DWINDLING
Case Study: Aveda The Strategy: Acquire Niomi Smart, wellness and fitness blogger with a mass following. Niomi’s content is often themed around health, beauty and fitness on a luxury entry price point so she felt like a good match for Aveda with the correct target audience. The aim: To create buzz around the new product, increase the brand status and boost sales. What Content? Aveda briefed Niomi to create one Instagram post holding the product with curled hair. To create a 20 minute Vlog named ‘My Guide to Healthy Hair’ and to attend an event at House of Fraser which would be a meet and greet for her followers.
ROI
Fig. 16 Capture Your style, 2016.
The Telegraph (2016) stated “fashion is now a numbers game. Success is measured by how many clicks a website gets and how many likes an influencer receives on their Instagram post” and this is inherently true.” The return on investment (ROI) in blogger and influencer marketing strategies is dwindling across many brands and industry’s. Bloggers are being chosen for their stats and not their quality of content, much to the frustration of many smaller micro bloggers with highly engaged followers. Case study 6.6 is a perfect example of how utilising a mega blogger brought about a low ROI as the strategy was undeveloped, see appendix to read more. Media agency Digiday, carried out a survey in 2016 of two million social media influencers. This research is very insightful to show the new opportunity of micro influencers and the declining influence of mega influencers.
FOLLOWERS
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8.03%
1k- 10k
4.04%
10k-100k
2.37%
100k- 1M
1.78%
1M- 10M
1.66%
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LIKE RATE % Fig. 17 Influencer engagement data visualisation, 2016.
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Alice Sperring, search engine optimisation manager at ASOS stated in an interview,
“We no longer regularly do blogger outreach campaigns as they are immensely time-consuming for the agency and the results are underwhelming.” Read full interview in appendix 4.3
ASOS are known for leading digital innovation and their strategy has moved from blogger outreach to a micro influencer and user generated content (ugc) strategy. This content helps build the brand image of ASOS and improves their search engine optimisation and increases their organic content (Full case study see appendix 6.3). Alice Sperring’s comment is reinforced in a Marketing Week article when Kevin Edwards (2016) stated that “affiliate marketing is time intensive and can drain resources for sometimes minimal output”. The main issue which has brought about this decline in investment is due to a shift in the way consumers interact with advertising and consume content. “They don’t want to look at ads” and if they do they have to be relevant and appealing to them (Harris 2016). Further evidence of this shift is supported by the fact that 22% of smart phone users are blocking advertising on their device while browsing the internet, a 90% annual increase (NY Times, 2016). This presents many issues for marketers as if this number rises the data that can be collected from cookies and online 28 activity will no longer be available.
Return On Investment? The Instagram image gained 63,000 likes and the vlog over 250,000 views. This was the expected engagement rating from her mass following however further measures of success highlighted the strategy was overall extremely unsuccessful as the click through to buy rate from her YouTube video was very low. Furthermore the product failed to reach its sales forecast. The House of Fraser event was expected to bring a lot of buzz to the Aveda concession and encourage consumers to enter the trial stage of the buying process, however the event felt extremely empty and did not achieve the marketing aims.
http://www.niomismart.com @niomismart 1.8M Followers 1,711,718 subscribers 102,828,011 views Known for: - Vegan, Plant based diet - Being an early Vlogger
The Brief: To promote the new Aveda Damage Remedy product through an influencer marketing strategy
So what went wrong? All content in which Niomi posted clearly stated #AD and was directed by the Aveda team. Images and vlogs were sent back and fourth between Niomi and the team with amendments to be made which predictably meant the content felt extremely inauthentic and false. This is evidence to show that mega influencers are no longer a successful or efficient marketing strategy. For the full case study see appendix 5.6. Perhaps if a micro influencer strategy was used the content would have felt more authentic and followers would have trusted the recommendation more. Although this would have a smaller reach the engagement would have be higher. Fig. 18 Niomi Smart #AD Post, 2016. Fig. 19 Niomi Smart You Tube Video, 2016. Fig. 20 Instagram Images of event, 2016.