An efficient management of Digital PR projects is a key aspect in the life of any full-service agency such as The Ad Store. In this article, Digital PR & Influencer Specialist Margherita Cavallotti will guide us through the dos and don’ts of this fascinating branch of marketing.
What is the relevance of Digital PR today? What is the role of a marketing agency in managing influencer marketing activities? And which are the main steps and activities involved in delivering a successful influencer marketing campaign to promote brands and products?
At The Ad Store, one of the basic assumptions of our approach is that brands are like humans and therefore - exactly like human beings - they strive to grow and create authentic relationships with their audiences.
Digital PR and influencers can help them achieve precisely that - a more intimate, credible and valuable relationship with consumers.
As you know, influencers are creators who, thanks to their knowledge, skills, or characteristics, have managed to gain the authority to influence their followers’ choices and are therefore perfect allies to create positive relationships between the brands they support and their own communities. They can do so in multiple ways, both sponsored and non-sponsored: live events, stories, feed posts, reels, seeding activations, etc.
If we consider the relationship between brands and influencers, the agency plays an important role of intermediary between the creator and the brand and has the responsibility of effectively promoting the brand’s vision, values, and interests.
The management of influencer campaigns includes the main stages:
- 1 - Identifying and selecting the most suitable influencer profile(s);
- 2 -Activating and monitoring the cooperation with the influencer all through the campaign;
- 3 - Analyzing and assessing the campaign results.
Needless to say, all these aspects cannot be improvised and need careful analysis, detailing, and knowledge, acquired through years of experience and creation of relations and contacts.
When it comes to the operational workflow of an Influencer Marketing project, we usually proceed in 7 steps, as follows:
1. Definition of our objectives
The first step consists in clearly identifying the objectives of the marketing effort: do you wish to increase the brand’s awareness or reputation? Do you want to generate new leads or encourage purchases of new products? Or again does the brand wish to position itself as a thought leader? We ask the client the right questions and clearly define the key goal of our campaign.
2. Budget assessment
Carefully considering the budget at your disposal is important to understand the extent of the project you can build. Based on that, you can balance expectations and define what influencer group you should focus on: micro, macro, mega influencers, etc. That will also allow you to establish how many influencers you can involve.
3. Definition of the target audience
This is key to any marketing strategy. What is the main age group to target? What sector or preferences should you lean towards? You have plenty to choose from: lifestyle, food, sport, sustainability… Also, what geographical area do you want to target?
4. Identification of the social channels
All the information you have collected in the previous step is essential to decide on which social media channel your target is more likely to be and interact. Based on our experience and the brands we support, the social platform we have used the most for our influencer campaigns so far is Instagram, even though we are starting to shift to other environments, starting from TikTok.
5. Setting the campaign KPIs
Clients want results, therefore it’s essential to define some specific KPIs you will measure and monitor to assess the success of your campaign. Some of the most common are engagement, quality and quantity of the audience reached, web traffic changes, impact on sales, number of blog and social media mentions. We use several tools, but mainly, at the moment, Fanpage Karma and Not Just Analytics.
6. Selection of creators
Now it is time to provide your client with a list of suitable influencers based on the needs you identified. The choice can spam from mega influencers and celebrities with more than 1 million followers up to nano influencers with 10K followers. Once the list is approved by the client, the agency will activate the partnership, dealing with all contractual and creative aspects.
7. Building an authentic storytelling
The final step of our workflow is the creation of the right storytelling. For your storytelling to be successful, the creator should convey the brand purpose and values in the best way. Under this respect, we at The Ad Store play a crucial role of intermediaries between the brand and the creator, by driving them in the best way towards the desired objective.
Some recent digital campaigns we created and developed in Italy were for cured ham brand Parmacotto. A campaign that embodies all these concepts and has proved particularly successful was the #caratterevincente (link) campaign that reached 7 million users and obtained 14K interactions among the desired audience - sport lovers. It went viral in a couple of days thanks to the involvement of some leading Italian athletes who perfectly represented the brand’s values: authenticity, passion, and quality.
Another recent successful campaign was the “Anti-waste Wednesdays” campaign that we created for Italian food brand Saclà. The form was that of a social live series against food waste involving several relevant influencers, which obtained outstanding results and contributed to position the brand as a promoter of positive values of sharing and sustainability. The digital effort was also supported by a press campaign.
Saclà and Parmacotto are just some examples of influencer campaigns with an authentic storytelling based on brand values, integrated communication, and an attentive and accurate talent selection.If you want to know more about our Influencer Marketing campaigns, email margherita@adstore.it
