Which celebrity is right for your brand – A Guide for Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing can drive traffic to your brand, and fetch you more ROI than the traditional digital marketing channels. However, picking an influencer for your brand can be difficult because he/she needs to build the credibility of your brand and represent it in the best way possible.

Who is an influencer?

An influencer is a person who can create a
lasting impact on people’s mind, and change how they think or act. They strongly
influence the buying decisions of the consumers.

They can do so because they have achieved a
lot in their area of expertise. Nowadays, most influencers use social media as
a tool to build up enormous followings from the people who admire them and value
their opinions.

Categories of
influencers

The influencers can be usually classified
into:

• Celebrities and Superstars: They have extensive outreach. However,
  celebrity endorsement is hugely costly. You need to stand in a queue before you
  can reach their PR teams to have a discussion.

Moreover, there are other issues with the
credibility of celebrities. The consumers tend to judge the brand according to
the celebrity’s lifestyle.

Therefore, they might end up rejecting your
brand if they don’t match. Also, the macro-influencers typically have a lower
engagement rate than the others having fewer

• Thought leaders and industry experts: This category consists of a bunch of
  professionals such as journalists, industry leaders, and academic advisors.
  They are popular owing to their qualifications, position, and experience in
  their profession. They add credibility to your marketing strategy.

• Bloggers and content developers: Bloggers have a large audience who seek out
  their opinions, and follow their recommendations while buying products.
  However, they do not cater to the masses. They have a specialized niche, and
  thus they can aid you in reaching out to your target customers.

• Micro influencers: They are such people who usually have less than 10,000 followers in
  their social media. But they are trusted for their expertise in a specific
  field. The community is small and close-knit. Therefore they feel strongly
  connected with the influencer.

The micro influencers can add value to your
brand by endorsing your products and services. Moreover, you can contact them
without any hassles, so they are suitable for low budget marketing endeavors.

Social media based influencer marketing can be
useful for attracting a new audience as well as enhancing the engagement with
the existing audience. If the followers of an influencer fit your target
demographic, then influencer marketing can be quite advantageous for you.

How to select an
influencer for your brand?

• Prepare for the campaign: You should research thoroughly before picking an influencer for your
  brand. You should set down your goals for the campaign.

What is your motive for influencer marketing?
Do you want to increase the reach of your brand, boost the traffic to your
site, augment your social media followers or generate sales?

Although you may want a single influencer to
do all of this for you, you need to keep your objectives realistic.

Hence, you need to be specific about your
goals, set the key performance indicator, and then start preparing for the
campaign. Do not forget to consider your budget.

• Pick the social media platform: Determine which social media works the best
  for your campaign. Doing so shall simplify the entire process of selecting an
  influencer.

Although influencers have their presence
across several platforms, they shall have a dominant account.

You should select your platform based on the
type of business. If you have a B2B business, LinkedIn and Facebook shall be
the ideal platforms for you. Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat can be the suitable
platforms for the Front facing companies.

Look for such channels which appeal to the
younger generation by producing creative content.

• Examine their legitimacy: It is crucial for you to check the legitimacy of the influencer
  while selecting him/her.

The influencers can easily buy an audience
now. So, it is crucial for you to check whether their audience is authentic or
not.

You should examine their engagement rate so
that you can determine the connection of the followers with the influencer.
Although choosing an influencer with a large community may be luring you, you
should attempt to have a clear understanding of how well the community engages
with the content.

• Do they have adequate knowledge of branding? After communicating with the influencers,
  decide whether they are interested in promoting your products and services.

Do not collaborate with an influencer who does
not have adequate knowledge of affiliate marketing. If the followers get to
know that their influencer is promoting products for money, the results may be
unfavorable.

Therefore, you need to be careful while
picking an influencer. Trust is an essential factor in influencer marketing.
So, ensure that you can trust your influencer to represent your brand in the
best way possible.

