Ways To Optimize Your Influencer Efforts in 2022

Influencer Jo Franco x Samsung Collab

It’s 2022, and Influencers are officially established as a profitable, successful form of marketing for most businesses and products. So much so, that Influencer Management companies exist to represent influencer talent and to help pair them with the businesses and campaigns that make the most sense. Because of how saturated the industry is and how common influencer marketing has become in the last few years, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed by how to best tackle influencer marketing for your business. We were lucky enough to sit down with two influencer marketing geniuses about the way you can maximize the success of your influencer marketing this year!

Executing successful influencer campaigns (for companies like Gucci, Dior, Amazon, Delta Airlines, Whole Foods, and more) and representing talent are their M.O; Lynsey Eaton is the CEO and Sam Katz is the Director of Business Development of Estate Five Media, an influencer marketing and management company.

What Was the Deal with 2021?

We first got to chatting about 2021 and how major events like the COVID-19 pandemic affected the way businesses and entrepreneurs thought about and carried out their marketing. Working with influencer campaigns, Lynsey Eaton and Sam Katz noticed the importance of messaging and strategy this past year. Lynsey Eaton remarks:

“This past year was all about working with our partners to restore the connections between brands and their consumers. It was crucial that their brand messaging was sympathetic and empathetic for the situation – speaking to the place that their customers were in at that moment. If the brand was there to help their audience maintain a healthy mental state (even if they were an apparel company), the messaging had to be genuine and authentic. While ‘genuine’ and ‘authentic’ might be industry buzzwords, they have both been extremely important, even critical, over the last 16 month. By working with creators that aligned with that messaging to showcase that value, brands were able to enhance and elevate their existing conversations with their audiences.”

That genuine brand-influencer alignment is crucial to the success of any influencer campaign, says Sam Katz: “The biggest issue of influencer marketing is being unintentional with your strategy.”

“Deciding who you want to work with and how you want an influencer program to supplement your existing marketing funnel is the first step. Similar to other mediums and tactics, influencer marketing should look at the full funnel and be used in conjunction with other tactics. As there are so many types of creators and content, it is important that brands have an existing overarching system that ‘influencer’ can plug into – for example, brands may utilize influencers for the sole purpose of content creation. Brands could also use influencers for expanding audience sizes. There are so many opportunities, but it is necessary to choose your path forward from the start.”

Influencer Marketing in 2022

What are some observations that influencer marketing professionals made in the last year that will affect the year ahead? What are some specific moves that businesses can make to maximize the success of their influencer campaigns?

Setting specific business goals going into the creation of an influencer campaign, such as positive ROA’s and ROI’s, is a big trend that Sam Katz has noticed: “One issue we’ve been solving for clients is how to drive positive ROAS (and ROI) through influencer programs. It is not enough to just build awareness anymore. Brands need/want to see a return – this is the main focus of all of our upcoming campaigns by combining influencer and other marketing tactics.”

By setting specific benchmarks that you’d like to achieve, you can more easily build out a strategy to achieve those goals, and in turn, choose better influencers that will help you to do so.

Influencer Marketing in 2022

What are some observations that influencer marketing professionals made in the last year that will affect the year ahead? What are some specific moves that businesses can make to maximize the success of their influencer campaigns?

Setting specific business goals going into the creation of an influencer campaign, such as positive ROA’s and ROI’s, is a big trend that Sam Katz has noticed: “One issue we’ve been solving for clients is how to drive positive ROAS (and ROI) through influencer programs. It is not enough to just build awareness anymore. Brands need/want to see a return – this is the main focus of all of our upcoming campaigns by combining influencer and other marketing tactics.”

By setting specific benchmarks that you’d like to achieve, you can more easily build out a strategy to achieve those goals, and in turn, choose better influencers that will help you to do so.

Lynsey Eaton has some specific insights on what businesses should be focusing on in regards to their influencer marketing, such as first-party data: “The last year and a half has shown us many things! Between iOS updates, Facebook crashes, and the ‘new normal’, there has never been this big of a need to focus on first-party data. Whether you are a creator or a brand, implementing strategies that build out your own first-party data set has emerged as a big priority. We have seen success with this by utilizing links in influencer content to drive users to an owned-page or owned-site. This is a proactive strategy as we start to see less cookie-based targeting opportunities. It also helps reduce the importance of any one platform.”

Influencer Trends for 2022

Working with influencer marketing and having executed our own influencer campaigns here at Kielo Digital, we have 5 influencer trend predictions for this year:

Video Content is King

TikTok has skyrocketed in popularity over the past year, and Instagram is prioritizing Reel content on their algorithm now more than ever. Video content reigns supreme online, and marketers can take advantage of that when it comes to influencer marketing. Turning to TikTok influencers to market your product is an excellent way to get your product into the awareness of your target audience, as TikTok’s ability to create a viral moment is far greater than other apps like Instagram and Twitter. 

Micro and Nano Influencers

At this moment in time, many people crave authenticity from their online experiences and look for this in the online creators they follow. Working with micro and nano influencers, AKA individuals with followers ranging from 1-50,000, allows brands to tap into this genuine sentiment and get far more impact with their collaboration. If someone has 10,000 as opposed to 200,000, those 10,000 followers are more likely to be more invested and engaged with that individual and trust the products they promote. Some successful case studies of brands utilizing micro and nano influencers are Glossier and Parade, who both utilized social media to get their products into the hands of micro and nano influencers who in turn, blasted their products to their trusting followers. By working with “everyday people”, viewers of these posts can see themselves reflected in who a brand chooses to work with, and thus are more likely to be interested in purchasing that product. In addition, working with these smaller influencers is a great way to get a higher return on investment, as they aren’t as expensive to work with compared to those with millions of followers.

Authenticity Rules

As we closed out 2021, there have been rumblings across social media about the drive to “make Instagram casual”. Essentially, this translates to foregoing the face tuning and pre-planned posts that have been Instagram’s hallmark as it’s grown in popularity over the last few years. As the world shutdown due to COVID-19, folks were forced to turn inward and the chaos of the world has people looking for authenticity in exchange for artifice. People are tired, and they have a desire for an experience online that won’t fill them with shame or feelings of not being good enough. What does this mean for marketers in regards to influencer marketing? Changing the way your product is marketed and who you choose to market it. Rather than choosing the aspirational route and working with someone with 5 million followers, choose the relatable route and pick influencers that people can see themselves reflected in. Choose to talk about your product in a way that is accessible to people and be honest about what your product is and can do. 

Ongoing Partnerships > Singular, One-Off Posts

Similar to what Sam and Lynsey had to say about being strategic with your influencer campaigns, we predict that brands will choose to work with influencers on a continuous basis to carry out campaigns as opposed to doing one-off sponsored posts. By doing so, the relationship between the influencer and the product they’re promoting is more genuine and is seen as such by their audience (why would someone continuously promote a product for months if they don’t believe in it?). Additionally, brands are better able to track the success of their influencer collaborations if they are ongoing for many months at a time in order to carry out a specific strategy with specific goals in mind.

Takeaways?

Strategy and authenticity are the names of the game. Before even thinking about which influencers you’d like to hire, sit down and lay out all of the specific business goals you’d like to achieve through this campaign. Consider the impact that these influencers have over their audience, who their audience is, and how your product comes across being advertised by said influencers. Utilize video content to create engaging material around your product and increase your chances of going viral. Have some ideas for influencer campaigns but no one to help you organize and see them out? That’s where Estate Five Media comes into play. Sam, Lynsey, and the rest of the influencer marketing professionals on their team can help you plan and execute your campaigns all year round.