Is PPC the Key to Super-Charging Your Influencer Marketing Campaign?

Marketers are always looking for new and exciting ways to market products and services. But trying to keep up with the never-ending merry-go-round we know as digital marketing, is bound to send you into a dizzying whirl… sooner or later.

Not to worry though — this happens even to the best of us.

It’s not easy to stay on top of it all, especially when you’re always chasing trends. Most businesses have come to grips with the fact that social media is an important marketing tool for helping brands get in front of customers. And when changes happen across the social landscape, we adjust… for our own sake.

In this post, we’re building on some of the other topics we’ve discussed on The Shelf Blog that show you how to use influencer marketing as part of a larger overall marketing strategy that includes stuff like site optimization, improving search engine rankings, email marketing, and mastering the art of creating other visual content. So, we’re dedicating the second half of this post to using PPC to super-charge your influencer campaigns (and vice versa).

Talk Topics:

• Here’s How Social Media Marketing Was Awesome… Then Not So Awesome

• Influencer Marketing as a Substitute for Limited Organic Reach

• Why PPC Works to Amplify Influencer Campaigns

• Step-by-Step PPC-Influencer Strategy

Here’s How Social Media Marketing Was Awesome Then… Not So Much

Not too long ago, the only thing brands had to worry about was choosing the best social network for their type of business and available resources (i.e. team members who knew how to manage social media accounts).

Facebook Delivers Targeted Reach with Real-Time Analytics…

Not surprisingly, Facebook has reigned supreme when it comes to social media marketing. The platform boasts and unmatched 2.2 billion active users and allows brands to create branded pages by which to build online communities and boost brand awareness. Businesses can extend their reach and raise their voices above competitors pretty easily and quickly on Facebook. AND Facebook offers a cadre of suped-up targeting and analytics tools that allow marketers to reach very specific audiences to drive better engagement.

…. Followed by Havoc and Dream-Crushing Confusion

Needless to say, it was heartbreaking to marketers when Facebook organic reach went into a drastic decline between 2016 and 2017.

Source: Medium

Source: Facebook

In 2018, Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook Zero, the code name for the algorithm change that would now focus on drumming up more meaningful interactions for its users (i.e. way less branded content).

Didn’t read it? Don’t worry. The whole blurb just means the Facebook feed now shows you more content from friends and family than from brands.

(Emoji with heart eyes for individual users. Emoji with tears in its eyes for brands.)

This major shift affected every brand on the platform, pushing their posts to the outskirts of the web — in many cases never to be seen by their intended audiences. But it’s not just Facebook unleashing anarchy on brands — other networks are doing the same. For example, Instagram decided to switch to a chronological order feed to deliver fresher content.

Instagram also prioritizes content from the users you engage with most frequently on the platform. So, for brands who have figured out how to deliver quality content that engages their audiences then the chances your Instagram content will be seen by your intended audience increases.

That’s good news… but it can also be seen as just another hurdle for brands to clear.

(But… glass half full, guys.)

For a lot of brands, the fix for the algorithm issue is crafting smart influencer campaigns.

Influencer Marketing Did Save the Day

You can say the shift in brands’ ability to win with organic reach caused a gold rush for the next best thing — influencer marketing. Influencers are well-liked by their followers, so partnering with influencers automatically solves the problem brands have of creating content that compels engagement.

If a brand is able to get an influencer to talk about its product or service genuinely, that brand can reach thousands or even millions of engaged users. Influencer marketing provides businesses with a way around the roadblock a changing algorithm presents so they have a chance and boost visibility substantially.

And influencer marketing is growing a marketing tactic. Between 2016 and 2017, there was a 200% increase in search volume for the term “influencer marketing”.

Source: Google Trends

Once brands got a taste of how impactful influencers are, they went all out with their spending. According to Smart Insights, 85 percent of marketers use influencer marketing and an astounding 90 percent of them say it’s one of THE MORE effective forms of marketing. Within the next year, expect to see influencer marketing spend to surpass $8 billion.

But it’s not all sunny days in palazzo pants in the influencer marketing world.

A lot of marketers who came from PPC backgrounds into influencer marketing had a hard go of it making influencer marketing make sense. While both techniques deliver similar outcomes, they work differently. They were trying to make influencer marketing work the same way as PPC when the real power is in running PPC and influencer campaigns together as part of one big, butt-kicking digital marketing strategy.

The ROI Thing Still Trips Up Many Marketers

ROI. A lot of brands and marketers still aren’t sure how to measure the success (or failure) of an influencer campaign. About three in four marketers who run influencer campaigns say this is their biggest obstacle. (I don’t have the time to get into that too much here, but we just released a guide on this very topic that will demystify ROI for you. Download it by clicking this link right here).

Now, if marketers don’t understand how to measure the ROI of an influencer campaign, why would they put more money into something if they don’t know if it’s working?

Well, they know influencer marketing works to increase engagement and boost brand awareness. I think the problem is they aren’t sure how to shape campaigns to do anything else (again, download our guide on this), or how to build on the traction they’ve already gotten… and move customers further along in the sales funnel.

For instance, once the influencer campaign is over and all the numbers have been logged in whatever influencer marketing platform they used, how does the brand continue to stay at the top of their audience members’ feeds without having to keep running campaigns?

Like I said earlier, algorithm adjustments on Facebook and Instagram have made staying top-of-mind a little harder for brands… UNLESS brands learn how to consistently produce the type of content their audiences want to see (hello, UGC campaign).

So, is influencer marketing a one-and-done type of thing? No. It’s not. So, let’s get into the PPC part.

Why PPC May Be the Key to Amplifying Your Influencer Marketing Campaigns

If you’ve never used pay-per-click (PPC) ads in the past, then you may be wondering why you would include it in a social media campaign. You may even be thinking that people sorta hate ads so why on earth would you invest in content that clearly looks like ads. Well, do they really HATE ads? No.

People Don’t Deliberately Click on Ads Anymore, Do They?

Yeah. They do.

People don’t mind being sold something if it’s on their terms. Nearly 50 percent of people say they click on text ads, while another 31 percent say they click on shopping ads. And if you’re thinking users don’t click on ads in Google, stats show 63 percent of people do. Many ads even outperform organic search, receiving 65 percent of the clicks compared to 35 percent for organic results.

PPC advertisers typically earn $2 for every $1 they spend. And it’s not just search ads generating results. Roughly 80 percent of B2B companies acquired customers through LinkedIn paid ads. Seventy percent of social marketers are reaching their goals with Facebook ads.

And one of the key factors for getting people to click on your ads – at least for 57 percent of Millennials – is personalization. You have to make ads more relevant. (Keep that in mind when you develop your PPC strategy.)

PPC offers some very real, very measurable benefits for influencer campaigns. In fact, one of the main benefits of influencer campaigns for many brands is that it gives them lots of user-generated content to reuse in paid ads. Pay-per-click ads can deliver the same benefits as an influencer campaign:

• Increase your visibility and reach. With paid ads, you’re not subjected to being pushed to the bottom of the feed.

• Easily track and monitor your campaigns.

• Retarget specific audiences. Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn all allow you to target relevant audiences based on their location, gender, and interests then retarget them when they click on your ad but don’t complete the required action like schedule a demo, or complete a download or check out a cart.

• Reach more users. You don’t only want to attract those who know about your brand. With paid ads, you can get more exposure and reach audiences you wouldn’t have any other way. Even with the visibility of influencers.

Running PPC ads to supplement your influencer campaign fortifies the strength of your influencer campaign and vice versa.

How to Create a Sales Funnel Using Influencer Marketing + PPC

What makes influencer marketing + PPC such a great combo is how well they work together.

Set Campaign Goals

Your marketing goals can take a number of different forms. You already know that. A lot of marketers get a little turned around with influencer marketing, because they don’t really know how to structure campaigns to reach specific goals.

For instance, they don’t really know which social media platforms to use to reach different goals (Danielle actually wrote a post on that here… but there are a couple of really good infographics in that post you can refer to if you don’t have time to read the entire post). The point is there ARE specific types of influencer campaigns to run for different types of outcomes. So, know what outcome you want to see is the first step in planning your influencer campaign.

Get Really Picky About Your Targeting

When you’re managing a paid ad campaign, you target your audience based on factors like:

• Demographics (millennial, Gen Z, baby boomers, etc.)

• Industry (fashion, fitness, health, etc.)

• Platform (Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, etc.)

• Geography (city, state, region, country)

The same is true of running an effective influencer marketing campaign. Campaigns have to be correctly targeted to work well. And we always suggest to our clients that they do deeper targeting based on the outcomes they want to see (which they can do on The Shelf platform).

So, in addition to the above list of criteria for filtering potential influencer partners, we further sort with criteria like family size, brand mentions, affinity, talent for storytelling, audience sentiment… In fact, here are just a few of the criteria we’ve created before vetting influencers through our database.

Test Your Messaging

The key to any type of marketing is to know what you want to see happen and continually optimize your campaign to make sure you can achieve your desired outcomes. And that means testing your messaging to see which posts resonate with an influencer’s followers.

Some influencers are better than others at creating content that “lands”. Some influencers rely on images, others create high-impact videos, others have a way of captivating followers with long-form text captions. So, part of rolling out effective campaigns is knowing how each influencer adds value to his or her audience and letting them find creative ways to share your message in a way that’s authentic to the influencer’s personal brand.

It also means you’ll have different types of UGC that you can repurpose on your own channels to reach potential customers. So, provide influencers with guidelines, let them create, and watch the numbers to see which posts perform best.

Promote What Performs, Trim What Doesn’t

For past campaigns, we’ve included PPC as part of influencer campaigns to make sure influencer posts and pins are getting as much traction as possible. This is a good strategy to use. Like, we could have a dozen influencers working on a campaign and the influencers whose posts perform well – like, exceptionally well, are prime candidates for getting the post boosted.

That’s why we position this as PPC being integrated into the influencer campaign, so you’re putting additional resources behind concepts that are already performing well.

If You Haven’t Already, Add CTAs to the Messages That Work

Add an action to the posts that are working. Let’s say you have a product that appeals to Millennials and Gen Z. This crowd is normally on Instagram and YouTube. So you reach out to influencers on Instagram and YouTube who also target this demographic. At the same time, you can create ads on Instagram, Google, YouTube (and even some in-app ads).

When the influencer’s Instagram followers see your product, they may go to Google to search for your product or brand, which takes them to your paid search ad.

Or maybe, they see your social ad on Instagram and decide to look for your product on YouTube (the place we all go to find out how stuff works), and they find the video posted by the influencer showing how your product works.

What you’re doing here is creating a funnel to drive leads towards a conversion. Plus, you’re widening your reach by directing more traffic to your influencer content.

By using paid ads, you’re able to measure the impact of your campaign across multiple channels. For instance, you can see conversion rates, click through rates, cost per customer acquisition, and your ROI.

Monitor Your Campaigns

The performance of your paid ads and influencers will help you to learn more about your customers and their desires, which can help you to improve future campaigns.

If you’re worried about learning which influencers are generating an ROI, then you can always implement custom URLs or unique discount codes per campaign. This will allow you to identify which influencer’s responsible for your increase in site traffic and sales.

You may find that influencers and social ads are the perfect tools for branding and discovery. You can use this to drive more searches and website traffic, which can then fuel your ad retargeting campaigns.

But there’s only one way to find out — experimentation and lots of it. Social ads are definitely on the rise, especially with the recent announcement from Instagram.

According to an Ad Age report, there will be a new ad format for brands to play with — “branded content ads”. This will allow you to sponsor influencers’ posts, promoting them like they were your own ad.

Before, when you compensated an Instagrammer to promote your brand or product, they had to include a visible hashtag like #ad or #sponsored.

Like this one.

Source: Instagram

Not hiding it in the mix of a hundred hashtags. Like this one.

Source: Instagram

There are FTC guidelines brands and influencers must follow to stay out of trouble (and keep your posts from being ghosted).

But no more worry about FTC woes. Now, all influencers have to do is tag the brand in their post and it’ll show “Paid partnership with…”

Like this influencer did.

Source: Business Instagram

Both and Instagram allow you to promote the content of the influencers you’re collaborating with (without needing access to their account).

Facebook has a branding tool you can use to keep track of the posts from the influencers you’re collaborating with. Once they tag you, you’re able to monitor their user engagement. And now that Instagram is allowing brands to create branded content ads, it’s going to take content promotion to the next level.

So make sure you’re ready. Meanwhile, you can start planning how you’re going to tie together PPC ads with your next influencer campaign.

Don’t forget — social and search ads can boost your influencer content and vice versa.

Wrapping Up

It’s time to stop siloing your marketing efforts and start linking them together. Hopefully, you can now see how PPC ads are golden pieces of the influencer marketing puzzle. This is especially true now that stunted organic reach is affecting both brand and influencer content.

Together, you can use PPC and influencers to magnify your reach, engagement, and conversions.

Bloggers may be clued in on something your brand is actually missing: Pinterest is an AMAZING product discovery tool. More, it’s basically a shopping list for about 55 percent of its active users. Pinterest itself presents a powerful marketing opportunity that can not only get your products in front of shoppers who have their wallets in-hand, but can also drive huge amounts of traffic to your website.

In this post, I’m going to help you build a Pinterest marketing strategy (you’re welcome) that will fortify your next influencer campaign.

Talk Topics for This Post:

• A Quick Overview of Pinterest

• Moms, Millennials and Men: Who Uses Pinterest

• User Behaviors That Make Pinterest a Digital Marketing Goldmine

• Tips for Making Pinterest Work for Your Business

A Quick Overview of Pinterest

Pinterest is a visual discovery platform where users can post (“pin”) their own visual content or repin (share) other users’ pins. post contains a title, description and a link to where the content being pinned lives on the web (usually a blog). Pinners must assign every pin a board (collection of pins) in order to pin it and assign any content they repin from another user to a board in their own collection.

So, for instance, with our Pinterest account we pin blog covers images to our board, From The Shelf Blog and pin our infographics to our Influencer Marketing Tips or Marketing Mojo boards. We may repin ideas we like from other pinners in one of several boards we have like Minimalist Bloggers, On the Streets, Summer Forever, or Weekend Style.

Imagine if Instagram and Google got together and had a digital baby. That’s Pinterest.

Pinterest is one-part social media platform, one-part search engine, and completely driven by visual content that can quickly travel across the site, and the world wide web to bring new visitors to your blog, website, or online store.

Pinterest Was Pretty Awesome Out the Gate

Pinterest launched in 2010 as a way to share cool ideas. When it first launched, it was invitation-only. Do you remember that – waiting to hear back from Pinterest and not even fulling getting what it was?

In spite of the invite-only setup, Pinterest ended up being the fastest site in history to reach 10 million monthly active users. Then, like now, it served as a great platform for the crafts and DIY communities, as well as various lifestyle verticals that are driven by visual content (and even lots of verticals – like personal finance – that aren’t super-interested in pretty pictures)..

Today, seven in ten Americans know about Pinterest. With more than 52 million mobile users, Pinterest is the fifth most popular social networking mobile app and the fourth most popular social network behind YouTube, Facebook and Instagram (third if you don’t think of YouTube as a social network).

AND you can find just about anything on Pinterest, from industry information – like how it’s overflowing with colorful marketing infographics like these…

…. to wedding ideas and wedding planning tips.

Pinterest isn’t in the top 10 as far as search engines go, but it may be of interest to brands and marketers that Pinterest is a popular search engine that 39 percent of female users and 48 percent of male users choose over more traditional search engines like Google or Bing, according to AdEspresso.

That makes sense to me. Here’s why…

If you were to search for “short blond pixie cut” on Google then perform the same search on Pinterest, different results would show. More importantly (for searchers), Pinterest filters the results a little smarter for stuff like this.

In the two screenshots below, check out the filter options along the top of each picture (and the fact that Google results INCLUDE Pinterest pins).

Pinterest also does a better job of integrating sponsored content a little more naturally with your actual results.

Actually, let’s try it for another popular Pinterest topic – home decorating. The search term is “small bedroom ideas”. I actually had to scroll down a bit because the first row on Google was sponsored content / products.

