In the 2020s, influencer marketing had already made a name for itself at the beginning of a new decade. Instagram feeds were full of beautiful images promoting everything from lemonade to household cleaners. But how does it work?
89% of marketers report that influencer marketing has a higher ROI than other channels in a crowded online market. In addition to getting your brand in front of new audiences and boosting your reputation, influencer campaigns also boost sales. In other words: yes, influencer marketing is still effective. Influencer marketing requires knowledge. The purpose of this blog is to describe what influencer marketing is, what it is not, and how 5 brands successfully executed massive influencer marketing campaigns.
What is Influencer Marketing?
A hybrid of old and new marketing tools, influencer marketing combines both. It incorporates the idea of celebrity endorsement into a modern-day content-driven marketing campaign that combines both old and new marketing tools. One of the main characteristics of influencer marketing is that it results in collaborations between brands and influencers.
The influencer marketing strategy doesn’t just involve celebrities. It focuses on influencers, many of whom would never consider themselves famous in a real setting. As a result of their authority, knowledge, position, or relationship with their audience, influencers have the power to influence the purchasing decisions of others. Otherwise, they can be followed in a distinct niche, with whom they are actively engaged. Depending on the topic of his or her niche, the size of the following will vary.
One of the biggest mistakes that traditional media makes is not recognizing the difference between celebrities and online influencers. Furthermore, it is important to understand that many influencers have built an enthusiastic and keen audience by systematically building it.
The audience does not really care about your brand at all. They only care about the opinions of the influencers, so they follow influencers rather than brands. It is not accidental for them to follow influencers rather than brands. There is no need for you to try to impose rules and business practices on your influencers. The audience belongs to them, and if they want to walk away, they can simply take their followers with them.
What Influencer Marketing isn’t.
You don’t just find someone with an audience and give them money or exposure so they’ll say good things about you when you use influencer marketing. Viral celebrities are for that. Influencers are people who have built their own brands and nurtured their audience. They are naturally protective of their reputation and their followers. People like this don’t do influencer marketing solely for the money; they have the patience and focus required to succeed in social media.
Unlike Social Media and Content Marketing, Influencer Marketing doesn’t deliver quick results. Instead, it’s about demonstrating your authority, credibility, and thought leadership within your industry. It’s the same kind of slow-and-steady approach as Social Media and Content Marketing. In other words, it’s about becoming synonymous with whatever it is you offer, like Xeroxing a document rather than photocopying it or hoovering the floor rather than vacuuming it.
When it comes to social media marketing, it can be difficult to acquire the kind of followers that will be loyal and engaged over time. As a result, it is tempting to think that joining forces with an influencer will be an easy way to get into the hearts and minds of his or her followers—but it is not quite as simple as it sounds. Achieving the trust and respect of influencers requires that you earn their trust and respect. But how do you achieve this?
Influencer Marketing Case Studies of 5 Popular Brands
There have been some brilliant Influencer Marketing campaigns in recent years. You can use them to design your own strategy.
Ola Prime Time
Ola Prime Time is one of the most popular advertising influencer campaigns in the industry. With top influencers and premium vehicles, the main focus of the campaign was to promote Ola’s new and improved Prime cab service. As a result of this ad, cab aggregator Ola was launched in selected cities, such as Pune, etc… Lucky customers were shown picking up at pre-arranged times as well as receiving celebrity chauffeurs as a result of this ad.
As part of the Ola Prime initiative, Ola teamed up with celebrities Milind Soman, Narain Karthikeyan, and Abish Mathew to give their passengers one of the most memorable rides of their lives, as they arrived in cabs booked by Ola Prime passengers. Ola leveraged the popularity of these influencers in order to spark interest among their audience.
Thrilled passengers, as well as Ola’s social media promotion around the activity resulted in a heightened number of Ola Prime bookings and helped Ola drive conversation about their new service. The number of bookings also shot through the roof for Ola Prime.
Craftsvilla’s #LatestSeLatest
In order to raise brand awareness, Craftsvilla, a leading e-commerce website offering handicrafts and traditional Indian jewellery, art pieces, and more, launched the hashtag #LatestSeLatest, which was aimed at raising awareness of the brand. The influencer campaign, executed by Kinetic in seven towns, communicates the message of the online store being a one-stop destination for women’s ethnic wear.
By drawing insight from ‘Kinetic Academy,’ the agency was able to develop an approach to creating impact and initiating brand conversations with consumers involved in order to create an impact for its clients. As a response to this approach, the agency developed a media mix of large formats at key intersections, arterial roads, and shopping centers dominating the city, as well as establishing a presence at consumer touch points through metro branding and bus shelters to keep up with consumer behaviour.
During the 15-day campaign, the agency was able to connect with the consumer by activating the brand in the out-of-home (OOH) environment. While executing this influencer campaign, Craftsvilla collaborated with relevant social media influencers such as Debashree Banerjee, Gia Kashyap, and Anshita Juneja through Twitter, Instagram, and a number of blogs.
During July and August 2016, Craftsvilla was able to reach out to its target audience through these influencers. As Craftsvilla was able to reach out to millions of their target audience with this influencer campaign, by choosing the right influencers from the beauty and fashion world to work with, they were able to do so.
Amazon’s #CrazyForReading
As part of their new influencer campaign titled ‘Because reading should never stop’, Amazon Kindle introduced the ‘Because reading should never stop’ campaign. In order to boost sales of Amazon’s flagship product, the Kindle, as well as the adoption of e-reading, Amazon launched an influencer campaign called #CrazyForReading. The event was attended by several bestsellers. The Amazon Kindle is a dream come true for bibliophiles, as acclaimed authors Ashwin Sanghi and Amish Tripathi explained during the Influencer Marketing Campaign.
