Among the digital marketing strategies hoteliers are willing to embrace to attract guests and reach more consumers, influencer marketing may be one of the most effective and fastest-growing online acquisition methods.
Credit: Tomoson
When it comes to ROI, according to the Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report 2020, the average earned media value per $1 spent on influencer marketing is $5.78. And here are several other valuable takeaways from the same report:
- 90% of all influencer campaigns include Instagram as part of the marketing mix - making Instagram the most popular platform for influencer marketing (used by 87% of respondents).
- The most common measure of influencer marketing success is conversions (sales and leads).
- 91% of the survey respondents consider influencer marketing an effective marketing strategy.
- Influencer fraud is a concern for more than 2/3 of respondents.
The global influencer marketing market value was about 13.8 billion U.S. dollars as of 2021, per Statista, with Instagram being the top channel for this marketing strategy, preferred by 89% of marketers. There were 6.12 million sponsored influencer posts on Instagram in 2020.
And, of course, Instagram is a powerful social media channel: it had 1.21 billion monthly active users in 2021 (over 28% of the world's internet users). So not using Instagram for influencer marketing is missing out on a tremendous opportunity.
We don't mean Hollywood, music stars, or other entertainment industry celebrities when we speak about influencers. Instead, influencers are ordinary people who gain trust and admiration from other ordinary people through their social media presence: images and messages (posts) that resonate with a specific group, their interests, and emotions.
Influencer Marketing Goals
Influencer marketing can help hoteliers achieve several goals:
- Increase brand awareness: influencers are prominent users, followed by large numbers of people. Get your brand in front of these followers to drive awareness and engagement.
- Augment conversions (sales and leads): influencer followers will be inspired to click on links leading to your hotel website, either to book or to subscribe to a newsletter.
- Supplement your content with user-generated content (UGC): expand your content library with UGC for your content marketing calendar.
- Generate more traffic to your hotel's website, attracting new and returning site visitors.
- Boost your hotel's online reputation: endorsements from influencers can enhance your brand image, build trust amongst consumers, and increase your hotel's popularity within certain groups or social media channels.
Engaging influencers shows a hotel's commitment to customer satisfaction and transparency, primarily due to the nature of the posts published by influencers: personal experiences - even when they publish sponsored posts - which are relatable and trusted by their followers. 63% of consumers trust influencers more than ads created by brands (Edelman).
Essential Influencer Marketing Tactics
To identify influencers for hotels, hoteliers should search within specific niches: travel, lifestyle, adventure, etc. Then, to make the best of an influencer marketing campaign, hoteliers must identify their target audiences and guest personas within these niches and pick the influencer most likely to reach them.
However, it is essential to underline that engagement and not reach drive the success of an influencer marketing campaign.
Most hoteliers will opt to engage influencers on a campaign-based model, while others will develop ongoing strategies offering influencers' followers special deals, coupons, and vouchers to incentivize them. Engaging influencers will be hard if your brand doesn't align with their principles, values, and moral code. Respect the influencer and their followers.
Giving the influencer creative freedom is imperative: you can explain your brand values and philosophy and describe your campaign goals. Still, the influencer's tone and style are the attributes trusted by followers. Changing these will result in a loss of trust.
Keeping the influencers engaged is paramount to a campaign's success, but so is engaging with the influencers' followers. The style of engagement will vary from hotel to hotel - either warm and personal or more detached and business-focused. Regardless of the tone, authenticity and transparency are cardinal points of engagement.
Useful Influencer Platforms and Tools
Identifying influencers can be a daunting task without employing the right influencer platforms and tools. Here are a few to help your influencer marketing efforts:
#paid
#paid focuses on "creator marketing," where creators are basically influencers who create exciting and engaging content that aligns with or matches your brand philosophy and values. With #paid, you can monitor both creators and content performance throughout the funnel.
Upfluence
Using Upfluence, you can find social media creators and nurture influencer relationships. In addition, the platform enables you to create custom workflows, generate individual affiliate links, issue coupon codes, manage product seeding, etc.
Storyclash
If you want to discover influencers and creators based on their content rather than vanity metrics (like the number of followers and likes), use Storyclash. This platform is for brands planning influencer marketing campaigns on Instagram and TikTok. You can discover brands by influencers sorted by category and country and get inspiration from their strategies to refine yours.
NeoReach
Many Fortune 500 companies use NeoReach, an influencer marketing platform featuring search, data management, and enterprise-grade analytics. This platform is excellent for real-time communication with influencers and data-driven campaigns.
Julius with HYPR
Julius scans social media channels including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, and Twitter to find the most suitable influencers for your brand based on their shares and content. In addition, the platform provides the tools to calculate ROI and analytics to track campaigns.
Key Takeaway
If you plan to invest in influencer marketing, remember that engagement is more important than reach and judge the influencers by the quality of their content (storytelling) and values rather than the number of followers and likes.