Now, it’s not that people don’t want to shop on Pinterest. The truth is actually quite the opposite. Pinterest is the social platform users are MOST likely to choose when they are ready to spend money.

Ninety-seven percent of Pinterest searches are unbranded searches, meaning users are open to suggestions from brands. In fact, 78 percent of Pinterest users say they want to see branded content, and more than half of shoppers name Pinterest as their platform of choice for finding and shopping for products.

Source: Statista.com

Moms, Millennials and Men: Who Uses Pinterest?

There is a much wider diversity in Pinterest’s audience than you might think. One in three U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 49 use Pinterest, and one in four adults between the ages of 50 and 64 use Pinterest, according to Statista. Not to worry, those stats change significantly for Millennial users.

• There are 265 million active monthly users

• There are over 175 billion pins currently uploaded to the site

• 81 percent of users are female

• Half of new user signups in 2018 were men

• 34 percent of 18-49 year old Americans use Pinterest

• Pinterest is as popular an app with Millennials as Instagram

Pinterest is popular among Millennials, and especially among Millennial women. One in two US Millennials use Pinterest, and 7 in 10 Millennial women use the platform – that trumps both Twitter and Snapchat. Seventy percent of US moms and one-third of US dads also use the super-charged scrapbooking platform.

And people use Pinterest for a number of reasons. Most people use Pinterest to look at pictures (60 percent) and find/shop products (55 percent). It’s also a popular place to share content (24 percent) and watch videos (15 percent).

Source: Statista.com

So…

A pinner can easily have 1,000 people following her Wedding Ideas board

And 500 other people who are only following her Shoe Lust board

And 2,000 people following her Blogger Tips board AND her Passive Income board

And 900 people following her Bible Verses board who ARE following Passive Income and ARE NOT following her Shoe Lust board.

The possibilities are endless, both for Pinners and for marketers.

Let’s Talk About the User Behaviors That Make Pinterest a Digital Marketing Goldmine

Take a look at the picture below . It was captured a few days ago by Sorilbran, the editor of The Shelf blog who came across the poster at her local McDonald’s.

In June, McDonald’s will be sponsoring the Women’s Expo in Atlanta, GA. In case you’re wondering, Atlanta is a global destination point, playing host to the busiest airport in the world. It’s home to a sizable entertainment industry hub, with countless television shows and movies being filmed here (think Avengers and other Marvel Studios movies).

The celebrity lineup for the Atlanta Women’s Expo is nothing to sneeze at – reality stars, social media stars, movie stars… these women are famous.

But it’s not just McDonald’s that will be involved. To give you a better idea of the scope of this event, other sponsors include luxury brands like Chanel, Coach, Michael Kors, Jimmy Choo and Dior, as well as retail heavyweights like The Home Depot, Walgreens, and Kroger.

Why am I telling you this? Because upon closer examination of the poster, you can see that one of the featured workshops for this event, which draws tens of thousands of women every year, is a Pinterest workshop. So, let’s talk about why that is.

Pinterest Has Cross-Generational Appeal

Whether Millennials or Boomers, adults love Pinterest. They love having a one-click storage place of awesome photos and cool ideas. They love having a place where they can build targeted audiences whose ideas and tastes align with their own.

Pinterest Time is Me Time

Pinterest is where people go to source and collect ideas to help them be their best selves. The fact that Pinterest is so heavily aspirational (with no PERSON in particular to be the target of anyone’s love-hate aspiration) keeps Pinterest from earning the same stigma as some of the other popular social networks. No reports of Pinterest-fueled depression or rage. It’s aspiration without the stigmas. It’s no real surprise (especially to anyone who actually uses the platform) that Pinterest users are twice as likely to think their time on Pinterest is time well spent.

Pinterest is a Positive Corner of the Internet

Pinterest gives all the feels. Pinterest is the platform that helps people feel more creative (73 percent), inspired (68 percent) and organized (62 percent).

Pinners are Planners… and They Plan Waaaay In Advance

Pinners are planners. While Pinterest users post about seasonal events year-round, there are noticeable spikes in engagement with holiday- and event-related content in the weeks before that holiday or event.

But if you notice, the posts start typically a few months ahead of the holiday. Pinterest users tend to start planning twice as early as people who use other platforms. Heck, Father’s Day ideas start circulating around the platform as early as March and interest in Halloween starts to spike in June.

Pinners also use the platform to plan life’s important milestones, like buying a new home, decorating your home, getting married, and going on vacation.

Pinners Are Purposeful

Pinterest users are more likely to use the platform for the intention of finding products and ideas, as opposed to just using the platform to kill time. Ninety percent of users use Pinterest to make purchase decisions.

Pinners Favor Mobile

Pinterest users heavily favor the app. Eighty percent of users access Pinterest on mobile devices and 85 percent of Pinterest searches are on mobile.

Pinners Use Pinterest to Source Ideas

Pinterest is the go-to spot on the web for people to discover new products and source new ideas, and part of the reason branded content is so effective is because Pinterest shows new content based on what people have seen and engaged with before. This personalization helps the platform naturally integrate product ideas and Promoted Pins in a way that doesn’t look like ads or make users feel like they’re being marketed to.

Pinners Can Buy Instantly

Most social media platforms are shoppable now. With Pinterest, every one of the images acts as a direct link back to the site, making it infinitely easier for companies with promoted posts to attract new followers and site visitors.

Half of all Pinners make a purchase after seeing a promoted pin. And, since so many Pinterest users are actively looking to make their next purchases, smart marketers can leverage the platform as a way to generate both traffic and revenue.

A Simple Process for Creating Your Pinterest Business Account

It’s true that you’re going to make a hefty front-end investment laying the foundation of your Pinterest marketing, but managing Pinterest is actually pretty easy (and a little addictive). Pinning and repinning takes up very little of your time, and in many ways, it’ll become second nature.

Here’s what you need to know about setting your Pinterest business account.

#1 Create a Business Account

You may have a personal account, but you still want to create a business account that you can use to run campaigns and monitor the performance of your pins. Pinterest is like most social media sites in that way – business accounts give you access to features you need to run successful marketing campaigns. Plus, you can start creating rich pins. More on those later – just know, they’re super important.

#2 Stay On-Brand

Once you’ve got a business account set up, you’ll need to get your branding in order. Of course, you’ll need the basics as well: A clear profile picture, business name, and bio are essential – just like on any other platform. You’ve got to put your best foot forward so people can see your awesome brand personality shining through.

#3 Create Keyword-Optimized Boards

Pins go on boards, so in order to add pins or repin anything, Pinterest needs to know where you want pins to go. This is a good thing because Pinterest is AI-powered, so it learns your preferences based on what you pin and repin and starts showing you more and more content like the content you’ve engaged with previously.

You’ll need to create keyword-optimized boards. For us, a lot of our boards focus on either blogger life or marketing strategies. So, you’ll notice we have tons of style and fashion boards, lots of infographics, a board that’s specifically to promote our blog posts, even boards on beauty trends and color combinations that look cool (we’re all about color).

Each board you create can be classified as either Public, Secret, or Group. Best practices indicate that creating 10 boards initially is a good way to start, with each board tailored to your target audience in order to attract them to your pins.

Pinterest serves two billion searches a month. As you can imagine, pinners will need a way to find your content. That’s where you keywords strategy comes in. Your keywords are going to be vital when naming and creating your boards. Choosing which topics to focus your boards on should be based on the keywords you think are most important to your brand.

#4 Design and schedule pins

Next, you’re going to need some pins creating for your content so you can get sharing, and start growing your audience. Canva is an easy-to-use tool that will help you streamline this. The platform is free to use (or you can upgrade to a paid plan) and it comes with templates… for the design-challenged pinner.

Pinterest is a visual platform, so creating pins that are eye-catching colorful and easy to read / understand is important for growing your audience. As soon as someone sees your pin, he or she should know exactly what the webpage you’re leading them to is all about.

To make sure your pinning strategy is as effective as possible, make uploading your pins a regular part of your content distribution schedule. Using a scheduling tool like Tailwind is a good way to do this, and also gives you access to Tailwind Tribes, where other users will also share your content to increase your reach.

#5 Make Pins That Convert

Possibly the most important factor in a successful Pinterest marketing campaign is how you build and design your pins. The huge focus on aesthetics on this platform means you need to be on top of your game when it comes to this side of the platform. We know how intimidating creating any kind of visual content can be if you’re not a graphic designer by trade, but Pinterest doesn’t have to be as difficult a task as you might think. I’ll walk you through it.

Let’s start with covering the basics of pin design. Without having these fundamentals down, no matter how fancy your design skills are, your marketing is going to fall flat.

Dimensions

Each of your pins should be vertical images, and according to Pinterest themselves, the ideal dimensions are 600×900, or any 2:3 ratio image

Image Style

Images that are high quality, light, and surprisingly, without faces receive more repins on average than others

Plain Image vs. Text

Depending on your target market and brand style, you may want to include text on your pins instead of just plain images. Both are viable options on Pinterest, and choosing which one to use should depend on your audience.

Of course, when it comes to design, there are a million and one ways you can go to make your pins stand out. From cool fonts to striking imagery, your pins are your chance to express your brand, so don’t be afraid to go a little wild.

Before We Wrap Up, I’ll Share Some Pin Design Ideas

When appearance really is everything, you need to be spending time designing the perfect graphics for your pins. So, for those who aren’t exactly the visual content type, let me show you some of the different ways you can go when building your own Pinterest designs.

Image only

If you have the ability to stage and capture stunning photographs or have an entirely visual product, then image only pins can be the best thing for you. People use the platform to create dream collections, so having high-quality images they can swoon over is perfect. Just remember to avoid including any faces, and keep your images as bright as possible for maximum impact.

Text over image

If you’re using pins to help promote blog posts or special offers on your site, then including a text overlay on your image is the perfect way to go. Having titles like the ones above on your pins helps to inform viewers exactly what they will see when they click through to your site.

Just make sure that your text is as easy to read as possible. The best way to do this is to place a solid shape underneath it so that it’s not affected by your background image. Also, take some time to experiment with fonts and see which styles and sizes are easiest to read both on a desktop and mobile view.

Infographic

One of the most popular forms of pin design is the infographic. These images educate and inform the viewer, allowing them to complete a project or plan a trip with added ease. People love to share images like these for future reference so can work as continual traffic for your site.

You have so much freedom with your design choices here as well, you don’t need to stick to the usual cookie-cutter style of infographic. If you take a look at the examples above, they all work in different ways, with very different styles. You can tailor yours to your audience and brand.

Rich Pins

If you’re linking your Pinterest strategy to a product, article, or recipe on your site then you need to be using rich pins. These special kinds of pins show more information on your pins to help inform viewers about what you have to offer. Not only do they look better than regular pins, but Pinterest will also sometimes amplify the reach of these pins so even more people will see your great content.

To make rich pins, you need to apply through Pinterest – this is entirely free to do, so every account can take advantage. Once your site has been approved, every pin you create, with the necessary data, will be shown as a rich pin.

Final Tips for Making Pinterest Work for Your Business

As with any social media site, the way the general public uses Pinterest, and the way businesses use it differ greatly. You can’t simply expect to put up a few boards, pin a few images to them, and suddenly attract loads of web traffic. You have to do things differently to get the best results.

Add Pinterest Save Buttons to Your Site

You want to be sure that it’s not just you pinning your content on the site. You want your followers, customers, and potential leads to be doing it as well. The best way to this, is to make it as easy as possible for them to share your content. By including a pin button on your site, you can increase the amount of content pinned from your site by up to 5x as much.

You can install permanent pin buttons to each image, or use hover buttons that only appear when a user moves the cursor over an image. The latter can often look cleaner and allow your pictures to maintain their visual integrity. But, by having a permanent button, you’re making it easier and more obvious for users to take advantage of the option.

Pin Consistently

Dumping all of your pins in one go is not recommended. Instead, you should aim to pin at least once a day, ideally in the evenings or at weekends if you’re working with the U.S. market. Spread your pinning throughout the day and week to help keep a consistent schedule going. As with any marketing – consistency really is key.

Plan Ahead for Holidays

When it comes to holidays or special event marketing, plan to start pinning around 45 days in advance. This gives your pins time to get traveling around the site and attract more attention.

Make Your Pins Accessible

For many of us, it’s easy to forget that not everyone who uses social media can consume the content in the same way as us. Pinterest is a highly visual platform, so this can be severely limiting for those with visual disabilities. There are ways you can make your content more accessible, helping to expand your audience even further.

For instance, if someone needs to use screen readers to access visual content online, text over images won’t register as text to them. This means that you need to incorporate proper pin descriptions to really make your pins work for you. Also, make sure that any fonts you choose to use are as clear and easy to read as possible. Finally, don’t forget to be conscious of your color choices. If you take the time to use color contrast ratios, not only will it make your content easier to read, it will also make it look more appealing in terms of design.

Promote Your Pins

If you have a marketing budget for social media, you should definitely consider plugging some of that cash into a Pinterest strategy. There are two different options when it comes to spending money on marketing your pins – promoted pins and shoppable pins.

Promoted pins work in pretty much the same way as promoted posts on any other network. You pay money to have Pinterest show your pin to people who you select through targeting. How many people see it will depend on your ad budget. They identify these posts with a small “promoted” button on the bottom of your image, and viewers can select that button to see more information about who promoted it.

The difference with using these promoted pins on Pinterest though, is that once a user pins your pin to their board, they begin to act like organic pins. This is why promoting on Pinterest can really help your budget travel further. In fact, according to Pinterest, brands who launch ad campaigns on the platform received an average of 20% more organic clicks.

Promote Your Pins

These pins are ideal for when you have multiple items to promote in each image. They appear pretty similar to promoted pins, but they have little dots over each product that you can click through and buy.

Pinterest recommends that you include between 4-6 buyable items in each pin to get the best results. Each link should go directly to the object when possible to make it easier for users to engage with.

It pretty much goes without saying, but these pins are optimized for generating sales, so if brand awareness is your goal, you’d be better sticking with the traditional promoted pins.

TL; DR – Pinterest is Effective AF

Pinterest is one of those great online tools that you can really get results from, even without spending a dime. It is still extremely underused by many businesses, so now really is the time to capitalize on the opportunity and get ahead of your competition.

Pinterest is visual discovery platform where users go to dream, get inspired, and perhaps most important to brands… users use Pinterest to plan purchases. More than half of active users open their apps in the store to use as a shopping list.

When it comes to your Pinterest marketing strategy, you can’t really phone it in. The returns will be better if you can get in there and do the work. Spend the time nailing your Pinterest marketing strategy. Design great-looking pins, schedule them out across the week, and build your boards around the best keywords for your brand. Do all this, and you’ll be winning.

Social media ROI. It’s one of the great mysteries of life for many brands and marketers. How the heck do you calculate the ROI of a single tweet? Or the ROI of using Instagram for your business over, say, Twitter? Or determine which platform brings in the most revenue for your company? Despite knowing how impactful social media can be, being able to quantify that value gets tricky.

Even the marketers who know they need to focus on this area are often held back by business-minded higher-ups who tell them that without clear evidence of ROI, they can’t invest money into a tactic they know works.

So, in this article, we’ll take a look at how you can measure, track, optimize, and understand social media ROI, and choose which platforms will bring the best results for your business.

What is Social Media ROI?

Let’s start with the basics. The return on investment (or ROI) for any campaign is a crucial metric to track for marketers. It lets you know what’s working and what’s not. If you’re pouring time and resources into a marketing strategy, you need to make sure that you’re getting the most out of it.

When it comes to social media marketing though, marketing teams often struggle to quantify the ROI of a campaign. This is because social media goals are not always based on revenue.

Much of time, social media marketing goals are focused on things like brand awareness, customer engagement, and website visits. These are not necessarily metrics that easily convert to ROI statistics. But, that doesn’t mean they aren’t important. If these are the kinds of goals you’re aiming for, you can still use them to measure your ROI on social media.

How to Measure ROI on Social Media

We’re working on a big post on goal-setting and ROI for social media (specifically influencer campaigns), so be looking for that in the next few days.

But just so we can get to the “which platforms” part of this article, I do want to run down a bit of the goal-setting and ROI info for you since something like 60 percent of marketers agree measuring ROI on social media is one of their biggest challenges.

