Over the past few years, influencer marketing has exploded as one of the most effective methods of raising brand awareness and increasing consumer engagement in an increasingly competitive marketplace. With people spending hours on their phones watching gaming and lifestyle YouTube channels, it’s no wonder that brands are turning to YouTube vloggers and Instagrammers to help improve their video marketing strategies and get more eyes on their product or service offerings.
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Here’s how you can use Influencers as a part of your video marketing strategy to make your videos go viral and raise brand awareness.
The Rise of Video and Influencer Marketing
Since 2017, we’ve watched video become a marketing channel that can’t be ignored. Now, more than ever, brands and marketers need to create a content strategy that works across all channels—whether it’s on Facebook or Instagram, Twitter or YouTube.
As a result, we saw a rise in Influencer marketing. As more and more ‘everyday’ people took to video and grew massive communities, it was hard to dismiss the power of their presence. This has led to brands across all industries partnering with content creators to promote their products by piggybacking off their popularity.
Research indicates that consumers value word-of-mouth marketing nearly twice as much as brand-sponsored ads. So it’s easy to see why brands would turn to influencer marketing—it’s a powerful way for companies in a variety of industries to connect with their customers on a more authentic level.
Why It Makes Sense to Combine Influencer Marketing as a Part of Your Video Marketing Strategy
There are several benefits of using influencer marketing as a part of your overall video marketing strategy. For example, marketers spend an average of 2.6X more for professionally produced content than they would working directly with influencers to create the same asset.
Let’s look at four ways incorporating video influencers can make sense for your brand.
1. You need an edge in content quality
Top influencers have massive followings on YouTube and across social media channels because their fans trust their opinions, see them as credible experts on specific topics, and are generally just interested in what they have to say.
2. You’re looking for a new way to tell your story
A video is a great way to communicate your brand story in a more human, authentic way that resonates with your audience.
3. You want access to their audience
As influencer marketing becomes more and more competitive, many brands seek influencers who have audiences that match their target demographics (which may be different from their own).
4. It makes it easier for your fans to find you on YouTube
For example, suppose you’re a brand in gaming or technology and most of your social followers are interested in seeing content related to travel. In that case, partnering with an influencer who has both tech-savvy AND travel-loving followers is a smart way for you both to reach your respective fan bases!
Benefits of Partnering With Influencers
Many gaming, lifestyle, and tech brands use video marketing strategies to create and raise brand awareness. Adding influencer marketing to your existing video marketing strategies helps to boost your efforts and amplify exposure.
Brands can reach thousands of consumers by tapping into a game influencer’s network. By collaborating with video game personalities on YouTube, Instagram, or other channels popular among gamers and technology enthusiasts, you can reach an entirely new audience that isn’t normally aware of your brand. Plus, influencers will likely include links back to your website or store page during their videos as another way to increase traffic!
Of course, one of our favorite benefits of partnering with video game influencers is their ability to convert. This means that viewers will buy a product or service after seeing it promoted on a video game influencer’s social media channel.
Studies have shown that 82% of consumers trust peer recommendations from brands they follow, and 59% are more likely to purchase after seeing content from someone they follow on social media. So partnering with influencers can bring your conversion rates up significantly!
Finding Influencers for Your Brand
The best-planned video campaign can fall flat if the influencer doesn’t deliver. Finding a reputable influencer can be the difference between a successful campaign and a flop.
The first step in executing your influencer marketing strategy is finding a reputable influencer that you want to work with. As a starting point, we recommend searching for top influencers in your niche and reviewing their follower numbers, engagement rates, and comments.
So how do you find influencers?
There are many tools available for doing more extensive research on potential partners. For instance, you can use Google search to find influencers and review their About Me page, as well as their social media profiles, before reaching out to them directly. This is, of course, time-consuming but can be crucial to ensure you are partnering with someone who will properly represent your brand.
Some brands turn to online recommendation engines such as Fiverr or Klear to help find potential influencers. In these cases, be sure to go through all of their listings first and select those that seem best-suited for your brand.
If you want to ensure success when working with an Influencer, you may want to consider working with a marketing partner or agency that has formed relationships with Influencers. At UberStrategist, for example, we work with influencers in gaming, lifestyle, and tech to develop influencer partnerships and campaigns for our clients. By partnering with an agency, you not only save time having to find an influencer on your own but are likely to get matched with an influencer that will have the greatest impact on your brand.
4 Things to Consider When Developing Your Video Marketing Strategy
When developing your video marketing strategy, there are several things you’ll want to consider to ensure its success, including:
Audience:
You need to identify your audience. If you can’t identify your audience, your video campaign will likely fail, and you’ll end up working with the wrong influencers, with the wrong target audience.
If you work with the right influencers with the right target audience, you’re more likely to see a return of investment and discoverability, which will lead to visibility.
Conversions:
These can be in the form of sign-ups, lead generations, or sales. Even if conversions aren’t your primary goal, you still want to accumulate revenue for your product.
Video ads can be helpful for conversions and give the audience a chance to see your product or game in action with their favorite influencer and understand how the product works. This enables audience members to decide whether it’s something they are interested in.
Visibility Vs. Discoverability:
Visibility has attracted public attention, whereas discoverability is the quality of being discovered or found. Therefore, your primary goal should focus on discoverability because visibility only comes with discoverability.
The more influencers that create videos for your product or game, the better your chance of discoverability. The more audience members that discover your product or game, the more likely you are to be visible.
Qualitative Vs. Quantitative:
Qualitative is measured by the quality of the video or content produced, whereas quantitative is measured by the quantity of the videos or pieces of content made. For example, if you have chosen to work with a highly engaging influencer, and you know the quality of their work is top-tier, you may not need to have as many videos produced.
However, if you want to increase your discoverability, you want as many influencers as possible to create videos on the game or product. For example, you want as many influencers showcasing your game as possible for a game launch, which is where quantitative comes in. But, you still want to ensure that the quality of the videos is good, which is where qualitative comes in.
Ready to get started working with influencers on your next video marketing campaign? As you can see, it has its benefits! However, you will need to invest time and money to do it right, so be prepared for that.
To increase the value of your spending, find the right content partners, and increase your visibility and discoverability, why not talk to Uberstrategist to help you with your next influencer marketing campaign. We’ve helped dozens of clients promote their gaming products with Influencer Campaigns. Check out some of the results here.
We are here to help!
