Influencers are a big part of our daily life, especially if you’re active on social media. With hundreds of thousands (if not, millions) of followers, they have such an impact on everybody scrolling.
Some brands have taken advantage of influencers and used them as their primary marketing technique. So much so, that some companies have become famous purely from their influencer marketing techniques.
What is influencer marketing?
To understand influencer marketing, you might have to take a look at what exactly influencers are.
Influencers are, in essence, people that have a significant degree of influence over a group of people. With social media, this is mainly people who have built up their reputation on platforms, usually revolving around a specific niche.
Influencers tend to have a lot of followers – the majority of which are very loyal and engage actively with their posts.
With this in mind, influencer marketing is a technique that capitalizes on these influencers. It focuses directly on using key leaders to promote a brand.
Influencer marketing usually involves hiring, paying, or collaborating with an influencer to help them get the word out for you.
Below, we’ve listed a handful of brands that have profited immensely from influencer marketing.
Birchbox
Birchbox wanted all the beauty-obsessed people on social media to discover their product.
Their company gives out monthly boxes on a subscription-based membership, which all feature the top lifestyle, beauty, and grooming products.
Birchbox decided to team up with the lifestyle blogger Emily Schuman – five Instagram photos received over 18,000 likes and reached over 550,000 potential customers.
They also allowed the founder of Jouer Cosmetics, Christina Zilber, to “take over” their Instagram page for Mother’s Day. She posted four Instagram pictures, one of which was a giveaway. This ultimately resulted in 1,135 user-generated posts.
The takeaway: Research into your target audience and find out what they would find truly useful and exciting.
“Consider the “take over” tactic – many brands have an influencer take over their social media accounts. This brings their fans over to your pages. Of course, giveaways are also a great feature to consider. These will help improve engagement on your posts exceptionally.” — Kareem Johnson, an SMM Specialist at WoWGrade.
Boxed Water
If you have a worthy cause, influencers will be happy to band together to bring attention to it.
Boxed Water is a water company that eliminates the possibility of plastic waste.
Boxed Water teamed with influencers such as Jaimie King and Megan DeAngelis to spread the word about their brand.
They started a campaign called The Retree Project – every Instagram photo posted with the hashtag #Retree, Boxed Water planted two trees.
In a month, there were over 2,600 Instagram photos with the hashtag.
The majority of influencers are delighted to support causes like this – you just need to research which influencers will be more interested in specific causes than others.
The takeaway: Start a worthy campaign, that’s too easy to ignore. So many brands have used this technique to not only make a difference but bring attention to their brand.
Perhaps you can donate $1 to a charity for every retweet, or plant a tree for every like and comment that your post gets? Influencers will very rarely ignore something as worthwhile as that.
Sugar Bear Hair
If you’re on Instagram, chances are that you’ve seen a branded post for Sugar Bear Hair. These bottles are being promoted by your favorite influencer and Instagram model.
Sugar Bear Hair provides gummy vitamins that claim to help with hair growth.
Even Instagram’s Holy Grail, the Kardashians, regularly post about these gummy bears on their Instagram accounts.
When you think of influencer marketing, your mind more than likely bounces to this specific brand.
They now have over 2.5 million followers and still, regularly collaborate with prominent influencers.
The takeaway: Know your niche, know your audience, and find the best influencers for your brand. Once you’ve established this, you’re sure to have a successful influencer marketing campaign.
Sugar Bear Hair spends a large chunk of money on paying influencers – as you can imagine, the Kardashians come with a big price tag. You will have to build yourself up to a certain level and make sure that your investments will be reciprocated.
SquareSpace
Straying away from Instagram, SquareSpace has used YouTube to promote its brand. The result? An increase in both awareness and conversions to their online service.
Squarespace provides hosting and website building services.
SquareSpace uses various influencers in a multitude of different niches to expand their brand. Whether it’s from News/pop culture, travel, gaming, or tech.
The company identifies the top YouTube channels and carefully creates content that is relevant to each particular audience. Their audience reach and video views prove just how effective their marketing technique is.
For example, Ray William Johnson produced a video for SquareSpace, which was released to close to 11 million subscribers. In this, he gave a detailed demonstration of how to use SquareSpace’s unique features.
The takeaway: You don’t have to stick to Instagram for influencer marketing. YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and even VSCO could be better choices for you.
Find the best social media platform for you and your message. Importantly, you also have to seek out the right influencers for your brand.
SquareSpace focuses its influencer campaigns on making valuable, informative guides or videos. Could your brand do the same?
SeatGeek
If you’ve watched Youtube sensation, David Dobrik, you’ve more than likely heard about SeatGeek.
SeatGeek is a ticket company that uses influencers in a really unique way. For David Dobrik, they’ve become a big hit due to them buying his and all his friend’s cars.
They also reached out to other influencers in the sports, lifestyle, family, and comedy industries.
SeatGeek lets their influencers tell their own event story, in a really organic way. For instance, when they donate a car to the “vlog squad,” the influencers will talk about the brand afterward in a really colloquial and natural way.
Now, SeatGeek has been a trending topic on social media, has over 400 influencers, and 1500 unique piece of branded content. From this, they have gained more than 125,000,000 organic impressions.
The takeaway: Be a little bit inventive and creative when it comes to your influencer campaign. Think outside of the box.
Similarly, when it comes to being creative, you need to provide influencers with punchy and engaging texts in the first place. Always make sure to use tools and services like Studicus, Grammarly, BestEssay.Education, and Hemingway, when editing your material or ad copies.
SeatGeek’s brand isn’t related to cars – except that’s what they’re widely known for now. Their brand is famous and often used, all because they built up this initial reputation.
SeatGeek gives most of their creative control over to the influencer, which is something that might work for you. Rather than sending your influencers scripts or guidelines, let them have more control.
Also, help out your influencers create the content that they want to create – this will help you build up a reputation and relationship with them.
Conclusion
We hope these brands inspire you to try out influencer marketing for yourself. These brands have used influencers to increase their credibility, increase sales, and raise awareness about their company.
Regardless of your niche, there’s always an influencer that can help you expand your reach. It’s one of the top ways to use social media to promote your business.
Author’s Bio
Nicole D.Garrison is a content strategist, writer, and contributor at PickTheWriter and a number of platforms for marketing specialists. She is a dedicated and experienced author who pays particular attention to quality research. At her free time, Nicole is a passionate runner and a curious beekeeper. Moreover, she runs her own blog LiveInspiredMagazine.