Blog

  • How to Dramatically Increase Your Revenue with Nano and Micro-influencers

    Nano-influencers and micro-influencers — which are content creators and key opinion leaders (KOLs) with smaller audiences ranging from 10,000 to 75,000 followers — often slip under the radar.
    However, despite a smaller following, their conversion rates stack up against celebrities and those with bigger audiences. In fact, according to Forbes, micro-influencers drive 60% higher campaign engagement rates than their macro-influencer counterparts.
    You can dramatically increase revenue with the right strategy behind your micro and nano-influencer marketing plan. Here’s what you need to know.

    What is influencer marketing?
    Influencer marketing is the practice of brands collaborating with influencers. Influencers are social media superstars, trendsetters, tastemakers, and knowledge leaders with sizable and highly engaged networks of followers on social media.
    Accessing influencers is a powerful marketing tool to boost brand awareness, send qualified traffic to your website, and impact purchasing decisions through product placements and endorsements on social media.
    Influencers can be anything from a famous fashion photographer on Instagram, a well-read cybersecurity blogger who tweets, or a dance instructor on TikTok.
    What are micro- and nano-influencers? 
    Micro- and nano-influencers are individuals or accounts with small but loyal audiences. Nano-influencers have less than 10k followers, and those in the micro category have an audience size between 10k-75k.
    The most significant benefit of working with an influencer with a smaller following is their close, trusted relationships with their audiences. Consumers are more likely to follow advice or recommendations because, with a smaller audience, these influencers are more likely to engage one-on-one with followers.
    This interaction leads to higher conversion rates and more returns on your marketing investment. Plus, smaller influencers typically come with a budget-friendly price tag, so your marketing dollars go further.
    These influencers want to grow their following and reputation, so they may go the extra mile to impress brands. If you need to adjust deadlines or alter posts, micro- and nano-influencers may be responsive to feedback. Small-scale influencers respond faster to communication as they have fewer messages in their inbox.
    Some brands shy away from working with influencers with fewer followers because they want a broader reach. However, nano and micro-influencers have developed strong trust with their audiences, will work for smaller budgets, and are more likely to collaborate in content creation.  
    How to Find and Recruit Micro-influencers and Nano-influencers
    Building a successful campaign with micro- and nano-influencers requires finding the hidden gems that fit within your budget but have a highly engaged audience. Here’s how you can do that.
    1. Search in an influencer database or marketplace.
    A database like the impact.com for Influencers and Creators platform does most of the heavy research for you. It gives you a quick overview of an account’s followers, engagement rate, platforms where they are active, and more. A marketplace also shares potential partners’ categories, demographics, and values so you can quickly find influencers that match your brand identity.
    2. Get specific about with whom you want to work.
    The smaller the audience, the more targeted your messaging needs to be. When trying to connect with a small number of people, you need to be sure your product fits their lifestyle. When finding and recruiting micro- and nano-influencers, get specific — look for partners who are already fans of your brand and speak your language.
    3. Offer a personal touch when engaging with influencers.
    Building long-lasting relationships with influencers are all about creating emotional connections. Customize your outreach messages and focus on nurturing your relationships as your partnership grows.
    4. Consistently add new influencers to your marketing strategy.
    You’ll want to work with larger groups of influencers with small audiences to widen your reach, so keep your recruitment efforts going after getting your partnership program off the ground. Consistency fuels your marketing initiative, so you can make new connections and promote brand awareness.
    How to Manage Micro- and Nano-influencers to Build Profitable Relationships
    Securing long-lasting partnerships that boost revenue involves creating a mutually beneficial environment where you and your influencers succeed.
    For instance, online for-profit clothing store Ivory Ella partnered with micro- and nano-influencers to tap into new audiences and grow revenue. By the end of their first full year, they saw 11% of their total revenue coming through partnerships. They decided to double down on partnerships, and in Q4, they increased revenue by 56% year-over-year (YoY) and generated 17% of total revenue through their influencer partnership program.
    Ivory Ella isn’t an outlier. You can achieve great results by doing the following:
    1. Automate manual processes to improve workflow.
    Busy work piles up when you onboard and manage multiple influencers. Automation tools help ease some pressure, so you don’t fall behind. Consider automating:

    Tracking and reporting: automatically generate reports that show each influencer’s engagement and conversions.
    Communication: use an automated system to send updates, surveys, check-ins, feedback requests, and other forms of communication.
    Recruiting: set up alerts to be notified of new potential partners in your space. Using automation fosters growth with less human intervention.

