Influencer marketing, already a popular marketing tactic, is set to explode next year with nearly 50% of marketers planning to increase their influencer budgets in 2017.
94% of advertisers who ran influencer marketing programs this year believe it to be effective, with a majority citing the creation of authentic content around their brand as the top benefit. Linqia’s Storybook, defined as a multi-flight influencer program spanning several months, was created for brands to gradually roll out compelling content over time. Because consumers rarely make a purchase decision at the first introduction to a product or service, the multi-flight Storybook enables influencers to expose their audiences to the brands over time, increasingly memorability. Memorability plays a key role in purchase decisions as most consumer decisions are memory based. After all, how can you buy something if you don’t remember what it is or why you need it?
However, Storybook programs aren’t just great options for brands. In fact, they have multiple benefits for influencers, too! Linqia’s recent Foster Farms program found that influencers see an average 20% increase in audience engagements during their second program with a brand, indicating that the Storybook model sets the stage for an influencer’s audience to develop a deeper investment in the promoted product.
Program Background
To generate awareness for its Foster Farms Simply Raised fresh chicken, the brand launched a two-flight Storybook centered around “The New Comfort Food.” Influencers in select regions were invited to share quick and easy recipes that inspired their audience members to visit the Foster Farms landing page to learn more about why Simply Raised fresh chicken is a healthy and delicious dinner option.
1. Participate with the Brand Again
Our Influencer Success Team is diligent about inviting back influencers from Flight 1 whose beautiful content proved to drive results towards achieving the brand’s goals. Influencers are at their best when they develop a creative, long-term narrative about a product’s many uses – flighted programs help an authentic story take shape over time.
Not only does a Storybook allow you to get creative, but your audiences respond to it as well. Although repeat influencers only accounted for 45% of the second flight, they inspired 50% of total program engagements, including 61% of total blog engagements. In other words, audiences were more inclined to share, like, or comment on the content if the influencer had written about the product before. Repeat messaging grows the relationship between the audience and the product, building an authentic partnership that your audience will trust.
Parsnips and Pastries for Foster Farms Flight 1
Parsnips and Pastries for Foster Farms Flight 2
2. Follow the Creative Brief
After you’ve opted into the second flight of a Storybook program, the best way to increase your performance is by following the creative brief found within your Linqia dashboard. Your Brand Success Manager (BSM) creates these briefs to reflect the best practices found in previous flights of the program. More specifically, the BSMs revise the story themes to reflect carefully drawn insights about how the influencers can maximize success the second (or third!) time around.
For example, after Flight 1, we discovered one-pot recipes contributed 70% of total blog story engagements. Because top performing influencers included one-pot recipes, Foster Farms’ BSMs wrote the insight into the creative brief for the second flight The added insight inspired 17% more influencers to create one-pot recipes and drove over 2x more engagement than influencers using alternative preparation methods. Shannon of What’s For Lunch at Our House even drove 4,300+ engagements with her one-pot citrus chicken stir fry. Identifying that simple preparation methods increased audience engagements, and we were able to optimize flight over flight to elevate both the influencers’ and the brand’s success goals.
3. Read Your BSM’s Support Emails
While following the creative brief for enhanced blog story themes will help you achieve optimal results before the programs get under way, your BSM’s support emails will help you improve as the program progresses. These support emails include blog story optimizations, tips for social media, and other pertinent information that will help increase your engagement and achieve your click milestone during the program itself.
For example, in Flight 1 the top six performers drove nearly 1,200 total engagements from Instagram by pairing their images with captions that discussed their recipes’ health benefits and leveraged popular hashtags like #recipe, #healthy, and #buzzfeast to capture a wider, targeted audience. After discovering this key finding, the BSMs sent emails to Flight 2 participants to encourage similar messaging. As a result, the top six performers on Flight 2 similarly drove nearly 1,200 total engagements from Instagram, accounting for 63% of total program engagements from that platform. Additionally, the benefits of shifting to a healthy context translated across all social channels, as incorporating their recipe’s health benefits drove 1.6x more Retweets than Flight 1.
Through Linqia’s Storybook model, influencers have the chance to share compelling content around a specific product over time, deepening their audience’s connection to the product. If you have any questions about participating in more flighted programs, or how to improve your performance after signing up for one, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your Influencer Success Manager at community@linqia.wpengine.com.