• Examine the audience of the influencer: Select an influencer whose community matches
  your customer profile. Research everything about the audience including gender,
  ethnicity, age, religion, geographical location, educational status, and income.
  You might get an influencer whose profile matches your requirements.

Why should you opt for
influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing can benefit your brand in
multiple ways. Some of them have been mentioned below:

• The prevalence of social media in marketing: Instagram has been a trusted platform for social media marketing in recent years. You can use other social media platforms to enhance the outreach of your brand.

• Influencers play an essential role in creating brand recognition: Social media influencers bring credibility
  to your marketing campaign, and enhance your brand value.

• Influencers impact consumer decisions: Consumers tend to trust the recommendations
  of the influencers, and their peers before buying a product.

• Influencer marketing gives you a high ROI: Influencer marketing can give you a high
  media value for the money you spend.

• Ad-blockers, the skip-ad option, and the fast forward button: Most brands tend to spend a lot of money on
  advertisements. However, many streaming services have been made commercial
  free, and ads can be skipped easily. In such a scenario, influencer marketing
  is the best way to engage with your target audience.

Which celebrity is
ideal for your brand?

Since celebrities have a significant impact on
the mindset of ordinary people, brands tend to depend on them for their
endorsements.

Influencer marketing is beneficial for both
the brand and the celebrity. It is the ideal way for the stars to make their
presence felt even when they do not have any public events.

Here is a list of the top celebrities and the
brands they endorse:

• Aamir Khan: Aamir Khan does not promote multiple brands. But when he supports a
  brand, he ensures that it is done with perfection. He examines the marketing
  plans thoroughly and even uses the products to check their quality before
  endorsing a brand.

He endorsed with Snapdeal recently, which
earned him Rs. 30 crores, thus making him the most expensive brand ambassador.
Some of the brands which he has recommended include Titan Watches, Snapdeal,
Coca Cola, Tata Sky, and Samsung Mobiles. His endorsement fee ranges from Rs. 5
to 7 crores per day.

• Shah Rukh Khan: He has the maximum number of brand endorsements because of his
  public image. He believes that he is a more prominent brand than all those whom
  he endorses, and therefore, his association will be extremely advantageous for
  the brand.

The brands which he has endorsed include
Pepsodent, Dish TV, Tag Heuer, Airtel, Videocon, and Emami. His endorsement fee
ranges from Rs. 3.5 to 4 crores per day.

• Salman Khan: Salman Khan’s popularity is no less in terms of endorsements than
  his screen presence in movies. This celebrity has promoted a host of brands
  such as Thums Up, Dixcy Scott, Revital, Wheel, Suzuki Motorcycles, Yatra.com,
  Relaxo, Splash, and several others. His endorsement fee ranges from Rs. 3.5 to
  5 crores per day.

• Amitabh Bachchan: Amitabh Bachchan is one of the most famous faces of Bollywood. He is
  immensely respected for his enigmatic personality. He endorses a large number of
  brands including Dairy Milk, Boroplus, Dabur, Parker Pens, ICICI, Navratna Oil,
  Maggi, Gujarat Tourism, and others. His endorsement fee is Rs. 2.5 crores per
  day.

• Deepika Padukone: She is one of the most iconic celebrities in Bollywood. She is the
  highest paid actress, and she is the most preferred actress for brand
  endorsements. Her brand endorsements include prominent labels such as Coca
  Cola, Vogue, Tissot, Van Heusen, Parachute, Nescafe, Garnier, Axis Bank, and
  others. Her endorsement fee is Rs. 7.5 crores per endorsement.

• Kareena Kapoor Khan: Besides having a distinguished career at Bollywood, Kareena Kapoor
  Khan is one of the most preferred celebrities for brand endorsements. She is
  the brand ambassador of almost eighteen brands including Lux, Vivel Soap,
  Boroplus, Head & Shoulders, Lakme, and others. Her endorsement fee ranges
  from Rs. 3 to 4 crores for every endorsement.

