A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is – it is what consumers tell each other it is.
– Scott Cook, Co-Founder, Intuit
Odds are your brand is not leveraging one of its most important marketing assets to the fullest: original content from bloggers, social media influencers and your customers. Brands spend countless hours working with influencers to get exposure to their audience, but ultimately neglect the final piece of original content.
Why is original content from influencers so important? In a nutshell, telling the story of your brand through the eyes of your customer is the basis of creating social proof. A recent study showed that over 70% of Americans read product reviews before making a purchase. When influencers tell a story about their experience with your product, people connect with their authenticity.
At BrandBacker, we hate to see valuable content go to waste. To help you get started, here are six ways to get the most out of your content.
This seems like a no brainer. However too many brands spend time and money building a following, only to erratically engage them. Consistently curating a stream of content that fits perfectly into your followers’ news feeds is a time consuming process.
Even if a brand does have the resources needed to consistently create their own branded content, these posts are often overly promotional (e.g. a sale, a new product, etc.). As of late 2014/early 2015, Facebook has changed its newsfeed algorithm to punish these types of posts, meaning “people will see less of this type of content in their newsfeeds.” For brands to increase their organic post reach, it’s now imperative to share engaging and authentic content.
Your E-Commerce Site
We’ve now established that consumers rely on other consumers (influencers) to help them decide whether they should purchase a product. However, most brands do a poor job integrating content at the point of purchase. One of the primary reasons is that keeping this content fresh and then updating your site is often a technical and manual process. To better serve the brands we work with, we recently released BrandBacker Showcases, which allow brands to easily add original blog posts, videos and social media to their e-commerce site. Showcases work on product pages to show off tutorials, or by creating a full page community. Adding original content educates customers and increases engagement across your site. In fact, it has been shown that when visitors to your site have access to product video content, they stay on average two minutes longer, and are 64% more likely to make a purchase. To learn more about using Showcase read our introduction [here].
Email Marketing
While social media marketing is all the rage, email marketing continues to be one of the most important drivers of sales. The issue is that customer inboxes have become flooded with promotional emails making them less likely to open yours. So how do you get your customers to open your emails? By creating a series that they’ll actually look forward to opening. Email marketing is about repetition. Incorporating bloggers’ stories about your product in a customer feature section or series captivates customers in an unexpected format where they are used to just being sold. You can even have a blogger write an original post for a special release to be sent to your subscribers. Integrating this kind of content into your emails shows your customers that you’re an expert without telling them yourself.
Instagram and Pinterest
Bloggers are skilled at taking artistic images of the products they review that include everything from vignette shots featuring your product among the contents of their bags, to amazing before and after pictures. Posting these to your Instagram or Pinterest shares with your followers what your product can do in a visual format.
Your Company’s Blog
Is your team struggling to consistently create content for your company’s blog? Writing all the articles on your brand’s blog can be another huge time drain. Repurposing original content from influencers saves you time and helps you build a sense of community. Giving your brand ambassadors exposure on your blog can also drive more traffic back to your site as the content creator is likely to share the feature with their audience.
Your Sales Materials
Influencer content is a natural fit for collateral materials to your consumers. It can be leveraged for postcards, catalogs, in-store displays and more.
Perhaps even more important is using the content in sales materials to retailers. Demonstrating strong brand traction through images and reviews is crucial to winning over retailers and increasing your brand’s distribution.
In Summary:
- Influencer content is one of your brand’s most valuable marketing assets because it is instrumental in telling an authentic story and demonstrating social proof.
- While exposure to the blogger’s audience is great, the content itself continues to provide tremendous value over a long period of time.
- Leverage influencer content across all your marketing channels to engage and educate!
