Davide, Author at CreatorDB

All the new Influencer Regulations in the EU
Influencer marketing in the European Union can be problematic: while having a unified market for goods and services the regulations and responsibilities around the promotion of such goods and services can vary drastically from country to country.
Three main actors are involved in shaping the regulations around influencers in the 27 countries of the Union: the European Commission and Parliament with their Directives (especially the Digital Service Act and the General Data Protection Regulation), the European Advertising Standard Alliance (EASA) which is a self-governing organization (SRO) that coordinates with national homologs SROs to create a common framework for advertising and local governments that can go above and beyond the European regulations.
This article is part of our series on influencer marketing regulations. You can find our other here:
Digital Service Act (DSA) & influencers
Entered into force on the 16 of November 2022, the Digital Service Act (DSA) has the goal to contain the spread of harmful content and create an environment that is faster to react to illegal content. In doing so, the DSA incidentally tackle influencers and their content.
By connecting the definition of “illegal content” with the national law of member states (“any information or activity, including the sale of products or provision of services which is not in compliance with Union law or the law of a Member State, irrespective of the precise subject matter or nature of that law”), the DSA expands already existing regulations applicable to advertising to influencer marketing.
Based on this interpretation of the DSA that most countries without a regulation that specifically targets influencers connect them to other forms of marketing and include them in their existing regulations.
GDPR compliance in influencer marketing
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the main legal framework that rules the collection and use of data of EU citizens. Implemented in 2018 it aims to protect personal data and guarantee the right to be forgotten to any individual that had previously provided its personal data. Anyone that intends to engage in influencer marketing within the EU should make themselves very familiar with the provisions included in the GDPR since fines to breach it can reach 20 million euros or 4% of a company’s international turnover.
Luckily for you, if you are engaging in influencer marketing is quite easy to comply with GDPR’s requirements since differently than with other ways of marketing you are not collecting influencers’ or customers’ personal data.
If you plan to collect influencers’ or (potential) customers’ data you need to explicitly inform the interested parties of it. Furthermore, you need to be able to scrap records about any individual at that individual’s will. Any use of data collected this way should be done only after anonymization if not otherwise directly agreed with the involved subjects.
What are EASA’s best practices on influencer marketing?
EASA is a self-governing agency that connects all the national advertising agencies active in the EU and tries to coordinate them in adopting similar regulations to create a homogeneous environment when it comes to advertising. EASA does not have legislative powers and neither the national agencies do but they often impose fines and punishments for regulations transgressions.
In May 2022 EASA published a new iteration of its best practices for influencer marketing, in this version the agency calls for the obligation to disclose commercial partnerships and enhanced collaboration for brands in order to forge a more ethical ecosystem where customers are safe and protected.
EASA’s best practices on influencer marketing are the bedrock foundation for doing influencer marketing in the EU. While some countries may have more stringent or more lax regulations, adhering to EASA’s will make you compliant in most cases.
While not constituting law, EASA’s best practices aim to be the stepping stone to spark national self-regulatory organizations (SROs) into adopting a cohesive and coherent regulatory framework.
To help creators and marketers EASA prepared an online tool called DiscloseMe, thanks to this tool is possible to look know the regulations of every country in the European Union.
National regulations
Austria
In Austria, the Media Act, and the Code of Ethics created by the Austrian Advertising Council establish that is required to disclose clearly when content is an advertisement.
Belgium
In Belgium, influencers are considered on the same level as media service providers, and like them, they need to make commercial communications recognizable. Concurrently who is paying the influencer need to make sure that there is a clear disclosure.
Bulgaria
The Bulgarian National Council for Self-Regulation recommends for any sponsorship be disclosed through the use of dedicated hashtags and in a clear and immediate way.
Croatia
Croatia does not have specific regulations for influencers but their activities fall under the category of promotional activities. Like other promotional activities sponsored posts need to be clearly identified as such, with the possibility of fines for both influencers and brands violating the Media Act.
Cyprus
Considering the small population of the country influencer regulation is not at the forefront of the topics debated.
Czechia
Czechia had to deal with many influencers promoting tobacco and alcohol products and without any dedicated legislation the pushback has been light and ineffective. The Platform of Professional Communication, a self-regulatory body that covers influencers, agencies, and brands has created a Code of Conduct with best practices. The Code invites the influences to mark the sponsored posts as such, not lie or conceal information about their experience with products and services and respect the laws around regulated products like alcohol, tobacco, and gambling which should not be advertised by anyone with an audience composed for more than 25% by underage people.
Denmark
Hidden advertisement is illegal in Denmark and this translates to influencers’ promotions as well as de-facto making it mandatory for influencers to disclose their partnership and be upfront with their connection to the brands. Recently the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration passed new rules especially aimed at tackling the promotion of foods, prohibiting exaggerated claims and anecdotal evidence for health benefits that could mislead customers.
Estonia
The Consumer Protection and Technical Regulatory Authority of Estonia established that influencers’ promotions on social media need to be clearly marked as such. Concurrently alcohol and tobacco promotions are not allowed on the personal account of an influencer.
Finland
The Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority composed guidelines for influencer marketing on social media in 2019. The guidelines promote the disclosure of advertisement content and paint both the influencer and the sponsor as responsible for the respect of the rules.
France
In March 2023 France passed new regulations for influencer marketing. Under this framework, influencers can incur in high fines (up to €300,000) and even jail time if fail to properly disclose sponsored content. Striving to also address the harmful impact that edited photos have on people’s self-esteem and mental health the bill includes an obligation of disclosure also for those instances.
Germany
The case of influencer promotion in Germany has been at the center of a few court decisions that created and shaped how influencers should behave. While was rapidly clear that any paid promotion, not immediately recognizable as such, should be labeled with proper hashtags in order to inform the potential customers of the sponsored nature of the deal, German courts had variable takes in regard to unpaid promotions. If the influencer buys the product themselves or receives it for free should they still disclose it as a partnership? Ultimately the court decided that the only way to not have to disclose is if is proven that the brand mentioned in the post had no influence in the judgment expressed. Since is easier said than done, the safest approach is to disclose it as sponsorship even when there is no monetary transaction between the influencer and the brand.
Greece
Greek influencers don’t need to comply with any specific law but they are bound to the Hellenic Advertising Communications Code that imposes the disclosure of promotional material making the marking of sponsored content as such mandatory.
Hungary
Hungary’s Competition Authority requires influencers to disclose their sponsorships and keeps both the influencer and the brand liable in case of violations.
Ireland
Ireland influencers are self-regulated under the Advertising Standard Authority for Ireland (ASAI) which requires commercial content to be tagged as such. In the past, the ASAI publicly shamed those influencers who didn’t comply with the practice.
Italy
The Istituto di Autodisciplina Publicitaria (IAP) is the self-regulating organ responsible for regulating marketing in Italy. In 2019 they included the “Digital Chart”, a collection of best practices before only recommended, in their regulations making it mandatory for influencers to disclose sponsored content through proper use of hashtags.
Latvia
Latvian authorities require sponsorships to be disclosed via text or orally.
Lithuania
Influencer practices aren’t the most pressing issue faced by Lithuania, considering that the country in 2020 only had 300 people that would have qualified for the title. But nonetheless, the self-regulating marketing organization created guidelines that encourage influencers to label their sponsored posts with the hashtags #ad or #reklama.
Luxembourg
Luxembourg has not instituted any special rule for influencers, but any influencer inside the little principate needs to follow the guidelines of the Autorité Luxembourgeoise Indépendante de l’Audiovisuel (ALIA)
Malta
No specific regulation has been established around influencers in Malta.
Netherlands
Dutch regulators established that is mandatory for any content creator with over 500,000 subscribers to register with the Media Authority, join the Dutch Advertising Code Authority, and clearly state when content is sponsored by the use of dedicated hashtags. In case of non-compliance Dutch authorities could impose fines of up to €225,000.
Poland
The Office of Polish Competition and Consumer Protection instituted a series of guidelines after a concerning investigation into social media advertising. Currently, content should be tagged and clearly understandable to be sponsored content. Violation can incur in fines of up to 10% of the influencer or brand turnover.
Portugal
No specific regulations have been introduced by Portuguese authorities regarding influencer marketing. Sponsored content falls under the category of commercial communication and requires to be disclosed as such. Therefore the use of hashtags to indicate a partnership is necessary when operating in Portugal.
Romania
Romania does not have special regulations for influencers when it comes to sponsorships.
Slovakia
The Slovakian self-regulating agency issued a Code of influencer marketing requiring that sponsorships are fully disclosed and forbidding the use of fake reviews.
Slovenia
Influencers in Slovenia are not considered media and because of this technicality, they are unaffected by the Mass Media Act and any existing advertisement regulation.