Let’s take a look at some business goals, the cost of running campaigns, and the actual things that matter when it comes to social media ROI.

Count the costs of “doing” social media

We know what you lose by not investing in social media. But there are costs associated with even the day-to-day management of social media. Before you can calculate how effective your campaign has been, you need to have a clear picture of how much you have invested in your social media marketing. While posting to social media networks, in general, is a free endeavor, there are other factors to consider as investments from your business.

TOOLS

If you’re investing money in scheduling tools, improved analytics, photo or video editing software, research tools, or anything else that helps you build your social media posts and strategy, these costs should be taken into consideration.

For instance, MeetEdgar is a social media scheduling tool. It keeps a virtual inventory of your social media content and automates the publication of your posts based on a post category schedule that you create provide.

So, for instance, every Wednesday, we have blogger roundups scheduled to go out to our networks on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Daily at 9AM, we publish blog posts from The Shelf Blog, and around 11AM, we share posts from some of our favorite blogs. Every day. Without fail.

So, if you’re not using third-party tools like MeetEdgar or Buffer (which we use as well) in your social media marketing, you should definitely check some out and consider them. The value they can bring to your marketing campaigns far outweighs the initial costs you must spend to get started (plus, most of them offer free trials to front-load value).

ADVERTISING COSTS

If you’re including things like boosted posts, PPC ads, or other paid advertising as part of your social media strategy (and you probably should be) these costs also need to be factored into your overall investment cost to calculate your ROI.

STAFF

Hiring designers to create marketing assets, specialists to create ad campaigns, influencers to promote your brand, or freelancers to help manage your presence on social media are all great ways to improve your marketing. But they all come with a cost, and this cost will impact your ROI.

TIME

The one resource you can’t replace… time. If you and your team spend 20 hours a week managing Facebook, but only 10 hours a week managing LinkedIn, each platform will have a different investment amount to include.

There’s a monthly subscription fee for MeetEdgar… but the tool literally saves us about 10 hours a week of social media scheduling time… or something like $200 to $300 a week just in scheduling and curating our social media feeds.

Add all of these costs together and you’ll have your total investment for social media.

Set goals and objectives for each campaign

Goal setting is an important part of any marketing campaign. Without setting clear goals early on in your campaign, you’re setting yourself up for a frustrating cycle of wondering how well your efforts are working… and what they are actually doing for you.

Goal setting isn’t hard, but it does need to be practical. If you’re rolling out a new software system, having people click through to see or schedule a demo is a much better metric of how well a campaign is working than would be, say getting sales. Getting sales is important, but the reality is social media users aren’t on social to find a new piece of software. So, a legit win would be getting them to click through.

Yes, people are growing more and more comfortable with buying online, but many are buying as a result of the positive experiences they are having online with different brands. So, I’m definitely not saying that sales isn’t a solid goal to set. What I am saying is before focusing on converting customers, you need to focus on getting their attention long enough to sell them.

Here are some goals social media are great for:

BRAND AWARENESS

Brand awareness is probably one of the most important yet least understood of the SMM goals but increasing your brand’s awareness is the first step in every marketing / sales funnel. People have to see you to do business with you, so knowing how to effectively market your brand across social media helps spread the word about your company, team, culture, brand and product (because social media success is about way more than talking about your product).

In a brand awareness campaign, reach becomes really important. So, if you’re going to partner with influencers to announce a new product launch, a new store, the spring line… you want to target larger influencers because they will be able to reach the most people with the announcement.

A successful brand awareness campaign will result in greater visibility, which will lead to more brand mentions, engagement, more followers, and more people sharing your posts with the people in their own networks.

For its Spring 2017 marketing push, Donald J Pliner launched the #ArtofFun campaign on social media to get eyes on its inventory of edgy mid-priced shoes. This was a brand awareness campaign, meaning DJP wanted to get the word out to as many potential customers (not just random people) as possible about its shoes.

So, we (The Shelf worked on this particular campaign) enlisted a set of confident, fashion-forward Millennial macro-influencers who had the influence, the follower numbers, and the engagement needed to help Donald J Pliner get the attention of people who were most likely to “get” DJP’s vibe and want to get in on the extra-ordinariness. These were people who invested in their shoe game.

The campaign produced some really great posts. They were colorful, creative, stylish, and a bit out of step with the typical Instagram posts you see.

UGC AND CREATIVE ASSETS

We’ve done several posts on the topic of user-generated content…

The benefits of UGC

How to drive sales with UGC

How to get amazing UGC in your campaigns

Examples of cool UGC campaigns

Getting the rights to sponsored content

That’s because user-generated content – the posts created by users that get published to different platforms – are the lifeblood of social media and influencer marketing.

For brands, UGC is a powerful word-of-mouth endorsement from key opinion leaders of targeted demographic segments. When presented in the right way, UGC carries more sway than any other type of branded or brand-owned content.

So, we get lots of clients that are looking to get loads of UGC from their influencer campaigns that they can reuse across their own branded social media feeds, in paid ads. Basically, they can use UGC as a creative asset in any way they see fit.

You may not immediately recognize the name Alex Brands… but you know the company’s products. Alex Brands sells some of the most well-known brands in the toy market, like the Slinky and Hot Wheelz bikes for kids. There’s even a National Slinky Day at the end of summer.

Until recently, the company’s primary method of distribution and their way to get new products into new markets was through Toy R Us stores. In early 2018, their #AlexBrandsPlays social media campaign was all about boosting visibility by having kid influencers create tons of UGC Alex Brands could use on their own branded social channels.

Source: on Instagram

ENGAGEMENT

Speaking of engagement, this is another popular goal for social media marketing. This goal is focused on encouraging your customers and followers to interact with your brand online. This can take the form of liking, commenting, sharing, messaging, or tagging you across social media platforms.

This is a great goal for brands who are focused on a slightly younger audience, as brands appearing authentic and “human” online is a big deal for them.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

With younger audiences fast becoming the majority of spenders across the board, having top notch customer service online is no longer simply an option for brands. Platforms like Twitter are perfect platforms for quick responses and public discussions that show how much you value your customers.

Measuring this can take the form of response times, response rates, and the resolution of problems via social media.

Which Social Media Networks Will Deliver the Best ROI for My Campaign?

The real reason you’re reading this is to determine which social media networks provide the greatest ROI, right? So let’s dive into some platform-specific analysis to see where your business or brand can get the most bang for your buck.

I do feel like we need to reiterate that interpreting the results of any social media campaign always goes back to the goals you set. Your goals also determine which social media platforms you use to accomplish your goals. while one platform may bring in amazing results for one brand, it may not do the same for you if your goals do not align.

For this reason, we’ve organized the top social media networks by the goals they are most likely to help you reach.

Facebook

For Brand Awareness

With over 2 billion users, Facebook is the largest social media network in the world. So, it is highly likely that your target audience is spending time here. Facebook can be a great platform for those who have placed brand awareness as their number one goal on social media.

Facebook’s algorithm shifted in 2018 to favor personal content over posts by business pages, and this definitely put a thorn in marketers’ sides as their reach was slashed. But, a shining light came in the form of Facebook groups and the platform’s new feature that allows pages to post in groups, just like individual accounts.

If you’re leaning toward paid ads on Facebook, “Brand Awareness” is also a campaign goal that you can access in the dashboard of your Facebook ads manager. You can choose ad recall as a goal, you’re working towards “Ad Recall” to ensure people remember seeing your ad two days later. Marketing is about more than just reaching lots of people; it’s also about sticking in those people’s minds.

If you have money to spend on advertising on Facebook, you’re going to see even better results. According to research by the social media scheduling tool Buffer, Facebook ads can bring in some pretty great ROI. Their experiment saw the average price on Facebook for a thousand impressions was $0.59, compared with $3.50 on Twitter – a big difference.

For Building Community

Facebook is also a great platform for building a branded or industry-specific group. And if you do that, you’re in luck because Facebook favors group posts more than anything else right now. A Facebook group will enable you to get your content in front of a group of people who have already demonstrated an interest in your content.

Brands can also join and participate in groups as a business page, so social media managers don’t have to worry about their personal brands being overshadowed by their professional brands on Facebook. They can remain separate.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the home of professionals on social media. There are 40 million decision makers on the platform, so it’s the place to be if you want to establish yourself as a knowledgeable professional, do targeted B2B marketing, and attract new clients to your business.

For Establishing Authority

LinkedIn is the place professionals go to connect with, talk to, and hear from other professionals. For brands, LinkedIn presents a moderately captive audience who is checking in for one reason and one reason only – to find professional opportunities. Those opportunities could be sharing an interesting post they read, sharing an idea they want to spread, sharing information about their company and culture…

All these little bits of information will come together nicely to help people establish credibility and build authority in their specific area of expertise.

For Website Traffic

Let me share some really interesting stats I found at Omnicore.com.

Of the 500 million LinkedIn users, 3 million of them share content weekly and 1 million users actually create articles for LinkedIn. But here’s the thing: 91 percent of marketing executives peg LinkedIn as the best place to find quality content. It is currently THE #1 platform B2B marketers use to distribute content and LinkedIn makes up half the traffic to B2B websites.

For Generating Leads

LinkedIn leads the pack when it comes to using social media marketing to generate B2B leads. LinkedIn accounts for 80 percent of B2B lead generation while Twitter and Facebook account for the other 20 percent.

Sponsored InMail allows users to inbox personalized messages to other users, whether regardless of whether there is an existing connection on the platform.

Brands use Sponsored InMail to facilitate trust with new potential leads, send out invites to webinars or in-person events, or to pitch their services to business owners.

InMail isn’t the only advertising option at your fingertips though, LinkedIn offers a range of different ways to reach new customers.

Sponsored Content – In the same way you can on Facebook, you can plug some investment into existing posts you’ve sent out from your company page to help them reach more people. This should be reserved for your best performing posts.

Display Ads – These appear in people’s LinkedIn feeds just like Facebook Ads. You can use text, images, and video to attract people’s attention.

Dynamic Ads – Display ads on steroids. These are shown to people based on their activity, making them hyper-targeted compared to the usual fare.

It almost goes without saying that this platform is great for B2B brands, or those who have services that would benefit busy professionals. This is probably the most niche of all the social media networks, and not everyone will be able to benefit from advertising here. So, make sure you fit the LinkedIn mold before going forward with a campaign here.

Instagram

For Product Launches

Instagram is my absolute favorite platform for engaging and connecting with customers and influencers alike. It reached 1 billion users in 2018 and is only going to get bigger. Thanks to it’s visual nature, content on Instagram is much easier to digest and engage with as it require less concentration and shorter attention spans.

For Customer Engagement

Instagram gives you a number of ways to reach your audience on their platform – all of which encourage engagement and interaction. Because the site is accessed almost exclusively on mobile devices, it’s a place that is ever-present in many of our lives. The platform is key for engagement based goals as it brings in 10 times more engagement than Facebook does, despite not having as many active users.

Thanks to the “Explore” page and the power of hashtags, discoverability is much higher on Instagram than other social networks, which helps brands to connect with more people. This also means this can be a great platform for reach as well, but you’ll have a more limited demographic than you would on Facebook, which is why we positioned it in this way.

There are two ways to post on Instagram – in the main feed, and in your stories. Both offer different advantages, and both should be undertaken simultaneously for maximum impact. Unlike other platforms where engagement is limited to likes and comments, Instagram offers users a number of ways to interact with your content.

If you post to Instagram Stories, viewers can interact in the following ways:

• Swipe up – if you have a following of over 10k and are operating on a business account (which you should be), you can include a link in your story that viewers can access by simply swiping up. Other than this, the only way to include a clickable link is in your bio on your profile. This is an incredibly useful tool for businesses looking to drive web traffic through social.

• Questions – If there’s something in particular you want your followers to tell you about, then you can post a question on your story. With this feature, you’re actively encouraging engagement by giving your followers the chance to speak directly to you. You can then share their answers on subsequent stories to further increase their effectiveness.

• Polls – Polls on Stories are pretty self-explanatory. You pose a question to your followers with two possible answers and all your followers have to do is click one, and there’s your engagement.

Combine all of these with the usual options of liking, commenting and direct messaging, and you have a catalyst for huge levels of engagement that you just won’t find anywhere else on social media.

Twitter

The final of the big four is Twitter, and this is the place to be if you want to focus on customer service across social media. Thanks to the fast pace of the online world, we are no longer content to sit on hold for hours with customer service teams (not that we ever liked it in the first place), so businesses need to be able to respond quicker than ever.

For Talking with Existing Customers

That’s where Twitter comes in. The fastest-moving of all the social networks, it’s the ideal place to keep up with customer requests. Because it’s such a public way of dealing with customer requests, many people love to use this in the hopes of receiving a speedy and positive response, as they know that others will be watching.

This means you need to be quick off the mark, and prepared to help diffuse any situations as soon as possible. But, providing awesome customer service isn’t just limited to direct questions sent your way. Keeping your eye on brand mentions on the platform is another way to make sure your customers stay as happy as possible.

(https://twitter.com/unbounce/status/935567576423325696)

See how Unbounce responds to a brand mention to help their customer, as well as turn the situation around in their favor? This is the kind of quick thinking that helps keep your customer service in tip-top shape.

For Getting Clicks

So, this last one is really from our personal experience. On the word of Gary Vaynerchuk who said during a keynote or fireside chat or something last year that Twitter ads were under-priced, we leveraged the reach of Twitter to promote a downloadable guide to rolling out an influencer campaign ahead of last year’s holiday season.

The response was phenomenal. Within a span of about two weeks, we saw more than 1,000 downloads of the guide.

Here’s the thing though: Because we weren’t nearly as focused on list-building as we were on testing Twitter’s fire and getting the guide in people’s hands, the landing page for the guide gave visitors the option to opt-in or not. What I mean is they could download the guide and skip town for all we knew. Despite not NEEDING to opt-in in order to get the guide, about 1 in 10 did.

So, when it comes to promoting content to get clicks and traffic back to your site, Twitter is a really affordable way to go.

For Getting Shares

Whether you’re Marvel promoting the next Avengers movie or Daquan spreading the next great meme, your Twitter network is key. Because so much of your reach on Twitter comes from engaging with and sharing other users’ content, creating content specifically to grab the attention of your Twitter followers can help you grow your network and build your reputation in the process.

Final Word

We have to agree with those who claim that measuring ROI on social media really does differ from case to case, but having a firm grasp on your campaign goals is the first step in making sure you get the most out of your marketing.

By understanding our goals, you can understand where to place your efforts on social media. Social media is a great way to bring in customers, engage with your fans, and keep on top of customer service – if you do it right.

Nano-Influencers: Who They Are, Why They Win, and How Brands Like Suave, Loco Coffee, and Gymboree Are Partnering with Nano-Influencers to Reach Hyper-Targeted Audiences

Influencer marketing has surged in the last couple of years. With 39 percent of marketers planning to increase their influencer marketing budgets, an effective influencer marketing strategy is the key to standing out in a saturated influencer marketing landscape.

The secret to more targeted influencer marketing may be using nano-influencers. Nano-influencers are influencers who have fewer than 10,000 followers on a given platform. So, yeah… someone could be a nano-influencer on one platform and a mega-influencer on another (that’s usually the case, by the way…)

Given the choice between mega and nano, why would a brand want to invest money having anyone with fewer than 10,000 followers promote their brand or product?

Well, there are actually a couple of good reasons.

Nano-influencers are relatively inexpensive to hire for influencer campaigns. They also tend to have much higher engagement rates and ROI than, say, a mega-influencer.

Let’s dive into everything you need to know about nano-influencers — more information on who they are, how they’re being used by media superstars, and why they may be a better fit for your campaign than some of the bigger influencers.

What (Exactly) Are Nano-Influencers?

The overall goal of influencer marketing is to find people who have the credibility to influence the purchasing decisions of large segments of the people in their social networks. Nano-influencers are influential people who have a smaller following — usually between 1,000-10,000 followers (think of them as that one really popular friend you have).

But being a nano-influencer isn’t just about having 3,000 followers. Nano-influencers possess very distinctive traits that PROVE their influence.