If you want your brand to excel, you should
research thoroughly and come up with a proper marketing strategy to collaborate
with professional brand influencers. Also, consider their opinion while
planning for your campaign. Once you have found out the perfect fit for your
marketing plan, go ahead and promote your products and services.

We
have heard about the word “Amazon experience”, what exactly is that?

The e-commerce giant
gives out suggested products, top lists and extremely curated categories that
provide customers a completely personalized experience. They believe that this
website actually cares about their shopping needs and gives them, exactly what
they require.

Amazon becomes a customer’s shopping assistant and
this experience is addictive. By next year, customer experience will differentiate
between brands and major purchase decisions will be made based on this. From
Amazon to Swiggy to Spotify, there are a lot of marketing personalization
lessons to learn.  Personalization is not
merely an option, it’s a mandatory requirement.

Decoding Personalization – The term and its application

Before going into the details of marketing personalization, we must first understand what the phrase really means. This clarity is essential before moving ahead and applying it from a brand perspective.

In the digital universe, individuals
can be targeted in various ways. From who they are and what they like to where
they are located to their content consuming habits, personalization is
targeting them by using any of these attributes.

Personalization is a small thing that makes a big difference. It is about giving your customers that special feeling in every interaction with your brand. When they feel special, they develop a deeper connection with the brand and this stays. Customer preferences must always be respected and every successful brand is proficient in showing customers they care.

To Personalize or Not – Why it Matters?

There is a reason why so many brands are obsessed with marketing personalization. The benefits are superb. Check them out:

Huge brand engagement and greater brand loyalty

Personalized marketing campaigns produce an authentic experience for customers and these definitely give birth to positive emotions in their minds. The customer becomes attached to the brand and they come back for more.

More Conversions? Yes, Please!

With marketing personalization, the sales cycle becomes shorter and prospects are converted much faster. Customers look out for quick solutions and sales are going to be faster, when a brand offers that instantaneously.

Better Customer Experience

Being memorable is the key in today’s digital world and the secret ingredient that is personalized campaigns. Your customers will always appreciate you if you make them happy. They are the real brand advocates.

To really understand how useful personalization is, some numbers have to be used. 
An Infosys research suggests that as many as 31% of consumers love a shopping experience, personalized especially for them. Not only this, Deloitte’s research found out that 36% of consumers buy personalized items and avail those services. Discounts are offered by every brand, but only the smartest brands offer tailor-made discounts and people are even ready to give out their personal information to brand like these.

They key takeaway from here is simple.
Customers have the ultimate control in today’s marketing scenario. They can be
as picky as they want. Marketers on the other hand have to be innovative and pro-active.
If the marketing techniques are not customized, a huge opportunity is missed.

Getting the Basic Right – How to Approach Marketing Personalization?

Personalization
is not as easy as it sounds, as your brand’s basic groundwork must be ready,
before you even begin with the process.

1. The very step is having a detailed look at the present customer base. This observation is very vital, as the key details can be obtained from there. From their personal details to their habits and preferences, every tiny thing deserves to be seen.
2. The next step is to segmenting the customers into different groups. The segmentation scenarios are endless, but short survey forms can be very effective here.
3. The third step involves interaction. Customers remember how a brand interacted with them in the beginning and this slowly builds brand loyalty. Some responses can be automated, but the other and important ones must be human.
4. The last step is taking the necessary action and actually acting on their preferences.

