Influencer Marketing?
Millions of people are active on social networks daily. As a result, more and more new communication strategies such as influencer marketing are arising. Influencers create a direct link between a company and the online community of social media platforms like Instagram or TikTok. There is no need to be a celebrity in order to become an influencer; they can be anyone whose age group corresponds to the target audience.
Influencers post videos, pictures, recipes and engaging content from brands to their followers on social media. A different agreement will be entered based on the size of this online community with several thousand or millions of followers. The more followers an influencer has, the higher the chance to get a high salary or free valuable samples. The advantage of influencers as a marketing tactic is the direct and very personal contact with the appropriate target group. Especially for Startups, it can be a cheap way to reach many potential customers at a fast pace.
Let’s consider influencer marketing for your food brand!
There are many reasons why influencer marketing can be worthwhile for businesses of all sizes. In 2021, the market reached 13.8 billion dollars, while delivering a return on investment of 5.78 dollars for each dollar invested. Within the last five years, 1360 platforms and agencies have focused on influencer marketing. Therefore you should consider influencers as a marketing strategy and try some campaigns to see how it goes.
Since the beginning, food businesses have accounted for a large share of the influencer marketing market. The power of pictorial representations, such as images and videos to create viral sensations for food, can result in food going viral. The community of influencers as recreational cooks, bakers or best friends share delicious recipes, videos or gift ideas via social media. Lastly, not only Startups and big brands can take advantage of influencers, but also restaurants are recommended with the help of influencers.
Key strategies to optimize your influencer marketing
There are a lot of famous companies like Kraft, Whole Foods and Coca-Cola, which are known for their top influencer marketing campaigns. However, success is not predetermined just because food is popular in the marketplace. You can avoid huge mistakes with the following key strategies and rise your chances of success.
Find the right Influencer
An Influencer needs to have the right personality which fits the brand. You can check if the community is active in their social media world. Do they comment, like and take part in live sessions? How is the quality of the posts? Further, is the Influencer posting in the right demographic area? Who is their target group? You should check on age, ethics and culture. In a nutshell, the Influencer needs a sympathetic proximity to the community.
Conversation with the story of food and not the brand
As people love to watch videos to laugh, be inspired or share, food videos can be very entertaining to watch. Focus on influencers who create their posts with the primary content on the recipe or story, not the brand. Products are way more sympathetic as they are not present as traditional advertisements. People should adore the brand after watching the videos without even knowing. In this way, they are happier buying and recommending certain content to their friends.
Influencers let’s be creative and a bit crazy!
It pays to take a bit of risk in the food business in addition to smaller, safe, and very affordable contracts with influencers. There are many ways to get into closer contact very quickly and reach millions of people with the help of sweepstakes and influencers. The potato chips brand Lays for example, experienced a 12% increase in sales with their marketing campaign. In this one, the influencers launched a task to their community to design a new type of chip. There were 3.8 million participants, of which the three best varieties, namely Cheesy Garlic, Bread, Chicken & Waffels and Sriracha, were produced and sold for a test market. With these extraordinary techniques, many potential consumers are engaged and will build up a personal relationship with a brand.
Focus on visual content
The food industry is taking advantage of the fact that people love to talk about their food. After having porridge for breakfast in the morning routine, social media users search for the next idea for lunch and dinner on Pinterest, Instagram and Co. 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. Therefore, an influencer should take rich and high-quality pictures as the brand can retain more attention and has a higher chance to go around the world.
Examples of social media food influencers
What could be better than starting the morning with the perfect cereal or a crispy cookie with your morning coffee? Influencers know what their followers appreciate. Here are a few examples, where influencers feature companies using delicious recipes, appealing music and great images.
A recipe video can become very famous and often shared, because there are specific ingredients that “would have” to be bought to recreate it.
To conclude, Influencer Marketing is a way of advertising with high potential, especially for food brands based on visual content directly delivered to social media users. If you, as a marketing manager follow some tricks and strategies, influencer marketing can be highly effective to skyrocket your business image and brand awareness. This strategy can help connect with loyal, as well as potential future customers.
Check related important topics on Digital Marketing and Communication strategies.
Sources
- Geyser, W. (2016, November 1). What is Influencer Marketing? – The Ultimate Guide for 2022. Influencer Marketing Hub. https://influencermarketinghub.com/influencer-marketing/
- Influencer Marketing in the Food Industry. What’s the ROI? – ProductLead. (2021, October 21). ProductLead Blog. https://productlead.me/blog/influencer-marketing-food-industry-roi/
- https://www.tapinfluence.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Tapinfluence-FoodBrands_eBook_Finalv3.pdf, last access 07.11.2022
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEgOI1rNlyc&ab_channel=Ahrefs, youtube video by last access 06.11.2022
- https://www.foodandwine.com/thmb/ImQsPCf6ZkHGbZxxCiWw-886CP0=/1500×0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/food-instagrammer-ft-blog0118-035ad7c284b345a0b78d605ede4119a0.jpg, last access 06.11.2022