This resulted in the popularity of these popular authors with a massive social media following, whose word was gold for their fans, so when they praised Amazon’s Kindle, it worked wonders. As part of the campaign, Amazon India contacted users to invite them to share their experiences with books and reading.
Axis Bank’s #AxisThoughtFactory
The Bangalore branch of Axis Bank recently launched the Axis Thought Factory, which aims to develop technology solutions for the financial sector. In an effort to promote the new program, Axis collaborated with various tech bloggers and social media influencers to get the word out about the new initiative.
Axis Bank understood the gravity of the situation and took the necessary steps to turn it to its own advantage. Axis Bank’s Thought Factory will give them an edge over others. They’ll be able to focus on creating something more innovative with these new-era technologies to solve disruptive banking problems.
In addition to hosting a number of events and workshops in Bangalore, this brainchild of Axis Bank will greatly boost industry-startup collaboration. As a result, Axis will be a part of the FinTech Revolution taking place in India. In addition to understanding the importance of influencer marketing, Axis used it to make the Thought Factory launch a big success.
The Axis Thought Factory was launching an influencer marketing campaign through the organization of an offline event that was attended to and covered by popular tech bloggers.
Axis collaborated with a wide range of blogging sites in order to reach out to all the potential bloggers and social media influencers in order to invite them to their launch event. They sought out micro- and nano-influencers in order to maximize their reach and get greater engagement from their target audience. On its launch day, #AxisThoughtFactory was trending nationally.
The goal of Axis Bank is to create awareness of their lab in the market. By doing so, they will attract startups to join them. By specifically targeting technology bloggers to cover their event, they were able to reach their target audience, which was tech-savvy startups. Axis achieved its goals by using technology bloggers’ influence. And this is why this campaign was a success. The results speak for themselves.
A number of popular technology bloggers attended this event. Bloggers who attended this event covered some of the same topics on their technology blogs, tweeted about the event on Twitter, and live-streamed the event on YouTube, providing details about the event as well as sneak peeks and interesting information. In addition, influencers shared their blogs across various social media platforms in order to increase the reach of their blogs.
On average, the blog posts had 1000+ views. The technology social media influencers we signed up with on average have 23000+ unique page views and 3500+ Twitter followers. The hashtag used for the Thought Factory Launch event – #AxisThoughtFactory – was trending nationwide on the day of the launch. This Axis Bank’s Think Factory campaign is the epitome of initiative and innovation. With its progressive and futuristic vision, it has made a mark on the banking world as a whole.
To make a difference, you must understand the current situation and the needs of the hour. If you make the right moves at the right time, you can master your game. Axis Bank has accepted the change and challenged itself.
Axis thought Factory is just one of many examples out there. Influencer marketing has become increasingly important for brands to reach their potential customers in a way that is more effective than traditional marketing. In addition to gaining publicity for the event, these astonishing results enabled it to reach its target audience, ensuring its success.
Pepsi #YourWildestDreams On Triller
On Triller’s social media platform, Pepsi hosted a spectacular concert entitled “Your Wildest Dreams” in 2020, featuring Chance the Rapper, Ava Max, Demi Lovato, and Chloe x Halle. Because Triller is a music-first platform, it was perhaps the perfect platform for this ad campaign. It was a virtual visual audio concert broadcast live on Triller all over the world. In partnership with Rock the Vote, Pepsi held its first social media music competition.
A non-profit organization called Rock the Vote empowers American youth to vote during elections. Around the time of September 2020, the decision was made to create some promotional content.
Influencers began to encourage participants to create their own music tone, lyrics, and stage performance. To encourage people to join the competition, influencers were required to use hashtags such as #YourWildestDreams or #PepsiWildCherry. On or before December 15, 2020, interested contestants will upload their video auditions using the Pepsi Wild Cherry hashtag and filter, just like American Idol.
To keep their brand presence noticeable as the frontiers of music and pop culture, they participate in all of these activities. Pepsi displayed their soft drinks to customers; young people were aware of the importance of “rocking the electoral vote”; and some of them chose to take part in the music competition in order to reach their own stardom. Using music promotion as a marketing strategy, Pepsi cola drinks were advertised through the campaign.
In the hashtag #YourWildestDreams, Pepsi is promoting the idea that anyone can start from nothing and become famous. Brand sponsors of American Idol, The Voice, and America got Talent have used a similar strategy. Some influencers spread the word, while others sang, or lip-sang to a beat while performing and dancing in this very specific campaign. A major role was played by hip-hop in the ad campaign, bringing together many youths.
In the Hip-hop contest, Pepsi invited many Triller influencers and celebrities, including nano and mid-tier influencers. Over twenty social media hip-hop influencers participated, all of whom were well-known on other social media platforms. The music event was attended by celebrities such as Chance the Rapper, Ava Max, Demi Lovato, and Chloe x Halle. Fat Joe was the judge. Judges included TV personality Kenny Burns and rappers Mike WiLL Made-It and Mulatto. Upon winning the entire competition, T- Lyon was projected as the face of the Pepsi commercial in early 2021, allowing him to pursue his ‘wildest dreams’. Pepsi’s Combined Social Reach for the Triller Case Study is presented below:
- Total number of sponsored posts: 56
- Triller followers targeted: 1,464,206
- Likes: 20,636
- Comments: 1,012
- Engagement rate (overall average): 0.13%
- Views: 16,720,400
- Total Hashtag Views (#YourWildestDreams #PepsiWildCherry): 74.4 million