For communication consultancies who work in the travel industry, is extremely important to integrate a digital influencer plans into their communications. So, in between packing and unpacking your suitcase, let´s have a look at the strategy that certainly will contribute to the brand awareness.
Most of the Message in a Bottle clients are aware of the importance of working with influencers, to promote their new products, services, or the brand itself, so it reaches new targets and acts as a brand awareness tool. However, some clients have prejudice against working with influencers, given all the associated clichés. Even so, there are excellent influencers who provide their followers with original, interactive, informative, and relevant content. Through a promotion on an influencer’s page, the probability of a travel package look more attractive for the followers will increase, might make them want to visit a destination and try a new product.
If you are looking for the ideal influencer for your brand, you need to stay away from the “best travel influencers” lists, as these lists are usually created by the communication and marketing agencies to promote themselves and their influencers, who might not be the experts in the field.
Why wouldn’t the “best” influencer be the right one for your brand? To choose a great influencer is hard, but it is very important first to decide which audience you want to attract for the brand, what is the communication strategy and consider the products and services themselves. For example, if we are promoting the outdoor activities, it is important that the influencer has an interest in such areas as outdoors, nature and sports. But if we’re talking about holidays and wellness, the influencer should be someone related to yoga, nutrition and psychology. We must not forget that the person who impacts his target audience, may be completely irrelevant to the people with different interests.
There are some key elements that make an influencer as powerful as an international advertising campaign. The honesty, some vulnerability, and openness are very important features for the influencer and will help him to create a striking content and to become a viable source of information for his followers. Of course, just like in any other marketing campaign there are risks, for instance, fake influencers, bought followers and fake giveaways, among others. So, do your research about the chosen influencer, analyse the impact of the campaign, its exposure, and examine the results of the campaign for other travel brands the influencer worked with before. If these results are unfortunate, it means that something is not right.
In this article you will learn how to achieve the best results and to invest in the most suitable influencer for your brand.
The 5 types of influencers.
According to their reach and the size of their audience, the influencers fall into these categories:
Mega influencers – AKA Celebrities
Famous people, like singers, TV presenters, football players, actors, etc.
They are hard to reach, the budgets they request are extremely high, and there is no guarantee that they will be willing to work with your brand once they are very popular and receive lots of proposals to choose from.
However, if the service or a product interests them and the timing is ideal, for instance, you offer them a dream trip to celebrate their recent wedding, they are more likely to accept.
Macro influencers (100K to several million followers)
Macro influencers, just like the celebrities, charge brands for posts or stories, but on a smaller scale. The they are familiar with these types of partnerships and with creation of the original content for the brands, as they have a strong and well-defined audience. However, macro influencers don’t tend to publish more than one post and a few stories, so the brands shouldn’t expect them to produce the content very often.
Most of these influencers work with an agency/agent that advocate for their interests and, of course, for their values.
Micro influencers (from 10K to 100K followers)
Micro influencers have smaller and more engaged audiences, tend to communicate more actively with their community, due to their high level of authenticity, and choose very carefully the brands and products they will promote. Engagement rates and results might be lower, but the good part is, if they really like the brand, they can promote it for free, or in exchange for a product/service.
This category of influencers proves to be a good option for medium and small sized travel agencies, that have no budget to pay an influencer and expect a content to be relevant, interesting, and of a great quality.
Nano influencers (up to 10K followers)
At first glance, they may seem too small to undertake a partnership with, but the nano influencers tend to take a high level of engagement with brands and agencies, and usually are willing to create plenty of content.
Message in a Bottle is keen to create a long-lasting and personalised relationship with these influencers, who have a potential to become great influencers.
Unofficial Influencers
The “unofficial” influencers are extremely powerful people in specific social environments. Usually they are friends and/or family members of celebrities and socialites. The level of frequency of posts or interactions may not be very high, however, they have a lot of influence through their attitudes and actions. If a brand can’t reach the big influencers, it can be a good strategy to reach out to their family member or a friend.
How to work strategically with influencers
First you need to understand that working with an influencer is the same as creating an advertising campaign, meaning that the budget you will invest in partnering with the influencer has the same weight as buying media advertising, for example.
To build a successful strategy, you can invest in 10 micro or nano influencers and reach a greater diversity of audience. The content produced will be creative, original, and one single post will be exposed at the same time in lots of different accounts, or using different platforms for the same campaign.
How to choose influencers?
When choosing travel influencers, take into consideration the number of followers, the overall Instagram aesthetic, who their followers are, and which brands they´ve worked with recently.
It is also important to be aware of the account’s reach and of what is the targeted audience. As for the influencer profile, it doesn’t really matter if you like their feed or not, what matters is the content itself and who are their audience.
To find out if the content appeals to the target you want to reach, you can do two things:
– Use digital tools to understand the influencer’s engagement rates and who are their audiences.
– Ask your friends and colleagues for their opinions on the influencer’s profile.
If the influencer has a media kit, you will get more information about their followers.
To pay or not to pay. That’s the question…
Many people may think, once the influencer is getting a free experience, why should I pay him? Of course, the decision will depend on the type of campaign and what the influencer is expected to do.
If the influencer is asked to publish a certain type of content, or a blog article, then yes, paying is expected. But if you are offering a free stay or vacation and the influencer is in a full control of everything they publish, then paying may not be necessary.
What is the best platform to work with influencers?
Search for the influencers with a strong presence on Instagram and blogs, they last longer because they are always available on the web and their content is entertaining. For instance, on Instagram the content fade away quickly in the feed, but it doesn’t apply to blogs, also the influencer may post a blog article about the brand to promote it.
YouTubers tend to be more relevant than Instagrammers because of the investment they make in editing and producing their videos. Video content is great and can be used in many ways by the travel brands.
Yet often the deal is a content for the Instagram, where most of the target audience spends their screen time.
The best tools for the influencer marketing
The best tool is a well-defined communications strategy and a dedicated PR team with creative ideas, but the technology can be a great help.
HypeAuditor is a paid tool that makes it possible to confirm the authenticity of Instagram accounts and helps brands verify influencers’ Instagram accounts.
SparkToro is an audience analysis tool, that makes it possible to find
what (and who) the audience reads, listens to, watches, follows, shares, and what the say online.
SocialBlade is a free tool that analyses profile statistics: likes, engagement, comments, shares, among others. It allows you to track statistics and measure growth across multiple social media platforms. It can also be a useful tool to detect “fake” influencers.
How to measure the success of an influencer campaign
– Engagement Rates
Interaction rates such as likes, clicks, shares, reactions, and comments, are often considered the most important KPI for tracking influencer performance. Content shared by nano and micro influencers typically generates higher interaction rates. Macro influencers have more impact and reach.
– Brand mentions and hashtags
Mentions and hashtags allow you to track a brand reach, as well as the impact and reach the influencer is achieving. Make sure you break down organic and paid promotions to properly calculate the investment and its return.
– Conversions
Whenever a link from a website or webpage is used you can track its traffic, and the subsequent conversions from those referrals. Confirming these figures with campaign launch data can further reinforce confidence in the numbers.
Brands have increasingly felt the need to become more human and closer to their audience, and influencers are a solution to this need, producing content that transforms the brand communication into a close, efficient, and empathetic communication.
In a nutshell, the partnership with influencers should be a natural path to follow in a brand communication.
