Are Influencers Really Worth It? 

Finding the right influencers to work with, nailing down the process and getting content together might seem overwhelming if it’s something you haven’t done before. Maybe you’re wondering if it’s worth it or if there’s an easier way to generate brand awareness, grow your follower numbers and increase sales?

Let’s take a look at some brands that have focused on influencers in their marketing strategy to help build their business, and whether Influencers are worth it!

Fashion Nova

@FashionNova

Fast fashion brand Fashion Nova started out as a club clothing retailer in LA. They focused on stylish, fitted clothing that made women feel sexy, especially if they were curvier than your average runway model. 

As they moved into eCommerce, they started to use curvier models more representative of their customer base. They started to work with celebrity influencers to drive sales, generating more than double the cost in sales each time and started to repost content from their #NovaBabes – customers who shared photos of their clothing on their socials. They also worked with micro-influencers too.

Instagram was key for the growth of Fashion Nova; they now have over 20 million followers on the platform and are worth a staggering $450 million. They’ve also been able to branch out into plus size and menswear ranges, all on the back of their social media and influencer activity.

Huda Beauty

@hudabeauty

Huda Beauty’s founder, Huda Kattan, was already an influencer and makeup artist when she launched the brand. She used her own channels and influence to share products, tutorials and tips, as well as working with celebrity and beauty influencers like Kim Kardashian.

The company was completely born on social media and continues to grow there. Huda Beauty focuses on sponsored and organic content, working with all types of influencers and focusing on being an inclusive and diverse beauty brand. They share influencer content across their channels, creating incentives for people to share their products.

Today, Huda Beauty has over 49 million followers and is worth over a billion dollars. They’re the top-followed beauty brand on Instagram and have been at the top of their game for a long time.

Gymshark

@gymshark

Launched in 2012 by teenager Ben Francis, Gymshark’s influencer strategy is credited with helping the brand to explode as quickly as it has. They started out by recruiting athletes who were active on social media, sending them free Gymshark sportswear so they could wear and share with their audience. 

Over time, this became the Gymshark Ambassador programme and expanded to more brand partnerships, sponsorships and work with influencers to increase their reach. When they started out, the influencer industry was nowhere near as big as it is now.

Gymshark has over 5 million followers and is now worth over £1 billion, with investment from General Atlantic. Brand founder Ben is set to become Britain’s richest self-made person under 30.

So, are Influencers really worth it?

Each of these brands effectively used Influencers to their advantage, and have become market leaders due to their ability to innovate and keep up with the latest trends. So to answer “are Influencers really worth it” yes they are.

When Influencer Marketing is done well the results speak for themselves, but we know it’s not always easy to get it right, if you’re looking to incorporate Influencers into your marketing strategy but aren’t sure where to begin, get in touch with us today!

Set your goal

Most businesses want to increase brand awareness, the size of their audience and sales, of course. 

An influencer campaign will likely help you to improve all three of these things, and more besides, however, to measure and understand your ROI, it’s essential just to choose one key area of focus.

Decide what is the most important outcome for your influencer campaign, and build your strategy on that one area alone. Focusing on one key indicator makes it easier to measure success.

Set KPI’s that are relevant to your goal

Next, set a KPI relevant to your goal and understand the earning potential (or ‘R’ in ROI) that your KPI affords you.

For example, if you want to increase your brand awareness, then an excellent way to do that would be to track the number of visitors to your page or the number of impressions for a particular piece of content. You could then extrapolate what the increase in revenue is likely to be due to this, based on your current income and audience size.

Similarly, if you were more concerned with sales, you could track the number of sales of a particular product and, therefore, the increase in profit.

When setting your KPI, it’s crucial to ensure that it’s realistic. 

The most reliable way to calculate a KPI goal is to base your expectations on the results of previous campaigns. However, if you’ve never run an influencer campaign before, this can be tricky! 

If you would like help calculating realistic KPI’s for your influencer campaign, then EAEO can help you. We’ve run influencer campaigns for companies of all sizes, and in various industries, so we can help you to understand what’s realistic for you.

Don’t forget to calculate the ‘I’ 

Before you run off and start scoping out influencers, make sure that you understand the total cost of your influencer campaign.

Be sure to account for things like the cost of the influencer, the production costs of any content, time costs for research and development and the price of analytics software subscriptions. 

So how do you measure the ROI From your Influencer marketing campaign?

The best method will vary depending on what kind of campaign you’re running, but here are some ideas to get you started:

• Promo codes – everyone loves a discount, and using promo codes will help you see which orders came from your campaign.
• Read the comments – people are generally quite vocal online! So be sure to take the time to read the comments to gauge how effective your campaign is.
• Affiliate links – You can trace orders placed using an affiliate link back to the post (and therefore the campaign) that generated them.
• Brand lift – if you’re running a video campaign, you can use brand lift reporting from Google, which allows you to monitor things like ad recall and brand awareness.

EAEO can provide you with comprehensive reports that allow you to measure the success of your influencer campaign effectively. If you’d like to learn more, please get in touch.