Nano-influencers regularly post to the social media platform on which they wield influence. They are also responsive on social media – they respond to comments, winks, likes, pokes, and shares from their audience members. And perhaps most importantly, their followers actually do seem to like what they post; that is, the audience demonstrates positive sentiment toward the nano-influencer’s social media content.

Nano-Influencers vs. Bigger Influencers

Influencers fall into different tiers based on the number of followers they have. Contrary to popular belief, nano-influencers are not the same thing as micro-influencers. We like this colorful little chart from Mediakix (okay, you got us… we recolored it so it’s cuter).

● Mega-influencers — Have more than a million followers and are often more famous than influential. Mega-influencers offer brands HUGE potential reach and expansive exposure, but often at a hefty price.

● Macro-influencers — Have between 100,000 and one million followers. This is what most people think of when they hear the term “influencer.” Most macro-influencers differ from mega-influencers because their fame is self-made, usually through the internet itself — think of fitness influencers like Whitney Simmons (on Instagram @whitneyysimmons) or fashion Youtubers like Patricia Bright (here’s a link to her channel). They usually have a more targeted audience than mega-influencers.

● Micro-influencers — Have between 10,000 and 100,000 followers. Micro-influencers focus on a niche audience and are usually considered an expert in their given industry. Marketers who want to employ micro-influencers can count on the influencer’s audience being interested in whatever made the influencer popular.

Nano-influencers have smaller audiences, so they can’t really offer huge reach on their own. BUT these influencers do tend to demonstrate a closer connection to their audience members than just about any other tier of influencers.

For nano-influencers, their lack of fame doesn’t compromise their influence. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Nano-influencers are everyday people who may wield considerable selling power just because they engage frequently and directly with the people in their small, niche, and highly engaged audiences. Therein lies the prime benefit for brands and marketers.

The Benefits of Choosing a Nano-Influencer

Nano-influencers are a great option for brands that have never worked with influencers before. You don’t have to have thousands of dollars laying around to secure sponsored posts from nano-influencers, and you can count on high engagement rates on the content they post.

Let’s talk about some of the primary benefits of working with nano-influencers.

Engagement

High engagement rates are one of the key distinguishing traits of nano-influencers compared to larger influencers who have greater reach. Small influencers consistently outperform larger influencers when it comes to responsiveness and audience engagement. That’s a BIG DEAL.

Most marketers use engagement ratio as a key performance indicator for the success of influencer campaigns. Nano-influencers outshine every other influencer tier in that respect.

Digiday reported that nano-influencers are able to engage up to 8.7 percent of their following, whereas the average engagement rate for macro influencers with millions of followers is 1.7 percent and that percentage usually dips below one percent for celebrities. That’s over 5x higher engagement rates nano-influencers produce with their content!

Source: Influencer Marketing Hub

Nano-influencers personally know their audience, or at least most of them. This familiarity helps them craft organic and authentic messages that resonate with their followers, leading to higher engagement rates. The smaller amount of followers also means that nano-influencers can respond to most every comment or personal message, further improving their authentic image (and usually resulting in a following that is consistently growing).

Authenticity

Having intimate knowledge of the people in their networks means nano-influencers can be an effective vehicle for word-of-mouth marketing. Nano-influencers become key opinion leaders among their following. That gives them influence over the purchasing decisions of the people in their network.

Think about it. How do you typically research a product before you buy it? Most Millennials won’t make large purchases AT ALL without first researching reviews of the product online, that includes asking people in their existing social networks.

As a buyer, you’re more likely to believe the rave reviews of someone you know than a paid celebrity endorsement. Let’s face it… who really thinks celebs use the same stuff the rest of us do?

But if it’s someone you know, there’s nothing to stop your from hitting them up in the DM to find out the real deal. Nano-influencers help companies connect with customers by allowing the influencers to share with their online community the real experiences they are having with different products.

Cost

Nano-influencers typically don’t charge excessive fees for their sponsorship like larger influencers do. There are a few that will either wittingly or unwittingly charge a higher fee than their influence warrants, but mostly… nano-influencer fees will be pretty fair.

According to Mike Dossett, VP and director of digital strategy at RPA, marketers can use the low cost of nano-influencers to their advantage. Low-cost nano-influencers means brands can work with a larger number of influencers, “each of whom can create and share their own content about the brand.”

Value

Nano-influencers aren’t just low cost — most nano-influencers tend to over-deliver. In fact, whenever a client wants to generate tons of UGC from an influencer campaign, we direct their ad spend to nano-influencers and micro-influencers, NOT macro- or mega-influencers. You would pay less per piece of content created for your campaign, and you’re far more likely to get the UGC rights you want (and need).

In addition to being a more affordable option for influencer marketing, nano-influencers tend to offer marketers a huge ROI.

Over the course of a year, you could easily hire 100 nano-influencers with 10,000 followers each for a combined reach of 1,000,000 people. And the campaign(s) would probably generate between 200 and 600 unique pieces of content for your brand to reuse across your own social media channels and in ads.

How Brands Are Using Nano-Influencers

Nano-influencers aren’t just for brands with small budgets. Nano-influencers are starting to proliferate marketing campaigns across every vertical with the help of endorsements from big media companies.

Companies like CMSwire, Hubspot, Vayner Media, Influencer Marketing Hub, and even the New York Times are already touting the success of nano-influencers — and other brands are taking notice.

According to research by Brian Solis, principal analyst at Altimeter Group, only 32 percent of consumers follow big-name influencers, compared to 70 percent who are influenced by their family and friends online. Trust is the name of the game when it comes to influencer marketing, and nano-influencers are uniquely positioned to stand in as trustworthy sources of information in the eyes of their respective audience members.

Brands are also paying attention to a particular demographic that relies heavily on the opinions of nano-influencers — Generation Z. Gen Z grew up surrounded by social media, and they’ve never existed in a world without it. Youtubing is a legitimate career path for Gen Z-ers, and their Instagram feeds are over-saturated with sponsored posts.

Social media is their main source of content, and where they discover most of the products they buy. Gen Z nano-influencers are using social media because their friends are too, which makes them a huge potential market for brands across the globe.

Gymboree

Take a look at some of the brands making use of nano-influencers across Instagram.

Source: On Instgram from Sarah Christensen

Parents love to seek out the advice of other parents, and Gymboree is smartly taking advantage of this with their influencer marketing campaign. Parents trust products used successfully by people they know, probably more so than any other target market. Gymboree’s use of nano-influencers was a smart way to spread the news about the classes they offer through word-of-mouth marketing.

Sarah’s post got 71 likes and six comments, earning her an engagement rate of 5.2 percent among her 1,472 followers.

Glossier

Source: On Instagram by @ammal

This relatively new skincare and makeup brand is taking the term nano-influencer to the next level by turning every customer into an influencer for the brand. Emily Weiss, Founder and CEO of Glossier, says the idea that everyone can be an influencer is ingrained into the makeup of the company and their marketing strategy.

According to Vox, Glossier has mainly relied on word-of-mouth to sell its products, and with huge success. The skincare company is partnered with over 500 ambassadors and has raised over $90 million in venture funding.

The post above from Ammal post received 215 likes and 16 comments. With 1,265 followers, the engagement rate for the post was 18.26 percent!

Suave

While Suave’s instagram account @suavebeauty may be relatively young (it only has 18.6k followers) the brand is sure making use of influencers’ audiences to promote its products. A quick look at the company’s Instagram feed reveals that Suave using influencers from multiple tiers to reach a large audience and reach engaged audiences.

Using the hashtag #SuavePartner, influencers for the brand both large and small are highlighting the benefits of a new Rose Oil shampoo and conditioner.

Source: On Instagram from @nicole.marshall

With 21 comments and 295 likes on this post, Nicole’s post for Suave earned a 4.4 percent among her 7,082 followers.

Loco Coffee

It’s not just beauty brands using nano-influencers. Loco Coffee (on Instagram @DRINKloco)is a new coffee brand with no added sugar and only two ingredients in the drink. The brand itself is new and only has 5,000 followers on Instagram, meaning they need a lot of bang for their buck in terms of their marketing strategy,

That’s where their nano-influencers come in. With something in the food and beverage industry, ease of use, taste, and ingredients are important. Nano-influencers for Loco Coffee can highlight any of these features in their sponsored posts while being authentic and relatable to their audience.

Source: On Instagram posted by @heykatemarie

This post of Katie’s generated 165 likes and 8 comments, meaning the engagement rate for the post was 6.8 percent based on her 2,520 followers.

Suave, Clinique, and Loco Coffee have all made use of the same nano-influencer — Alexis Baker on Instagram @alexisbakerrr). Alexis’s most recent sponsored Suave post garnered 213 engagements (comments and likes) — a 7.3 percent engagement rate based on her 3,000 follower audience.

Final Thought

Nano-influencers are the next big thing for influencer marketing in 2019 — they are a low-cost option and they produce high engagement rates for the brands they work for. Any brand can make use of nano-influencers in their marketing strategy.

To get started working with nano-influencers, sign up for a demo or check out our resources section for more information.

Well, It Looks Like We’re About to Reverse Engineer Influencer Marketing… You Know… So It’s Easier to Understand

Updated February 2019

Over the past few years, influencer marketing has become seamlessly integrated into our lifestyles. But what (EXACTLY) is it? A mommy blogger speaking well of a cream that helps reduce the discomfort of her baby’s eczema? Is it a celebrity endorsement? Is it influencer marketing if no money changes hands? How do we define it? How does it really affect us? More, how do brands translate Likes into store foot traffic? If you’re still having a hard time putting your finger on EXACTLY what influencer marketing is, I wrote this particular post for you. .

Buckle your seatbelts, kids. We’re going to “reverse engineer” influencer marketing!

First things first. Don’t get confused by the jargon. There are a half dozen terms out there that essentially mean the same thing as influencer marketing: brand advocates, brand ambassadors, blogger advocacy, blogger campaigns, native advertising, sponsored posts, word-of-mouth marketing.

Some of those terms are less interchangeable than others, but they all pretty much describe the method of marketing using the publicized experiences of authentic, relatable, unbiased people. This is in stark contrast to marketing with the more traditional styles of advertising, all of which are based on branded content and shiny marketing messages.

To preface our discussion, let me tell you what inspired this “Influencer Marketing in Layman’s Terms” post. It all started when my grandfather asked me (for, like, the fifteenth time) what exactly it is that I do. My grandfather was 85 at the time and he calls me every other week with conversations that go something like this:

Let’s First Look at What Influencer Marketing Is NOT

A key difference between influencer marketing and traditional marketing is that influencer marketing isn’t created by the brand. In fact, it’s not even branded. When done well, this type of marketing won’t even look like marketing.

Typically, when we think of brands marketing themselves, a certain collection of marketing collateral and brand behavior pops into our heads: Newsletters, banner ads, social media posts, and pretty much any other opportunity the brand seizes to let the world know how great their products are.

Come to think of it, isn’t it odd that this type of advertising was ever really effective at all? A brand telling you that THEIR own product is the best is like a doting parent telling you that THEIR kid is smarter than everyone else’s kids. Or when I boast about my smart little pug (who really IS smart. Like smart smart. Like the smartest little pug in the whole wide world) but I’m only referencing my little genius to drive home my point). Which is that no one believes me, even when I insist. And no one believes those bragging parents or their bumper stickers. The same thing goes for all those brands proclaiming their own greatness.

One reason why old school marketing isn’t as effective is because technology has afforded today’s consumers the ability to get wise to a product long before he or she ever comes face-to-face with any brand representatives. They do it through online reviews, chatty groups on social media, the company’s website, its competitors websites… Today’s consumers can even spot fake reviews when they crop up in the results. Our spidey senses start tingling and our BS-ometer rises to the orange level. As we have access to more information, the branded approach to marketing is becoming increasingly ineffective.

An article on Forbes.com by Kimberly Whitler, quotes a 2012 stat, confirming the same 2016 finding from CMO: consumers just don’t trust brands.

Data shown above is from Nielsen’s Global Trust In Advertising Survey

CMO says a brand’s ability to establish trust accounts for 30 percent of total brand loyalty. As time and technology makes it harder for consumers to determine what’s real vs what’s not, more people around the world trust earned media – such as recommendations from friends and family – above all other forms of advertising. Who knew “earned media” was even a thing?

Consumer confidence is shaken because many brands are resorting to brute-force marketing tactics. And that just doesn’t work.

What do I mean by brute-force? Well, let’s start with an example.

One day you’re on the Internet checking out black leather jackets.

Maybe you’ve always wanted one or maybe you recently watched a rerun of Happy Days. Either way, it just so happens that you’re searching online. You stumble upon a random product page from Macy’s and before you even know what’s happening, they’ve ensnared you in their trap. Suddenly, you’re in the middle of a full-on ad attack and for the next year – winter, spring, summer, and fall – you can expect to see that damn leather jacket following you around the Internet, interrupting you with presumptuous reminder emails, popping up when you’re reading the news, commandeering your Facebook feed. They won’t stop until that jacket is haunting you in your dreams, making you rue the day when you innocently decided to google “black leather jacket”.

Now, if  you are anything like a normal human being, that leather jacket is not the only thing that caught your eye, which means every item of clothing you clicked on – whether intentional or not – will now “Walking Dead” you around the web, lumbering behind, and showing up on every site you happen to visit.

It’s all fun and games until people start going crazy.

The point I hope I’m driving home successfully is this:
BRANDED marketing comes across as disingenuous.
It’s loud and in-your-face.
It interrupts you.
It fights you, tooth-and-nail, for your attention.

Now let’s compare the above (branded) approach with that of Influencer Marketing…

Influencer marketing is the exact opposite.

It’s subtle.
It’s NOT in-your-face.
In fact, most of the time, people don’t even realize they’re looking at it.

We’re far enough along here where a definition might be useful. Let’s see if you’re sharper than my 85 year-old grandfather.

Influencer marketing is the practice of paying for social proof. Brands work with everyday people who have an interest in – and are willing to – promote their products. These people are unbiased and have no vested interest in seeing the brand increase their sales; their only value to the brand lies in the fact that they organically have the one thing all brands are clamoring to get – the attention of a very targeted audience. It is often the case that a brand will have to woo an influencer and provide him or her with a compelling enough reason (usually a great product and money for endorsing that great product) to present the brand’s product or message to the influencer’s hard-won audience.

The job of an influencer is to help you win genuine interest in your product. They spread the word about your product in a uniquely creative and unbiased way. As a result, they get your product in front of people who are conditioned to completely ignore traditional advertising. Score!

Okay, so back to our big example of the leather jacket, the wedge, the watch, and the jeans. In case you’ve forgotten and are too lazy to scroll back up, these are the products…

When we last checked in, we were being chased around the web by the Macy’s retargeting monsters.

Now, check out the subtlety and authenticity of these same products being advertised low-key by an influencer.

The example below is from Sabrina Fenster’s Vancouver-based, street style blog, StreetScout.Me. Sabrina’s taken those same products and made them into a look that’s distinctive and real – something most big brands miss the boat on when it comes to advertising.

Why is Influencer Marketing So Great??

#1. Influencers know how to thrill!

In the example above, Sabrina’s photos aren’t salesy. They’re not even pitching. For all I know as a reader, Sabrina’s just updating us on her typical Tuesday. The difference between traditional marketing and influencer marketing are targeting and context. Sabrina’s photos not only make these products look much better than the original product shots, her photos also provide real-world examples of how these products can fit together into an outfit that a REAL person would wear.

The same goes for men. The pompadour haircut, infinity scarf, and cigarette-legged pants all came from somewhere – a striking image some guys saw somewhere that stuck in their minds. Oh, and many thanks to the companies who made bushy beards, big glasses, and cardigans a look. Geeks are the new billboards. The annoying banner ads of yesteryear are officially obsolete.

#2. Influencers allow brands to strike when the timing is perfect!

Let’s talk about timing.

The psychology of traditional advertising worked because advertisers had a captive audience. People were on the couch every Thursday watching whatever shows NBC had lined up. It was too much of a hassle to get up every commercial break, so brands essentially had a captive audience. That’s not the case anymore. People aren’t consuming media according to a broadcaster’s schedule anymore. We now consume media how and when we want to. What does that mean for advertisers?

