“Bernice has a very clear idea of what works well for the brand and has strict criteria and contracts in place for the influencers she chooses to work with. For example, Koala.com has the full rights to their posts and has permission to repurpose and boost it themselves (put ad spend behind it).”
Dynamic Business
My role at Koala
From May 2017 until March 2020, I was in charge of the influencer campaigns for Koala.com. This entailed forming strategies, establishment of processes, creation of WIP documents, creation of contracts, and briefs, finding creators, relationship management with their agencies, and doing post campaign reporting.
During this time I’ve been lucky to work with everyone from major celebrities to up, and coming micro influencers! A few influencers I’ve gotten to work with include @Taramilktea, @ashybines, @paulpayasalad, @red_delacruz, @hannahpolites, @reece_hawkins_, @londonshaygoheen, @gemma_forsyth and @lozcurtis.
Why I booked influencers
I believe influencers are now a fundamental part of any marketing mix. Now influencers aren’t all the cookie cutter image you may think when you hear the word “influencer”.
To me, an influencer is someone who influences someone to take an action outside of their post. That could mean, looking at the tagged brand’s website, researching the product discussed, looking for similar products, or just following the brand’s Instagram.
When booking influencers I thought of 3 use cases for them:
Can the brand reuse their content for paid or organic channels? Eg do they make high enough quality content that is suitable for reusage.
Does their audience reflect the audience I want to reach? Eg. Do they have a primarily Australian audience? Does their audience live in a country we are expanding to? Is there audience a community we currently don’t/can’t target in our ads?
Does their audience actually care what they have to say about that topic? Eg. Are they an expert or have a trusted, relatable opinion? Even if their content isn’t high quality, does it resonate with their following?
Could their content, and opinion help lead prospective users into actual customers? Eg. Are they old enough to buy the product? Does their following have the right income for what is being advertised? Do they live in a country we deliver to?
How I booked creators
Overall, I booked close to 900 influencers across a wide variety of niches, following amounts, and demographics.
Proper representation of the brand, the products, as well as the diverse population of Australia was fundemental to my booking strategy. I maintained a Work In Progress (WIP) spreadsheet of all my bookings with specific reporting on ethnicity, state, gender, niche, following amount, and age to ensure that as many communities could feel represented by who I booked to represent Koala.
Reporting
Due to the investment into influencer marketing, all influencer I booked were given a discount code, and unique tracking link so I could establish roughly how many sales they contributed to.
However, code redemptions were just a finger to the air to check I was going in the right direction, and that there was value in that booking.
There are instances a customer converted because of the influencer which we may not know. For example, they found a bigger discount code amount, they bought after a considerable amount of time, they purchased using a different device/browser with a different code.
Engagement rate, likes, and comments are never my success metric as they do not benefit the business whatsoever. A like doesn’t equal a sale.
The Results
Influencers have produced over 5000 User Generated Content (UGC), and influenced over 3.8K code redemptions from their followers which helped contribute $3.5M in revenue from May 2018- March 2020. With the top 10 converting influencers bringing in 42% of total influencer code redemtpions, and 34.48% of total influencer revenue.
All my campaigns were properly planned, and structured to ensure a diverse range of influencers were booked who had diverse but relevant audience which enabled my 2018-2020 campaigns to have an Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) of $66,433 for every $1 spent.