Yesterday marked the day of our first official event organised at George Marina in Amsterdam. We provided our guests with informative insights about influencer marketing between 2 and 5 pm and ended the day with a sunny drink at the waterside. Here is a short recap.
Paolo Martorino, co-founder and CEO Join
Paolo kicked off with a presentation about Join, influencer marketing and recent technological developments in the industry. He told the guests that influencer marketing is not a new phenomena, but already exists for about 120 years in various forms. It started off with endorsements, after which sports deals came into play. The collaboration between Michael Jordan and Nike is one of the most iconic examples. However, nowadays, you don’t have to be a famous actor, artist or athlete to promote products. It could just be your neighbour or dog living down the block. The industry has evolved enormously in the past years. Something we are very much aware of at Join. He concluded his presentation by pointing out some recent technological developments for the future of Join and influencer marketing, like voice recognition software, visual matching and virtual influencers like Lil Miquela. He provided the attendees with a good knowledge base for the next speaker, Kim van Meel.
Kim van Meel, General Manager Northern-Europe Ausnutria Nutrition B.V.
After Paolo had his say, Kim van Meel was introduced to the crowd. Kim has already completed a campaign via Join and took out a lot of learnings she really wanted to share with the crowd. Despite having significant experience because of her impressive career in the Netherlands and other countries at Jacobs Douwe Egberts and Mead Johnson Nutrition, influencer marketing is also new for her. This enabled her to get on the same level as our guests. Ze started with sharing her objective and therewith also her challenge: ‘’creating awareness and trial among first time moms’’. Having few market research data and low budget, she started this challenge. To understand her target audience well, she had to be in the shoes of first time moms. She did this by reading various blogs, comments, platforms and content of competitors; she looked for available market research, articles and filtered potential influencers. Next it was important to know where to reach her target audience. She was well aware of recent developments and the fact that social channels are essential in the process. She knew the story must be told by other moms.
‘’83% of moms thinks product recommendations from a mommy blogger are more authentic than those of a brand itself.’’
In collaboration with Join she designed and launched the campaign. Join helped for a great deal in the process, by assisting her in influencer selection, setting up the briefing, getting in touch with influencers and the report. She ended her presentation with some practical tips and tricks:
- Share elaborate inspiration and unique information about your brand. Influencers appreciate getting an ‘’inside scoop’’ and share it with their followers.
- Offer a nice mix of tools like content, tips, visuals, giveaways, win contests or discount coupons.
- Ask influencers to use hashtags and create content in their own style: well made Instagram- and Facebook posts are visually strong and good for SEO.
- Provide influencers with freedom to create their own content. That way it will be more in line with their tone of voice and style their followers recognize and appreciate so much.
- Encourage interaction between an influencer and their followers: this ensures engagement and provides you with inside information about what’s going among the target audience.
- Make sure to determine upfront which social channels you’re focussing on together with the influencers and define what’s important in the communication process.
After a short break it was up to influencer Arielle Dannique to shed light on the influencer side of influencer marketing.
Arielle Dannique, influencer (240K+ followers)
Our third and last speaker of the day was Arielle Dannique. A 22 year-old from Groningen and recent graduate in Human Resources. She has gained a lot of experience with paid collaborations and wanted to share her side of the story with the marketeers present. Very valuable insights of course. Arielle actively started with social media about two years ago and quickly started building up her following, after which she was approached for her first commercial collaboration quite fast. Arielle collaborates by:
- clearly communicating the goal of the campaign and company;
- discuss the content from her perspective in relation to the brand/company
- establish the price rate, in which she also thinks it’s important to give start-ups a chance to collaborate.
She told the crowd that when selecting an influencer you shouldn’t only be looking at the reach and also don’t let it scare you. What matters is whether or not your brand matches with the influencer and vice versa. Her perspective on barter deals can be summarized in one quote:
‘’If I would be a re-stocker of shelves in an Albert Heijn I would expect to get paid and not to get a bag of free groceries ’’
Arielle also very much likes using Join, because the platform is very user-friendly. You can make clear agreements via the platform, because you’re directly in contact with the marketeer and her questions are answered very fast by the Join team.