Ads are being skipped… and therefore becoming increasingly useless.

Ads interrupt you as you’re doing other, more important things, like watching adorable babies with bed head try to master the art of sleep-eating. Influencers don’t interrupt because, unlike advertisers, they don’t have to wait until they have a captive audience. When an influencer’s reader lands on his or her website or social page, the reader is coming there for a specific purpose – to be influenced. That’s why a popular vlogger like Zoella can make videos that outperform those of multi-billion-dollar companies like Maybelline.

Zoella present products to her audience when they are in their most receptive state. Unfortunately, without the help of an influencer like Zoella, Maybelline doesn’t have that same advantage.

How does Smartphone footage of a young woman talking about makeup in her bedroom get 3 million views while Maybelline’s social marketing team only grabs 22K views?? Two words:

I already talked about why people trust social influencers more than they trust branded ads. Relevance is another hurdle brands have to overcome. Many brands still create ads like they did 20 years ago – they want to somehow find a way to present Hollywood icons, models, and CG to the typical consumer and send the message that, “You can have all of this.” But in many segments, consumers have outgrown that message. They want something they can relate to, something that resonates with them. Very few of us can relate to being on the set of a national commercial spot, trying to make our makeup perfect for the green screen. Zoella’s video wins because most of us know what it’s like to go to the store, grab a bunch of different products, and play with them at home in our bedroom.

#3. Influencers can expand a brand’s target demographic.

Influencers have the ability to reach a huge variety of audiences because they each have unique opinions and approaches towards their lifestyle and the products they choose to incorporate. They are like alien ambassadors who translate your mission of peace into Klingon for you.

I went there. Or should I say pa’ jImejbej!

Part of the advantage brands gain by working with influencers is loss of control. Let’s face it, big companies are slow to latch on to emerging trends. And if they were calling the shots with influencers, it would be more bad commercials and more hit-and-miss print ads.

But the freedom that influencers have to determine how to market products is what enables brands to reach that wider audience.

A beautiful example of this in action (at a very HUGE scale) was the Lord and Taylor Instagram Blitz.

To promote the launch of the Design Lab line, Lord & Taylor decided to focus its marketing power on one paisley dress (shown to the right). No, I don’t know why. Take a look at the product shot. It isn’t terrible…but it’s nothing special. In all honesty, I wouldn’t have given it a second glance if I was browsing their website.

They brilliantly sent this same paisley print dress out to 50 Instagram influencers and encouraged each to style the dress in a way that reflected her personal fashion sense. Then L&T had all the influencers post about the dress on the same day. And that’s exactly what they did. Check out the range this dress actually has when the backdrop is real life on a person with a unique style…as opposed to the infinite white of a studio photo with the dress atop a headless, legless mannequin.

Photos courtesy of Arielle Noa Charnas , Jeanne Grey , and Cara Santana .

At least twenty media articles, hundreds of comments, thousands of Likes and one FTC finger-wag later, the dress sold out. In hours.

OK, now that we all know what influencer marketing is…and why it’s awesome…let’s cover a few common painpoints and concerns that I frequently hear from brands who are new to the space.

Pain Point #1: Influencer marketing is messy.

Yes. There’s no cookie-cutter method for handling 50 influencers, each with their own platforms, ideas, styles, and requirements for entering their domain. When you enter their world, you play by their rules, at least to an extent. So when we see marketers jumping into this space, they often find they don’t really know how to leverage it. They’re used to PPC ads with immediate (although dangerously vain) ROI in the form of clicks.

Clicks that may or may not result in a sale. It’s a world where brands can get exactly what they pay for.

Influencer marketing has a very different setup. For starters, you’ll be working with influencers. And just like their extremely diverse styles and audiences, you’ll encounter that same level of diversity within their work-styles. You’ll get presented with various pricing structures, payment processes, time frames, and attitudes. There are no guarantees. And the process, as a whole, can be messy.

But, this messiness is the entire reason WHY influencer marketing works so well. It wouldn’t be effective if it wasn’t organic! So the messiness comes with the territory.

If you’re looking for an easy solution, there isn’t one that will take away all of the work, BUT platforms like ours, The Shelf, will streamline the crap out of it! Plus, we’re totally great with targeting down to the finest nuance…which, in the end, will give you better ROI than what your marketing intern will be able to achieve after slaving over the campaign setup process for months.

And even if you don’t want to use our platform, our blog posts are turbo-thorough (if you couldn’t tell from this post), and we’ll get you up and running, as well as armed with the info you need to run successful campaigns, right out out of the gate!

• This post runs through the whole process.

• This post is a step by step guide on how to structure your first campaign.

• This post runs through what to expect in terms of influencer-pricing (so you don’t get burned)!

• This post covers outreach.

• And then there are series of posts on vanity metrics here, here, and here…because vanity metrics can really jump up and bite you on the butt if you’re not careful.

Pain Point #2: There are no guarantees.

True. Most influencers won’t guarantee a particular ROI. If you find one who does, latch onto them and don’t let go.

But most don’t. And that can be both a blessing and a curse. This post of ours goes into every ROI question you might have, but to summarize, I think the lack of a guarantee is actually a good thing.

If you’re coming from a PPC background then you’re probably looking for numbers. But, let me wipe the stars from your eyes for just a moment to remind you that while Google Ads give you a guarantee in terms of CLICKS, clicks are not qualified leads, and they are definitely not sales. If you really assess the quality of leads that come through Google Ads, you may be willing to finally admit to yourself that they are so-so at best.

You assume more risk with influencer marketing because there is no “clicks guarantee.” But this risk is tied pretty closely to how well you select your influencers. If you find one who is the exact poster-child of the products you’re selling, you can expect the quality of leads coming through that influencer to be much better than what Adwords would produce for you given the same budget. Paying the RIGHT influencer can give you wonderful, AMAZINGLY successful results.

One more thing: When your Google ad reaches its allotted budget, there are no more leads coming through to you. Like, zip. The Google bots will hear none of that. But with bloggers, their posts about your product remain in the form of great evergreen content and viral images long after your payment to them is gone. Influencer marketing presents you with the unique opportunity to grab residual leads from once-and-done marketing efforts for months after the marketing event. Plus, if the influencer had a good experience with you and your product, be on the lookout for further honorable mentions from that influencer. We like to think of it as the gift that keeps on giving.

Pain Point #3: Disclosures screw up the authenticity.

Many brands get SUPER worked up about FTC disclosures. They fear that if readers and followers know that they’re reading an ad or sponsored post, it will make the posts less effective and brands won’t get the most bang for their buck. The key thing to remember here is bloggers are very discriminating. Most of them aren’t going to cover a product they don’t like because they’ve spent years developing their own brands and building a following. They are not going to risk it all to promote a soft-soled shoe. So brands aren’t paying for an endorsement, they are paying for entry into the blogger’s world. You’re paying for the blogger’s attention and their ability to direct the attention of thousands of other people to your brand.

Case in point:

I am quite the enthusiastic shopper in my own right… And because I run an influencer marketing platform, I am more aware than almost everyone out there that lots of product endorsements are paid for by brands.

But when I’m trying to find cute sandals for summer (which I was literally just doing five minutes ago), I have my go-to bloggers that I follow and I check out some of their recent posts. I browse my favorite pin boards and if I see something I like, I couldn’t care less what’s sponsored or not sponsored. I’m on the lookout for sandals that are awesome (and inexpensive). This is the way many of us discover new brands and it’s a fun and exciting way to find smaller, new brands that don’t otherwise have widespread attention. We, meaning all of humanity, need those sponsored posts!

I joined Stitchfix as a result of a blog post.
I joined Blue Apron as a result of a blog post.
I joined Barkbox as a result of a blog post.
I recently found (and joined) TheGoldenTote because of a blog post.
And if Happy Socks had a subscription service. I would join that as well. Because they are awesome.[Hmmm, I didn’t realize I was such a subscription-box nut til listing them out just now. Ha!]

But in all seriousness, I knew these posts were sponsored. However, all of those subscriptions were super useful, so the knowledge of the sponsorship didn’t affect my decision in the least. AND months/years later, I’m still a member of all of them.

Another super on-point example…Last year, I got a bitten by the DIY bug and I built a whole bunch of pipe furniture. “Pipe furniture?” you ask. I found a pin on Pinterest that originally came from a blog post sponsored by The Home Depot. The pin itself may or may not have been sponsored. I don’t know and I don’t care. Anyway, after seeing this pin and reading the tutorial, I had to have some pipe furniture, so I went to Home Depot and bought the exact materials that the blogger listed in her instructions.

I actually liked that first pipe-table so much that I built TWO MORE pipe tables AND a coat rack! So that was three more Home Depot trips that were all a result of that one blog post that may or may not have been sponsored.

So what (you might be saying)? Well, the numbers that this blog post tutorial generated will show you the true power of influencer marketing:

• On Facebook it received 125 likes, 86 shares, and 44 comments.

• On Pinterest it was repinned a whopping 54,111 times!!

Through this blog post, The Home Depot tapped into a totally new market (for products that are typically used only in plumbing). And this post presents these products in such a compelling way, that you can imagine within the 54,111 times that this was repinned, a huge number of people probably went out to Home Depot and dropped a few hundred bucks, just like me.

I think my point here is this: The only time consumers really get bent out of shape about sponsored content is when the post doesn’t support the original mission and theme of the blog itself. If it’s a post about the most delicious, fancy gourmet cheese from our vegan sister, that ticks us off a little and lets us know she’s selling out.

If you target your market and your influencer properly, the marketing will go off without a hitch and without ruffling any feathers. They’ll just see it as a super dope product that you’re selling, and they will buy.

We have a whole post devoted to disclosures with ideas for writing them creatively AND honestly, and I think it will make you feel a little better if you’re still an FTC-hater. Don’t be a hater.

Painpoint #4. We sell niche products that might not do well with influencers.

If you think you sell something weird and that no one will get it or want it, you must not be familiar with a tool we use to find anything and everything. It’s called the Internet. Trust me. Your crowd is out there. You just have to look for them…and sometimes it’s the long tail.

Then, you need to find influencers in that space. Influencers exist in every industry, and the other important thing to note is that you can get super creative with your influencer targeting. Just because you sell underwear doesn’t mean you need to find underwear bloggers (yes there are a few of them out there). But, everyone wears underwear. Lifestyle, fashion, and mommy bloggers, for example, are all perfectly equipped to get in front of the right people and sell those undies off the rack. Just remember that it’s about demographic-matching, not vertical-matching.

There are influencers out there for just about every industry. The chart below is a bit old (a senior citizen in Big Data Years), but it gives a pretty cool breakdown of influencers across 16 of the top industries.

Source: Izea

Wrapping Up

Let’s finish up this 15-minute training course exactly how we began, talking about my grandfather. He was right about something: Influencer marketing is nothing new. An influential dude by the name of Liberace did it back in the 1950s when he got people to go in droves to Citizens National Trust and Savings Bank, to the tune of $400,000 in new business in just four weeks with an average deposit of just 10 bucks ( about $100 or so today). He did this by mentioning how he admired the bank’s products. Liberace was so influential during the 1950s, the papers pegged him as a sorcerer.

Influential people have been around since the beginning of…well, the beginning of people, I guess.

The only difference between influential people from back in the day and the influencers of today is internet access. Harnessing their power before the Internet was a much bigger feat, but the Internet as well as social networks and blogging platforms have allowed the voices of influencers to travel far and wide in ways that weren’t eve imaginable. Birthing in the process, the greatest form of marketing EVER!

Hopefully this article brought you up to speed on what influencer marketing is. The next thing for you to do is to start influencer marketing! We can help with that. Either sign up for a demo, or check out our resources section, where we have more articles just like this.

The Rise of Recommerce and Online Resale Sites Part 2: How Retailers Like Depop, ASOS, and Stella McCartney Are Appealing to Thrifters

Despite FANTASTIC holiday sales the retail industry is still experiencing a seemingly unstoppable tumble in revenue. As companies like Macy’s and Sears scrambled to implement a legitimate plan B in response to the exponential growth of e-commerce, fewer in-store visits from customers often mean dwindling sales, smaller inventories, closing stores, and in some cases bankruptcy.

Last week, we analyzed the campaigns of three luxury brands… luxury goods represent one segment of the retail industry that is still experiencing growth. This week, we’re analyzing another profitable segment in the retail sector, also experiencing massive growth – resale.

So… we published The Rise of Recommerce and Online Resale Sites a few weeks ago to give you an overview of the resale industry as a whole. You can read that post here. In this post, I want to take a look at the marketing strategies of clothing brands that are successfully targeting thrifters.

Resalers are Nudging Traditional Retailers Out of Closets

Uh… thrifters. Why thrifters? Aren’t they sort of like the anti-target? Yes, and no. By definition, thrifters do spend a portion of their hard-earned money on used stuff.

The thing is, thrifting isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, the resale market is expected to double in size, reaching $41 billion in annual sales by 2022, according to ThredUP’s 2018 Resale Report. Just a few years ago, thrifting was sort of an acquired taste. In 2012, only 11 percent of the items in the average thrifter’s closet were used. By the year 2022, 40 percent of the stuff in their closets will be used. That means the money shoppers are spending on vintage goods and previously-worn clothes are being moved out of the hands of traditional retailers and into the hands of resalers – that includes individuals resalers, apparel brands, and resale stores.

It is projected that the money shoppers spend at department stores like Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s and even mid-priced specialty stores like Banana Republic and Ann Taylor is going to shrink and that money will instead be spent with off-price stores like TJ Maxx, and you guessed it, resale stores like Poshmark and ThredUP.

For Millennials, Thrifting May Make the Most Financial Sense

That makes sense, right? We’re always harping on how Millennials have more debt than their Boomer parents, and are making different buying decisions than their parents would have made.

So, let’s look at the some numbers. Thrifters pay, on average 70 percent less shopping resale than they would buying the same items new. They pay 40 percent less shopping at off-price stores than they would shopping with traditional retailers.

That’s why resale sites like Depop, ThredUp, and The RealReal have all been experiencing year-on-year growth as consumers become more ethically conscious with every purchase.

The Resale Market Has Officially Become THE Thing

The resale market is rapidly growing. True. But how is an industry based around used clothing making such a high revenue?

Well, according to that report I mentioned earlier, one in three women shopped secondhand in 2017, and that was about 10 million more women than the year before.

Millennials play a big part in the success of the resale industry because they are weirdly both wasteful and waste-conscious. Here’s why: The average Millennial discards a clothing item after just one to five wears. The flip side is 77 percent of Millennials are more likely to buy from brands that are environmentally responsible. #kanyeshrug. In our deep dive into how to market to Millennial women, we discovered that 34 percent of Millennial women are more likely to spend their money on products that are environmentally friendly.

Consumers Are Moving Spending Dollars to Resale Stores

There are a couple of reasons buyers are shifting their spending from buying new at traditional retailers to buying used at online and offline resale shops.

People are spending more time shopping online and choosing to shop from their phones in lieu of venturing into stores… and getting those all-important impulse buys (socks, lip glosses, matching earrings, a bangle that would be cute with another thing in your closet) isn’t so easy online as it is in-store.

People are buying clothes direct from China. From baby clothes to prom accessories, it’s now simple and inexpensive to buy high-quality goods directly from China and skip paying the premium franchises, big box retailers, and physical store locations charge consumers to get access to the same (or close to the same) goods and services.

Casual Friday starts on Monday. Who needs a work wardrobe when more and more employers are allowing employees to dress down for work? Street clothes and work clothes are often the same.

Signature outfits. Buying 5 black turtlenecks and 5 pairs of acid washed mom jeans to wear Monday through Friday is a REAL THING. Popularized by Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg (and driven by the minimalist movement), more people are relying on signature outfits – self-appointed uniforms that reduce the amount of time spent deciding what to wear to work every morning.

Remote teams. Four in ten American employees now work remotely at least part of the time. At The Shelf, those of us who work at the Brooklyn headquarters work remotely two to three times a week. The rest of the team is spread out all over the globe – British Columbia, the UK, Russia, California, Atlanta… this is fast becoming the new norm.