Some
great examples of marketing personalization that won the hearts of the
customers:

1. Amazon: Amazon always sets the benchmarks, when it comes to personalized marketing. They have their recommendation algorithm, which continuously creates tailored experiences. Different personality aspects of the buyers are taken into consideration here and this has increased the sales of the e-commerce giant by 29%.
2. Music Streaming apps:
3. Personalization had to play when it comes to listening music and brands like Gaan, Saavn and Spotify scored big in this aspect. The discovery is easy and the playlists are created as per listening habits. The future looks good for these apps, as the level of personalization may increase as days pass by. With the inclusion of social sharing and recommendation by friends, the music listening environment has become very personal.
4. Facebook: With all the data that Facebook gets from us, it is not unnatural for them to create a personalized newsfeed for us. Only the relevant stories show up and behaviour is tracked very minutely. From photos shared and videos viewed to places visited and pages liked, everything is tailor-made to enhance the customer experience.
5. Coca-Cola: This brand was always known for its innovative campaigns and they never shy away from surprising the customers. With their campaign called ‘Share a Coke”, they offered a different kind of brand experience and especially targeted the millennials. Social shares increased and the youngsters got an new outlet to show their emotions.

From
personalized videos to the usage of dynamic content, the audience’s attention
can be captured in a lot of ways. The different channels of communication must
also be explored to find out the best method of interaction. Some brands use
mailers while others use messenger marketing to reach out to customers in a
special way. Customer insight is the keyword here and every brand must
understand this before going ahead with a personalized approach.

How
do you want to incorporate personalization in your marketing strategy? Let us
know.

62% Small Business Owners Are Losing Money With Facebook Ads [But You Don’t Have To]

Facebook’s population is massive.

It is quite
natural for businesses to make their presence felt on Facebook and promote
their services.

Facebook
Ads can do wonders for your business but almost 62% small businesses fail at
it.

Reaching customers successfully is very tricky and we will tell you exactly how to do it, so that your money doesn’t get wasted.

The Importance of Reach Campaigns

Today, we thought we would take a little time to explain why Facebook reach campaign is vital to your Small Business’s social media strategy. In Facebook, reach refers to the total number of unique Facebook users for a message, or the maximum number of potential people who could have been exposed to a message. Be it a photo, a status update, or a video, all content that is published on your Facebook page.

It
is like how newspapers and magazines uses reach to measure circulation numbers.

Reach
is important to campaigns, as a result of it’ll assist you to perceive the
potential impact of your messages. It’s necessary for quantifying the scale of
your message’s universe and understanding if a campaign is no-hit. You’ll think
about reach as the denominator in your measurement equations. We use reach
alongside engagement numbers like clicks, share, reactions or replies to
calculate an engagement percentage.

Brand
Awareness or reach campaign is created to reach customers for small businesses
or new businesses who may possibly be a match to their target market; these are
cold prospects that do not know their brand at all.

You
cannot expect a sale from reach campaign, what you would like to happen is to
put a brand recall on the minds of these new audiences. You can up your effort
and go for cultivating curiosity to the audience to actually engage on your
page or messages or click a link. This is measured with the number of people reached,
the ad gains and the number of engagement those ads receives.

Understanding
the importance of Facebook reach campaign for your brand, believe it or not,
you can expand your brand’s reach in a few simple steps. Here are six free ways
to help you:

Know Your Potential Audience

Study
your audience behavior.  Dive into
Facebook Insights very closely to know which content they want and at what time
of day are they reading it? Run campaigns during that time of the day! Also
analyzing which content is the most responded to? Are they consuming content
like a photo or article or only responding to video? Are they using mobile or
desktop to engage with it?  As much as
possible you are catering specifically to your target audience then you will
get the result in more engagement in reach campaign and increase your chance of
staying in your audience’s timeline.

Practice Brevity, Be Topical and Don’t Go Hard to Get

Don’t
be coy with your content and call to action, when you are running any campaign.
Be succinct as well as relevant, when you are promoting your content. On
Facebook, users want to engage, but they need the opportunity. They never want
to read a long post. Keep an eye out for referencing current events and don’t
forget to post about holidays and promote it via reach campaign. Also humourous
content and memes garner  high
engagements, if it’s well-aligned with the voice of the brand.

