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Networking

Networking Blog

Time flies! Now it comes to an end to the marketing seminar course! I have the privilege to learn from more than a decade of marketing professionals in a consecutive 12 weeks online. Our topics are very diversified from inspiring alumni stories to different focus of marketing speciality including loyalty marketing, SEO, B2B Marketing, Marketing Science, Influencer Marketing, Performance Marketing, Product Enrichment, Digital Marketing Strategy, Paid Media Marketing, etc.  Within each marketing area, our speakers have walked us through from overview, work framework, business problem that are solving, dimensions, metrics, KPIs, as well as their own experience in these practices, which, to great extent, provided us a comprehensive way from overall to in-depth to get an idea about how exactly digital marketing works within each area. In the end, each speaker provided a case study based on their own company. Within group work, we brainstormed the causes of business problems, identified the opportunities and generated solutions from digital marketing perspective to solve the business problems. It was an instant reflect from what had been covered by the speakers. Great way to practice new learnings. Each speaker provided their feedback on each team’s work. Their positive, constructive, and equally insightful feedback greatly wrap up what we learnt and what we should work more.

I have greatly benefited from these sessions from different marketing professionals. Looking back at what we all have experienced, I am so grateful to be guided by them with huge thanks to my professor Wendy Greenwood from GBC for providing great resources and planning the most organized and strategic learning.

What have I learnt most?

The overall knowledge of all marketing specialities has provided me comprehensive knowledge and encouraged me to do further research on areas that I want to dive into as career choices. Marketing science, loyalty marketing and performance marketing are areas that I want to learn and contribute more. I have connected with them on LinkedIn.

My further step to enrich my learning in these 3 areas are to follow these companies LinkedIn accounts and marketing professionals from these companies. I also did research on these companies’ competitors by learning from their websites on their services, business model, team and culture. I followed 12 professionals from these companies and now already started to benefit from their contributions from LinkedIn.

What I get from connecting with them? I would say the trends, ideas, events, and their opinion/comments on different marketing events. I find these are great learning resources in a format of real work & life experience. It is always easy to learn framework, methodology in books and very beneficial to master how to use what we learnt by watching how others are using it, learn from their experience either success or failure. All are great learning resources.

Now I am starting to search for some work opportunity in the marketing analytics area.  When I am reading JD for Marketing/business data analyst from different companies, those detailed responsibility are things that we have covered and had practiced from the marketing seminar course as well as other courses from GBC. The companies I did research for are hiring for analyst. Those roles look familiar to me which provided confidence for me to apply.

My takeaways in network building

I followed/connected with each speaker prior to our online session. Normally, I will say thank you to joining us and sharing your knowledge with us this afternoon. My name is x. Currently I am doing x. I am looking forward to meeting you!  Almost all of the speakers approved my invitation.

It is good or safer to connect with speakers after class. But I understand they know we will approach them if they share LinkedIn with us. It may be also safe to connect prior to class due to this reason. In addition, it is a good sign to show they are welcomed by us. We appreciate their time and input.

About LinkedIn connection, always good to send a note with brief intro about you and reason to connect. Be positive! Do not ask anything! It is rude to ask them to offer you a referral or information call when you just try to build a connection via LinkedIn.

Following the connection, if you feel a good fit or have a good reason to approach them, you can send them a short message to concisely share your intention and why. Perhaps you will be surprised that people agree to offer an information call to provide industry information or answer your questions.

For our speakers from the seminar, I am very happy to connect with them and appreciated the opportunity to know more professional experience about them, and their company, community etc.  As I have asked the questions I had during our session time, I did not approach them for an information call as of today. But I know who I might want to approach for a in person or virtual meetings in near future when I am ready.

Speakers and her industry that greatly inspired me on networking

Blair Roebuck, vice president, marketing science form Valtech

Paul Michel, Senior Manager, Performance Marketing, Harry Rosen

Jennifer Stoll, VP, Strategy, Valtech

I have gained great insights and explore more resources from them. Because of Valtech, I started to network with professions in digital transformation field. I am keen to understand how to provide digital services to clients to help drive business growth and increase ROI. This area looks like a more integrated work who are not just talking about influence, impressions, clicks but focusing on results from the top of pyramid, which is business result, the ROI. Now I am working on the list of predominant marketing agency with focus on marketing science.

Performance marketing played a critical role in driving me to think further on metrics and KPIs to drive ROI. It is not just about one thing, but an integrated work. I am so honored to see the way how Paul shared his work, structure, case study, as well as key measurement with us. I am a huge fan of him in terms of how to bring the topic to the table and how to wrap it up in an efficient and enjoyable way. He knows what the main things that his audience want to learn.

