Behind the scenes: How social media influencer marketing actually works?

Last summer working as a community and marketing intern at a social media influencers analytics startups has taught me a lot — how to handle the clients, AKA the KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) as well as brands PRs, as well as the deals behind the so-called “sponsored contents” on Instagram.

So what are the processes like before an influencer like Brooklyn Beckham posting about him and sponsored luxury products, say Burberry trench coat? Indeed Brooklyn Beckham came to fame because of his family background — in the eyes of social media marketer, the collaboration between him and the Burberry is perfect due to the right match of audience and content on the right platforms. The whole deal starts with the brand PR reaching out to a influencer analytics company and telling them about the details like their goals (could be as “We want to promote this product to younger generations”) for their potential campaigns. Then the analytics firm will try to identify which exact group of audience is the right target (Sometimes what the brands first proposed might not be right — we will get to that later!) and what kind of image does the brand want to build or retain.

For the firm I worked at, they have an established Influencers and brand database backed by big data technology, meaning they have access and therefore can analyze data ,from followers growth rate to interaction/engagement rate, of every Influencer they have in hand. Based on the brand criteria and budgets, analyst with knowledges in the social media will select and propose a group of influencers for the brands to choose. The analytics firm then have to consider questions like: how much budget does the brand have? What kind of campaign is it (new product launch or just PR shows?) How much response does the brand want? Little does many people know that micro-influencers (namely people with much less followers but the definitions vary!) sometimes work better than a big name (and often much more expensive) influencers as with the same amount of budget, you can get more of these micro-influencers and target a very specific group of customers thus higher chance of having a successful campaign!

So back in the case of Brooklyn Beckham, through posting about the coat on both Instagram and Snapchat, where Burberry can reach the group of young people — data shows that 71% of Snapchat users are below 25 and 53% of Instagram users are under 29 — Burberry can successful attract Brooklyn’s followers and build up their new brand image as innovative(young) but still classy in the British way — we call this “telling a new brand story”.

Now you know that behind every post of which bloggers posting their new bags — there are more efforts involved than just sending out bags to famous people. Though there are indeed some terrible Pos overspending their budget on wrong influencer on wrong platform — it is important to note that in this cloud era, any job can be done more efficiently and more effectively!

Written by Tong Tong Chan

Emory University | EEVM | Corporate Sponsorship Associate