Influencer marketing is the fastest-growing form of online acquisition. There’s a good reason—recent data proves the ROI of influencer marketing campaigns: Eighty-two percent of consumers are likely to follow a recommendation made by an influencer and every $1 spent on an influencer marketing returns $6.50 That’s why the total influencer marketing spend is estimated to increase from $1 billion to $5-10 billion in the next five years.
But, to date, executing compelling influencer marketing campaigns has been a laborious, time-consuming process. First, you need to search social media accounts to create a list of influencers who may be a good fit for your brand. Then comes the research to find out who are his followers, what other brands has she posted for, what’s the potential cost per post, and how to get in contact with this person. Finally, you have to set up tracking and processes to measure the impact of your campaign. This ends up being a full-time, spreadsheet-laden role for a marketer.
Julius is the software solution for brands and companies to launch turn-key and successful influencer marketing campaigns. Julius provides the tools you need to research influencers, activate and manage your relationships, and monitor data all in one place. It saves invaluable time, energy, and provides real-time insights to launch a successful influencer marketing strategy.
With Julius, you can:
- Immediately access the comprehensive data that a marketing professional needs in order to make an informed decision about who can best create for and represent their brand. Find out the real story on 50,000+ influencers. Read latest news posts about the influencer, see her content style first-hand, and get detailed data on his audience demographics. You can also see an influencer’s reach and engagement metrics for nine social media networks.
- Find the right influencer based on micro data points. If you want to find someone with a large and engaged following in the Midwest, a passion for skydiving and pricing well within your budget? You can search for it. Do you want to see who a competitive brand is using? You can search for that, too. Julius provides data that goes beyond the surface.
- Compare influencers to make quick, educated decisions. Side-by-side comparison views all you to vet, add, and discuss potential influencers in one place.
- No more cold calling. Start conversations, get contact info, and track communications in one place.
- Get the whole team involved. Easily manage campaigns across teams with conversation and campaign progress visibility. Follow your colleagues’ campaigns to see what’s working.
Influencer Marketing Best Practices
Influencer marketing enables companies to communicate directly, precisely and creatively with their audiences. Combining the right philosophy with the right tool can make for campaigns that are consistently remarkable in how successful and cost-effective they can be. Mark Gerson, CEO of Julius.
Some best practices include the following:
- Find the right influencer for your message. The most successful influencer marketing isn’t just about having celebrities pose with your product or give false praise about your service. It’s about highlighting your brand or company in a way that realistically and positively resonates with the influencer’s audience. Hello Fresh leveraged reality star Audrina Patridge’s status as a busy, new mom to showcase their meals-in-a-box in an authentic way. She Instagrammed that having help getting healthy meals on the table fast was an amazing solution for her and any other harried new moms out there that care about cooking. That personal element works.
- Remember, integrity is everything. Most consumers are okay with sponsored posts as long as it’s staying true to the value of the brand. As Tara Marsh of Wunderman said in a forthcoming Julius podcast, influencer marketing has been around at least since the Royal Family effectively endorsed Wedgewood China several hundred years ago! Just as the Royal Family is an authentic influencer of fine china, a properly chosen influencer can authentically distinguish a brand for a long time — as, among many examples, Nike continues to find with Michael Jordan. The presence of a commercial relationship between a brand and an influencer is irrelevant to the authenticity of a campaign — that is determined by the selection of the influencer and the creative freedom she has.
- Be collaborative. Have a specific vision for your influencer marketing campaign, but be open to collaborating with your influencer on the exact language or photos to use. They know their audience best and know what will have the best sense of what will make a successful post. In a forthcoming Julius podcast, Brittany Hennessy of Hearst speaks about the “Squeaky Clean Test.” A brand shouldn’t ask an influencer to say, “squeaky clean” — but should instead give the influencer the creative license to make that point in whatever way is most authentic to her and responsive to her audience.
Influencer Marketing Success Stories
Julies is the most effective and efficient solution for small and large companies who cannot spare a head count for manual management of influencer campaigns.
Previously, we’ve had to rely on just Googling to find influencers and going to all their individual social media accounts to find information. Julius is invaluable. Meghan Catucci, Content Strategist at AOL/Huffington Post
Beyond saving time and manpower, Julius also accelerates a marketer’s ability to activate, test, and retest with multiple influencers at once to find the best ROI for your campaign. For Access Sports’ Google Photos campaign, they hired several athletes to engage their audiences to spread the message that Google Photos is the best and easiest way to store, search, and catalog photo, using the hashtag #easythrowback. The ability to pitch and close several deals at the same time using Julius saved the company hours of work time.
We have had an amazing success rate using the platform, executing multiple influencer activations at once. Bill Meara, CEO of Access Sports Media.