He did not share LinkedIn with us. However, reading his PPT and doing further research about Harry Rosen, sign up on the email list, following social media channels also enrich my learning because of him. I highly appreciated this.

Harry Rosen is a good example of showing me how marketing strategy works for a luxury brand. Those skills are transferable which I can apply either in a job from Harry Rosen if possible, in the future or similar company in the industry.  So, I followed other Canadian companies in the retail industry, such as Canadian tire, Canada Goose at all channels and keep reading their financial and local publics to gain better understanding on their business strategy and how their marketing function to support business objectives. If I were in that role, part of their teams, what I might learn, what I might change or contribute.

Wrap-up

Marketing is an ever-evolving journey. As marketers, we constantly learn and evolve to keep updated and drive great outcomes. Building network is great tool to help us understand what is new, what is on demand, what we can learn and what else we can contribute. How to network varies on what you are looking for. It could be just a hint on industry knowledge that could inspire you to do further research on your own and go from there. This way fits me well.  Or it could be a way for you to know more about people, and you know how to work with and learn from others especially those people with senior experience and knowledge in the area you might be quite interested in.

Lastly, thanks Professor Wendy Greenwood for providing this great opportunity to learn and reflect, and thanks all our speakers who took their own time and guided us from different areas. I am confident these learning will be stay with us and help the marketing community to train more excellent marketing professionals just like them and shine in different corner.

With thanks to all who contributed in these sessions and shared their ideas!

#marketingscience #performancemarketing #valtech #harryrosen #marketing

[lylameng]

Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing  

Influencer marketing has become super common in different channels. For many brands, influencer marketing becomes their key channel in terms of brand promotion, generate leads and increase sales. It can also be utilized to get the brands in front of the target audience through relationship building with influencers in the industry. The audience are more likely to trust the brand if it is endorsed by other prominent people in this industry.

How does influencer marketing work?

Before marketers decide to start influence marketing, Marketers may have solid ideas about a few things:

Purpose of using influencer marketing

KPI: to increase awareness, consideration, conversion

Metrics:  reach to new customers/increase new acquisition/sales

persona: who you are trying to reach more of your current audience

influencer persona: matching and identify the qualities your influencers

Build a disclosure guideline into the agreement with influencers

When marketers go through these points, now how we reach the influencers and how we know who can be a good partner for the brand?

There are three components to help with and marketers can focus on relevance, reach, and resonance. As influencers’ reputation, the type of community is very important factor to the brand as well. The audience must trust and respect the opinions of the influencers. Many marketers will agree on starting to do research on a few potentials, check their posts, engagement frequency, who they create content for etc. It is always nice to start building relationship with influencers by engaging in the posts, clicking like, comments and send interest of collaboration to influencers. In addition, marketers may email influencers to provide the brand information, benefits to them, beyond paycheck, and sometimes try to send a sample of your product. One thing marketer may want to know, try to use ‘content creators’ to identify them in all formats of your communication to them as some of them may feel hesitating about the word ‘influencer’.  A good start of conversation is always a good sign of better partnership along the journey.

 

Starting influencer marketing with the content creators can possibly greatly benefit your brand, and how we know if it is working?

It is good to capture all data in terms of engagement, frequency, and sales if possible. Engagement include views, likes, comments, and shares. Frequency means how often you want the influencer to post.

How to catch the results of influencer marketing?

UTM parameters

Assign each influencer a unique links with UTM codes. This allows you to calculate the engagement.

“Coupon” link had a UTM attached and can track sales amount from this link

Providing unique discount code is also easy way to track sales

 

If use branded content tools on facebook and Instagram for influence campaigns, you can have access to the data for both feed and posts through facebook business manager.

 

Influencers can also share detailed reports on the reach and engagement levels of their posts

 

What are the main Influencer marketing tools?

Hootsuite

Hootsuite search streams can help brands to discover influencers by monitoring conversations relevant to the industry across multiple channels

Add them to social listening and keep eye on what they post, who they engage

Collabstr

Right relevance pro

Forustarzz influencer recommendation engine

Insense

 

How does influence marketing price?

There are multiple factors that impact the pricing. Influencers can set their rates based on their followers’ numbers, channels, post format, post amount, the brand’ ability on payment, their engagement rate and time investment.

Based on Statista, the most popular platforms for influencer marketing are Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.   Different channels apply slightly different rate.

Influencers numbers are the key impact on the rate. There are 4 categories of influencers based on their follower numbers.

Nano-influencers: 1,000–10,000 followers

Micro-influencers: 10,000–50,000 followers

Mid-tier influencers: 50,000–500,000 followers

Macro-influencers: 500,000–1,000,000 followers

Mega-influencers: 1,000,000+ followers

 

Engagement plays a key role in setting up rate as well. Total engagement includes likes, shares, comments etc.  Before influencers start working for the brand, brand can use the recent average engagement as a key indicator to predict how much engagement the new post will receive. And the higher engagement rate, the higher rate will be.

