For over 10 years, Roberta Cammisa has worked for beauty and fashion brands like Ray-Ban, Net-a-Porter and Charlotte Tilbury. Now, she is the Head of PR for the EMA region at UGG, overseeing public relations, influencer marketing, and product collaboration teams.
We had the pleasure of sitting down with Roberta to learn more about her journey in influencer marketing (the discipline didn’t even exist when she started!) and the lessons that have propelled her career. In this article, Roberta shares her top three tips for building a successful career in influencer marketing.
3 Tips for Building an Influencer Marketing Career
Influencer Marketing Career Tip #1: Make relationship building your bread and butter
“True connection comes from being able to empathize with the person you have right in front of you. Whether it’s the influencer with 2 million followers or their talent manager, you need to make them feel welcomed and comfortable, so they can bring their authentic self to the table.” - Roberta Cammisa, Head of PR, EMEA, UGG
As an influencer marketing pro, you will always be wearing many hats to ensure the campaign or event goes smoothly but being a relationship builder is often priority #1.
According to Roberta, empathy and agility are two critical skills for building relationships with influencers. When you bring more empathy to a relationship, you understand the needs and wants of the other, making you more agile in fostering the connection.
This can often come up in influencer marketing negotiations which are among the biggest moments of influencer relationship building. For example, say you are extremely interested in working with a creator for a campaign but their rates are too high. Instead of shutting down the conversation, be open to asking the creator what’s important and valuable to them in a partnership.
A couple of other ways to build strong influencer relationships:
- Create memorable experiences. Extravagant trips are no longer necessary, but an exclusive opportunity for the influencers to connect with your brand is. People are itching to get back in person so take advantage of this time to create memorable experiences for you creators.
- Let creators speak authentically about your brand. You chose your influencer partners for a reason, so trust them when they speak about your brand. A creator highly values creative freedom, so let them have it!
- Check-in during transitional periods: Sending a quick message for an influencer’s birthday or reaching a certain milestone is a great way to maintain relationships with previous influencer partners.
Influencer Marketing Career Tip #2: Create tailored headlines when conveying value
“It’s easy to get lost in the metrics when overseeing multiple markets. You need to be able to take a step back and look at the big picture to understand what are the three key headlines that my boss or key stakeholders need to know about this.’” - Roberta Cammisa, Head of PR, EMEA, UGG
If you’re getting stuck on how to educate your executive team about the impact of influencer marketing, you are not alone. Even Roberta admits that it isn’t easy.
One tool that Roberta has developed over her influencer marketing career is her ability to make a headline that will convey the impact of her influencer marketing efforts to different stakeholders in the organization.
For example, if you’re talking to someone in finance, highlight the data from your program like performance metrics (impressions, engagements, video views, ect.), spend efficiency metrics (cost per post, cost per view, cost per engagement, ect.) and share of voice like Traackr’s Brand Vitality Score (VIT).
Pro tip: Check in with other teams in your organization to see if there was a spike in sales during the campaign or growth in social following.
If you’re speaking to someone more in a creative department, lean into the content that the influencer created. As influencer marketing becomes a more integrated domain, it’s critical to show that your team is creating valuable content that could benefit other marketing initiatives.
With this framing, you then craft a 1-2 sentence statement that is easily digestible.
- Our last campaign received X amount of impressions which is double from our campaign last year.
- Over the past quarter we’ve run # campaigns and activating # influencers, and we’ve seen a # increase in sales with the product we were highlighting.
- We outcompeted X, Y & Z brands this quarter in VIT indicating that we have a strong share of voice in the market.
Influencer Marketing Career Tip #3: Be flexible and react quickly
“Often, there is no playbook for trends. You just need to be ready to react. Either you change with it or you’ll be left out.” - Roberta Cammisa, Head of PR, EMEA, UGG
Social media and the creator economy move fast, but as an influencer marketer, you have to be faster. Your secret weapon to being ahead of the curve? Follow and listen to the influencers who are creating the trends.
Now, we’re not saying to follow every trend that an influencer talks about (because that would be exhausting and potentially harmful to your brand!). Instead, focus on choosing the trends that are relevant to your brand’s values and strategy.
Pro Tip: Trends are incredibly impactful when used right! Check out our article that shares some tips on how to successfully incorporate trends into your influencer marketing strategy.
For example, Roberta is focusing on how Generation Z and Alpha are starting to take distance from social media with social detox trends and de-influencing. In turn, her team is prioritizing quality over quantity to not overload their audience with too much content. This may include focusing on longer forms of content like YouTube videos or podcasts.
A successful influencer marketing strategy plans far enough ahead but leaves room for flexibility. At UGG, Roberta says that while the budget is decided at the beginning of the year, the team can revisit the planned budget every quarter to adjust if needed. This flexibility allows her team to stay relevant by putting dollars behind a trend they think will help the brand’s image.
“You’ll never get bored working in influencer marketing.” - Roberta Cammisa, Head of PR, EMEA, UGG