The Creator Economy is at its most powerful with an estimated current value of $104.2 billion. With more than half of the world's population using social media, leveraging Influencer Marketing through brand activations has become an essential part of many marketing plans.
Influencer Marketing opens up opportunities to reach target consumers better than traditional marketing, by developing deeper and more meaningful relationships between consumers and creators.
Furthermore, the recent expansion of niche creator content across social media platforms, means that brands can effortlessly build on brand affinity by tapping into audience passions and sparking conversation to drive higher engagement levels.
But Influencer Marketing activity doesn’t have to be time-bound, campaign based or for product launch. You can constantly drive traffic and conversions to your brand, all year round. This can be created by using different creators throughout the year or re-sponsoring the same creators.
The advantage of sponsoring a creator multiple times is that it can drive brand affinity, loyalty and conversions. Long-term partnerships can even assist in forming ambassador influencer programmes that will produce conversion-driving content on a regular basis. Having a long-term partnership mentality will assist in nurturing loyal and returning consumers who trust in what your brand has to say.
At Digital Voices, we believe influencers should be at the heart of yearly media plans, through brand activations on social media, including YouTube integrations, Instagram Reels, TikTok videos and more.
But this can extend into other media formats.
You can obtain usage rights for the sponsored influencer content and use in multiple ways, instead of spending additional budget and time on ad shoots. This includes organic assets for your brand's social media channels to build community i.e. creators running brand TikTok accounts.
Commissioning creator-produced paid social adverts is 50% cheaper than commissioning a video production house to make brand adverts. The content also performs 40% better, which lowers CPMs and CPAs, by raising the assets’ Quality Scores. This strategy saves on production time and money and also ensures high-quality ad content featuring recognisable influencers to drive further entries, impressions and engagements.
It doesn’t stop there though - we have recently worked on an OOH campaign with Hinge. Hinge were looking for creators to empower the app’s users to find love without limits. We found 7 creators who were placed in adverts on billboards and murals across US cities. And more and more you will see influencers in TV advertising.
If you are working with different KPIs throughout the year, Influencer Marketing can work for any stage of your marketing funnel or work as a full-funnel strategy. Driving initial brand awareness through influencer campaigns is simple. But you can also drive consumer consideration and interest generated through targeted educational and informative content about your product or service - which can ultimately convert into downloads, sales or whatever your goal is!
All of our campaigns are carefully and strategically designed to hold attention and win the trust of viewers, to drive results for your brand. Our long-term partnership with Surfshark, a secure virtual private network (VPN), focuses on running YouTube sponsorship performance campaigns at a groundbreaking global scale. Over the past two years, we have worked with vast budgets every month to drive sales by showing the benefits of using Surfshark VPN in YouTube videos. By putting Influencer Marketing at the forefront of Surfshark’s long-term plans, we have been able to collectively scale their marketing efforts and sponsor over 540 creators from 20 different countries on over 1,300 YouTube videos, to drive thousands of sales.
Additionally, our partnership with Pearson Revise, a trusted revision resource brand for exam preparation, has resulted in a long-term partnership with Digital Voices. From the initial trial campaign, we found the repeated exposure of the brand to their audience was successful, and we look forward to working on an annual basis this coming year.
Partnering with creators who consistently feature your brand on a long-term basis, delivers better results as the audience builds on trust and familiarity.
If you are looking to plan out your marketing activity for the coming year, get in touch!
If you’re an influencer and are looking for further information or support with brand partnerships, we offer free support and advice through our Creator Voices initiative, answering questions on content, building relationships with brands and how to price brand collaborations.
Influencer marketing is an essential touchpoint for all demographics, with two-thirds of Gen Z women stating that “social influencers are more important for showcasing brands than the actual brands themselves”, (download our insights report for more) whilst YouTube Shorts campaigns offer up space to communicate with a broader demographic scale including millennials, boomers - and Gen Z due to the platform’s existing legacy. Read more.