Understand Your Content

Content is always the king of any social media strategy, even when you are promoting. Quality content is the X factor to expand Facebook reach and engagement. Photos are ranked as the most engaging type of content, but video is creating the buzz nowadays. So if you want to say something, you can combine it with an image or video? But keep it original, try not to steal it off the web and post them as your own.

According
to research by Buddy Media, using the words “where,” “when,” “would” and
“should” increases engagement. Posts which includes “would” consistently yield
the greatest interaction because they allow the audience to agree through a
simple “like” rather than writing a comment.
Engage With Engagement

The audience always loves to know you are listening or not and many of us often overlook this. When you like their comment or you comment back, it will encourage them to engage more frequently in the future. Increased interaction will definitely boost your visibility.

Turn Your Follower’s Friends into Fans

Friends
of your followers can be reached through Facebook ads and you should leverage
this relationship. Many of us are rarely using it. Targeting them is not just a
way to reach your fans’ friends, but also your competitor’s fans and more.

Adjust Bidding & Budget According  To Time

We
have previously mentioned that if you know the time when your fans are engaging
more, you can spend more then. In Facebook, whenever you are running any
campaign you should think more about the bidding and budget. You can reach your
potential audience with a minimum budget if your bidding and timing well. We
will discuss this in detail in the next blog.

The
bottom line is that Facebook wants the audience consuming the best content. Its
algorithm rewards the businesses that create the coolest and most relatable
content.

Always remember that Facebook ads work for those, who do the basics right. It all depends on the approach and how you want to reach your goal.

Focus on building relationships with your audience on Facebook and it willl do wonders for your buisness.

PewDiePie vs. T-Series War – What Your Brand Can Learn?

The internet is all about trends and only a few brands can cash it in. Everyone familiar with most-popular YouTuber PewDiePie will also know about his never-ending battle with Indian record label T-Series. As the competition between the two brands grew, PewDiePie touched one milestone after another. In a period of three months, his subscriber count jumped by 700% and it’s a major fit. The battle with T-Series has become the highlight of the channel and clearly no winner can be predicted as of now. PewDiePie’s subscribers spiked in 2018, while 2017 was a drab year for him, YouTube’s slowdown didn’t affect him at all.

Unpredictability, Popularity and the World of YouTube Trends

You may never know what can become famous over the internet; it can be an immensely talented person or a total maniac doing silly things. The control of it is in the hands of the viewers, as they go on sharing anything which interests them and a wave is created which makes an impact on the people. The weirdest of stuffs have been uploaded on YouTube, ranging from slightly funny to absolute insane. Unpredictability is the buzzword here, things go unplanned.

To persist on digital, brands now have to think beyond marketing and focus on creating content that will actually be liked by the people. Things which are ‘shareworthy’ don’t require much push, it spreads like wildfire and the internet takes care of it.

T-Series vs. PewDiePie – How it all began?

It all started when PewDiePie watched Ekta Kapoor’s serial “Kasam Se’ and gave a hilarious reaction. Ekta Kapoor responded to this matter on Twitter, starting a huge spat, which escalated very quickly.

One such thing which gained
popularity on YouTube, in October in 2018 was the epic battle between the two
channels for the highest number of subscribers. Yes, PewDiePie v/s T-Series
emerged when a survey stated that T-Series at the current rate of growing subscribers
would become the most subscribed channel in the first week of December.

Being the most subscribed YouTube
channel since 23rd December 2013, PewDiePie’s throne was significantly
threatened by the Indian music record label which releases some songs daily
along with trailers. Whereas Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, popularly goes by the
name of PewDiePie is a Swedish Youtuber. He is famous for comic and video game
play-commentator videos.

Many YouTube channels and their
artists came to the rescue of the channel of PewDiePie so that it can maintain
its prestigious position in YouTube. To name the most prominent ones among
them, Justin Roberts another famous YouTuber bought a billboard at New York’s
Times Square, costing nearly a million dollars. It was used to attract the
audience, and Roberts asked the public to subscribe to PewDiePie’s YouTube
channel, and this helped him a lot in gaining a remarkable lead over T-Series
in the subscribers count battle.

