Influencer marketing has always piqued my interest, and for good reason. This channel allows brands to dive deep and create meaningful collaborations with individual ambassadors or to spread their message widely by onboarding a variety of influencers. At anew sleep, from day one, we've aimed to achieve success with influencers, and we've witnessed the positive impact of the frequency of our messages across different channels. Since late 2022, we've worked with about 200 different influencers who have shared unique and personal stories about our products. And we plan to do even more of that throughout 2024.
How Can One Work With Influencers Today
When working with influencers, it's crucial to have a clear strategy. This can vary from brand to brand, depending on your goals, budget, and the audience you're trying to reach.
One of the most common methods of working with influencers today is through dedicated ambassador programs. These programs focus on building long-term, meaningful relationships with a handful of key influencers. In such partnerships, influencers are seen as an extension of your brand and help to tell your story to their audience. This method is extremely effective in adding depth to your marketing efforts and helps to create authentic and credible brand messages.
But it's also expensive. Larger influencers with a significant reach know their worth.
On the other hand, a broad approach is also an effective method of working with influencers. This approach involves working with a large number of influencers at once, which could be 10, 100, or even 1000+ influencers.
Yes, there are brands in Denmark that succeed with such large campaigns. Among others, Trendhim with Morten Bülow-Nielsen at the forefront of the effort.
This approach is best for brands that want to spread their message widely and quickly. It's also an effective way to reach different demographics and interest groups, as each influencer brings their own unique audience to the table.
Today, brands have the opportunity to use technology to facilitate the process of finding, contacting, and negotiating with influencers. Platforms like MakeInfluence help brands find influencers that match their brand values and target audience, making it easy to track the results of their influencer marketing campaigns.
Using Agents, Platforms or Direct Contact
There are several ways to work with influencers, including through agents, platforms like MakeInfluence, or direct contact. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. For our startup brand, anew sleep, MakeInfluence has been the most valuable solution, with a small monthly fee for using the platform and payment to influencers based on the sales they generate.
Our Experiences With Influencer Marketing
Our journey with influencer marketing began right from the start of anew sleep in September 2022. We always believed that influencer marketing could be an important driver for creating awareness and sales for anew sleep.
Initially, we tried to do everything ourselves. We contacted influencers directly who were not represented by agents. Although we got a good response at the beginning, we encountered challenges. Some influencers suddenly stopped responding, while others became too busy to follow up. The whole process turned out to be overwhelming to handle on our own.
So we tried a different approach. We used a Danish-developed platform that focuses on micro-influencers. We onboarded over 40 influencers and followed the recommended best practices from our success manager. Unfortunately, this approach also became a challenge. We found that many influencers were more interested in receiving free products than in creating real value for our brand. Frankly, it was a disappointing experience.
Despite these challenges, we didn't give up. We tried a third approach with a new platform, MakeInfluence, and this time we began to see results. MakeInfluence's platform and their focus on creating real value (earnings) for both brands and influencers finally gave us the results we were looking for. We could see that influencer marketing could actually drive relevant traffic and generate sales.
Through our experiences, we've learned that influencer marketing requires a clear strategy, patience, and the right platform or partner. We've also learned that it's about much more than just sending out free products. It's about creating genuine partnerships where both the brand and the influencer have something to gain.
Now, with a year behind us and growing experience in influencer marketing, we feel more equipped than ever to leverage this channel.
Our approach to influencer marketing
For us, it was important to recognize that each influencer is unique and has their own unique following. It's not enough to just find an influencer with a large number of followers; we need to find the right influencers whose brand and values align with our own. This includes metrics like reach and impressions, as well as where the followers are from.
Moreover, we see influencer marketing as an investment. When assessing the effect, we ultimately look at our ROAS.
Yes, it's not perfect. Because influencer marketing is also about building relationships, creating brand awareness, and engaging with new audiences in an authentic and personal way. But to justify spending the money and time on the channel, we need to be able to measure an effect.
How many influencers are we working with now?
Each month we work (at the current point) with between 20-30 new influencers. We divide our influencers and campaigns at the product level to evaluate the effect and profitability for each product.
We pay our influencers based on the sales they generate. This creates a situation where both parties have a common interest in selling more.
Expectations for influencers in new markets
We plan to use influencer marketing as a way to break into new markets. It's an effective way to generate a large number of visitors and slowly build authority and trust in our brand. It also allows us to bring new content to our website and advertising, which can reduce our costs for content production.
Today we use influencers in Denmark and Norway, the two markets we currently sell in. As we are in the process of opening up more new markets in 2023, we will also be using influencer marketing for this purpose.
Conclusion
We look forward to continuing our work with influencer marketing, and we believe that 2024 will be a groundbreaking year for us. With our ambitious product roadmap, we believe we will be able to drive our "always be launching" mantra to new heights through our influencer marketing efforts.
Our mission is to continue to deliver outstanding products that help people sleep better, and we are convinced that influencer marketing will play a significant role in this - especially in new markets.