Social media. Social has changed the way we live in multiple ways. One key way is that people no longer have to rely on apparel as their primary form of self-expression. Many of us now prioritize experiences over things. We’re seeing people care more about having an Insta-worthy life that they can show off on social (and create a business from) than spending their money on branded items.

Athleisure. Athletic wear is getting smarter. With retailers like Outdoor Voices (which we profiled in this post) selling athletic wear with no-sweat technology, people with active lifestyles can move seamlessly from gym life to life-life without having to stop and change clothes.

Is it any wonder spending on apparel has plummeted?

Consumers are planning to reduce their spending in traditional clothing avenues such as department stores by as much as 71 percent over the next five years, and at the same time, increase their spending on thrift products by the same percentage. Thanks to this shift, we’ve seen a number of resale brands experience phenomenal growth recently… which brings me to the next part of this article – how clothing brands – even traditional brands – are targeting the thrift market.

These are some of our favorite brands and the marketing strategies they’ve employed to take advantage of this growing retail trend.

Luxury Resaler The Real Real

The Real Real is probably the most popular luxury resale platform in the space, though platforms like Vestiare Collective are also making noise in the luxury resale space. The Real Real only works with luxury brands and offers customers a slick experience when shopping with them online. The Real Real has the authentication process locked down so buyers don’t have to worry about being sold knock-offs.

Luxury goods are ideal for resale sites. Sixty-six percent of resale customers buy luxury goods second hand. This enables them to own brands they otherwise wouldn’t (or couldn’t) pay full price to own. Thanks to the growth and rebranding of the some of the biggest names in the luxury retail industry in recent years, luxury goods are more accessible now than ever before.

The Real Real – Stella McCartney Partnership

The Real Real pushes the overarching brand message of eco-consciousness, and the brand has partnered with fashion icon Stella McCartney to launch a circular fashion promoting the message of “make well, buy well, resell”. Resalers get a $100 voucher for selling a Stella McCartney item on The Real Real.

The campaign included social media posts, TV spots, and print ads encouraging people to resell their unused items. You may know Stella McCartney has a reputation for creating ethical fashion, making vegan sneakers, trying to push fur bans, and using recycled materials as often as possible.

By teaming up, the two brands were able to tap into to each other’s followings and add to their own. The campaign gained some serious traction online, thanks in part to the growing trend of sustainability both in and out of the fashion world.

(@therealreal)

Why It Was Sort of Magical

Finding another brand that perfectly lines up with your own core values to form a partnership is always a win.

Shared values. Partnerships inherently lend each partner the other’s values. allows you to tap into their following while staying true to your brand. The Real Real’s partnership with Stella McCartney was 100% on-brand for both companies.

Wider reach. Whenever brands with different core audienes join forces, the result is greater exposure. The key is to choose partners carefully so you can leverage the exposure for the mutual benefit of both partners. Double the impact without double the work.

Customer Rewards. This partnership provided The Real Real with a new and exciting way to reward their loyal customers, something that probably wouldn’t have happened outside the partnership with Stella McCartney. Customers like to feel valued, and rewards like gift vouchers, discount codes, and free items with purchase are a great way to do this. By teaming up this reward system with another, related brand, they made it feel even more special.

The Hip Resale Community Depop

Depop is a social marketplace used by over 10 million people worldwide. Unlike The Real Real, Depop is more peer-to-peer selling, whereas The Real Real serves as an intermediary to authenticate products being sold on its platform. Depop is a much more accessible platform, especially for Millennials because it gives the whole shopping experience a personal feel, as people are buying directly from individual sellers.

The platform features a mixture of people selling items straight from their wardrobes… plus, small business owners and designers use the platform to sell their own products. We’ve talked before about how a third of women only wear an item five times before getting rid of it. That’s just one workweek of wear time. And, with many of us more focused than ever on our environmental impact, simply throwing our garments away is… well, it’s frowned upon. This is where social selling networks like Depop become super useful.

Often lorded as being a mash-up of online bidding store eBay and Millennial favorite Instagram, Depop engages in some rather unorthodox marketing to reach its ideal demographic.

Depop Rolled Out a Killer Marketing Campaign…

The majority of Depop’s early growth came from user word-of-mouth, but the brand built on the momentum with a campaign that partnered digital and print together and focused on the users themselves. Depop created a collection that highlighted its users, including a few well-known faces like model Jazzelle Zanoughtti of @uglyworldwide.

(Image: The Drum)

Depop highlighted what customers already loved about using the platform – the feeling of community. And, thanks to the diversity of people featured in the ads, Depop was able to celebrate the diversity of its user base – another important factor for Millennials and Gen Z.

…. Then Opened a Friggin’ Depop Coworking Spot

But, the fun didn’t stop there. Depop also opened a brick-and-mortar location in L.A.their own. The store was not filled with stock, and it wasn’t marketed as an IRL place to buy the items you might see on the site.

(Image: Fashionista)

Instead, Depop designated it a hub where sellers could attend workshops to improve their sales, photograph products with the right lighting, and even book a session with the staff photographers to do it for you. It is a place for users to meet, discuss, and build their own businesses through Depop’s framework.

Depop’s marketing strategy of print ads and brick-and-mortar stores may seem odd, especially since 75 percent of the platform’s users are under the age of 24, but it definitely worked. The company successfully tapped into the minds and desires of the #hustle generation and its disenfranchisement with traditional retail. Depop has become a community.

Traditional Brands Are Targeting Thrifters, Too

Urban Outfitters

Wait. What? Urban Outfitter’s Urban Renewal line is a good example of a traditional apparel brand targeting thrifters and proponents of circular fashion by including a section on its site for shoppers to buy Urban Renewal, Urban Outfitters’ curated selection of previously-worn apparel.

So, trust that dedicated marketplaces aren’t the only brands cashing in on this resale revival. Urban Outfitters is one of a growing number of high-street brands that are working hard to claim their own piece of the resale market.

Urban Renewal is classified as a brand under the Urban Outfitter umbrella, so it’s not a marketplace since users aren’t the ones selling apparel. Instead, items in the Urban Renewal line are carefully selected by UO’s own buyers then resold to the public both online and in-store.

This Urban Renewal line comes in four flavors; Vintage Originals, Remade, Remnants, and One of a Kind. With products that range from unique high-end luxury pieces to new items made entirely from discontinued fabrics. A brand that has always catered to the Millennial crowd with their stylish and vintage-inspired designs this supplemental line suits them perfectly.

ASOS

Online retail giant ASOS has had a resale marketplace as part of its online store for years. The ASOS Marketplace. independent brands and vintage stores from around the world into one easy-to-shop online marketplace. The company represents over 800 different brands with products varying from vintage designer sportswear to one-of-a-kind handmade items.

ASOS talks openly about its commitment to a more sustainable fashion industry and has a collection of Instagram Stories under Sustainability that double as a fast fact resource and a way to promote recycled items posted to the ASOS Marketplace.

Let’s Wrap it Up

The phenomenal growth of the resale market teaches us that the influence of the millennial generation is not to be underestimated. Eco-conciousness is fueling spending habits, and feeling good about your purchases seem to be the driving factors between a lot of retail spending.

Even if you’re not participating in the resale industry, there are still some pretty good lessons to be learned in this post… like understanding who your target market is, what they’re about, and what would resonate specifically with them can bring back good, old-fashioned work-of-mouth advertising. These are the types of strategies that work all the time, every time, across every vertical… if you execute them well.

Six Traits that Make Marketing to Gen Xers Both a Joy and a Challenge

Born between 1965 and 1980, Generation X is thought to some of as the “middle child generation”. They are often overlooked for the cooler, trendier Millennial market. And believe it or not, Gen Xers won’t overtake Boomers by number for another ten years, according to Pew Research. But Gen Xers wield a significant amount of influence in the market, with spending power that tops $2.4 trillion.

In this post, let’s take a look at what makes the 66 million adults known as Generation X spend their hard-earned money, and how brands and businesses can capture the attention of the Digital Age’s first adopters by tailoring their marketing specifically for this booming audience.

Trait #1: Gen Xers Are a Nostalgic Bunch (Sorta)

It’s no secret people love reliving the good old times. Studies have found that that we spend more money when we’re feeling nostalgic. While nostalgia is nothing new (haha – pun), Gen Xers are the first generation to be able to indulge in their nostalgia by accessing retired sitcoms and music videos from the 80s and 90s on demand.

(Like when Ozzy got his own show… and it was both startling and hilarious? On the one hand, Ozzy was BACK! On the other hand, Ozzy was OLDER and didn’t know how to operate his own remote-controlled house.)

And it’s not just the music. Sony released an updated PlayStation Classic. Reboots of popular franchises like Star Wars, Transformers, and Full House grace our screens – big and small. Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Iron Man are back. Nostalgia is a growing market, and people are buying into it in spades.

One great example of this was the marketing campaign from Domino’s to advertise the new Domino’s Tracker app. Modeling its commercial on the classic 80’s movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and casting one of the original cast members alongside Stranger Things star Joe Keery, the company effectively covered all of their bases by appealing to people across generations.

Gen Xers were the last generation to grow up on Saturday morning cartoons, and the amazing storytelling that came with them. To this day, Gen Xers can be swayed with a great story… and even more if the great story you’re telling is a throwback. Ideally, you never want to alienate anyone from your marketing, even when targeting it at a specific group. Nostalgia is one thing that everyone can enjoy – if it’s executed well.

Trait #2: Gen Xers are BIG on Family

Gen Xers are still knee-deep in family matters. The majority of Gen Xers are married and have an average of 2.5 children per household . Many older Gen Xers have also assumed the role of primary caretaker for their own parents. But here’s the thing that sort of rattled the personal finance world a few months ago: According to a recent study released by Merrill Lynch, there is actually what is referred to as an “economy of support”. Millennials and adult Gen Zers are relying on their Gen X and Boomer parents to help them meet financial obligations, to the tune of $500 million a year. The money Gen Xers and Boomers would otherwise earmark for personal purchases and retirement is being reallocated to financially support adult children.

Gen Xers make up around 20 percent of the population, and control 14% of the nation’s wealth. But, 75 percent of them also help their parents financially, and 52 percent support their adult Millennial children struggling to make it on their own. Add to that the 54 percent of Gen Xers still controlling the spending of younger Gen Z children who are now teens and in their early 20s, entering high school, college and the workforce and you can see why Gen Xers have to be smart about their spending.

Many Gen Xers live in multi-generational households, really keeping their families as close as possible. This is why a lot of that family support spending happens. Family is incomparably important to this generation (we’re not going to mention the helicopter parenting thing), so keeping a focus on that is essential if you want to appeal to Gen X.

This doesn’t mean that you have to fill every commercial with the beaming faces of a happy family. What it does mean is that appealing to this generation as parents, adults (who are STILL rebels, by the way), and individuals.

Trait #3: Gen Xers Pretty Much HAVE to Be Smart Shoppers

Let’s talk about that $2.4 trillion in spending power. Despite being the hardest hit by the Great Recession, most Gen Xers count the cost of home ownership among their many financial responsibilities… in addition to college tuition, business costs (they’re the entrepreneurial generation who invented hustling), and saving for retirement.

This may explain why Gen Xers are so likely to zero in on good deals and thrifty spending… despite their ample incomes. You’re likely to find Gen X coupon clippers, so if you want to channel their spending power into your brand, you’ll need to offer them a great deal because these guys do their due diligence. They love comparing companies, products, and prices online to ensure they get the BEST possible deal.

That said, it’s pretty safe to assume that Generation X will respond positively to the use of compelling UGC in your digital marketing campaigns. They put a lot of stock into researching brands to figure out which companies are worth patronizing. Positive (and negative) customer reviews matter, so make sure you’re set up to receive recommendations and reviews. . Learn how to effectively use user-generated content, and you’ll be appealing to what these savvy shoppers find important.

Right now, the average Gen Xer is on the verge of big life changes, and these kind of changes always come with a price tag. Whether that’s focusing on personal investment, organizing retirement funds, or sending kids off to college. Money stays on the mind of Gen Xers.

Brands like Amazon (headed by borderline Gen Xer Jeff Bezos) have the market cornered when it comes to online shopping. Their unique mixture of great deals and customer reviews makes this a popular spot for Gen Xers to spend their time and money. It’s easy for them to research the products, they can save money compared to buying elsewhere, and with the option of free delivery, they can be confident with every purchase that they have either gotten the best deal or they’ve gotten the best value. Both are wins.

Trait #4: Gen Xers Prefer Analog… and Digital

Analog was a bit of a reach, I know.  But it’s totally true for Gen Xers. This generation didn’t grow up with the internet. There was no wi-fi, no smartphone, and no social media. But, they’ve adapted better to this new technology than the Baby Boomers who came before them.

All the technologies that we take for granted as part of our everyday lives came to fruition as most Gen Xers were already adulting. They had to either adapt or be left behind… typical choices for Gen Xers.

Despite this, they’ve have developed an intense affinity for tech and gadgets, while still nurturing a sort of inborn appetite for traditional live TV, old school radio, and even lo-fi vinyl records.

Gen Xers aren’t afraid of technology, but they still have old school boundaries in place from when they were growing up. They come from a time when there was only one telephone in the house that everyone used, and today 85 percent of Gen Xers use smartphones. They really are great at straddling both the traditional and digital worlds. This is the type of fluid duality marketers complain about when it comes to reaching Gen Xers, but the truth is being able to reach your target audience across multiple platforms isn’t a disadvantage.

Gen Xers are masters of cross-channel living. They will happily research the best product and price online before heading into the store to purchase. They all have social media accounts that they check throughout the day, but will also still put pen to paper and actually mail a handwritten letter. They survived Oregon Trail (or rather, they died of dysentery, but kept trying time and time again to make it), and played Monopoly, Clue, and Catan on the weekends… that was before they switched to The Sims, Candy Crush, and 2048.

Brands only have to make it easy for Gen Xers to find them and that means doing some savvy omni-channel marketing and beefing up your voice search and AI chops. In the next few years, 50 percent of online searches will be conducted by voice, rather than by typing. No surprise there. In January 2018, 39 percent of US adults said they were very likely or somewhat likely to buy voice-activated smart speakers in 2018, and 61.1 million Americans (nearly 20 percent of the population) expected to use a smart speaker in 2018.

This shows a considerable shift in the way that we use everyday tech… and where brands should be aiming their marketing. Even when working in the digital space, keeping it personalized and human, while combining it with the newest tech or digital practices inspires Gen X to take action.

Trait #5: Gen Xers Prefer Live TV… When They’re Not Streaming

Once branded the “MTV Generation”, it’s no surprise that Gen Xers are big live TV watchers. In fact, according to data from Nielsen, this generation watches more traditional live TV than Millennials . This does not, however, mean they’re not also indulging in streaming services like Netflix, although older Gen Xers still prefer traditional pay TV services over streaming.

So, when building your marketing campaign for this generation, traditional TV ad spots can work to your advantage. This generation grew up on massive amounts of TV, and are more than used to sitting through countless commercials, and seeing them become more and more inventive and interesting. They pay attention to what you’re saying in a commercial, but only if you stand out some. Make your ad original and appealing, and this generation will sit up and listen.

Alongside traditional TV, YouTube offers an amazing opportunity for brands to interact with Gen Xers. Of all the the most popular platforms (most of which are social networks), YouTube is one of the most effective ways for brands to reach Gen Xers, moreso than any other demographic. This is because Gen Xers rely on YouTube to improve their personal and professional performance and to find better ways to connect with their children and those around them.

Seventy-three percent of Gen Xers go to YouTube for DIY tutorials, according to Think with Google. They learn new skills by following DIY tutorials, which in turn could save them money.

Seventy-five percent of Gen Xers watch YouTube videos that relate to past events or people. They can rewatch old favorites that have been uploaded onto the platform for new generations to enjoy.

Sixty-eight percent of Gen Xers use YouTube to stay on top of current events, get the news, and keep up with what their kids are watching.

