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Influencer marketing is one of the fastest-growing advertising strategies in the world. In fact, 93% of marketers have used this strategy in their campaigns. It’s no surprise, though—it’s a strategy that enables brands to connect with customers on a more personal level.
According to Influencer Marketing Hub, It started as a niche practice and grew into a $1.7 billion industry in 2016, then $9.7 billion in 2020, and now it's projected to grow to $16.4 billion by 2022
Influencer marketing has been around for a long time, but it's recently exploded in popularity among brands and small businesses who want to get their products and services in front of their target audiences' eyeballs. Influencers can help you grow your brand awareness, increase sales, and improve customer service by providing useful information.
Here's how 5 brands nailed influencer marketing that drove over 50k+ followers and more than 3% engagement. Also, find 10 easy steps to launch your own influencer marketing campaign with Digital First AI.
Warby Parker
Warby Parker, the direct-to-consumer brand offering stylish glasses at an affordable price, has been using influencer marketing to great effect.
The brand was born from the founder’s story of being unable to replace his lost glasses due to the industry’s traditionally high monopoly pricing. Warby Parker set out to change this by offering stylish glasses at an affordable price. They also have a mission of improving eyesight for those who can’t afford eye care, providing a pair of glasses for every pair purchased.
The brand is popular with fashionable millennial-aged between 25-34. The customer base is highly engaged on social media and they are particularly fond of YouTube.
Warby Parker used 16 micro-influencers with sizable followings on Instagram and YouTube as part of their influencer marketing strategy. The micro-influencers were highly engaged with their followers on social media and have large followings (between 10k - 1M). This allowed them to reach a wide audience and generate awareness around Warby Parker products.
Results?
The results speak for themselves: gained 50,000 followers, 3.5% engagement rate
Blue Apron
Blue Apron is an ingredient-and-recipe meal kit service that delivers fresh ingredients to homes across the U.S. In 2018, the company saw a massive increase in demand for its services and needed to find a way to reach more customers.
When Blue Apron launched in 2012, its customer base consisted mostly of people in the 25-34 age range, followed by 35-44-year-olds—but now it has expanded to include an older audience. Almost 30% of customers are cooking for children under 18.
The company's goal was to expand its reach even further by engaging vloggers and foodie Instagrammers, as well as food-centric YouTube channels—and they were looking for a solution that would help them achieve their goals while staying on budget.
Results?
Blue Apron turned to influencer marketing—specifically, 92 influential vloggers, 200+ content creators, 7.5 million+ impressions, 42k+ clicks, and 2,150+ paying customers later—the company was able to see huge success with this approach.
Casper
Casper is a “sleep company”–– a direct-to-consumer mattress company that values innovation and customer satisfaction. The company is valued at $1.1 billion (2021)
Casper was looking to drive conversions and increase brand awareness among younger target customers through influencer marketing.
The solution was to partner with millennial-focused YouTube influencers, who would use Casper products in their videos while talking about the brand and its benefits.
The partners were selected based on their demographic compatibility with Casper's target audience and their ability to generate organic views on social media platforms like YouTube and Instagram.
Results?
The results were impressive: 17.2M impressions, 6% engagement rate, and 2:1 direct sales!
FIFA World Cup 2022
As the world's largest sports brand, FIFA has a lot of attention to command. But how do you get your audience to pay attention?
In their case, they found that they needed to create an event that would spark enthusiasm and draw attention—not just from the influencers but from their followers as well.
They decided to bring 17 of their most popular influencers on an all-expenses-paid trip to Doha for a week-long soccer camp. The influencers traveled around Qatar, playing games, attending events, and sharing their experiences with their followers on YouTube and Instagram.
Results?
The campaign resulted in 10 Million impressions, 1.4 Million video views, and 127k+ engagements.
Pedigree
Pedigree is a global leader in pet nutrition and pet health, but it wanted to humanize its brand by standing up for a cause.
They partnered with influencers like Kristyn Cole, an influencer with more than 135k+ followers on Instagram, to launch a campaign called “Buy a Bag, Give a Bowl.” The goal of this campaign was to support the national effort to end pet homelessness.
Results?
The campaign was so successful that it garnered 143 million impressions and 9,300 blog post engagements!
How to use Digital First AI to create a killer influencer marketing campaign?
Ever tried to create an influencer marketing campaign from scratch? It's a pain.
It takes hours of research and a lot of trial-and-error, and even then you're probably not going to get it right the first time. But you don't have to do all that anymore!
Digital-first AI is a SaaS platform that helps marketers and solopreneurs create & manage marketing campaigns from a single tool with AI-powered technology. The platform provides access to actionable tactics across channels, from social media to marketing automation to search engine optimization (SEO) with an AI-built recommendation engine.
With DF AI, you can automatically create marketing funnels in minutes with a click of a button. It also offers tools for copywriting, designing, managing your team, and streamlining your workflow, so you can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on what you love—creating awesome business.
And the best part? It's all accessible through one dashboard! You no longer have to log into multiple tools. It’s a complete solution for your marketing needs.
10 steps to create an Influencer marketing funnel
Here’s a sneak peek of what our funnel will look like in the end but don't worry we'll walk you through the funnel, step by step.
