's it. That's kind of the gist on whether you're gonna approach any influence or campaign from the sense of awareness or for the sense of revenue. I hope that for everyone's sake, if revenue is is an important thing to you, which is for most people that you garner that out of any program that you do. But again, I would really stress the importance of thinking about this in the sense of awareness. To start, be in a place where you're ready to financially invest those dollars. And if you're not, just consider simple seating campaigns and just get your brand or your product in front of as many people as you can until you're in a place where you can start to really test these things and figure out who is the right fit for your Brent. And that's a wrap on awareness verse revenue campaigns with influencers. Be sure to check out some my other videos on skill share, and if you want to see a bit more about what we do here at Matt Black, you can go to We are matte black dot co. See you later