Spain
The Asociación para la Autorregulación de la Comunicación Comercial (Autocontrol) establishes what constitutes a commercial post and how it needs to be labeled in Spain. Whenever a post is aimed at promoting products or services, is the result of financial remuneration, or is subject to validation before publication it falls under the Code of Conducts regulation. Autocontrol establishes that posts need to be marked as commercial by explicitly stating it and when possible by also using the features built into the social networks to highlight such cases.
Sweden
Swedish regulators, and courts, have established that any kind of sponsored content needs to be marked as such, clearly indicating if the influencer received compensation for the post.
Davide
September 19, 2023
Guides
Mid-Level, Regulatory Compliance
New 8-steps Guide to Influencer Marketing in the EU
Influencer marketing is a powerful strategy for brands to connect with their target audiences and amplify their message. By partnering with influential individuals on social media platforms, brands can leverage the trust and reach these influencers have built to promote their products or services. However, when it comes to conducting influencer marketing campaigns in the European Union (EU), it’s crucial for brands to understand and comply with the specific regulations governing this practice.
On May 22, 2023, the European Advertising Standard Alliance (EASA) has updated its best practices regarding influencers and how they need to disclose collaborations and partnerships.
But what this means for everyday marketers that want to carry out an influencer marketing campaign in the EU? In this article, we are going to discover how to craft a perfectly EU-regulation-compliant influencer marketing campaign.
What are EASA’s best practices on influencer marketing?
EASA’s best practices on influencer marketing are the bedrock foundation for doing influencer marketing in the EU. While some countries may have more stringent or more lax regulations, adhering to EASA’s will make you compliant in most cases.
EASA is a self-governing agency that collects all the national advertising agencies active in the EU and tries to coordinate them in adopting similar regulations to create a homogeneous environment when it comes to advertising. The EU has established a single market where goods and services can easily pass across borders, but it is not the same story for advertising: each country has its regulations that establish how promotions of products can be carried out.
While not constituting law, EASA’s best practices aim to be the stepping stone to spark national self-regulatory organizations (SROs) into adopting a cohesive and coherent regulatory framework.
How to do influencer marketing following EASA’s best practices:
The founding pillars of EASA’s Best Practices are responsibility, recognizability, and disclosure.
Influencers and Brands are concurrently responsible for making sure to abide by disclosure regulations and acting following local laws. The sponsored content needs to be instantly recognizable as such and overtly disclose its sponsored nature. Each local SRO usually provides a list of hashtags and terms that can be used to easily disclose a post born from a brand influencer partnership.
To simplify creators’ and marketers’ lives EASA also created DiscloseMe, a simple online tool to help influencers and marketers to know the regulations for each European country.
Digital Service Act & influencers
Entered into force on the 16 of November 2022, the Digital Service Act (DSA) has the goal to contain the spread of harmful content and create an environment that is faster to react to illegal content. In doing so, the DSA tackled influencers and their content. By connecting the definition of “illegal content” with the national law of member states (“any information or activity, including the sale of products or provision of services which is not in compliance with Union law or the law of a Member State, irrespective of the precise subject matter or nature of that law”), the DSA expands already existing regulations applicable to advertising to influencer marketing.
GDPR compliance in influencer marketing
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the main legal framework that rules the collection and use of data of EU citizens. Implemented in 2018 it aims to protect personal data and guarantee the right to be forgotten to any individual that had previously provided its personal data. Anyone who intends to engage in influencer marketing within the EU should make themselves very familiar with the provisions included in the GDPR since fines for breaching it can reach 20 million euros or 4% of a company’s international turnover.
Luckily for you, if you are engaging in influencer marketing is quite easy to comply with GDPR’s requirements since differently than with other ways of marketing you are not collecting influencers’ or customers’ personal data.
If you plan to collect influencers’ or (potential) customers’ data you need to explicitly say so. Furthermore, you need to be able to scrap records about any individual at that individual’s will. Any use of data collected this way should be done only after anonymization if not otherwise directly agreed with the involved subjects.
The 8-steps Influencer Marketing Campaign in the EU
Define the campaign objective
Is important to have clear in mind what is the final objective (or objectives) of your campaign. Once the ultimate goal is defined you can start evaluating which are the appropriate steps to take in order to achieve it, on which platforms you should engage your audience, and with which types of content.
Having identified the campaign objective and the path to achieve it it will be easy to spot which metrics would allow you to understand if the campaign is going in the right direction while it is running, these are going to be your KPIs.
Identify target audience
Consider psycho-demographic factors that are shared by your current customers and use that information to highlight interests, buying behaviors, and content categories. Through this process, or creating consumer personas, you will get closer to understanding what moves your customers and how you can approach new potential customers through content and influencers.
Research and select influencers
The right influencer would not only be able to help you achieve your final goal and approach your target audience but will also align with your company values and vision. The extra step of finding influencers that match your company deeply will be a major help in establishing trust in their audience and creating a stronger bond with your brand. While is always recommended to prefer content creators with a highly engaged audience you may also want to focus on other metrics that may better reflect your campaign objectives. To simplify your life influencer marketing platforms, like CreatorDB, provide advanced search tools to easily identify creators on the base of many different markers.
Start up the partnerships
Once you identified the influencers you want to work with you can start connecting with them. This is as simple as sending out emails that describe the details and establishing a communication line with the interested creators. Is it at this time that you will have to negotiate the terms of collaboration, such as compensation, content requirements, posting schedules, and disclosure guidelines. It’s important to ensure transparency and align expectations with the influencers.
Create compelling content
Work in concert with the influencers to craft content that is both compelling to their audience and aligns with your brand values and goals. To streamline this process you can prepare guidelines and creative directions that will allow the creators to understand how they can keep their style and voice while fitting your brand image and values.
Ensure legal compliance
Before anything goes live make sure that all creators are aware of their country’s local regulations in matters of influencer marketing. As a general rule sponsored content of any kind needs to be disclosed as such and tagged with hashtags that identify it as an advertisement. Under the upcoming implementation of the DSA influencer’s content will get closer to other forms of content in the regulatory framework.
Monitor performances and optimize
When a campaign is running is important to have under control the various metrics that were identified as KPIs. Concurrently you should measure the different influencer’s performances. Collecting real-time data on each of the pieces of content you sponsored is going to allow you to understand if your planned steps are functioning in the way you intended. By keeping the pulse of the situation in check you will have the chance to tweak your campaign if things are moving in an unexpected direction.
Foster long-term relationships
To leverage the influencers effectively maintain open communication, provide timely feedback, and consider evolving the initial collaboration into something else if the experience with the influencer was positive and productive. Long-term collaborations are conducive to trust and loyalty building toward the brand.
Conclusion
While there are not yet European-level regulations for influencers set in stone a series of tendencies are emerging: is to be expected that more responsibilities will fall onto creators and possibly, on the French example, brands for disclosure. Concurrently EASA is calling for the local SROs to introduce a more inclusive approach when it comes to influencers instituting certifications and compliance courses.
If you are running influencer marketing campaigns in Europe or you plan to do it in the future this is a moment of changes, influencers are gaining traction at times positive and at times negative this is bringing the eye of the regulators on the field and will possibly translate in various European countries introducing more specific regulations on the base of the EASA guidelines or the example of other nations.
Davide
September 19, 2023
Guides
Mid-Level, Regulatory Compliance
Make the best of Engagement Rates in Influencer Marketing
Engagement rates are essential in influencer marketing because they measure the level of interaction between influencers and their followers. A high engagement rate indicates that an influencer’s audience is interested in their content, which points to an audience that trusts and connects with the influencer.
When applied to influencer marketing campaigns, highly engaged content increases brand awareness, sales, and brand loyalty.
What are engagement rates?
Engagement rates measure the level of interaction between an influencer and their followers. The engagement rate is calculated by dividing the number of interactions (likes, comments, shares, etc.) by the number of followers and multiplying by 100.
Engagement rates can be calculated per-post basis to know how successful each post is or as an average to evaluate how an influencer can create content that resonates with its audience and is used to evaluate the effectiveness of an influencer’s content.
The engagement rate can be calculated using different interaction measures better to understand specific aspects of a content creator’s audience. You can decide to include any active action the audience takes towards a post to create a “total” engagement rate.
This is generally what you will find indicated as the engagement rate. However, using such a catch-all metric will not be as effective in evaluating specific aspects. For example, if you want to create discussion around your campaign, you may prefer to look specifically at comments when calculating your engagement rate to individuate creators whose audience is already highly vocal about related topics.
Why are engagement rates important in influencer marketing?
Engagement rates are critical in influencer marketing because they provide insight into the effectiveness of an influencer’s content. A high engagement rate indicates that the influencer’s content resonates with their audience and their followers actively engage with it.
Many social media algorithms promote highly engaging content showing it to more users, and, more often, how they calculate engagement rate changes from platform to platform.
But engagement rates are not everything. Learn about other essential metrics in our Analytics 101
Engagement rates are essential in an influencer marketing campaign. Similarly to what is said for organic content, users are likely to engage with sponsored posts if they find them interesting.
