Peter Kennedy is the President and Founder of Tagger Media.
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Social media is one of the largest sources of data in the world. Every minute, users post 1.7 million pieces of content on Facebook, upload 500 hours of video on YouTube and share 66,000 photos on Instagram. Every like, share, follow, view and click for this content is captured, creating a real-time database of digital behavior.
Through big data analytics, marketers have turned this mountain of social data into a goldmine of insights, leveraging it to create data-driven strategies and make informed decisions. So, how are top brands leveraging data to inform their influencer marketing strategy and achieve precise content delivery to the right audience at the right time?
Leveraging Data To Inform Strategy
The vast amount of content and wide range of topics covered by influencers on social media creates an invaluable data source, empowering marketers to construct effective strategies and gain insights into nearly any industry. To do this, it's essential to understand the "who," "what," "when," "where" and "why" (the five W's) of your product category, industry and target audience. By leveraging data insights, you can better understand your audience's interests, behaviors and preferences, which can inform your influencer selection, creative execution, timing, delivery and messaging.
Building Influencer Strategies Based On The Five W's
The five W's provide marketers with a simple framework to analyze complex and multifaceted business problems, allowing them to ask the right questions, identify key issues and develop effective solutions that align with their marketing objectives. Depending on the marketing channel, the five W's will change and adapt based on the available data and actionable insights.
Those who have adopted the five W's approach often have a competitive advantage over their counterparts who simply look at an influencer’s profile and audience demographics. A broad-stroke approach to a complex space prevents you from seeing the white space. The five W's framework helps provide a comprehensive understanding of the target audience, helping brands resonate with their audience and driving greater influencer marketing campaign success.
1. The Who
The “who” identifies your target audience, their demographic characteristics, geolocation, interests and affinities. Getting the "who" right is essential to ensure your messaging will reach the right audience with the greatest propensity to engage with your brand.
The "who" is the influencer you should hire based on audience fit and proven past performance within your industry. Proven past success doesn't simply mean they have a high average engagement rate, but rather it means out of thousands of influencers who have mentioned your topic or product category, they outperformed everyone. The metrics determining performance will change based on the industry, company, campaign and marketer’s objectives, but some common metrics used to measure the effectiveness of influencer marketing include reach, engagement, cost per impression (CPM), cost per video view (CPV), cost per engagement (CPE) and return on investment (ROI).
2. The What
Understanding what types of content most resonate with your audience is critical to your campaign strategy, as not all viewers will respond the same way. A strong sense of who you want to reach is foundational to your overall strategy. For example, a short 30-second makeup tutorial video on TikTok may see a significant engagement rate for women under 25, but a 15-minute video on YouTube may be the sweet spot to reach women over 30.
3. The When
Social platforms have become some of the most competitive real estate in the digital space, so knowing when the best or most relevant time is to connect with your community is critical to your campaign’s success. So, once you know who you want to connect with and what content you want them to engage with, the next thing to consider is when these social conversations are happening. Is there predictable seasonality throughout the year when your brand or product is most relevant? Are there tentpole moments that naturally fit with the context of your brand or product? Planning for the best time to activate your campaigns can help boost engagement and cost-effectiveness by ensuring your brand’s peak awareness is at the most advantageous times.
4. The Where
Considerations for where you activate your campaigns can be just as important as the contents of the campaign. Perhaps your brand’s community is most active on Instagram, and you notice the content regularly receives three times the engagement of other social media platforms. It's probably important to ensure your brand is included in this share of voice. You might also see a significant volume of posts, in which case the competition may be significantly higher than another platform. White space may be a strategic advantage.
5. The Why
Lastly, you want to ensure you're clear on why you're running your campaign, as there are many ways influencer marketing strategies can support your digital marketing strategy. Analyzing the volume of mentions your competitors receive through influencer activation can help determine why you need to hire influencers. Additionally, analyzing the volume of posts about specific benefits of a brand’s products can provide valuable insights into your target audience’s needs or preferences. This exercise will enable you to develop more effective campaign messaging, highlighting your product’s most important features and benefits and, ultimately, driving higher engagement, conversions and ROI.
Advancing The Tools Available
For marketers to ask and answer these questions, the tech industry has developed tools that have and use more data. However, many tools in the market focus heavily on influencer profiles and audiences. This is a broad strokes approach to a very complex space that prevents users from seeing the finer details.
A one-size-fits-all formula doesn't work for influencer marketing. Each campaign is different, and each audience is diverse. This calls for tools that measure hundreds of variables instead of a handful, help drive strategy and get to the who, what, where, when and why with the stroke of a key. With these, brands can tailor their messaging, targeting and creative approaches to resonate more effectively with their audience, driving greater influencer marketing campaign success.
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