    2. Choose your compensation method based on performance.
    Influencers with smaller followings charge far less than celebrities. However, you still need to reward them fairly for their time and effort.
    Some popular payment models for influencers include:

    Performance bonuses: brands pay influencers when a user converts or triggers a “success event.” These events include purchases, subscriptions, sign-ups to newsletters and free trials, app downloads, etc.
    Participation bonuses: this model compensates for upper-funnel contributions such as brand awareness.
    Hybrid model: influencers get paid a flat fee plus performance and/or participation bonuses for specific user actions.
    Flat fee: brands pay influencers a fixed rate per post or campaign.
    Gifting: brands gift products or services to influencers in exchange for content creation.
    Tiered fee: the fee is based on the number of engagements and/or contributions to the buyer journey.
    Monthly payouts: influencers get paid a fixed monthly fee for the length of the contract.

    Micro- and nano-influencers introduce potential customers to your brand through engaging content. The last touchpoint attribution model gives the conversion credit to the final touchpoint where a customer has converted.
    These creators are seldom the last touchpoint. They play an essential role in other parts of the sales cycle, such as brand awareness and persuading audiences to convert eventually. For these reasons, paying small-scale influencers with gifts and performance bonuses that solely reward last touchpoints may not meet their requirements.
    According to a WARC and impact.com white paper, 84% of influencers (small-scale and big-scale) prefer a flat fee payment, while 47%are open to a hybrid model.
    3. Prioritize your partner’s experience.
    Working with a beloved brand is exciting for an influencer of any size. Micro- and nano-influencers who partner with the right brand may get the momentum they need to accelerate audience growth. By providing a memorable experience, you may contribute to their development, which benefits your brand.  
    When partners feel valued, they’ll take that extra step when discussing your brand and products. They want to build a business with you, and the more recognition they get for their work, the better their content becomes.
    Here are some ways to boost your partner experience:

    Reward partners. Incentivize influencers for achieving specific goals or milestones. For example, offer them a performance boost when they bring in a defined amount of new leads or raise their commission at a special conversion rate.
    Pay influencers on time. An influencer and creator platform tracks and streamlines payments, so you’re never late.
    Gifting goes a long way. Give away some of your top products to loyal partners or share a discount code for them to try something new.
    Have fun and get creative. Challenges, games, or other fun activities are a great way to stand out and bring something new to your partnerships.

    Get Significant Revenue Boosts from Smaller Audiences
    A strong influencer-based marketing strategy requires many different kinds of partnerships — including those with smaller followings. It’s easy to get caught up in numbers and assume bigger is always better, but after a few collaborations with micro- and nano-influencers, you’ll quickly see how you can get great returns from working with the right people.

  • 5 Marketing Trends That Might Not Survive in 2023 [HubSpot Research]

    Few marketing trends last forever. In reality, they come and go at rapid speed — and marketers must adapt.
    Because marketing is always evolving, your marketing playbook should, too. But if your strategy looks the same as years prior, it’s time to do some housekeeping.

    Here, we’ll cover five marketing trends that are losing steam and how marketers can respond.
    1. Celebrity endorsements on social media.
    Have you ever seen a sponsored post from a celebrity on social media and thought, “Do they really use that?”
    For example, Beyond Meat’s collaboration with media personality Kim Kardashian became a viral moment in 2022, but not for the right reasons. After releasing a promotional video of Kardashian sampling its vegan products, viewers were quick to accuse Kardashian of “fake chewing,” leading many to question the authenticity of her endorsement.

    The problem is not that Kim K is clearly not a fan of Beyond Meat and is only doing it for the check.It’s that all of her fans can see through it in the comments. pic.twitter.com/chwq9xK0Uh— Cody Wittick (@Cody_Wittick)
    August 26, 2022

    While celebrities offer more exposure, consumers need to trust the celebrity and believe the endorsement is authentic. But building that trust is getting harder.
    Research shows that trust in celebrity endorsements is decreasing. Only 44% of Gen Z-ers trust endorsements from a celebrity or athlete. This number drops to 38% for Millennials.
    Unsurprisingly, the same study found that influencers are more trusted as brand spokespeople. We predict social media influencers – specifically micro-influencers — will start dominating this space.
    Micro-influencers have a smaller following than traditional celebrities, but their audience is highly engaged. On top of that, they are seen as “everyday” people, so their audience is more likely to trust their recommendations.
    Brands seem to be catching on: more than 56% of marketers who invest in influencer marketing work with micro-influencers.
    2. The heavily filtered Instagram aesthetic.
    If you’ve scrolled through Instagram recently, you may notice the aesthetic is changing.
    Gone are the days of heavily filtered photos and perfect Instagram feeds. Nowadays, influencers, brands, and everyday users are pivoting towards a more unedited, imperfect look.
    What’s the reason for this pivot? Many users feel a sense of fatigue over the highly processed aesthetic that has dominated the platform. The Gen Z crowd, in particular, values authenticity over appearing too polished online. It’s no wonder they gravitate to TikTok, where raw and unfiltered content is the norm.
    Brands are starting to take notice of this shift, including Glossier. These days, the brand plays into the “anti-aesthetic” movement by sharing candid shots, unedited photos, and even cute animal photos.
    Although this is just a shift in aesthetics, it points to a bigger trend with young consumers: they crave authenticity from brands. In other words, snapshots of avocado toast and heavily filtered selfies won’t cut it. Instead, brands must explore how to appear more accessible and relatable online.
    3. Audio chat rooms.
    Audio chat rooms — like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces — surged in popularity during the start of the pandemic, when many people were seeking opportunities to connect with others.
    Fast forward to today, and more than a quarter (29%) of marketers are planning to stop investing in audio chat rooms in 2023.
    From a marketing perspective, the biggest problem with audio chat rooms is that users prefer to speak with people — not brands. In fact, only 7% of Gen Z consumers prefer audio chat rooms for discovering new products.
    Audio chat rooms are also losing popularity with younger audiences. Only 14% of Gen Z consumers have visited Twitter in the past three months, and a slim 13% have visited Clubhouse. If your audience skews younger, it’s worth exploring other strategies.
    4. Long-form videos for social media.
    It’s no secret that short-form video has dominated the social media landscape this year, and it will continue to pick up steam in 2023.
    In fact, short-form video will see the most growth of any trend in 2023, according to HubSpot’s 2023 Marketing Strategy & Trends Report. On top of that, a staggering 96% of marketers agree that the optimal length of a marketing video is under 10 minutes.