Since highly engaging content is boosted, investing in content creators with a high engagement rate not only means that many people in the influencer audience will see and react to the content but also that many in adjacent niches will be proposed such content organically, expanding the reach of your campaign.
Evaluating in comparison with other metrics with other metrics, such as reach and impressions, can provide a comprehensive understanding of the effectiveness of an influencer marketing campaign. Reach refers to the number of unique individuals who have viewed the influencer’s content, while impressions refer to the total number of times the content has been viewed.
By comparing engagement rates with reach and impressions, brands can evaluate the effectiveness of their influencer marketing campaigns and identify areas for improvement.
Factors that affect engagement rates
Engagement rates reflect the level of interaction and responsiveness between influencers and their audience. Factors such as content quality, relevance to the target audience, content type, and follower count all have an impact. By understanding and optimizing these factors, brands, and influencers can enhance their strategies and achieve higher engagement rates, resulting in more successful influencer marketing campaigns.
Quality of content
The quality of an influencer’s content is one of the most critical factors affecting their engagement rates. High-quality content is more likely to engage followers, encourage them to interact with the influencer’s content and increase their likelihood of sharing it with their followers.
Influencers can improve the quality of their content by investing in high-quality visuals, incorporating informative and entertaining captions, and creating authentic content that aligns with their brand.
Relevance to the target audience
Another critical factor is the relevance of the content to the influencer’s target audience. The influencer’s content should align with their followers’ interests, values, and preferences. Since content creators are generally more in touch with their audience than the marketers who hire them is essential to consult with them on how to structure an effective brand collaboration.
Type of content
The type of content an influencer creates can also impact their engagement rates. The content should align with the influencer’s brand and interests while being relevant and engaging to their followers.
Concurrently different platforms promote different content in different ways: Instagram, until recently, had a preference for Reels, while LinkedIn favorites documents. Your campaign should keep in mind these differences to be able to create content that will perform best.
Size of following
The size of an influencer’s following can also impact their engagement rates. While big influencers with larger followings may have a broader reach, their engagement rates may be lower than micro-influencers or mid-tier influencers.
This is because smaller influencers often have a more loyal following, and their followers may feel a stronger connection to them. Brands can work with influencers of different sizes based on their marketing objectives and target audience.
Authenticity
Another factor that can affect engagement rates is the influencer’s authenticity. Followers can tell when an influencer is not genuine or promotes a brand or product that does not align with their values. Authenticity is crucial in influencer marketing, and influencers who are transparent and authentic in their content are more likely to build a loyal following highly reactive to their posts.
Brands can work with influencers who align with their values and ethos, ensuring the partnership feels authentic and genuine.
How to improve engagement rates in influencer marketing
Enhancing engagement rates is crucial in influencer marketing, as it determines the effectiveness of campaigns in capturing and retaining audience attention. Influencers can significantly improve engagement rates by engaging with followers, optimizing post timing, and collaborating with fellow influencers.
These strategies foster a deeper connection with the audience, increase content relevance, and expand reach, resulting in more successful influencer marketing campaigns.
Engaging with followers
Engagement is a two-way street, and influencers who actively engage with their followers can significantly improve their engagement rates. Responding to comments, addressing questions, and showing genuine interest in their audience’s opinions fosters community and connection.
Influencers can create a more interactive and engaging environment by initiating conversations, asking for feedback, and encouraging followers to participate. This increases engagement rates and strengthens the relationship between the influencer and their followers, fostering loyalty and advocacy.
Timing of posts
The timing of posts plays a crucial role in maximizing engagement rates. Influencers should analyze their audience’s behavior and identify the optimal times when their followers are most active on social media. By scheduling posts during these peak times, influencers can increase the visibility and likelihood of engagement with their content.
Collaborating with other influencers
Collaborating with other influencers is an effective strategy to boost engagement rates. By partnering with influencers who share a similar target audience or complement their niche, influencers can tap into a new pool of followers and expand their reach.
Collaborative content, such as joint videos, guest posts, or shoutouts, not only exposes the influencers to each other’s followers but also creates a sense of novelty and excitement. This often leads to increased engagement as followers are curious about the collaboration and eager to participate in the conversation.
Conclusion
In conclusion, engagement rates hold immense importance in influencer marketing. These rates serve as a vital metric to gauge the effectiveness and impact of influencer campaigns. Engagement rates provide valuable insights into content’s success and engagement levels by measuring the level of interaction and responsiveness between influencers and their audience.
High engagement rates indicate that influencers effectively connect with their audience, foster brand awareness, and drive meaningful actions such as likes, comments, and shares. Furthermore, engagement rates help brands assess influencer marketing campaigns’ return on investment (ROI) and make informed decisions about collaborations and content strategies.
With the ever-evolving social media landscape, authenticity and transparency will remain paramount. Audiences increasingly seek genuine connections and relatable content, leading to a shift towards micro-influencers offering niche expertise and more authentic engagements.
Additionally, as technology advances, metrics, and analytics tools will become more sophisticated in measuring engagement beyond likes and comments, incorporating qualitative factors such as sentiment analysis and feedback. Moreover, with the rise of emerging platforms and formats, influencers, and brands must adapt their strategies to optimize engagement rates in these new spaces.
In summary, engagement rates are a vital metric determining influencer marketing campaigns’ success and effectiveness. Influencers can continuously improve their engagement rates by emphasizing quality content, understanding the target audience, engaging with followers, optimizing post timing, collaborating with other influencers, and staying ahead of trends.
With the evolution of influencer marketing and the dynamic nature of social media platforms, influencers, and brands must remain adaptable and innovative to maximize engagement rates and achieve long-term success in the ever-evolving landscape of influencer marketing.
Davide
September 7, 2023
Guides
Mid-Level, ROI Measurement and Optimization
How To Get Results: Influencers And Pre-registration For Games Launch
Pre-registration campaigns for mobile games are more and more common. They rely on generating hype in communities connected with the game to drive interest and expectations about the game. Pre-registration campaigns connect with influencer marketing and social media user-generated content to expand the campaign’s reach further and show the community already built around it.
Why pre-registration and influencer marketing
Mobile games significantly benefit from pre-registration since it is an excellent way to stand out and incentivize potential players to get involved with the game from the beginning. Particularly in the case of games with prominent multiplayer features having a community involved right off the bat is going to be an essential part of the success of your project.
Influencer marketing uses influencers with online followings in relevant communities to promote your products or services less invasively than traditional publicity. Because influencer marketing relies on people who are organically followed and have built their reputation in a field, it can target particular niches and allow us to engage with them.
You can check out other ideas on combining gaming and influencer marketing here for the best results.
Define the right audience
Targeting the right audience should be one of the prime concerns of any marketer. And this includes the proper age group, interests, and even the right countries. A good target audience definition can create a successful marketing campaign. Defining the right target audience is especially important in a pre-registration campaign since it entirely relies on involving people with something that still needs to be released.
Pre-registration campaigns for mobile games are more and more common. They rely on generating hype in communities connected with gaming to drive interest and expectations about the upcoming release of a game.
However pre-registration campaigns are most effective when they’re not organized by themselves. By flanking it with the involvement of relevant influences is going to be possible to obtain a much greater audience involvement and reach.
Why pre-registration and influencer marketing
Mobile games benefit from pre-registration as a way to generate early interest in the launch, establish a community, and incentivize participation and interactions with other marketing initiatives. Particularly in the case of games with prominent multiplayer features a community involved right off the bat is going to be a huge help to the success of the project.
Influencer marketing uses influencers in relevant communities to promote products or services less invasively than other marketing channels. Because influencer marketing relies on people who are organically followed for their content and have built their reputation in a field, it can target particular niches and allow them to access these audiences and engage with them.
Combining a pre-registration campaign with influencers’ involvement is going to provide the best of both worlds and boost the success of the game launch.
But in order to do it right, there are a few things that need to be taken into consideration, in the following paragraphs we will illustrate step-by-step how to ace it.
You can check out other ideas on combining gaming and influencer marketing here for the best results.
Define the right audience
Targeting the right audience should be one of the prime concerns of any marketer. And this includes the proper age group, interests, and even the right countries. A good target audience definition can create a successful marketing campaign.
Both pre-registration and influencer marketing campaigns have a heavy emphasis on the audience. While pre-registration campaigns need to be finely tuned to speak to the right people, influencers are able to access highly segmented audiences allowing them to precisely target the campaign aim audience.
Once identified a target audience, it is time to go ahead and understand what will motivate them. Not all communities reply the same way to the same stimulus. For example, European gamers are more likely to pre-register for a game if a discount is involved, while APAC players may do so just to obtain exclusive in-game items. Giving your audience the right incentive is vital to engage the communities.