Before we dive into the funnel, let's first understand the 4 stages in a customer journey—and how these stages will help you map how your customers will be interacting with your product.
Ice-breakers - Awareness
These are the first few times a customer interacts with your brand. It's when they're just getting to know you and what you're about. This is where you should be building trust and establish a relationship with your customers.
E.g social media posts, Facebook ads, Google ads, remarketing, PR, and Influencer marketing. The main goal of this stage is to “Reach / Attract potential customers.”
Cheeseburgers - Acquisition/consideration
Once the customer has established some trust, they're ready for the next step of the journey—cheeseburgers! Here, you want to make sure that everything is clear and easy for them. You can do this by making sure that all of your products are easily accessible through a landing page or from a link on the homepage. Also, have simple and straightforward features or pricing structures so that it's easy for customers to see what they're paying for what product or service.
E.g landing page, social proof, Brand comparison, webinar, events (product launch), free trial, demo, etc. The main goal of this stage is to “Engage / Convert.”
Main Product - Purchase/Activation/Retention
Now that we've got their attention, let's get them into our main offering! At this point, we want to make it easy for the customers to buy our product or service by making sure we've got an easy checkout process set up so they don't have any confusion about how much money they need to spend or how much time it will take them to receive the product.
E.g sales page, product page, onboarding, customer support, etc. The main goal of this stage is to “Nurture / Close/Retain”
Upsell - Referral
This phase is when a customer brings in new customers for you. Word of mouth, referral, online reviews, etc. The main goal of this stage is to convert customers into “promoters/advocates.”
Step 1
Log in to Digital First AI. If you don’t have an account, create a 3-day free trial account to access the platform.
Step 2
Once you’re logged in, you can start by creating a new funnel. To do this, click on the “Add Funnel” on the top left corner of your screen or click on the “Plus+” icon in the center of your dashboard. This brings up a popup window where you can create a new funnel.
Step 3
Filling out the brief details for your funnel will help keep everything organized and easily accessible. The first thing to do is create a name for your funnel. This helps you remember what type of campaign or goal you are working on, as well as making it easy to find it later.
Once you save it, you will find a dashboard with 4 stages to your customer journey: Icebreakers, Cheeseburger, Main products, and Upsell.
Step 4
Add tactics to Ice-breakers. Click on the recommended tactics, or click on the plus icon which you can find in the Ice-breakers section. You will be then taken to our tactics library where you can find 1000+ tactics created by our expert marketer and growth hackers.
You can search tactics by keywords, category, or funnel steps. For e.g, let’s use the keyword “influencer” and funnel steps as “Ice-breakers”.
Step 5
Click on the tactics and it will show you a complete breakdown of what this tactic does and step-by-step process, examples, and benchmarks to implement it into your marketing strategy.
You can also add the desired tactics to the funnel by clicking on the “add to the funnel” button on the top of your screen. Add it to the Ice-breakers. Similarly, you can add more tactics as per your use case.
Step 6
Add tactics to “Cheese-Burgers”. Go back to the tactics library and now select Cheese-burger under the funnel step and choose tactics that are relevant to your use case. For e.g, let’s choose “Lead generation - a Pre-launch Landing Page”. You can choose multiple and add to your funnel by following the same steps as above.
Step 7
Similarly, follow the above steps and add tactics to your remaining stages i.e, Main Product & Upsell. Here's what it finally looks like:
Step 8
You can create flows and map your customer journey. To create flows, click on the left arrow icon on the top, name the flows, and link cards by clicking on them using the mouse. Links will be added in the order that you click. Save once done.
Step 9
You can export the funnel to pdf and share it with your teammates or clients. You can also invite your team members to view it.
To do so, click on the three dots in the top-right corner of the screen. Then, click "Save".
Step 10
Finally, you can use our Ai copywriting tool to create content for your website, copywriting, social posts, e-mail scenarios, or banners!
Our tool allows you to create original content on any topic. You can also use it to create social posts and e-mails. The tool offers a wide range of templates so that you have plenty of options to choose from.
E.g, to create copies, click on the content generator. This brings up a popup window where you can create content for assets.
For e.g, under Ice-breakers “Micro-Influencers Funnel Like Colourpop.com” there’s an Instagram asset added under step 5 “Pre-Launch Strategy”.
Fill in the details like the product, occasion, and offers. The tool will generate content automatically for you.
But wait, there’s more!
With DF AI, you can create multiple designs in different sizes and formats for your social media channels in seconds. To do so, click on the graphics at the top of the screen and fill in details about your campaign. Our design tool will generate graphics in seconds.
Isn’t amazing?
At Digital First AI, we believe that marketing isn't just a job, it's a passion. That's why we made it our mission to create a platform that helps marketers and solopreneurs create & manage marketing campaigns from a single tool with AI-powered technology. We want to help you grow your business by offering access to actionable tactics across channels.
As the world of digital marketing continues to change, so do our tools and resources. We work hard every day to provide you with the latest technology for all your digital marketing needs.
So, if you're looking to grow your business, then Digital First AI is the right choice for you.
Try it for 3 days trial and see what it can do for you!
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