Aura Dumitru is Communication Engineer & Partner at MakeSense. Her role there is to help build a business where one would like to work 20 years from now. Not a bad goal. But until then, let’s focus on what 2019 has to offer: influencer marketing and expertise. Because this is what this interview is all about. It’s also about 2Performant’s new marketplace for influencers, by the way.

Firstly, when you hear hard  facts & stats, it’s best that you pay attention. With a vast experience in dealing with influencers even before they were called influencers, Aura says 60% of the success you can expect from a campaign lies in the brief. As for the bias mentioned in the title of this article, well, sometimes brands get cold feet about it. They really shouldn’t. Influencer bias is good.

The best tool you can use to measure a campaign’s success is a proper collaboration with the influencers taking part in that campaign.

[Pentru versiunea in limba romana a acestui material, dati un click aici]

Background

My curiosity about communication started 10 years ago, while attending college. This curiosity turned into something more 9 years ago when I crossed paths with MakeSense. Back then I was already a student at the Faculty of Communication and PR within the University and wanted to understand more than what was being taught at school. So I knocked at the agency’s door asking for an internship. They let me in and I never left.

Today I am Raluca Negrea’s associate at MakeSense and I contribute the building of a business where we hope to enjoy working 20 years from now.

Steps take in an influencer marketing campaign

The starting point of such a campaign is no different from any other communication effort. It all has to start with an understanding of what is needed. This in turn translates to clear objectives. Without them we will not be able to correctly suggest communication actions and ultimately to measure their impact.

Picking the influencers

As mentioned above, we start by looking at the objectives. Once we answer the question ”what do we want from this campaign?”, we can apply the right filters in choosing the influencers. Specifically, when discussing criteria, these come to mind:

• The target we want to reach. We match the influencer target with the target we want to reach in the campaign.
• The size of the audience (the largeness of the communities on social media, the traffic blogs have).
• The influencer’s niche. (there are cases where a campaign may only need influencers from a certain niche, while others where you need a mix).
• What exactly can be delivered in a campaign. That is, first of all, the types of content an influencer can deliver. And secondly, the results they can achieve. Some influencers deliver well on brand awareness, others are more suitable for changing habits and mentalities, while others can deliver on sales.

Mistakes

There are many of them and neither the agency, nor the influencer or agency are immune to them. Can’t really pick one as being the most common. Many of them have potential according to context and the reaction stakeholders have at the end.

I would however note the limits and interventions that many times brands feels they have to make regarding the biases of influcencers. An influcener marketing campaign comes with a great asset –authenticity and bias. These are scary for the companies sometimes and it gets to a point where we lose this leverage on the way.

What makes a campaign go viral?

Context.

Expectations, KPIs and measuring results

KPIs are strictly correlated with the objectives of the campaign, the mix of actions and the suggested channels; but also with the allocated budgets. To adequately give an estimation of results for a campaign, transparency on stats and figures is a must from influencers – starting from the proposal phase and going all the way through the final phase of evaluation (Sometimes numbers coming from current measuring tools are not enough. More accurate info is needed which currently can only come from the influencers).

So to sum it up, the best tool you can use to measure a campaign’s success is a proper collaboration with the influencers taking part in that campaign.

The brief

It has to be written responsibly, be comprehensive and clear. 60% of a campaign’s success can be tracked down to a well-written brief. Clarity of context, needs and deliverables will always help the influencer make use of its work for the brand’s benefit.

Brands getting involved

I thing brands should constructively get involved. As much as it takes so that things get done as they should. But all the while trusting the influencers know their audience best. If trust is not established, best thing to do is call the project quits.

MakeSense

We have been developing such campaigns since the agency began its work – back then the notion of influencer did not exist, we were all talking about blogging. In fact my very first project at MakeSense was to coordinate a bloggers campaign for Millennium Bank.

Favorite campaigns

Every time I run into this question about memorable campaigns, I remember Magic Home. I will mention here also because so many influencers got involved and contributed to the success of the campaign.

Another brand with campaigns I enjoy keeping an eye on worldwide is Coca-Cola. With them I noticed they get into a lot of niches with influencers they work with (travel, fashion, sports and may others).

A few trends

One of them has to be that more and more niched are tapped into – influencers developing on certain niches that have not been yet occupied. Also a new concept for Romania: virtual influencing and VTubers. I follow closely how it keeps on growing in Japan and reaching other markets as well. There have already been campaigns with virtual influencers – in fashion for example. And I think soon we’ll be seeing it on other industries as well.

The Romanian markets

I think we’re making good strides in the right direction and beginning to align it all with what’s happening abroad. A relevant example for the alignment is the launch of these automation tools for influencers campaigns. We’ll have to see how agile and willing to adapt we will all be eventually.

—
The new marketplace on 2Performant is dedicated to influencers and the ways they can help businesses grow. The platform allows brands to set up campaigns in a transparent and simple manner. For more information have a look at the Influencer section on our website