#Inreach17 – Why your company should consider influencer marketing

AdBlocker and the decreasing acceptance of display advertising make it hard for classic online marketing. The marketing industry is therefore facing the challenge of developing new ways to reach users with a positive advertising message. A promising marketing channel is influencer marketing. MyBusinessFuture was at this year’s #Inreach17 Influencer Marketing Conference in Berlin, Germany, and took a closer look at the topic.

Influencer marketing as a new marketing channel

Let’s start with the question what influencer marketing exactly is. In this discipline of online marketing, a message is presented in an authentic setting with the help of influencers. Influencers are users in social networks who are perceived as trustworthy and on whose opinion the users attach great importance to influence the (buying) decisions of the community. The goal of influencer marketing is awareness and positioning a company in the market. The sale is also significantly driven by influencer marketing. A “by-product” that is often forgotten is the resulting content. Influencers create content for campaigns themselves, and this in turn can be used by the companies for their own social media channels.

Classic display advertising is increasingly bothering users. Especially obvious and obtrusive advertising displays have a negative effect on the various target groups and thus completely miss their actual goal. Influencer marketing offers the opportunity to disseminate an advertising message unobtrusively and authentically. The scatter losses are also very low due to an exact target group. In addition, influencer marketing is a much cheaper marketing measure.

Review #Inreach17 – The Influencer Marketing Conference

The Inreach took place for the third time this year with the motto “where brands meet influencers”. Well-known brands like Walt Disney, dm and Sixt as well as successful influencers got together to discuss the various topics of influencer marketing. The companies presented some information from their previous cooperations with influencers and the results of those cooperations.

For example, Thorsten Mühl, Head of Digital Marketing at Walt Disney Germany, presented the results from influencer marketing campaigns in 2017.

This year, Walt Disney managed 59 projects with 196 influencers, generating 2,500 social media posts and  2 million interactions. Meanwhile, the company has built its own influencer network with a database. According to Thorsten Mühl, Walt Disney’s success factor in influencer marketing is the selection of real people, the personal relationship with the influencers and the resulting user-generated content with love for the brand.

The drugstore dm introduced the “Bilou effect”, which shows how a single influencer can create a completely new brand. So dm managed to get 320,000 videos posted on YouTube without the company initiating them. On top, the company even offers its own exhibition together with its influencers. The “Glow” could count over 12,000 visitors this year.

Therefore, it can be seen that the incorporation of influencer marketing can be far more than just an advertising placement. The success factor according to Frauke Klos, Project Manager Social Media & Influencer at dm: “All influencers are treated equally.” Although there are different efforts, the approach is always the same.

Conclusion

All in all, there were many exciting insights into the methods of influencer marketing at the #Inreach17. It has been shown that different companies pursue individual approaches, but all of them are successful. However, all those insights spoke against automation, generalization and standardization. When working with influencers, it should be clear that you don’t buy reach. It’s more about stories, characters, personalities and individual content.

Source cover picture: iStock / TARIK_KIZILKAYA