Remember social media, circa 2019? Lifestyle and beauty influencers filled Instagram feeds with filtered photos in monochrome outfits, flawless skin, and perfected wavy mermaid hair. These influencers appeared glamorous and gorgeous 24/7 — encouraging consumers to buy anything that these influencers used.
But in late 2020, social media trends started to change at a faster pace than ever before. Influencers had to get creative, authentic, and educational in order to earn engagement and compete in an increasingly crowded space. Brands also needed to overhaul their strategies since the types of influencer partners, strategies, and content types that worked two years ago suddenly felt outdated and clunky.
Here are three tips to give your influencer marketing strategy a sophisticated boost.
If you’re one of the plethora of brands that are targeting older Gen Z and younger Millennial consumers, know that you’re targeting an educated audience. It’s highly likely that your consumer has been buying products online since their early teens…which means that they have most likely been exposed to beauty content for 10+ years.
In 2022, beauty consumers:
In essence, the modern beauty and lifestyle consumer is intelligent, knowledgeable, and deciphering. So treat them as such! Encourage influencers to provide educational facts about a product’s ingredients instead of just relying on aesthetics, develop products that solve specific problems, and don’t try to fool your consumer into thinking your brand is something that it’s not.
Tip: Walmart and P&G are doing this particular thing well. Read what two of their executives had to say about how they designed for young, educated consumers with their latest hair care line, NOU.
The lifecycle of a product or content trend lasts a maximum of five months in this era of social media. Influencers always want to stay current, because their audience gets bored of seeing the same trend at a quicker rate than in years past. So, a few guidelines:
Smaller influencers are often at the heart of new trends because they have less to lose, and they’re willing to take risks and see what sticks. To find these experimental influencers, try evaluating past content performance by engagement rate. Many Traackr customers discovered influencer Tijera Fleming using this method. Here’s why it works:
Traackr’s influencer marketing platform helps you do this kind of analysis on a case-by-case basis. If you aren’t a Traackr customer, you can try comparing the influencer you’re evaluating against an Engagement Rate Benchmark. It won’t be a perfect science but it will give you a starting point!
If you’re interested in learning more about successful influencer marketing strategies, check out this briefing where I talk through brands like Colourpop, Pantene, Matrix, and Viktor & Rolf Fragrance. I come in around the 7:06 mark!
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