We all witness how traditional advertising is struggling in these days. At the same time, the smart or we can call them also as the empowered customers are choosing to follow influencers and listen to their recommendations.
Rick Shiels, the world’s most watched online golf personality, has hailed the inaugural YT Golf Day a resounding success, as he welcomed 44 of golf’s most popular content creators to Formby Hall on Monday 6 May, in aid of Prostate Cancer UK.
The first-of-its-kind event planned to raise over £15,000 for Prostate Cancer UK, brought together golf content creators such as
- Peter Finch,
- Me & My Golf,
- Erik Anders Lang and What’s Inside, who have 6.5 million subscribers,
- Carly Booth,
- Gary Beadle, and
- Brian McFadden.
In total there were over 19 million followers across all of the creator’s channels.
The event was supported by:
- Performance54,
- Formby Hall Golf Resort and Spa,
- Prostate Cancer UK,
- Titleist,
- TaylorMade,
- Callaway,
- TravisMathew,
- Golfbreaks,
- Golf Genius, and
- Foresight.
Lloyds BMW and Swatkins also provided superb prizes.
The importance of engagement & the role of micro-influencers
The empowered customers have access to much more information about products and services than any previous generations. As a result of this customers don’t trust brand messages.
Therefore, they connect with influencers because they want honest and transparent insights about products and services (e.g. golf club membership).
The best types of influencers are those who are already fans of your brand. In our case, who is an active golfer and plays a lot, even during his holidays.
Those marketing activities will succeed in 2019 that meet the need for authenticity.
The biggest challenge is who and what can influence customers’ behavior
I have the impression that when an influencer has over 100,000 followers, the level of engagement with their followers (also known as their community or tribe) starts to flatten out.
In other words, these fans and followers are less likely to interact with the influencer because they may have the impression that they won’t receive the desired attention from the influencer. This means communication will be less effective.
At this moment, there is no proof that if you cooperate with an influencer with hundreds of thousands, or millions, of followers, then your campaign will be more effective.
Engagement as a social media KPI was always an important KPI for marketers, but when we realize the size of the content tsunami that our customers are facing we start to understand its importance.
You can also ask yourself, can you pay attention to every single news item and content that you see on the Internet. Congratulations to those who are able to do so. 🙂
To gain their attention and trust is not simple in the current media environment.
Trust and a close relationship with the audience are indispensable if we want to change their purchasing behavior in favor of our golf club.
Sprout Social Index 2019 study found
- that the top social media goal among marketers is increasing brand awareness (79%);
- When marketers measure social media success, they define engagement primarily in terms of likes and comments (72%), shares (62%), and interactions with consumers (60%).
I agree with those golf clubs and other marketers who define engagement success in terms of interactions and shares.
The interactions are significant because they enable us to exchange information with prospects and customers, and learn about their needs, goals, and desires.
We click on so many things on social media with or without intention that it is hard for me to consider as a reliable engagement KPI.
This is why I said above that mega-influencers are rarely able to influence people’s behavior. At the same time, they are suitable for increasing awareness.
The shares are not only significant in terms of content visibility but also demonstrate that customers agree with and believe in our product and service.
I see the following benefits in cooperating with micro-influencers (10-100,000 followers):
- Because they are personally invested in their craft, micro-influencers are trusted sources of recommendations for their followers.
- When the goal is to promote your brand, you’ll need micro-influencers for a long-term campaign. An ongoing campaign will ensure that your target audience consumes as much content about your brand as possible.
- 60% higher engagement.
- Underpriced (6.7X more cost-efficient per engagement)
- 22.2% more weekly conversations than the average consumer.
To find the relevant micro-influencers I recommend testing one of these tools. They can help you to find and develop relationships with key micro-influencers at a scale and efficiency which no human could match:
- Mavrck,
- Onalytica
- Neoreach, and
- Traackr.
Recommendation for your future influencer marketing strategy:
Cooperate with micro-influencers (between 10 and 100,000 followers) and even nano-influencers (less than 10K followers) as well for a better impact!