Once you have the target audience figured out, you can start working on finding influencers that will be able to effectively access it. Using services like CreatorDB will make it easy to individuate the right influencers for your campaign by browsing a large influencer database and being able to perform searches using advanced filtering options and parameters.
How to use influencers for boosting pre-registrations
As for the target audience is essential to have well-established the goals of your marketing campaign. In the case of a campaign aimed toward game pre-registration, it would mostly be done by setting a quota of users to pre-register. When picking influencers, there is a considerable debate about whether it is better to go with prominent names that hold accounts with millions of followers, small influencers with a few thousand followers, or something in the middle.
There are good reasons on both sides: more prominent creators bring your message in front of many more people at once but obtain a lower engagement rate on average, and small creators have fewer but much more dedicated followers.
Another significant difference is how smaller creators often cater toward more specialized niches while larger ones tend to attract much broader, less focused demographics. It is essential to consider that, especially if your marketing strategy wants to break through specific groups.
Learn everything you need to know about micro-influencers here.
But much of the decision should come down to which influencers are going to be able to better target your desired audience and achieve your goals.
Once chosen the influencers, think about your messaging strategy. Unlike other forms of advertising, influencer marketing is often discouraged from having a script set in stone that each creator should follow.
Many campaigns still want to keep a unified approach to their messaging and that is going to be important to ensure that everyone can easily recognize every piece of content as a part of the same campaign.
The messaging strategy should be able to create a connection between the influencers’ styles with the game branding and content.
By leaving the influencers enough creative freedom, they are able to craft messages that resonate with their fanbase better than any other message could.
How to launch a pre-registration campaign
Google Play allows games to be searchable in the app store and in pre-registration for up to 90 days, even if many large studios seem to be given extensions.
In general, a pre-registration campaign should be started 1 to 2 months before the launch of the game to be able to maintain the hype and excitement around the project.
Since the pre-registration campaign is a prolonged effort, it is important to be able to have a sustained push when it comes to marketing. Activating many relevant small content creators throughout the duration of the campaign is a perfect way to keep the target audience engaged with the game and aware of the launch.
Generate buzz through influencers to improve pre-registration
Pre-registration campaigns are proven to lead to higher daily installs and improved day-one to day-seven retention.
By promoting pre-registration through relevant influencers is possible to mobilize and engage with online communities. Doing so the marketing message would be amplified and have a great chance to gain traction.
In order to better attract interest and registrations is helpful to offer exclusive content or discounts for the ones that participate in the pre-registration. This approach can be taken a step further by including content tailored around the influencers’ likings or signature traits.
Including and encouraging user-generated content in your campaign is another good approach to extend the buzz around the campaign and boost audience involvement and community-building efforts.
Sharing early access or game demos with the influencers is another crucial way to generate hype around your game and drive in pre-registering users.
Showing off parts of your game can give your audience a sense of what will be and create excitement and anticipation.
Conclusion
In conclusion, a pre-registration marketing campaign can be an excellent tool for mobile game launch since it enhances the game’s visibility and works towards establishing a community around the game even before it has been found. They can be boosted by collaborating with influencers, which is especially important since they can work towards mobilizing online communities and groups to participate in your game or marketing campaign actively.
That’s why we at CreatorDB offer a series of services that can accommodate your needs: our proprietary software will help you identify the right influencers in no time. But if you are looking for a more hands-off approach, our agency team can deliver end-to-end influencer marketing campaigns across the globe. They flaunt expertise in 10 of the most spoken languages and are used to individuate contact and manage content creators for our clients. Contact us to learn more about what influencer marketing can do for you.
Davide
August 31, 2023
Industry Trends
Advanced Influencer Strategies, gaming, Mid-Level
6 Terrific Halloween Ideas for a Nightmare 2023 Influencer Campaign
Halloween: the holiday that millions celebrate across the world. There’s no doubt that everybody loves Halloween – make the most of this annual tradition by collaborating with influencers on Halloween-themed content! If you want to pumpkin-spice up your influencer marketing for Halloween this year, this is for you.
Why use influencer marketing during Halloween
Halloween is a prime moment to execute an influencer marketing campaign. As during other holidays, people are more likely to spend time on social media and engage with brands and they are prone to shop.
Moreover, Halloween is a very visual holiday: costumes and dressing up are a main part of it, and many will prepare decorations for the house and so on.
To find inspiration and tutorials many look to influencer content on social media making it a prime time for brands to organize partnerships and campaigns.
By partnering with influencers for a campaign around Halloween a brand will have access to a highly interested audience.
With the spooky season coming there are going to be many dedicated content categories that will emerge and that can be integrated with a marketing campaign.
In this article, we will introduce six content ideas for brands to use when partnering with influencers. Is always possible to mix and combine to create some unique approaches.
It’s all about the scare, cook or bake a scary treat!
Sweet treats are a hit all year round, so why not add a spooky edge to them this Halloween? Keep up with the trends by working with influencers who can show your audiences how to cook or bake a scary treat. Choose influencers who are up to the challenge!
Google-sponsored influencer Rosanna Pansino delivered exactly that with her last-minute recipe video – check it out!

Pumpkin season or ghost season? Show yourself carving a pumpkin!
There’s no surer sign that Halloween is coming than seeing jack-o’-lanterns everywhere! Carving pumpkins is synonymous with the spooky season, so select an influencer who can show their carving talent this.
Influencer DaveHax showed us how easy it is to put everyone in the right mood by carving jack-o’-lanterns.

Dress-up your fur babies this Halloween
Everybody loves fur babies! If your company offers products or services for pets, then this is the perfect time to partner with an influencer who can showcase the spookier side of their pets this season!
Take a look at YouTube influencer Stephanie Moratto, who is known to have a lot of fur babies and pets. Since she loves her pets, she grabbed this opportunity to dress up all of her dogs!

Spooky Halloween makeup
If your company is all about makeup, then partnering with a makeup guru is one of your best shots this Halloween! Choose an influencer who can show off your products as part of a makeup idea video.
Youtube star Stephanie Toms is an excellent makeup guru who came up with an excellent,scary looks!

DIY your terrifying Halloween decorations
You can foster creativity and imagination by partnering with content creators who focus on how to make your own decorations for a haunting party!

Mix Fun and Terror
Collaborate with content creators in the costuming scene to find and show how Halloween can be also a moment for laughs.
@rosannapansino
My best Halloween Costume yet! What are you going to BEE this year? 🐝 #fyp #halloween #halloweencostume #funny #tiktokhalloween
♬ original sound – Rosanna Pansino

Davide
August 29, 2023
Industry Trends
Advanced Influencer Strategies, Mid-Level
Influencer Analytics: The Practical Social Media Insights For Marketing
Analytics will fuel any of your marketing campaigns, and this is especially true regarding influencer marketing over Instagram, TikTok, or any social media.
Influencer marketing shares many analytics with other forms of marketing but it also developed its own influencer analytics that especially captures the nuanced nature of influencer marketing.
Oftentimes people who have limited knowledge of influencer marketing see it as an area where the data are scarce and difficult to track.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. Social media log any action and give the possibility to quantify almost every interaction with posts and content.
Why Analytics Matter in Influencer Marketing
Analytics are the backbone of any marketing campaign.
When it comes to influencer marketing there are a myriad of analytics that become involved. Some are useful before the campaign, some are to be looked at during it, and others gain more importance afterward.
Different analytics can help different stages of the campaign process and is important to be able to master them all.
Key Metrics in Influencer Analytics
Three main areas should be clear when discussing influencers analytics: engagement, demographics, and conversions.
While many other analytics can be used at different points to gauge the viability and effectiveness of a campaign, these three should always be kept in consideration.
Engagement Rates: The Heartbeat of Influence
Engagement rate combines the interaction to a post(or a series of posts) received and puts it in proportion to the influencer’s following. This way is possible to gauge how committed and passionate is the influencer’s audience.
Engagement rate is a more in-depth measure compared to followers count since it also takes into account the level of interaction the followers have with the creator.
Is also a more difficult measure to fake leading to an easier time to weed out malicious actors.
Engagement Rate Formula
Audience Demographics: Unveiling Consumer Insights
One of the most advantageous things in influencer marketing is the possibility of really knowing the audience that is being reached.
Social media platforms in many cases provide influencers with a breakdown of their following based on three main components: Gender, Location, and Age Groups.
Gender
Very simply, which percentage of the audience is male, and which ratio is female. Since in many online communities, males are the significant majority, gender can be expressed as % of females. If your products are explicitly targeting one gender, this is a critical metric to keep in mind.
Location
Where the audience is located. If your product requires shipping or localized versions, this is very important to keep in mind.
Age Groups
Age groups are often presented as a bar graph and show the distribution of an influencer audience by age. Generally, age groups are 13-18, 19-24, 25-30, 31-40, 41-50, 50-65, and 65+. Age data are particularly beneficial to evaluate the interests and income levels of an audience, but also combined with location and gender can be used to better understand if a creator audience fits your desired customer persona.
