Influencer Marketing – Tips and insights from the Experts – Influence4brands
We are talking to four publishers from Italy, Germany, France and Poland specialized in influencer marketing. They are giving insights into their business and recommendations for advertisers who want to become more active with bloggers.
Our second interview partner is Stéphane Bouillet, founder of Influence4brands, an influencer hub connecting influencers with advertisers.
Influencer marketing is getting mature. What latest trends and developments have you experienced?
Stéphane: Influencer marketing is a trendy topic now but that’s not only a hype word. The foundations (based on word-of-mouth) are very strong and yes, we can say that this market is getting mature and it will keep growing to help brands communicate with people that are no longer watching TV or banner (50% rate of AdBlocking).
What has changed in influencer marketing over the past 12 months?
Stéphane: Mainly three things :
- Cheating : Brands have to be aware that some influencers buy likes and/or followers. Using a tool or an agency will help brands to identify cheating.
- Tools (influencer marketing platforms) that increasingly help brands to manage their campaigns.
- The professionalism of the influencers who better understand the brands.
How important is influencer marketing today?
Stéphane: Currently influencer marketing in France is a relatively small market with an exponential growth. In the very next years it will be a very important communication channel because French influencers have a huge audience. For example, EnjoyPhoenix (the #1 Beauty Youtuber) have 3 times more audience (in terms of time spent watching her video) than the #1women’s dedicated website. Furthermore, studies showed that influencer marketing is 11x more efficient than all other forms of digital media (https://www.tapinfluence.com/blog-tapinfluence-and-nielsen-catalina-solutions-launch-collaboration-for-cpg-brands-to-measure-sales-impact-of-influencer-marketing-campaigns/). In the last 6 years, we proved the success of influencer marketing (detailed in the white paper “The Best Friend Effect” : http://blog.influence4brands.com/influencers-strategies-a-white-paper-on-the-best-friend-effect/).
What recommendations do you have for advertisers who want to start with influencer marketing?
Stéphane: You have to start with a professional approach. You can’t contact the influencers without a clear brief, a value proposition and knowing the editorial line of the influencer. To help brands you can get help from a specialized agency and/or an influence marketing platform like www.influence4brands.com .
To succeed you have to :
- Find the right influencers
- Define a clear brief and give some freedom to the influencer to get more creative content
- Define if you have to pay the influencer (or if giving your product can be enough to make the influencer willing to talk about it)
- Understand that the influencer has to be objective (that it’s not an advertisement)
- Get and analyse the report of the operation
Which kind of customers can benefit most from influencer marketing?
Stéphane: All the B-to-C brands (large & small), targeting 13 to 40 y.o. people
Thank you very much, Stéphane, for taking the time to share your experience with us!
Stéphane Bouillet
Founder of Influence4brands, a French platform to connect influencers with advertisers
https://www.influence4brands.com/