In this episode of Add To Cart, we are joined by Danielle Lewis from the influencer marketing platform and agency, Scrunch. Whether you’re a TikTok regular or a social media novice, understanding how to best utilise influencers within your business can be daunting. Danielle gives us tips on what you should look for when selecting influencers to represent your brand, how to brief them to get the best response and the future of influence on social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. Plus, Danielle takes us behind the scenes with YouFoodz, sharing how they use social influencers to drive results.
“Consumers trust advertising less and less every year…so the idea of influencer marketing is to make it like a personal recommendation from a friend.”
Influencer marketing uses a mix of old and new marketing techniques where brands collaborate with influencers to promote their products using modern marketing campaigns.
In this episode of Add to Cart, Danielle Lewis, CEO and Co-founder of Scrunch, takes you behind the scenes in the world of influencer marketing and shares what clients need to look for in choosing the right influencer for their brand.
Consumers trust advertising less and less every year…so the idea of influencer marketing is to make it like a personal recommendation from a friend.
Danielle Lewis
Questions answered in this episode include…
- How does a business go about finding the right influencer?
- How much does it cost to work with influencers?
- How do you measure success with influencer campaigns?
- What is the future of influence on social media platforms?
How Scrunch came to be
Scrunch is an influencer marketing platform and agency established in 2014. According to Danielle, it works as an analytics tool which seeks to understand the audience (their behaviour, interests, etc) behind influencers. This information allows brands to know and understand the kind of audience they are reaching should they decide to collaborate with these influencers.
Danielle and her team saw opportunities to educate the influencer communities too and help them build sustainable businesses. Scrunch have started educating both influencers and brands in creating influencer campaigns that work.
On the agency side, the team at Scrunch are responsible for executing the influencer campaign. Since they understand how influencer campaigns can be tedious, time-consuming, requiring a lot of manual effort, the agency offers its services to brands who do not have the internal resources to launch and manage influencer campaigns.
Finding the right influencer for your brand
When asked what to look for when choosing an influencer, Danielle suggests going “…back to your brand, your products, and your customer”. She emphasizes the importance of understanding the target you’re trying to reach, knowing the right message you want to deliver and which platform your target is using. Gathering all this information will help you make informed decisions in choosing which influencer to collaborate with to reach the right audience.
As a brand, you also need to consider your budget and campaign goal when choosing an influencer. According to Danielle, influencers usually charge around $50 for each piece of content. So you really need to think about the kind of results you wish to get before launching your campaign to avoid wasting money and resources.
For example, if your goal is to have a lot of content that you can use for marketing, leveraging micro-influencers is the most cost-effective plan. You can collaborate with influencers who have at least 20,000 followers to create content that is relevant to your brand.
If you are launching a TV campaign, it’s best to go for macro-influencers. Always consider the call to action that you wish to use for each campaign. You must make it easier for users to make a purchase. If you are advertising on Instagram, choose an influencer who has at least 10,000 followers so you can leverage the swipe up feature on IG stories.
What to look out for when assessing an influencer
Technology has made it easier for brands to assess the performance of influencers using a variety of digital tools to access metrics and check other factors that can affect their campaigns in the future. If you’re unsure about using these tools, Danielle offered some tips on what you need to look out for when assessing an influencer.
Engagement rate – It is important to check if the influencer’s audience/followers are actively engaging with their content. Having lots of followers that don’t engage with their content may indicate that these followers are fake or they are not really interested in what the influencer is talking about. Collaborating with influencers like this will only lead to disaster, since not many people will see the content featuring your products/services
Reluctance to show analytics data – It raises a lot of suspicions when influencers refuse to show screenshots of their analytics. Before collaborating with an influencer, you need to make sure that you are reaching the right audience with their help. This is why it is important to check if their audience reach is relevant to your brand. “Let’s say they’re a Melbourne based fashion influencer, but 50% of their followers are based in Singapore, or somewhere just really random, that can be a bit of a red flag”