Demographic Panel on CreatorDB
Conversion Tracking: From Awareness to Action
Conversions are the most direct way to track ROI in influencer marketing.
It represents the number of people who bought your product directly from a given influencer or clicked on the link promoted. Conversions can be easily tracked by providing each influencer with personalized trackable links.
Choosing the Right Influencers: A Data-Driven Approach
Analytics are especially important when is time to pick the influencers for a campaign.
Many of the metrics to look at in this phase are what make each influencer unique and are going to shape the results of the campaign.
Not all the analytics you want to look at in this phase are purely numeric: the kind of content and area of relevance is something of prime importance that needs to be evaluated qualitatively.
Other important factors in choosing influencers to partner with are: reach, the kind of engagement that the influencer is getting, and its various growth rates.
Relevance
To strike the right cords with the audience is not enough to craft a good influencer campaign, it’s especially important to pick the right content creators to partner with.
Their content and values need to align with the brand and the collaboration should be enhancing both parts.
To grasp the relevance of an influencer is important to look at the themes of its content and compare them with the interests of the target audience.
Reach
Reach indicates two things:
1. the actual reach: the number of unique users that see a post from an influencer
2. the potential reach: more like the expected number of people that would see a post.
In the first case, social media provides influencers with reach data telling them how many people have seen or interacted with a post. Higher numbers generally translate into higher engagement.
The second interpretation of reach is, crudely, just the number of followers an influencer has since you can expect that number of users to see their post.
Quality of Engagement
The engagement rate can be calculated in a few different ways depending on what matters for the campaign.
Commonly it uses the aggregated number of interactions divided by the followers to grasp the level of the response to an influencer post.
But certain campaigns may prefer one metric (for example comments) over another (for example shares). Tweaking the formula by weighting one interaction more than the other, or just excluding the markers that are not relevant is possible to obtain derivation of the engagement rate that reflects what are the campaign goals.
Growth Rate
The growth rate captures the pace at which an influencer’s following is growing and is generally calculated monthly but could also be done yearly or any other time frame.
A high growth rate can be highly beneficial to a marketing campaign since it means that even while partnering with the same influencer, the people seeing your sponsored content grow over time.
Growth Rate Formula
Measuring Campaign Effectiveness
Many of the influencers’ analytics can be used to predict or measure the effectiveness of a campaign.
Different metrics can be used to understand the impact of the campaign at different points.
Before the Campaign
It’s important to predict the effectiveness of a campaign even before it is launched.
While it will never be a 100% accurate prediction, it will give a ballpark about how the campaign will perform.
Metrics like reach, engagement, and impressions can be estimated by looking at historical data from the same influencer for similar pieces of content.
Such projections are useful for estimating the Cost Per Thousand (CPM) of the campaign.
If the creators are compensated with a performance-based type of deal this is a viable way to estimate the expense.
How to calculate CPM
CPM-based payments are a common solution especially when it comes to YouTube integrations since views can be easily obtained and allow one to grasp the reach of the ad.
Calculating CPM is simple: is only needed the campaign cost and the number of impressions received. Dividing the cost of the campaign by the number of impressions will lead to knowing the cost of each single impression, which should be very low. Multiplying that result by 1000 will give the CPM or the cost for a thousand impressions.
Cost Per Thousand Formula
Learn everything you need to know about CPM with our guide
During the Campaign
Social media’s fast-paced data turnover allows marketers to keep a constant eye on how a campaign is performing.
Calculating the engagement rate and keeping track of the conversions identifies different content performances and how they impact the campaign.
Brand mentions are also an important part of the in-campaign monitoring that every brand should be doing.
They can be calculated as how often a company is directly tagged in posts and comments on social media.
But it’s often important to also keep track of reviews and articles on other platforms. By periodically checking for brand mentions, it’s easy to keep in touch with how the public perceives the company. It allows one to break through the bubble that may have been built around your accounts by the sponsored content.
After the Campaign
Once the campaign has wrapped up, there are many useful analytics that can be collected and used to understand the impact.
Earned Media Value (EMV) estimates the word of mouth generated by any influencer post. It starts from engagement and quantifies the value of the content created in your brand community.
Earned Media Value Formula
The adjustable variable is going to be what you are tracking: Impressions, Likes, Comments, and so on.
Similarly, the Click Through Rate is a simple way to understand how effective a sponsored post is to bring a viewer to go further than the post and click the link.
Click Through Rate Formula
Finally, a well-thought-out campaign is going to bring interest to the brand-owned channels.
Growing a following on the accounts directly controlled by the brand is going to bring more people within their reach and help with further marketing efforts.
Therefore, comparing following and engagement with the brand account before and after the influencer campaign is an extra analytic to keep in consideration.
Conclusion
Keeping track of the right analytics at the right time is going to make a huge difference for any influencer campaign.
While originally influencer marketing was seen as a shady and difficult-to-track approach to marketing in the current state of social media is very easy to keep in check all the parameters that matter.
Davide
August 24, 2023
Guides
Basics of Influencer Marketing, Entry level
5 Reliable Tips To Empower Your Influencer Marketing Campaign
Influencer marketing campaigns are a flexible tool that can be shaped to achieve a number of different marketing goals. They are cost-effective and extremely personalizable both for aims and delivery methods.
But many companies are still reluctant to use influencers, this is especially true with small to medium-sized brands which would have some of the biggest advantages to use influencers.
With this article, we want to shed some light on 5 aspects of influencer marketing and show how it is a viable option for many brands out there.
1. Define Your Goals Clearly
Every marketing campaign should have clear and measurable goals defined before it starts running.
As long as they are based on measurable goals broken down into measurable steps to achieve them, influencer marketing can be used to pursue any goal.
The most common goals for influencer marketing campaigns are:
Understanding how influencers can help reach these goals will make it easy to create clear measurable goals for your brand and ace your next campaign.
1.1 Increasing Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is often a nebulous concept that gets used to vaguely explain a lot of likes/views on social media but not as many sales.
But that does not have to be the case. Brand awareness is a real thing and is extremely important for new and emerging brands.
By partnering with creators brands can introduce their products to new people and start establishing their name in the minds of possible customers.
Most customers require more than one touchpoint to make a purchase and having your product introduced by someone that the audience finds trusted and reliable is a great way to start this process.
Brand awareness is often calculated from the number of impressions a post receives. But can be also considered the increase of followers on a brand-owned social media or the brand mentions.
Campaigns that aim to increase brand awareness should maximize reach over any other objective and possibly do so by creating expectations and curiosity around the product.
1.2 Driving Sales and Conversions
Sales are the most direct measure of a campaign’s success. They bring to the brand tangible resources and show how the audience they targeted is directly interested in the product.
While easy-to-track sales can be more tricky to directly stimulate.
But influencer marketing can provide unconventional ways to boost your sales.
Many influencers are authorities in their niche, they grow their following by presenting their audience with valuable information and content related to their interests.
Partnering with well-known content creators in your brand’s niche will introduce your product to an interested audience and show it as a reliable product.
1.3 Enhance online presence
One’s online presence and reach are most commonly evaluated by the number of followers on social media and how the followers are engaged with the posts published.
Influencers can be an amazing tool to improve reach and engagement. Social media take over and campaigns that foster participation can drive a lot of traffic to a brand’s social channels.
2. Choose the Right Influencers
Influencers are not all the same, each one of them is slightly different and caters to a unique audience.
Therefore, when creating an influencer marketing campaign is important to select carefully which influencers to partner with.
In the early days, follower count was all that mattered; nowadays, it has been replaced by taking into consideration metrics that more closely reflect the campaign results.
Here are three tips for picking the right influencer:
2.1 Authenticity Matters
Being authentic is a highly debate characteristic in the days of Photoshop and beautifying filters. But more than how an image can be authentic or not you want to focus on the message.
Many influencers gained notoriety by showing their true colors and it created a deep connection with their audience.
Being able to identify and partner with those content creators who are the genuine faces in your niche is going to lend credibility to your product and help its penetration in the market.
2.2 Engagement Over Follower Count
How useful is a huge number of followers if they don’t engage with the content published?
Not much.
That’s why you should not only look at the follower count but also take into consideration metrics like engagement rate, sentiment, and historical trends.
A large following still has utility, especially if the campaign is aiming at increasing brand awareness or reaching a completely new audience.
When a campaign aim to improve sales, an engaged audience is more likely to bring positive results.
2.3 Micro-influencers
Micro-influencers incarnate the two previously mentioned points:
1. they are authentic
2. they put engagement over follower count.
Micro-influencers cater to niches of content that are often very segmented and allow them to target highly specific audiences.
Due to the small size of their following, they often have a much closer and more personal relationship with their fans. Due to this connection, followers are likely to trust them more and see their opinions and suggestions like one of their close friends.