“I sat through what turned out to be a pretty fun night of YouTubing Carpool Karaoke with my nieces and nephews, which introduced me to both Cardi B and Migos. Weirdly enough, a few days later, my teenager met Quavo from Migos at the Pacers game, and you know what – I didn’t have to ask, ‘What the hell is a Quavo?’ Cool Mom moment.” -Sorilbran, The Shelf team member and Gen Xer.

Most Gen Xers aren’t fans of digital advertisements in the way that their Millennial, Gen Z, and Alpha counterparts are, but YouTube manages to get around this by toeing the line between traditional TV commercials and customer reviews.

Trait #6: Gen Xers Have a Tech-Driven Split Personality

While Generation X is no larger than any of the other defined generations we work with, the difference between the oldest and youngest of the group is much more defined.

Between the 1970s and the 1990s, the evolution of digital technology happened was much faster than in previous years, resulting in very different landscapes from the 70s to the 90s. It’s because of this split that we even have a microgeneration within Gen X – the Xennials; a mixture between Gen X and Millennials.

Xennials were finishing high school in the 1990s. Many are now looking after young kids, and being extra wary of their money after the Great Recession back in 2008 when they were first building up their careers and savings.

Compare this to the older Gen Xers who enjoyed an almost Boomer-esque economic period of stability and were able to climb onto the property ladder in the midst of an upswing – lucky them. Now they’re getting ready for retirement, with their own kids heading off into the world on their own.

Understanding these differences is key to understanding this generation. Younger Gen Xers and older Gen Xers can be vastly different from one another. These are the differences that make it a challenge to target Gen Xers.

Their parents may have ignored them after school, helping them to attract the title of “latchkey kids”, but marketers really shouldn’t follow suit. As with middle children in real life, this generation has had to fight for attention, breeding a collective of “I’ll do it myself” entrepreneurs, go-getters, and people who have no trouble bucking tradition and dismissing both the prevailing wisdom and authority. Gen Xers have launched over half of all U.S. startups, eschewing Boomers who refuse to leave their jobs, and creating roles for those digitally advanced Millennials to fill.

Let’s Wrap This Up

As youths, they were disinterested in what “the man” was doing to our country, rebelling through the pop punk movement, skateboards, and bags of teen angst. You can see this perfectly mirrored in the hit movie of the era, The Breakfast Club which shows a group of misfit teens learning that they want to be themselves, and that’s what will make them “cool”.

These latchkey kids were left alone for vast amounts of time, with their parents busy working, or simply taking a backseat approach to parenting – which was the way to do things back then. This turned them into the generation of parents who liked to hand out participation trophies, and never say “no” to their toddlers. A total 180 from their own upbringings. But, this built in need to rebel and nurture all at once makes wooing this audience a bit tricky.

While many may forget or overlook Generation X, they aren’t going anywhere. They not only have massive spending power right now, and if if they seem a little elusive at times, smart marketing teams would do well to target them.

The 5 Key Factors That Directly Impact How Much Brands and Marketers Pay for Influencer Partnerships

Over the years, we’ve fielded tons of questions about influencer marketing, running campaigns and hiring influencers. Without a doubt, one of THE most common questions brands want to know is how much they should be paying influencer partners. “How much does an influencer charge anyway? What’s the standard rate? Can you at least give me a ballpark?”

Well, let’s start with this little truth bomb: There’s not really a standard rate. Trying to come up with a standard rate for influencers is like trying to come up with a standard movie rate for every actor on the planet. No matter how you slice it, you’re not going to get Daniel Craig for the same price you would get your friend Craig Daniels (whose credits to date include three college plays and being a hometown hero because he stars in the commercials for the local sandwich shop). Trying to ‘pre-price’ influencers is the same way.

Influencer rates can and do vary wildly, even for influencers within the same niche, with the same number of followers. Influencer marketing has technically been around for a very long time, even though it sort of feels like when we adapted it to social media things got a little wild.

Many marketers have no idea what to expect when it comes to budgeting for influencers. And I’ll let you in on a secret: A lot of influencers have no idea how they should price their services either.

So, we’re talking money in this post. We’re going to break down what should go into your calculations when you’re trying to set a budget for an influencer campaign, and what you’re actually paying for. Armed with this guide, you’ll soon feel more confident setting budgets for influencer marketing campaigns – and sticking to them.

Here’s What Determines Influencer Rates

Every influencer sets his or her own rates. There isn’t a standard rate for a post. Some influencers will undercharge, others will overcharge. You can Google it, but you’ll probably face a similar challenge, with every result providing a different answer to the question. Just in general, sponsored content ranges in cost from $100 for an Instagram post to over $250k for a YouTube video.

A general rule of thumb is to consider your campaign goals and the ROI you want to see with the campaign. Using these as starting points can help you to manage your expectations. Setting a budget before heading out into the influencer marketing world can help to keep costs down. But, if you begin to find your numbers are very different from what you’re being quoted by the influencers themselves, you might need to rethink your goals.

Factor 1: Audience Size

As with most aspects of influencer marketing, follower size makes a big impact on the price an influencer can and will charge. It might go without saying, but let’s go for it anyway – the larger an influencer’s audience, the more the influencer can justifiably charge to create sponsored content.

Follower size is, of course, very important when picking the right influencer. It determines how many people will see your brand in the sponsored post. If your big goal is brand awareness, then you want as many potential buyers to see the post as possible. But, keep in mind that while audience size does determine the rate an influencer charges, follower size is not the best metric for deciding which influencer to choose for partnership opportunities.

That said, you absolutely have to have a way to qualify an influencer’s followers by checking organic follower growth and engagement ratios. Without doing this, you really don’t know what percentage of an influencer’s audience are accounts that are owned and operated by real buyers. You could end up paying top dollar for bottom-level influence.

You might decide that an influencer with a large following isn’t going to be the best fit for your needs, as you may need access to smaller, more targeted audience segments. But, smaller influencers won’t always mean smaller prices, and because a micro influencer’s audience is often more niche-down and streamlined, the smaller audience can actually be worth more to your business than the bigger influencers and their wide nets. Combine this with the other factors on the list, and you can easily see why pricing structures can be so varied.

Factor 2: Audience Engagement

No matter how many followers an influencer has, if those followers aren’t interested in an influencer’s content, they won’t engage with it. Without that engagement – that proof that an influencer’s posts are making an impact – an influencer can’t actually provide any proof to brands of the influence he or she wields. For simplicity’s sake, you can work out an influencers engagement rate with this simple equation:

Average post engagements / number of followers x 100

If an influencer has 100k followers, but only receives 10 likes per post, their engagement rate is going to be a measly 0.1%. On the other hand, a smaller influencer with just 5k followers who receives an average of 300 likes a post has an engagement rate of six percent and will actually be more valuable to your campaign.

Analyzing an influencer’s engagement ratios allows you to compare influencers side-by-side to gauge their actual influence (and thus their value) irrespective of audience size. You want influencers to maintain between two and nine percent quality engagement and positive audience sentiment with each post.

In general, the larger the audience, the smaller the engagement ratio. The Shelf always aims to work with macro-influencers who can maintain at least 1.5 percent engagement and micro-influencers (3K to 100K followers) who have anywhere from two percent to, say… nine percent engagement.

Engagement isn’t just likes though. You should be looking at comments, re-tweets, shares, and any other metrics that shows someone actively engaging with an influencer’s content. And these numbers will vary by platform.

It’s also worth checking who the people engaging actually are to ensure the followers who engage aren’t just other influencers participating in like-for-like campaigns with no real interest in the post being liked. Like-for-like is a common strategy used by influencers to grow their audience and engagement numbers. But these types of Likes fall into the category of vanity metrics, and those rarely convert.

So, be warned: If an influencers core source of engagement is other influencers, it may be worth looking elsewhere.

Factor 3: Quality Content (Especially Quality Photography)

UGC rights is the name of the game in this business, and brands want (and expect) amazing user-generated content.

So, It should go without saying that you could skip the influencers whose feeds are stained with grammatical errors, bad spelling, low-quality photography and poorly edited video.

Nearly 100 percent of our clients want to work with influencers who produce the type of content that can be reused as-is in the company’s own branded feed and even in other advertisements. So, an influencer who produces that level of stunning, scroll-stopping content will typically demand a premium for his or her skill set.

Factor 4: Past Performance

Many successful influencers already have a track record of working with brands before you pop into their DMs. That said, you can inquire to find out just how effective their previous partnerships were. Influencers who have been able to achieve good results for previous brands will be more than happy to share that with you – and it means they know what they’re doing.

If they seem reluctant to share this info, that could be a red flag for you. If, however, they have lots to say about how they helped the brand, prepare to pay a little extra for their expertise.

If they haven’t worked with brands before, then get the analytics on their own posts and the demographics of their audience. Our platform actually does those for you. You need to see how many interactions an influencer is receiving, including those that are visible to the public like website clicks, messages, etc. This is the kind of info you need to help you paint a clearer picture of the influencer’s ability. The bigger the results he or she can get, the more valuable the influencer is to your campaign… and the more the influencer will be able to charge for partnerships.

Factor 5: The Platform / Content Type

The final thing to consider is the type of content you need, and the platform(s) for which your influencer needs to produce this content. Do you need blog posts, videos, social media posts, images? Different platforms call for different strategies… and budgets.

For example, on YouTube, it’s going to take considerably more time, equipment, and skill to produce great content than it would on Twitter. Instagram Stories is a less-produced style of video content, as well. That’s why it’s important to tie your business goals to an execution strategy (which we’re really great at doing here at The Shelf) that will help you reach those goals in the fastest, most effective, most affordable way possible.

When approaching an influencer, think about where your audience is online. You may want to work across multiple platforms to help reach more people, or a more diverse selection of people. Each platform also has different rules when it comes to paid partnerships and how they should be operated. Both you and your influencer should make sure that you’re familiar with this before launching the campaign.

Also, the amount of times the influencer mentions your brand will vary by platform as well. For example, on Twitter one lone tweet is likely to get lost in such a fast moving site, so you would want multiple mentions from your influencer.

YouTube on the other hand, one video will carry enough weight for you to just be mentioned once. FYI: You also have to decide if you want a product mention in that video or if you want a dedicated video – one that’s JUST about your product. You can expect dedicated videos to be more expensive than video mentions.

To Sum Up

We’ve talked about a lot of different factors in this article that all contribute to how much an influencer is going to charge you to create sponsored content. Each influencer is different, just like each brand is different, and there is no set scale of payment that we can follow. Despite this, going through the factors we mentioned can help you to get an idea of what your budget can afford, and what level of influencer you want to work with. So, to sum up, here are the most important things to consider:

• How many followers do they have? More followers = higher cost

• What is their engagement rate like? Higher engagement = higher cost

• How good is their content? Higher quality = higher cost

• What form does their content take? More effort = higher cost

• Have they worked with brands before? Previous success = higher cost

• What platform are they working on? Different platforms = different costs

• How many platforms will your campaign be live on? More platforms = higher costs

The 8 Things About Millennial Women and Millennial Moms You May Be Missing

By far, the most coveted demographic for those selling consumer goods has to be Millennial women. This magical segment of the global population has been responsible for sweeping changes in how we tell stories, how we use family photos, how we use digital, what a founder looks like and even how we think of motherhood. Magical is the right word, right?

They are primed to be the most financially independent generation of women in history. They are the most educated cohort of women in history. They are the most ethnically diverse generation in American history (67 percent of Millennial Moms are multi-cultural, according to research from Carat; they and their children are part of the two most ethnically diverse generations currently living in the US). And they are a vocal bunch.

On the heels on Gen X women, many of whom rebelled against societal norms, Millennial women are using the shattered pieces left by the generation that brought us Grunge and Gangsta Rap to build a modern woman who is progressive, active and powerful… whether she thinks she has it all or not.

Full disclosure: I just watched gangsta rap pioneer Ice Cube in Fist Fight (#teacherfight) last night, so the concept of Gangsta Rap doing the middle age thing is like, “Whaaaa…?”

As part of our What Makes Them Buy series, we looked at Millennial Men and Baby Boomers already. In this post, we’re going to look at two more distinct segments of the Millennial population – Millennial Women and Millennial Moms – and talk about the traits brands need to know about them to roll out targeted, authentic, effective influencer campaigns.

Trait #1: Millennial Women Are Hustlers

We’re going to go ahead and give Gary Vaynerchuk his due propers for making a hard-core value like work ethic trendy again by calling it hustling. The hustle culture is nothing new. A few years ago, hustling was used almost exclusively to refer to urban dwellers who created multiple streams of income for themselves by finding opportunities and capitalizing on them.

Of course now, conversations around hustle culture are social media fodder. And Millennial women are hustlers.

• Millennial women are driving the $20 billion resale apparel market that’s making sites like Poshmark and ThredUP a household name.

• Millennial women and minorities are launching new businesses at a faster rate than any other segment of the population.

• According to Worldbank.org, young women in the Middle East and some North African countries are outpacing men with regard to launching and heading up organizations. Young women are 60 percent more likely than men to dream up innovative solutions, and it’s 30 percent more likely for their innovations will have international reach compared to men.

• Young women also lead the charge for social change, venturing into social entrepreneurship and even rolling out programs in conflict-affected areas… fearlessly.

• And outside of business, 48 percent of Millennial women surveyed by Bustle say they volunteer, while 63 percent say they plan to volunteer in the future.

Trait #2: Millennial Women Plan Their Purchases

Millennial women plan their purchases. They will spend more than intended if they find a product that better suits their needs. Still, one characteristic that is consistent throughout their holiday prep is planning.

This is a big one, especially this time of year because you really have to get those influencer strategies rolled out well ahead of when your customer will be buying, if your customer is a Millennial woman.

For all the fabulous living being depicted in Instagram feeds, by and large, Millennial women are a frugal bunch, in large part because of the current economic climate. Consider this:

Generally speaking, Millennials have more debt and less wealth than their parents did at the same age. Millennials are, however, making more money than their parents did at their age. One of the main culprits driving the disparity between the net wealth of Millennials and the net wealth of their parents at the same age is student loan debt. Student debt has taken a heavy financial toll on this generation, causing them to delay wealth-building activities like buying their first home.

These are some of the factors which contribute to the tendency for Millennial women to be more mindful about their spending, saving and financial well-being. It also helps fuel their drive to hustle.

Source: From @21Ninety on Instagram

Here’s another thing about the planning: Millennials prioritize differently than did their parents. Unlike previous generations that had cut-and-dry lists of what grown-ups should buy (house, car, then vacations and luxuries… in that order)… Millennials instead plan their purchases to suit their lifestyles. They cut back drastically on non-essential items (which can INCLUDE an actual house or car) so that they can spend freely on items they believe will have the greatest impact on their emotional well-being and social lives.

Whereas Boomers would place a priority on buying a home, a car and getting their financial houses in order, Millennials are far more likely than previous generations to get their financial houses in order by renting instead of buying and participating in the sharing economy instead of buying (or leasing) a car.

Doing this frees them up to, say spend the money from a recent raise at work taking more trips abroad, or boosting their budget for dining out (or ordering in).

Trait #3: Millennial Moms Rely on Social Media to Inspire Planned Purchases

Millennial women use social media to source ideas for gifts, holiday travel, and entertaining for the holidays. Often, final purchasing decisions are made after months of collecting ideas and bookmarking images spotted on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and even blogs.

According to Popsugar 34 percent of moms between the ages of 18 and 34 get gift inspiration for their kids from lifestyle blogs, and 43 percent of Millennial women go to Pinterest to get food and drink inspiration for holiday entertaining.

What may be of interest to marketers is that Millennial women expect brands to use social as a way to introduce products. Eighty-one percent of Millennial women surveyed by Bustle say social media is the best way to reach them, and 57 percent expect to see sponsored content from brands – that’s an important part of product discovery.

As well, Millennial women have preferences when it comes to the type of sponsored content and advertisements they see. Fifty-seven percent of readers chose humor and social good as their preferred themes for branded content. Thirty-six percent preferred cause-related spots, followed by motivational spots (33 percent) and real-life scenarios (30 percent). We’ll talk more about why these are the top categories of ad content in the next section.

Nevertheless, Millennial women rely on visual content to help them gather information and opinions more efficiently and evaluate purchases. You know the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”? Yeah, well… That’s because it takes 4 minutes to read 1,000 words and it takes less than 100 milliseconds to process an image.

