1) The best influencer marketing campaigns are on YouTube
Dollar for dollar, our research shows that YouTube has the best ROI above any other social platform. As the second largest search engine on the planet, people are constantly turning to YouTube influencers to discover helpful tips, find reputable products, and honest reviews. So if you are not represented there, you’re missing a big part of the market. And it’s incredibly affordable if done right.
Why it’s important: Unlike with other forms of advertising, sponsoring a video with YouTube influencers gives you three things that move the needle. First, if you’ve chosen the right influencer, you’ll have access to a massive subscribed audience of fans that are emailed and notified of the influencer’s videos.
Second, you can place clickable links in the video and in the comments for immediate calls to action (e.g. get more information, buy this product, subscribe to my newsletter, etc.).
Third, because it’s the world’s second largest search engine and Google search results are increasingly surfacing videos, the value of the video lives has a long shelf life. Some of our influencer videos are still paying off after three years on YouTube.
Advice: Finding the right YouTube influencers is the most challenging step. We like to test a 5 – 10 influencers first to understand their ability to move product or generate leads. But once you find the right influencers on YouTube, you will find them to have a far better ROI than any other form of marketing or advertising.
Expect to pay between $0.10 and $0.15 per average video view for a dedicated video, less if you work with an influencer agency (due to renegotiated rates) or sponsor a review segment within a video.
2) Advocate Marketing will turn your company’s best customers into a referral and review machine
Research shows most purchase decisions are more informed than ever before. Buyers are not waiting for a company to give them the information they need, they’re conducting extensive, personalized research before speaking to any sales professional. Brand advocates can influence those decisions, cultivating brand loyalty, and generating an abundance of qualified leads through social engagement.
Why it’s important: Referrals from current customers are the best marketing method to obtaining customers at the lowest cost. The next highest ROI comes from authentic and visible testimonials on 3rd party sites like Amazon. Advocate marketing taps into both methods to significantly increase revenue with relatively low effort.
Advice: For our clients, we use a gamified community platform from Influitive to unite our client’s most engaged customers. How do we know whom to recruit? We survey their customers and ask them about their experience using our clients’ products or services and their willingness to share their opinions. Anyone answering 7 or above, we recruit into the community.
Then, we use points to reward people for doing challenges like post an honest review on Amazon, refer 5 friends and write about us on your blog. After a number of challenges have been completed, community member can spend those points to get prizes like Amazon gift cards, iPads, and other items that appeal to the community.
3) Facebook video ads are dominating social media advertising conversions
Facebook video ads are dominating conversion rates for our clients. Because Facebook allows you to upload a current customer or lead list to create “lookalike” audiences that are constantly self-optimizing, these video ads quickly educate the right target audience with the right message. Then, when they visit your web page (from a conversion event on Facebook) you create a bigger “look-a-like” audience because Facebook understands the type of person that is converting and then looks for more people like them.
Why it’s important: I’ve been critical of banner ads in the past, in our experience they don’t convert well. But Facebook, has taken ads to a new level, inserted them into our daily streams and made them relevant. Facebook video ads, if done well, are among the best of the best.