3. Craft Engaging Content
Ads on many other mediums are often crafted to tend to a generalist audience, trying to catch the attention of as many people as possible. But with influencers, there is already a self-selection of the audience.
A successful campaign needs to combine the understanding the influencers have of their audience with the brand personality in an almost seamless manner.
3.1 Brainstorm with your influencers
First and foremost, influencers understand their audiences well.
Therefore, it’s recommended to include them in the process of crafting the campaign messaging and modes of delivery.
Brands should limit their intervention to establishing overarching themes, while delivery and artistic ideas should be reserved for creators.
3.2 Visual Storytelling
Social media are largely visual first platforms, when creating an influencer campaign be aware of these details.
A campaign that involves multiple influencers across different platforms should still be easily recognized as such just by taking a look at it.
Creating a framework to operate in is a great way for brands to have influencers on the same wavelength.
Shared details like ad structure, ways to introduce the product, color scheme, etc. help the customers to easily remember the products and create a stronger connection with them.
3.3 Interesting and Informative Content
Influencers are not spokespersons, they don’t exist only to promote brands.
Their appeal is largely due to them bringing interesting and informative content to their audience.
Likewise, a marketing campaign should be aimed at bringing value to them.
The customer should have the feeling to have gotten something out of the ad even before purchasing the good.
4. Establish Clear Guidelines
Creators can be difficult to work with especially when it’s the first time.
Miscommunications are often the spark to attrition.
While in most cases they are not deal breakers and are made in good faith these issues are still an annoyance to deal with. Luckily they can be avoided just by implementing two simple mechanisms:
4.1 Brief the influencers
Before the creators start to work on their deliverables make sure to explain to them the campaign, what is expected, and the final goal.
Make clear which parts of the campaign have to be strictly implemented and where they can use a major degree of freedom.
Having everyone aware of limits and flexible points is going to help the campaign run smoothly without requiring too much back and forth between the brand and creators.
4.2 Collaboration, Not Control
Ultimately brands want to partner with influencers not only for their platform but also for their style, and the ability to convey messages.
Therefore, partnerships should be imprinted toward collaboration: including their inputs and style in the campaign is going to enhance the results all while giving it an exclusive touch.
5. Measure and Optimize
Many think that influencer marketing lacks ways to measure its impact but that is just because they never looked into it well enough.
As with every other form of marketing, influencer marketing goals and results can be tracked, and since all actions on social media are recorded it is even simpler than with other mediums.
With this level of information, it is also simple to understand on the fly how things are going and focus on what works.
5.1 Analyzing Key Metrics
If the goals have been established correctly it is easy to know what metrics are important and need to be kept in mind.
This way a campaign can be tracked minute by minute showing easily how different factors influence the result.
5.2 Continuous Improvement
By keeping track of the results in real-time a campaign can be stirred in a more favorable direction.
Campaigns can commit to different approaches at the same time initially but focus only on the winning ones when the data comes in.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing campaigns have at times a bad name because of a lack of understanding of what influencer marketing can really bring to the table.
With our 5 tips, we wanted to prove that influencer marketing is a great tool for brands once is understood and campaigns are crafted keeping in mind the strengths and weaknesses of it.
Davide
August 23, 2023
Guides
Campaign Management, Entry level
Partnering with Influencers Made Easy: 7 Essential Strategies
Introduction
Social media are the main tool to discover and research new products and services. And influencer marketing is necessary for brands that want to establish themselves. While crafting and executing influencer marketing campaigns is quite simple contacting and partnering with influencers can be hard and complicated, at least the first few times.
In this article, we will present 7 tips for you to partner with influencers confidently and with a valuable offer for both parties.
Influencer marketing campaign workflow
Campaign Ideation
Influencer marketing campaigns are born out of the drawing table of a brand or an agency. Starting by individuating an area that would need improvements, often sales or brand awareness. The team will come up with a strategy to tackle the issue that involves collaborating with influencers. The strategy should also outline what are the KPIs that mark its success.
Creator research and outreach
Identifying the right influencers is going to be the next step. It can be done fast and accurately with tools like CreatorDB’s Advanced Search.
After having shortlisted a few potential influencers to collaborate with comes the outreach phase. The campaign idea is pitched to them and it can develop into a negotiation around compensation and objectives.
Campaign execution
Once an agreement has been reached is time for the content creators to prepare the deliverables for the campaign. This moment generally includes a series of revisions of the content from the brand or agency in order to make sure the content fits with the brand image.
When the content is satisfying for all the parties it gets published and comes the time to track the campaign.
Goal tracking
Monitoring results and engagement in order to evaluate KPIs accomplishment.
Based on the content performances many brands will start considering certain influencers for long-term collaborations.
How to create a killer influencer marketing campaign?
In a sense influencer marketing campaigns truly embody McLuhan’s famous phrase “The medium is the message”. Because they connect customers, and brands through influencers these campaigns need to take into account the specificities of each influencer.
Differently from every other advertising medium-influencer have their own preferences and style. And they should all be taken into account when deciding about the collaboration.
The unique style of a creator should never be seen as a detriment to the campaign but as a strength to empower the message.
If a brand understands the unicity and potential of the creators they are partnering with they can easily incorporate it into their influencer marketing campaign. Creating a more engaging and captivating experience for potential customers.
Why partnering with influencers can be difficult
Influencers per se are not difficult to find, just looking at the discovery page of Instagram you may see tens of them. But finding the right ones for a brand is a more complicated task. Following numbers are not enough, there is a need for a convergence of values, fields of expertise, and much more.
And after having found the right ones, many influencers may be reluctant to partner with a brand that they are not sure they can trust. They are going to present it to their audience and one wrong collaboration can break the trust that is established between them.
1 – Find common values and interests
When partnering with influencers, the first aspect to look at is shared values.
Before considering partnering with any influencer a brand should do its due diligence. Look at the content the influencer has created. Have an idea of their style and tone, and evaluate how it fits with the brand image.
By getting familiar with the creator’s content is also possible to individuate common values and interests. Having overlapping interests is a great starter for collaboration.
Once the common points are found be mindful to include them in the pitch and explain how they are important for the campaign, this is going to make the partnership feel the fruit of a common vision.
2 – Collaborate with experts
Prominent members of an industry or experts on a specific matter are often also influencers that have created a following around themselves. By partnering with them, it is possible to foster a deep relationship between thought leadership and the brand.
Sponsoring industry-related events, papers, and research is a longly-established practice that can help to bring a brand’s name to the forefront.
Similarly, this can be done on social media through partnerships with industry leaders and experts.
Organizing virtual panels and roundtables is a great way to offer not only brand exposure but also influencers the possibility to present their expertise and network.
While unconventional, it offers the possibility to present the brand as dedicated to the furthering of the industry and wanting to engage in serious discussions.
3 – Include social value
Leaving a positive impact is always a great incentive. Connecting a campaign to a tangible and positive impact in the real world is going to provide ulterior incentives to the content creators to participate.
Showing interest and support for causes a creator sides with is going to create a more favorable image in the minds of the creator and its audience.
4 – Make a compelling offer
Content creators and influencers, as many others don’t want to work for free. Be sure to be respectful of their time and craft by offering fair compensation for their job.
Many expect content creators to work in exchange for free products or services, and while it is true in some cases it is not the norm.
Compensation for influencers can follow a few different models:
- Flat rate, where the total price is established beforehand and performances are not going to affect it.
- Results-based, which can use indicators like views and likes multiplied for a flat rate to price the content the base of its achievement.
- Commission-based, the creator is going to receive a percentage for each sale that is directly traceable to them.
- A mixed rate is generally configurated as a flat rate plus a results bonus for the reaching of certain levels on the likes, views, or conversions.
Monetary incentives are the most direct and obvious but in certain cases focusing on other perks can also be powerful motivators.
Exclusive access to products, custom modifications, and other similar approaches can be very enticing for creators in your industry.
5 – Creative Content Synergy
Don’t limit yourself to integrations or standard content formats. Each creator has their own voice and a way to express themselves and integrate them into your marketing campaign.
By proposing ideas that are fitting the influencer content style is going to be more likely to be accepted and to have delivered a campaign that is truly effective.
Combining the influencer’s style with the brand goals is going to deliver a campaign that resonates authentic and genuine.
6 – Long-Term Relationship Building
The possibility of long-term collaboration is going to show dedication and support to the influencers involved
While many companies prefer one-off collaboration, the real value of influencers is in the long game. Showing true interest in partnering with them, not just for brief access to their audience, is going to be a great signal about your brand’s commitment.
Developing long-lasting relationships is not only cheaper but is also a strong signal to the audience of those influencers. It shows commitment to the collaboration beyond immediate sales and support for the creator’s values.
Not every influencer a brand partners with should become brand ambassador, but there should be a clear idea of what would constitute a good candidate.
7 – Staying open about expectations and deliverables.