The reason behind so much
promotion of PewDiePie was that almost entire Bollywood backed T-Series. The
stars didn’t do actual promotion, but most of the songs getting released in the
Bollywood industry are via T-Series which makes it a prominent channel in a
country like India. And PewDiePie is just one guy, competing against the entire
industry. The fans of both the channels put up a good debate, only to prove why
the channel they support is better.

T-Series was also questioned
because its followers were not legitimate. But despite all these things, the encounter
between both the channels has been quite interesting for the fans to see. The
basis of competition is not so clear, as both of them have an entirely
different type of audience as well as the platform. PewDiePie is known for
making vlogs, doing commentary while playing games and also for funny videos.
Whereas T-Series only releases the songs over its channel, so it is quite clear
that both of them don’t have any common ground on which they can compete. But
still, the battle has attracted a considerable audience.

As of now, the difference between
both the channels is merely 3,600 subscribers. Both of them crossing the mark
of 87 Million subscribers are having an interesting battle going on. PewDiePie
also released a diss over T-Series which is also being used by FlareTV as the
background music on the online subscriber count.

Third parties making the best out of it

Amidst the chaos, other people are
taking benefit out of the current situation which is going on. The people
prefer to take into consideration any such opportunity where they can make some
profit while two parties are busy in their own business. A similar thing
happened when the battle between PewDiePie and T-Series surfaced on the
internet. A lot of people tried to make the best out of it in several ways.
Hardly a handful was able to succeed in the same.

Subscribers’ count battle needed
more specific data of both the channels to be presented to the users. A screen
partition with the real-time subscribers’ count is what was the need of the hour.
And many channels took a chance of tracking the subscriber race between the
two. Almost 8-10 such channels appeared in the top results when people searched
for ‘Tseries vs. PewDiePie’. But as you all know, that only one out of many can
enjoy the maximum benefit out of it.

What is FlareTV and its growth?

However, in this battle the one
channel that prospered throughout 5-6 months was FlareTV. As it took the
opportunity very well and was the first channel to stream the count of
subscribers of both the channels. About the same time, many other channels also
did the same. But the search was always topped by FlareTV, and they have still
held the same position.

Two 16-year-olds from Canada started the channel. Its objective was to give information about the relevant topics over social media, to the general audience. But since they made the first move in respect to this battle, by showing the live count of subscribers between PewDiePie and T-Series since they have grown to a very great extent.

Before the launch of the live
stream, in last August the number of subscribers of FlareTV were merely 6,600.
But as they launched their stream, the number jumped up to a massive count of
1.5 Million subscribers in just six months. They have experienced enormous
growth in their viewership as well. The business which makes the first move
remains an advantage over the others, and that’s what FlareTV did. They also
provided a platform for all the fans to come over and interact with each other,
over the stream itself.

Started just as an information
providing source, then they have now a clothing line based on the channel. The
revenue that they are generating by ads and by selling by their merchandise
like mugs, t-shirts, hoodies have not been made public as yet. The channel is
also selling t-shirts featuring PewDiePie and T-Series, which the fans can
purchase depending on their preferences.

Lesson for others

As things grew for FlareTV, same
can be the case for any channel. All you have to do is sense the right
situation and take the step after going through the pros and cons. In the world
of YouTube, the video of subscribers count which is streaming online on FlareTV
doesn’t require any significant investment, but the outcome achieved through it
was tremendous for them. Once you have the audience, you can go on diversifying
the contents on your channel.

Although the names of the two
entrepreneurs behind the channel have not been revealed, they are satisfied
with what they have become at such a ripe age. They have not yet figured out
what they will do once the battle is over, but till then they would have to
build respectable positions over the YouTube platform.

In a world where reputation on social media counts for a lot, you need to be active to take advantage of the situations. The more attention you pay to the surroundings you work in, the better will be your decision-making skills to act.