 

Type of contents can differentiate the rate as well.  Video costs more than picture. Picture with citation cost more than solely picture. That is based on the effort and time investment.

 

Lastly, exclusivity can impact the price. Influencers will ask a higher rate if brand asks for exclusivity as this ask to eliminate the potential opportunities of the influencers making promotions for other brands. If marketers ask them to give up the potential income, usually they expect you to pay more.

How much exactly influencer marketing cost?

Most pricing starts with one of these baseline formulas and goes up from there. Engagement rate per post + extras for type of post (x #of posts) + extra factors = total rate. The unspoken industry standard is $100 per 10,000 followers + extras for type of post (x # of posts) + additional factors = total rate.

 

TikTok Influencer Marketing Pricing

 

TikTok becomes the mega popular social media platform app. It attracts younger generation. Influencer marketing is getting successful by creating video and viral. From my research, TikTok influencers price their posts based on their number of followers.

Nano influencer: $5-25$

Micro influencer: $25-$125

Mid-tier influencer: $125-$1250

Macro Influencer: $1250-$2500

Mega influencer: $2500

 

 Example

TikTok Influencer:  Emmanuel, Macro Influencer, 470.7k followers

in partnership with Axel Arigato a luxury brand to help promoting the sneakers

The marketing price will be between 1250$ and 2500$. The average rate per post charged by Macro influencer is %1500 which could be an acceptable rate for the influencer and the brand for this post.

 

Facebook Influencer Marketing Pricing

Facebook Influencers charge differently due to some factors like the number of their followers. Nano influencers charge $25-$250 per post, while Mid-tier influencers charge $250-$1,250. Macro-influencers’ pay is between $12,500-$25,000 and lastly, Mega-influencers charge the highest at $25,000+ per post.

Formula: $25 for every 1000 followers each post

Example

 

Facebook influencer:  HellthyJunkFood, facebook video creator, 1.7 M followers, Mega Influencer

The influencer created 2 video posts for Starbucks on Nov 23 and 24 to help Starbucks promoting products.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1267769240434738

 

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1202465570683168

 

The marketing price will be 85000 total(42500 each)

(1700000/1000) *25=42500

2 posts cost: 42500*2=85000

 

Instagram Influencer Marketing Pricing

Normally the price to pay influencers can follow this formula

$100 per 10,000 followers+ extra for type of post (* number of posts) + additional factors=total rate

As engagement rate is a key indicator. Marketers may notice influencers will use the following formula to calculate their return:

Engagement rate by posts=total engagement on a post/ total follower *100

Price per IG Photo (CPP) = Recent average engagement x $0.14

 Price per IG video (CPE) = Recent average engagement x $0.16

 

Example

 

Instagram influencer   burnt_pellet_bbq    215k followers  

Check these 2 video posts :

partnered with

🔥 @bradleysmoker P10 🧂 @spiceology SPG & Smoked maple Sriracha rub 🔪 @thecookingguildshop Serbian Cleaver

The purpose is to achieve conversion and average engagement is 9500 (average engagement from last 5 posts before this one)

 Based on the formula above, the possible charge can be

7500*0.16=1520$

Or (215000/10000) *100+ additional factors (it is more likely under 3000$)

Why there is big difference?  This creator’s engagement rate is not stable. Among the recent 5 posts, some hit 10.3k engagements, some is 3800.  It is more likely the influencer and the 3 brands will make an agreement under 4000$ for the total 2 video posts. (under 2000 each video post)

Wrapping Up

It is critical to know the cost for influencer marketing varies due to your industry, content needs, social media platforms, reach, engagement, and more. It is always reasonable to do enough research and clear all questions marketers may have prior to starting the influencer marketing for your brand.

Is influencer marketing interesting you? Ready to dive into it?

 

Macarthy, A. (2022, February 14). Instagram influencer pricing 2022: Influencer rates and cost per post for Instagram. Andrew Macarthy - Social Media Marketing. Retrieved November 24, 2022, from https://www.andrewmacarthy.com/andrew-macarthy-social-media/instagram-influencer-pricing#:~:text=1%20Nano-influencers%3A%20%2410%E2%80%93%24100%20per%20post%20or%20free%20gifts.,%245%2C000%E2%80%93%2410%2C000%20per%20post%205%20Mega-influencers%3A%20%2410%2C000%2B%20per%20post

Influencer marketing costs. Business of Apps. (2022, October 26). Retrieved November 24, 2022, from https://www.businessofapps.com/marketplace/influencer-marketing/research/influencer-marketing-costs/

#influencer marketing #contentcreator #marketingPrice #influencer #creator