Content creators may have ideas about how to deliver your message in the best possible way.
They know their audience better than anyone else and their whole career is based on creating content that resonates with them.
By discussing expectations and deliverables details is possible to obtain concepts that better fit the specifics of a creator’s audience.
It can also be a very important part of how KPIs are identified and calculated.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing is a powerful tool that can help most brands to establish themselves. To do it correctly is important to consider the influencers themselves for what they are: people passionate about certain topics and able to gain attention around them.
Finding influencers with common values, including a social value in the campaign, and establishing a content strategy that is mindful of their unique characteristics are great steps to make it easier for an influencer to accept a partnership and see the value also for themselves in it.
A fair remuneration, the possibility of long-term relationships, and openness to inputs on the campaign results and contents are all aspects that will help to have good and healthy connections that not only promote sales but also boost the brand image.
Davide
August 16, 2023
Guides
Basics of Influencer Marketing, Entry level
What is Social Commerce and its Impact on Shopping
The rise of social media has revolutionized the way we connect and has had a significant impact on the way we shop. Social commerce, integrating social media and e-commerce, has emerged as a powerful force in the retail industry, transforming how consumers interact with brands and make purchase decisions.
The importance of this evolution in online shopping cannot be overstated. 30% of online shoppers will likely purchase from a social media platform, with Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest currently being the primary outlets for social commerce.
One of the key drivers of social commerce is influencer marketing, which involves partnering with influential individuals on social media to promote products and services. Influencer marketing has become integral to social commerce since 1 in 2 customers rely on influencer recommendations for their purchases.
Influencer marketing has proven highly effective in promoting brands and products.
A survey conducted by Mediakix found that 89% of marketers believe that influencer marketing ROI is comparable to or better than other marketing channels. As such, influencer marketing has become a significant focus for brands looking to tap into the power of social commerce.
This article will explore social commerce and how it shapes online shopping. We will also delve into the role of influencer marketing in social commerce and examine its impact on how consumers interact with brands and make purchasing decisions.
What is social commerce?
Social commerce is the fusion of social media and e-commerce, allowing consumers to shop and purchase within social media feeds. It involves leveraging social media platforms to promote and sell products, provide customer support, and build brand awareness.
It differs from traditional e-commerce because it integrates social media platforms and networks into the shopping experience. Customers can browse products, receive recommendations, and purchase without leaving their social media feeds.
The growth of social commerce
According to a study done by McKinsey, the worldwide social commerce market is expected to reach $80 billion in the US and $2 Trillion worldwide in 2025.
In 2022 63.5 million US shoppers made a purchase through Facebook, crowning it as the most popular platform in the US. By 2025 they are projected to be 69 million shoppers on the platform.
In China, live streaming shopping has become a $171 billion market in just three years.
Along with the growth of social commerce we can see AR and VR growing hand in hand, with AR being expected to pass 100 million users by 2024.
Along with sales and users social commerce is also carrying the growth of live streaming and AR/VR by them being fundamental parts of the trend. In the future, we will see new components that allow brand and user to interact and get closer.
Social commerce platforms
Many social media are introducing social commerce features.
For example, Instagram’s shopping feature allows brands to tag products in their posts, making it easy for users to click through to purchase pages and complete transactions.
But also TikTok and Facebook are moving in a similar direction, implementing ways for brands to sell from their feed directly. While established e-commerce websites like Amazon and Shopee are introducing social features to capture momentum and improve time on the platform.
TikTok is leading the charge in organic trends with #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt, a viral hashtag that gathered over 50 billion views and combined social proof and FOMO to encourage customers to try out new products.
Social commerce VS e-commerce
Social commerce provides a range of benefits for brands and consumers alike. It allows brands to build stronger customer relationships, increase brand visibility, and drive sales.
Another advantage is that it enhances trust and credibility. By leveraging the power of social proof and user-generated content, brands can build trust and credibility with customers. Social proof and trust are critical in an era where consumers are increasingly skeptical of traditional marketing tactics and demand brand authenticity and transparency.
Finally, customers partake in a more engaging and interactive shopping experience. By leveraging the power of social media, brands can interact with customers in real time, provide customer support, and build stronger relationships.
Personalized and interactive connections enhance the shopping experience and increase customer loyalty and retention.
Social commerce represents a significant shift in how consumers shop and interact with brands. Integrating social media and e-commerce provides a more personalized, engaging, and convenient shopping experience that meets the needs and expectations of modern consumers.
How social commerce is shaping online shopping
Social commerce is having a profound impact on online shopping behavior, driving increased sales and customer loyalty. Here are some of the key ways is shaping online shopping:
Increased conversion rates
One of the primary reasons is that social commerce allows customers to shop in a more relaxed and social environment, where they can connect with friends, family, and other shoppers—not feeling the pressure of deciding and allowing them to ask for familiar people’s opinions easily.
Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest offer a range of features that enable customers to browse and buy products directly from their feeds. These platforms also provide social proof through likes, comments, and shares, which can influence customers’ buying decisions.
For example, when a customer sees that a product has been liked and shared by many people, they are likelier to trust and buy it themselves.
Another way leads to increased conversion rates is by providing customers with a more personalized shopping experience. Social media platforms collect data on users’ browsing and purchasing habits, allowing them to show customers products and ads more relevant to their interests and preferences. Social commerce can significantly increase conversion rates and drive sales by offering customers products they are more likely to buy.
Higher customer retention rates
Social media platforms offer numerous opportunities for businesses to interact and engage with their customers, which can lead to stronger relationships and increased customer loyalty.
By leveraging social commerce, companies can create a more personalized and interactive shopping experience for their customers, improving their overall satisfaction and likelihood of returning to make future purchases.
One way that helps in customer retention is through social media marketing campaigns that focus on building brand awareness and engagement.
By consistently providing valuable content and responding to customer inquiries and feedback, businesses can foster community and trust with their audience. This, in turn, can lead to increased customer loyalty and retention.
Additionally, social commerce allows businesses to collect valuable data about their customers’ shopping behavior and preferences.
By analyzing this data, companies can gain insights into their customers’ needs and want and tailor their marketing and sales strategies accordingly. This can help create a more personalized shopping experience for each customer, increasing their loyalty and likelihood of returning to make future purchases.
Improved customer engagement
Social commerce can also enhance customer engagement, vital for building long-lasting customer relationships.
Businesses can interact with customers in real-time by leveraging social media platforms and creating a two-way communication channel. This allows businesses to address customer concerns and queries, offer personalized product recommendations, and respond to feedback promptly.
Additionally, social commerce allows customers to share their purchase experiences and product reviews on social media, which can increase brand visibility and credibility.
Social media platforms also effectively create a sense of community among customers.
Businesses can build a loyal customer base invested in their brand.
They can create exclusive social media groups or pages for customers to share their experiences and connect with other like-minded individuals.
Furthermore, businesses can use social media to run contests, quizzes, and other interactive campaigns to keep customers engaged and interested in their brand. These efforts can lead to higher engagement rates, stronger customer relationships, and increased sales.
Emergence of new sales channels
Social commerce has given rise to new sales channels, such as live streaming and shoppable videos, which are becoming increasingly popular among consumers.
Live streaming enables retailers to showcase their products in real-time and interact with customers through live chat. This creates a sense of urgency and excitement, encouraging customers to purchase.
Live streaming also allows retailers to build a deeper connection with their audience, which can increase brand loyalty and drive repeat purchases.
Shoppable videos, on the other hand, allow customers to shop directly from the video they are watching.
This creates a seamless and engaging shopping experience where customers can discover products while watching their favorite content. This type of content is highly shareable on social media platforms, which can help drive brand awareness and attract new customers.
By leveraging these new sales channels, retailers can increase their reach and revenue while providing an innovative shopping experience for their customers.
Use of augmented reality and virtual reality
Social commerce has also paved the way for using augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) in commerce.
AR and VR are technologies that can provide customers with an immersive shopping experience, allowing them to virtually try on products and see how they would look or fit before making a purchase. This creates a more engaging and interactive experience for customers, which can increase their likelihood of making a purchase.
AR and VR technology can also be used to enhance product descriptions and give customers a better understanding of the product they are interested in.
For example, a furniture store could use AR to show customers how a particular piece of furniture would look in their home, while a fashion retailer could use VR to create a virtual fitting room where customers can see how different outfits would look on them.
This technology provides customers with a more personalized shopping experience and increases the likelihood of a successful purchase. As a result, more and more retailers are incorporating AR and VR into their social commerce strategies to stay ahead of the curve and provide a unique shopping experience for their customers.
Rise of social media marketplaces
Social commerce has also led to the rise of social media marketplaces. With the popularity of social media platforms, users increasingly want to use these platforms to discover and purchase products. Social media marketplaces provide consumers with a convenient and seamless shopping experience, enabling them to browse and purchase products directly on the platform without leaving the app.
