3 Ideas to Improve Your Influencer Marketing and ROI

Ten years ago, when collaborations with influencers were a novelty, all it took for a campaign to become successful was for the influencer in question to talk about the company’s product in their article or video. And boom – the effect was as impressive as it was immediate. Times have changed a lot since then. Due to the insane efficiency of influencer marketing and its win-win nature. The market has become somewhat oversaturated with such campaigns.

It isn’t to say that its effectiveness has decreased – quite the opposite really. It is expected to be worth a record amount of $13.8 billion in 2021. But you can no longer rely on the choice of the influencer alone to do the hard work. You have to be extra creative and come up with an actual influencer marketing strategy for the collaboration to earn engagement and good publicity. So, let’s take a dive into the topic and see what does it mean for such a partnership to be outstanding and how to do influencer marketing the right way.

1. How does influencer marketing work, really?
2. 3 tried-and-true influencer marketing ideas

 

How Does Influencer Marketing Work, Really?

First of all, you may be wondering – what is the basic premise of this type of marketing and what conditions do you have to meet? Well, there are quite a few different types of influencer marketing strategies to choose from, and you do not have to limit yourself to using ready-made ideas. The most basic criterion is that the idea has to be attractive and bring profit to all parties involved – namely your brand, the influencer and their fans.

Let’s see how it works in practice, taking giveaways as an example in an influencer engagement campaign:

• Brand gets increased awareness, improved client loyalty and/or promotion of their products.
• Influencers get money (or another form of remuneration) from the brand and boosted fan engagement.
• Fans get a chance of winning a prize.

If you take a look at all the most prosperous influencer partnerships out there, you find out that they all meet these conditions.

 

3 Tried-And-True Influencer Marketing Ideas

So, what can you do to maximise ROI (return on investment) in your sponsorships? Here at inStreamly, we are very familiar with the concept of customising influencer marketing strategies and fitting them to the brand’s image, style and visual communication. So, we will show you some of our own campaigns as examples.

 

Idea 1: Do You Want to Engage Gamers? Bet on Gamification!

Most adults in Poland do not need to be introduced to Little Hunger. The mascot and hero of many advertising campaigns created by Danone, that dominated TV commercials between the mid-2000s and late 2010s. However, as time passed by, the younger generations lost interest in watching cable TV. And they moved to VOD services and streaming platforms. This is why, in order to reach them, Danone decided to collaborate with streamers.

Our goal was to create an interactive, lighthearted campaign based on the concept of Little Hunger. We wanted it to appear whenever the player notices a drop in energy. This binds the original advertising concept of the brand and the theme known from most role-playing games into one perfectly. Collaborating with the VMLY&R agency we used technology based on AI that analysed the gameplay and broadcasted the artwork at the perfect moment.

Then we engaged top polish Fortnite streamers to defeat Little Hunger with Danone, making the whole campaign a form of a game itself. The effect? The campaign has been seen over 650,000 times on the live streams in just one week! If you want to get to know more, check our case study about the Danone campaign.

Conclusions? Never forget who is your core target market. Yes, gamers are not easy to engage, as they are very conscious consumers. And if you learn to use their language, the results may astonish you. Gamification is one of the styles that truly resonates with stream fans. With proper tools you can use it successfully in your marketing.

 

Idea 2: Organise Giveaways That Attract Attention

When Cyberpunk 2077 was at the peak of its popularity, Sprite decided to engage in a prize lottery campaign for Cyberpunk 2077 gamers. Sprite’s marketing representative, Mediacom, came to us with a task to create a campaign focused on creating as much publicity as possible and engaging a difficult target group – gamers. The solution had to be intriguing enough to tempt stream viewers to visit the lottery’s landing page.

With our help, Sprite created an immersive artwork that suited the games’ cyberpunk style. We then broadcasted it on thousands (!) of Cyberpunk 2077 streams. The result? An almost 3% click through rate, which is an impressive score for a campaign of this style! If you want to know more, check our case study about the Sprite campaign.

You can see that several factors contribute to a well-conducted giveaway. Apart from the attractiveness of the prizes, you need to promote it in a way that grabs attention.

 

Idea 3: Make it a challenge!

Our campaign with adidas, created in collaboration with the VMLY&R agency, is a perfect example of a campaign that takes things outside the (shoe) box. adidas sent five Fortnite streamers their newest shoe model, ZX 2K Boost for them to show on their live streams.

Additionally, we have taken care of the proper visual setting, making this multi-element campaign all the more enticing. If you want to know more, check our case study about the adidas campaign.

What can we learn from this example? It’s good to give your influencers something to work with when you engage them in a campaign. Dry advertising slogans will not encourage many viewers to take interest in your product. The situation gets much more intriguing once you start playing on the competitiveness of the gaming industry. Influencer marketing seems much more natural once you let the advertisement be organic and result from playing with a product or service, rather than reading a script.

 

Influencer marketing can be a very powerful tool, but you need to play your cards right. Simply paying a few famous people to mention your brand online won’t do you much favour – quite the opposite, really. A failed influencer sponsorship may tarnish your image and annoy your target audience. When establishing this type of partnership and planning your strategy, it is best to use the help of specialists in the field. 

 

The inStreamly team will be happy to present you with some tailored-made ideas for your influencer marketing campaigns, powered by the tools that allow making stream advertisement fully immersive. Check out what we have to offer and enjoy better ROI in no time!