    Of course, this isn’t to suggest long-form video doesn’t have its place — or that it’s going extinct. Longer videos can offer more information about a topic, product, service, or brand.
    However, the challenge is keeping your videos engaging enough to hold the audience’s attention. Shorter videos, on the other hand, work well on social media because they align with the fast-paced attention spans of online audiences.
    5. Marketing in the metaverse.
    Marketing is all about experimentation, and the metaverse became a new playground for marketers to explore. However, this initial excitement seems to be fizzling out.
    29% of marketers plan to stop marketing in the metaverse (e.g. Horizon Worlds and Roblox) in 2023. In addition, more than a quarter (27%) plan to stop leveraging VR and AR.
    Although the metaverse is intriguing, it’s proving difficult to execute. The equipment is expensive, the hardware is uncomfortable, and adoption is slow.
    That said, the metaverse is still in its infancy. As it continues to evolve, things could turn around.
    Back to You
    Marketing is always evolving, so your marketing playbook should, too. As we inch closer to 2023, it’s essential to take stock of which trends you want to leverage, and which ones are better left behind.

  • Understanding signals from customers beyond the surveys: interview with Bill Staikos   

    Last week, we had the honour of hosting an interview with Bill Staikos, Senior Vice President at Medallia. In this conversation overview, we’ll break down a few key points about: Three key elements of value creation in CX The insignificance of quantitative surveys as a research method Leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to get…
    The post Understanding signals from customers beyond the surveys: interview with Bill Staikos    appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

  • Benefits of WhatsApp Marketing

    submitted by /u/Syncloudsofttech [link] [comments]

  • Boundaries are levers

    And assertions are maps.

    Which means that:

    Budgets

    Timelines

    Plans

    Decision trees

    and projections

    are nothing to be afraid of. They’re a gift. They give us the chance to act as if, to describe a possible future and then to lean against them as we work to create the place we seek to be.

  • Global Supply and Demand for Salesforce Professionals in 2022 – Key Findings

    At 10K we consider ourselves to be the bridge between the Salesforce customers who need specialized (and often hard-to-find) Salesforce talent, and the people who provide those necessary skills. As that bridge, we believe it’s our job to measure the trends that deeply impact the… Read More

  • Pricing Strategies & Marketing (Ana Bibikova Interview)

    submitted by /u/Sammeeeey [link] [comments]

  • Staring at decisions

    Soap is 85 cents a bar or two for a dollar. Which should you buy?

    It depends. It depends on how much space you have, whether you like this brand, how full your cart is and whether or not you’re sure if the person who sent you to the market wants you to buy two.

    It’s easy to focus on these sorts of low-value decisions.

    There are organizations that spend far more time discussing a new logo than analyzing where to place the new office. One is filled with emotion and no economic importance, the other is fuzzy, complicated and incredibly expensive.

    Perhaps you’ve seen someone spend emotion and focus figuring out a tip to the penny, but impulsively use credit card debt to go on a fancy vacation.

    Marketers have pushed us to spend as little time as possible thinking about things like long-term debt, the implications of going to a famous college or the lifetime emissions of buying a certain kind of car or house. But we end up spending countless cycles on the trivial choices that make us feel like we have control over the world around us.

    We may believe that if one takes care of the little things, the big ones won’t matter. Or the opposite.

    It turns out that staring at an uncomfortable big decision might pay for a thousand of the little ones.

  • How to Design Facebook Ads in GetResponse

    Want to drive more traffic to your landing pages and marketing funnels? Check out this article and learn how to design epic Facebook Ads with GetResponse social ads manager.