Social media marketplaces provide businesses with a new avenue for reaching their target audience and driving sales.
By listing their products on social media marketplaces, businesses can tap into these platforms’ massive user base and leverage social media advertising’s targeting capabilities to reach their ideal customers.
Moreover, social media marketplaces often offer built-in tools for businesses to manage their inventory, track sales, and handle customer service, making it easier for them to manage their online presence and grow their business.
Overall, the rise of social media marketplaces represents a significant opportunity for both businesses and consumers in the social commerce landscape.
Learn more about influencers and e-commerce trends in our deep-d ive article.
Influencer marketing and social commerce
Influencer marketing is a crucial driver of social commerce, as it involves partnering with influential individuals on social media to promote products and services. Influencers are typically individuals with large followings on social media platforms, such as Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.
By leveraging their influence and reach, brands can reach new audiences and build brand awareness more authentically and engagingly.
One of the critical advantages of influencer marketing is that it allows brands to tap into the power of social proof. By partnering with influencers who have established trust and credibility with their followers, brands can leverage their influence to promote products and services more authentically and engagingly.
This can increase brand visibility, higher engagement, and more sales.
Another advantage of influencer marketing is that it allows brands to reach niche audiences that may need help to target through traditional advertising channels.
By partnering with influencers who have established themselves as experts in a particular niche or industry, brands can reach highly engaged audiences more likely to be interested in their products or services.
In addition, influencer marketing allows brands to create more engaging and shareable content. By partnering with influencers with a strong creative vision and a deep understanding of their audience, brands can create content that resonates with their target audience and encourages sharing and engagement.
Overall, influencer marketing is critical in social commerce, providing brands with an effective way to reach new audiences, build trust and credibility, and drive sales. However, it is important for brands to approach influencer marketing with a strategic mindset and to choose which creators to partner with carefully.
How to find the right influencer with CreatorDB
Head to the CreatorDB app and on the main page select “Advanced Search”.
On the left of the search page, you can customize all the parameters you need to find the perfect influencer. Most commonly you may want to narrow done the geography and language of a the creators shown as well as their content category.
After hitting search you will obtain a list of all the creators fitting your criteria. You can click on each one of them to see their page, there you will find detailed analytics, historical trends, and their content sentiment analysis among many other useful information.
Once you found an influencer that fits your brand you can save it in a group and go ahead and look for more to contact and pitch your campaign to.
Conclusion
In conclusion, social commerce transforms how we shop and interact with brands. Provides customers with a more personalized, engaging, and convenient shopping experience while offering numerous benefits for brands, including increased customer loyalty and retention, improved conversion rates, and new sales channels.
Influencer marketing is a crucial component of social commerce, allowing brands to tap into the power of social proof and user-generated content to build trust and credibility with customers. As this trend continues to grow, brands that successfully leverage the power of influencer marketing will be well-positioned to succeed in the modern retail landscape.
Davide
August 9, 2023
Industry Trends
Emotions, Influencer Marketing Strategy, Instagram, Macro-Influencers, Micro-influnecer, Social Commerce, TikTok
AI Influencers: What They Are And How To Use Them
Introduction
AI influencers are here, but they are not going to take over and completely replace human influencers. Still, if you are a marketer, is important that you keep up with this trend and know how working with virtual influencers can boost your marketing results.
AI influencers, sometimes referred to as virtual influencers are a particular type of influencers that emerged in recent years.
Their appearances are virtually generated and their posts are curated by a team of experts.
With AI tools becoming an integral part of our lives and making it easier and easier to generate entirely synthetic content, AI influencers are becoming increasingly common.
In this article, we will discuss the history of AI influencers, their impact on influencer marketing, and their future trajectory.
What Are AI Influencers?
AI influencers are an improper term in the sense that as of now none of them is AI-powered: their images are generated using AI technology or good old CGI but their interactions are managed by a human team.
Nonetheless, many of these influencers use AI as part of their narrative: LilMiquela and many others include AI in their name or bio to create a narrative of high tech and sophistication around their character.
Currently, the closest to a true AI influencer is Kuki which is integrated with an advanced chatbot and offers the possibility to talk with Kuki herself.
What’s the history of AI influencers
The concept of AI influencers can be traced back to the early 2010s, with the creation of virtual characters for gaming and entertainment purposes. As AI and computer graphics advanced, these characters became more sophisticated, leading to the birth of virtual influencers.
The above-mentioned Lil Miquela is considered the first hyperrealistic AI influencer and at the time of her release in 2016, there was a major debate about if was a real person or not.
Many brands have developed their own AI influencers starting from their mascots. The most successful is CB de Casa Bahia, the face of a major retail brand in Brazil with over 10 million followers.
While initially AI was just in the name while the images were CGI creations in the past year, with the explosion in popularity of stable diffusion and generative AI, have emerged profiles like Milla Sofia whose images are generated by an AI model.
With the advancement of generative AI, virtual influencers will become more and more integrated with the real world and offer a more engaging experience to fans.
Why Some Brands Choose AI influencers over human content creators
According to Influencer Marketing Hub data, 59.8% of marketing professionals have worked with AI influencers, and another 15.5% are planning to do so in the future. Over 60% of the ones that had collaborations with virtual influencers consider themselves satisfied.
These data are encouraging for the future development of AI influencers and show how brands are interested in experimenting with new and innovative ways to reach their customers.
virtual influencers offer a unique appeal to brands as they allow brands to maintain complete control over the messaging and branding. Also since they don’t have an existence outside of social media they are very unlikely to be caught in scandals or controversies.
Since AI influencers don’t exist as people outside of their social media feed but they are managed by a team of professionals it is easier to have them allying with the specifics of a marketing campaign.
How to use AI influencers in your marketing campaign
The data about the effectiveness of AI influencers are still non definitive but what can be seen is that similarly to human influencers the fit with the product is the most important factor for a successful campaign.
Audiences enjoy the innovation of AI influencers but they often still find human influencers more relatable and are more likely to be purchasing an ad involving a human influencer.
Still, virtual influencers are a great way for brands that want to show an innovative image and place themselves at the forefront of a trend that is not going to stop.
Hugo Boss Rebranding (2022)
In the spring of 2022, the 98-year-old brand Hugo Boss underwent a huge rebranding effort in order to increase its appeal to the younger generations. The campaign included many traditional influencers like Kendall Jenner and Hailey Bieber.
Along with them, they partnered with Nobody Sausage and Imma two of the largest AI influencers around. Integrating virtual influencers in the rebrand was a powerful signal that the future of Hugo Boss is going to be focusing on tech and innovation.
Showing themselves embracing new and emerging trends even older and more traditional brands can showcase a vibrant spirit that is going to appeal to the young crowd.
Miquela for Samsung
Miquela Sousa has collaborated with prestigious brands such as Calvin Klein, UGG, Prada, and many others. Among her exceptional work, one particular paid sponsorship stands out her collaboration with Samsung’s #TeamGalaxy.
The fusion of Miquela’s self-proclaimed robotic identity with advanced technology, like the latest Samsung phone, is a match made in digital heaven. Miquela Sousa’s presence as a virtual influencer has redefined the concept of brand ambassadorship.
With her captivating persona and futuristic identity, she brings a unique allure to the brands she collaborates with. By leveraging Miquela’s influence, Samsung has effectively connected with a tech-savvy audience and embraced the essence of modernity, ultimately enhancing their brand image.

Noonoouri for Dior
In 2018 Noonoouri substituted Natalie Portman in the Dior “Rogue” campaign. With her cartoonish appearance and exaggerated eyes, Noonoouri was a huge break for her predecessor.
The commercial copied the original, with Noonoouri dancing while applying makeup. While it would be a standard ad for the cosmetics industry the use of an AI influencer is creating a sense of novelty and unexpected that allows the ad to be much more striking.
The Future of AI Influencers
AI tools like Midjourney, and ChatGPT are becoming integrated with many other services to provide a more personalized and effective experience for the users. With these tools becoming more precise and reliable we can expect to see them integrated with virtual influencers soon.
If the first generation of AI influencers had AI only in the name, the second generation is going to be fully backed by AI technology. Soon we will be emerging influencers whose story arc is completely decided by an AI model.
The integration of “true AI” tools in AI influencers is going to allow these influencers to better connect with their audience. As in the case of Kuki, AI models can be tailored to chat with users while keeping in character.
Once this kind of implementation will be proven reliable we can expect many brands to start developing their own AI influencers and relying on them as brand ambassadors while also including them in much of the online material of the brand.
Conclusion
In conclusion, AI influencers have opened up a new frontier in the world of social media marketing. While they present exciting opportunities for brands to engage with their audience in novel ways, they are still in the early stages of development. As AI technology progresses, AI influencers will become more and more common while also providing better value to brands.
Davide
August 3, 2023
Industry Trends
Advanced Influencer Strategies, Influencer Marketing Strategy, Mid-Level