Trait #4: For Millennial Moms, Adulting and Momming Are Part of Their Identities, Not Just Something They Do

More than a million Millennial women become moms each year. In 2016, there were 17.3 million Millennial moms, according to Pew Research. Today, I would estimate that number to be between 19.5 million and 20 million Millennial moms.

With nearly 90 percent of new mothers being Millennials who are members of the world’s first “Always-On Generation”, you can image motherhood is crucial to their identities. In fact, with so many “social” eyes watching, being a perfect mom is a goal to which many Millennial Moms aspire.

Research from BabyCentre’s well-known 2015 State of Modern Motherhood report said 64 percent of Millennial women feel enormous pressure to be the perfect mom.

In the previous section, I talked about the types of sponsored content Millennial women prefer to see. Millennial women favor inspirational or funny ads, content that shows a person (or better a brand) doing good in the world. But Millennial women also want to see ads with regular women doing regular things and having real-life challenges. Millennial women aren’t looking for perfection, even though some may feel that’s what the world expects of them. Whereas Millennial men respond to ads of regular men doing amazing things, Millennial women are okay with taking a break from amazing just to see someone else finding ways to deal with an over-packed schedule, work pressures, and the perpetual dance to juggle all of life’s social, familial and professional obligations.

Like Gen X and Boomer moms, most Millennial Moms work out of necessity. Only 35 percent of Millennial Moms call themselves homemakers. Interestingly, about the same percentage of Millennial Moms are the primary breadwinners in their households, and a third of those are either unmarried, or not co-habitating with a partner. In a world where two-thirds of Millennial Moms MUST work, 21 percent of Millennial Dads are now stay-at-home dads.

Trait #5: Millennial Women Are More Confident About Money

Unlike mothers of generations before them, Millennial Moms are, by and large, more confident with and more savvy about finances and products that protect their family’s financial well-being. Forbes recently reported that Millennial women are poised to become some of the most financially independent women in history. Not only that, but Millennial women are also some of THE MOST educated women in history.

Millennial women are more likely than men to have finished at least a bachelor’s degree, and 29 percent of Millennial wives between the ages of 25 and 34 earn more than their husbands.

For many Millennial women, money equates to independence, power, success and happiness.The majority of Millennial women (like, 7 in 10) are going into the workforce and marrying later than did women of previous generations.

Source: Mental Floss

They’re focusing on growing their careers and building financial stability ahead of walking down the aisle. So, by the time they marry, many Millennial women have already successfully managed their own households, budgets, bills, income and even investments.

Granted, Millennial women are thrifty spenders. They heavily research and prepare for purchases well ahead of making them. Not only that, but they are also couponers. Seventy-four percent of these consumers compare prices online and 55 percent download coupons from couponing sites.

Source: https://insights.popsugar.com/6-10-Millennial-Women-Plan-Apparel-Holiday-Purchases-44106878

Trait #6: Millennial Moms Are Willing to Pay Extra for Convenience

Life is busy. For Millennial moms, the work to balance life as a spouse, partner, parent, professional, influencer and agent for social change comes with a hefty price – time. As a result, Millennial moms – more than any previous generation of moms – are willing to pay a premium for convenience.

We’ve talked about their earning power and their education. We talked about how they’re starting families later than did women of previous generations. We talked about how thrifty and money-conscious Millennial women are. Now, bundle all of those insights together and digest this: Millennial moms will pay extra if you can make their lives a little easier.

According to Trybe:

• 83 percent of Millennial Moms shop online to hunt for the best price, as opposed to going from store to store

• 79 percent of Millennial Moms use e-commerce to get a better selection of products

• 62 percent of Millennial Moms shop online because of the good shipping options

The work-life balance for Millennial Moms is an ongoing struggle. So, it makes sense that 25 percent of Millennial Moms are willing to pay at least $50 a month to have someone step in and help them keep their home lives organized, and to keep their family from partaking in the one in five family meals that are now being eaten in a car.

Millennial Moms are also far more likely to have necessities like diapers and beauty products delivered to their homes rather than spend hours shopping for them in-store.

Trait #7: Millennial Women Are Loyal to Brands Who Are Loyal to Good

Millennial women aren’t brand loyal, not in the traditional sense. I remember my mom buying the same brands with every shopping trip, even down to the type of breakfast cereal she bought. All raisin bran were not created equal. Some, she thought, outranked others based strictly on the manufacturer. My grandma was the same way.

I agree that not all raisin bran are created equal. But I don’t base that idea on the logo at the top of the box, because I know formulas change. I base it on things like the presence of GMOs, sugar content, number of ingredients I mistake for another language, and whether or not a particular mixture of whole grain goodness makes my kids go nuts after they eat it.

Millennial moms are loyal to quality – whether it’s the quality of the product or the quality of the brand itself. By that I mean, Millennials in general are willing to pay a premium for a better quality product. They are also willing to pay a premium to buy from a brand that incorporates social good as one of its core values.

Fifty-one percent of Millennial women expect brands to give back to society, and 34 percent said they would be willing to spend more money on products that are environmentally-friendly. To give you an idea of what kinds of social good matter most to Millennial women, the Women 2020 report (which you can download here) identified six key areas Millennials women think are the primary issues facing women today.

Trait #8: When Millennial Moms Talk (and they do a lot of talking), the World Listens

Millennial Moms are social creatures indeed, significantly more social than Gen X Moms. For them, social media is more than just a place to chat about current events. It’s where Millennial moms show their communities who they are and what they’re about.

Eighty-five percent of Millennial women post pictures of their past experiences to social media and 80 percent post in real time. Seventy-two percent of Millennial women share from other sites to social media. This includes opinions about products.

Millennial Moms are totally okay with offering their opinions online about products – any products at all. They talk openly about clothes, cosmetics, motherhood, brands, retailers, experience-based services, even financial products.

What’s more, in addition to giving advice, 46 percent of Millennial Moms look to the recommendations of their network when it comes time for making decisions on acquiring goods and services, or making purchases.

While Millennial Moms favor Facebook (with an average of 500 Facebook friends) and Instagram, the average Millennial Mom has at least three social media accounts, according to a Weber Shandwick study.

Millennial Moms prefer smartphones to laptops. More than half of the Millennial Moms surveyed said they spend most or all of their time online on their phones, and spend more than 17 hours on social networks every week. That’s 30 percent more time than the average mom spends on social sites.

The Finish Line

Millennial women are an interesting and an influential bunch. More than any other demographic, they are actively spearheading societal and economic changes that impact how brands reach and engage them. This post was the tip of a very large iceberg, but it should definitely provide you with insights that can guide your marketing efforts this holiday season.

Of course, if you’re ready to roll out your influencer marketing campaign, we’re the best in the business. Give us a call to schedule a demo.

8 Surprising Traits About How Boomers Are Using Digital Media (… and Yes, Social Media) to Make Buying Decisions

Baby Boomers are an economic force. They are a generation of adults who are still in the workforce, still affecting social change, and still crushing it on a day-to-day basis… despite being in or approaching retirement. They are the most active , vital and healthy generation of over-50 we’ve ever had. They are digitally savvy, spirited, and are redefining what it means to be an elder American.

Fact is, if you’ve focused your marketing strictly on wooing Millennials, you are probably leaving stacks and stacks of money on the table. In this post, we shed some light on 8 traits most marketers would never suspect about Boomers, and how this digitally-savvy, financially strong generation uses social media to make buying decisions.

Of course, you know us… before we get into that, let’s talk numbers.

Who Are Baby Boomers?

In the years following World War II, we had what you call a baby boom, a temporary spike in the number of children being born. The general consensus is that the generation of Americans, born between mid-1940s and the early 1960s are the Baby Boomers. They grew up in a post-war world with three important values:

1. High hopes for the future

2. A great work ethic, and

3. A make-do-and-mend mentality

A Boomer will tell you he or she grew up during one of the best periods in modern history, and they’re probably right. The years between World War II and the modern Civil Rights movement in the U.S. were ripe with social change and technological advancements. They grew up in a society with a good level of wealth and job opportunities, are still one of the fittest generations to date, and ushered in a new age of consumerism for all to enjoy.

Today, there are more than 70 million Baby Boomers in the U.S. ranging in age from 54 – 72 years old. But, their age doesn’t stop them from indulging in social media like the rest of us. Sixty percent of 50-64 year olds are active on at least one social media site, with Facebook being the most popular. They’re also fans of longer online content, with 60 percent of Boomers regularly reading blogs, and 70 percent watching video content online.

So, as is our way, we want to use this post to outline some of the key things you need to know about marketing to Boomers.

Trait #1: Boomers Are Doing HALF of All Spending Right Now

Yeah, half.

Boomers grew up during a time of affluence, when finding a good company you could stay with for your entire career was THE move. And there were plenty… which is how Boomers were able to spearhead a little something called consumerism. Boomers have more disposable income than any other generation.

In fact, in 2012, Nielsen reported that by 2017 upwards of 70 percent of the disposable income in the U.S. would be controlled by the over-50 crowd. That’s a little misleading because by 2017, the oldest Gen Xers were already in their early 50s. But by and large, the over-50 crowd is made predominantly Baby Boomers. If you’re sleeping on Boomers, you’re sleeping on a huuuge market of spenders. Boomers are controlling most of the disposable income and doing half the spending in the U.S..

Source: Visa

Even though Boomers have tons of cash to spend, they are typically very bargain-oriented. Maybe this is why they have such a large chunk of savings to dip into. But, it’s worth bearing in mind that if you’re marketing to this generation, you’ll be well-placed if you portray your prices as a bargain, deal, or special offer.

Despite staying in the workforce longer, many Boomers are reaching retirement age, too. They have the time and means to research and find the best product for their needs and budget. You won’t be able to fool them with splash campaigns. You’ll need to make sure your product, strategy, and marketing are all top-notch to get them eyeing your product.

Unlike Millennials though, Boomers are much more confident in choosing when to spend their money. We’ve seen influencer marketing grow in effectiveness in recent years thanks to the shopping habits of the younger generations who trust recommendations more than traditional advertising. But, Baby Boomers aren’t as reliant on this kind of information as their younger counterparts. In fact, only 12 percent prefer having the help of others to make buying decisions.

Instead, Boomers are most concerned with the level of attention and customer service they receive from a business. They are traditionalists at heart, and they grew up in a world where the customer was always right, and the service you received was often more important than the product itself.

Who else has a parent or grandparent who still eats at the same restaurant they have for years, where the food is only so-so but the staff members know their names and always ask them about their family? With Boomers, good service trumps a celebrity influencer campaign any day.

Trait #2: Baby Boomers Spend More Time Online Than Millennials

The typical view that older people don’t know how to use the Internet like us young ’uns is slowly falling apart (the Facebook – Capitol Hill weirdness aside). The vast majority of the Boomers use social media regularly, find information through search engines, and spend a large portion of their free time online. In fact, on average they spend 27 hours a week online – that beats Millennials’ time by two hours!

A large percentage of a Boomer’s online activity is carried out on their cell phones. Not only that, but of all the generations, Boomers are the most likely to click the links they see on social and YouTube. Why? They’re researchers who like to get a feel for what a company is about before making a purchase – especially an online purchase. That’s good news, right? It gives you a chance to get them on your site so they can see what you’re about and make purchases. Just one more reason to make sure your website looks and works great on mobile devices.

Facebook is by far the most popular social network across generations, Boomers included. They use to it connect with friends and family, keep up to date with local news and events, and more and more, Boomers are letting Facebook influence their shopping habits.

Businesses that are active on Facebook, and using targeted ads as part of their strategy will be able to cash in on this much easier than those who don’t.

Trait #3: Boomers Spend More Per Online Purchase Than Millennials and Gen Xers

Here’s one for you: 92 percent of Boomers shop online, and the average Boomer who shops online does so at least once a month. Surprised?

Boomers shop online just as much as Millennials, but they have more disposable income in their hands so their average spend is much higher. Boomers are more likely to spend on higher-ticket items like wine, appliances, home goods and healthcare.

Trait #4: Baby Boomers Are Proud and They Have Reason to Be

Boomers came of age in the 1960s and 1970s – a heady time of social change and fighting for causes. Even though Gen Xer and Millennials have been walking the road to social change that were paved by Boomers back in the day, Boomers are still deeply invested in the issues swirling around in social chatter today. Boomers favor socially-conscious companies that give back to their communities – especially those pushing for domestic issues that support the country’s long-term success.

Trait #5: Boomers Still Prefer to Shop In-Store

We already know Boomers spend more per online purchase than do Gen Xers and Millennials. But they’re a lot more like their Gen Z grandkids when it comes to shopping because they still prefer to shop in-store.

In fact, 84 percent of Baby Boomers prefer to make their purchases in person to experience great customer service first hand and get a feel for the merchant. Boomers spend more time mulling over a purchase than do time-pressed Millennials. So, they are more likely to take their time wandering the aisles (physical and virtual) looking at a wider range of products, or talking to service staff to get the low-down on products that interest them.

Here’s the social connection to in-store shopping though: According to Sprout Social, one in four Boomers follow brands on social media, and 60 percent of them are following those brands to get access to discounts and promotions you don’t typically see in-store. That’s in addition to the assumption Boomers have (like all of us) that brands should leverage social as a way to provide higher quality customer service.

So, the carrot dangling in front of your Boomer customers could be as simple as announcing a senior discount across social or a targeted ad campaign. But don’t call it a senior discount – that’s a sucky name for Boomers… maybe go with something like “Boom Day Discount” or something not quite so… senior-y.

Trait #6: Boomers Are Too Busy Crushing It to Be
“Old”

Once upon a time being part of the over-50 crowd was considered being old. Makes sense. A hundred years ago, the average life expectancy was something like 47 years (WOW!), according to the Nielsen & BoomAgers report, Introducing Boomers: Marketing’s Most Valuable Generation (you can download it here).

Source: A recent pic of 60 year-old Angela Bassett from Mastiffhaven . Yeah… 60.

Occasionally, we still slip up and think of Boomers as an “old” generation. Stop it. Not only do they not want to be reminded of their age, if you saw Tom Cruise doing his own stunts in Mission Impossible: Fallout or have ever laid eyes on Angela Bassett, you know “old” is woefully inappropriate.

It makes more sense to focus on their accomplishments and what they can still accomplish in the future now that the kids are gone. Many of them are enjoying an empty nest and they now have the opportunity to experience “grown-up” things WITHOUT THE KIDS for the first time in decades.

This includes the retirement staples like community work, sure. But it also includes things like solo traveling (which we raved about here), dating and building their own social media followings to become influencers in their own right (you can check out our post on Instagram influencers over the age of 50 here).

Trait #7: Baby Boomers Are Fit and Healthy

Speaking of hot bods…

Boomers are actually an incredibly active and healthy group. Many of them have yet to retire, and are still working full-time, working hard to pay off their mortgages. Boomers have always been more health conscious than their parents. They were adults in the 80’s when diets really started to take off, and the public started to exercise in order to lose weight. Health has long been a top priority for them.

People now live longer than ever thanks to medical advancements, and Baby Boomers don’t want to retire simply to relax. They want to use this new found freedom to explore the world. They want to travel the world, take up new hobbies, and experience that 24K Magic Bruno Mars talks about.

Trait #8: Baby Boomers Value Loyalty

Once you have captured the trust of a Baby Boomer, it’s your for life – as long as you look after it. Loyalty is hugely important to this generation, which you can easily use to your advantage in marketing. They love a good loyalty scheme, both in-store and online, but make sure it’s obvious you have one.

This idea of brand loyalty also ties into what we mentioned earlier about exceptional customer service. One of the best ways to keep customers coming back time and time again is to provide the best service you can. This is especially true with Boomers.

Let’s Wrap it Up

Baby Boomers are much easier to market to online than many marketers think. They may prefer shopping in store, but they’re more than happy to research online, and make purchases there if it’s going to save them money. Don’t discount them just because they’re older because they are, by far, the most valuable generation to marketers today.

Baby Boomers value quality – quality of the product, quality of the customer service, and quality of the marketing. As long as you can focus on this, you’ll have no problem marketing to this affluent group.