4 Brands That Understand Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing has grabbed the attention of marketers around the world. According to new research, 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations and up to 40% have made purchases due to influencer social media posts. With the potential for stellar returns with a relatively small investment, big brands have also quickly realised the huge potential offered by influencer marketing through a focussed and targeted approach. In this blog, we’re going to highlight some of our favourite examples of brands that got influencer marketing right.
Gymshark
Gymshark represents one of the first and best examples of effective influencer marketing for brand growth. Ben Francis was just 19 when he founded Gymshark out of his mum’s garage. After fast initial growth, Ben realised they could leverage the huge followings of YouTube fitness influencers, including Lex Griffin and Chris Lavado, to access their target demographic of young gym-goers and athletes. When Gymshark eventually released their women’s line, they recruited popular influencers such as Whitney Simmons and Nikki Blackketter, who were hand-picked to ensure credibility and authenticity in their sponsored posts. Today, the company is worth over $1 billion. Continuing this success, influencer marketing is still a key aspect of Gymshark’s marketing strategy, with brand ambassadors across social media platforms. Gymshark realised before many the importance of building brand awareness through targeted influencer marketing.
HiSmile
HiSmile is one of the most prominent recent success stories in influencer marketing amongst millennials. Founders Nik Mirkovic and Alex Tomic started with just a $20,000 investment of their own money in 2014 and by 2017 HiSmile was worth an estimated $40 million! Their secret? Regional micro-influencers. With a target demographic of millennial women aged 15-24, Nik and Alex initially spent most of their initial investment on stock, sending these to a focussed group of small micro-influencers within their target demographic with the hope they would promote their product. On average, micro-influencers can generate nearly 7 times more effective engagements than larger influencers, which proved key to their initial growth. Within two years of their initial investment, HiSmile landed lucrative posts with Kylie Jenner and Connor McGregor, generating over 10 million views, and cemented their brand across social media. Today, HiSmile works with over 2000 influencers at any given time and has well over 2 million followers across social media platforms.
ASOS
Ask any marketing team one fashion brand they admire and they’re sure to say ASOS. Their enormous success in influencer marketing across social media has spawned a new wave of fast fashion, including brands like Misguided, Shein, and PrettyLittleThing, all aimed at young, fashion-conscious millennials. ASOS has realised the power of the influencer in shaping opinion through authentic content to drive sales amongst their followers, prioritising a consistent, long-term engagement strategy across social media platforms. Take ‘ASOS Insiders’, a collection of stylish 20-somethings hailing from all corners of the globe, each posting the latest ASOS trends to their often-small collections of followers. By facilitating influencers to generate genuine and relatable content, ASOS have leveraged the high engagement rates of micro-influencer channels to strengthen brand loyalty amongst followers, and they always make content conveniently shoppable through creator links on sponsored posts. Overall, ASOS continues to lead the pack across the fashion industry.
Audible
Audible, an Amazon-owned company, offers a huge selection of audiobooks, TV & radio programs, and audio versions of newspapers and magazines. Much of their stellar early growth owes to a 2015 influencer marketing campaign on YouTube aimed at increasing monthly subscribers and brand awareness across a range of demographics. Audible identified many of the most highly subscribed YouTubers on the platform, challenging them to come up with creative ideas to integrate the Audible brand into a sponsored segment. By relying on the influencer to guide the creative process, they were able to leverage both relatability and authenticity in their ads. With a total pool of 132 million subscribers across their brand representatives, the campaign accumulated 83 million views in the first half of 2015; today, Audible is at the forefront of the audiobook industry which grew to $4 billion in 2020.
