Influencer Marketing: 3 Social Listening Strategies for Luxury Brands www.talkwalker.com
Table of Contents Table of Contents............................................................................................................................ 2 1
Understand – What Drives Your Audience ......................................................................... 4 1.1 Discover where luxury shoppers learn about new brands and products ..................... 4 1.2 Understand How to Use each Social Media Platform ...................................................... 6
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Identify – Find the Best Ambassador for Your Brand ........................................................ 7 2.1 The Stand-Out Celebrity ...................................................................................................... 7 2.2 The Social media Star ......................................................................................................... 8 2.3 The Micro Influencers........................................................................................................ 11
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Measure ROI –Determine the Efficiency of Your Influencer Marketing Program ........ 13 3.1 Campaign Hashtags: Tying Campaigns to Revenue ...................................................... 13 3.2 Change in Sentiment: Maximize ROI by Identifying Key Marketing Efforts ................ 15
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 16
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With the rise of the digital age, luxury brands such as Dior, Ferrari and Cartier have seen a shift in their customers’ behaviour. While brick-and-mortar stores still play a key role in the luxury experience - including driving the majority of sales - more and more luxury shoppers use social media to compare products and find trusted recommendations from peers and influencers before even stepping a foot in a store. Today, social media plays an ever-growing role in the decisionmaking process of luxury buyers, with research from McKinsey showing that over 44% of all luxury goods sales are influenced by Internet research or online buzz1. Because of this change in the luxury consumers’ journey, it is essential for brands to get a comprehensive understanding of the behavior of the socially savvy luxury customer and develop winning and innovative strategies to promote themselves on social, beyond traditional marketing campaigns. As a result, most have invested significant time and money into building their online presence, but without the ability to effectively measure the ROI of these efforts. Social media analytics enables luxury brands to cut through the social media noise and extract the very best information from these online interactions to identify consumer trends in real time and discover new influencers with the clout to sway luxury buyers. This guide will help you to: - Identify customer preferences by tracking influencer-driven social conversations - Build loyalty and improve conversion by using social data to identify the best opinion leaders for your brand - Make social marketing more effective by using social media metrics to understand how each social platform is used - Measure the real ROI of your influencer program by correlating social KPI’s with internal company data.
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1 Understand – What Drives Your Audience
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1.1 DISCOVER WHERE LUXURY SHOPPERS LEARN ABOUT NEW BRANDS AND PRODUCTS In the highly competitive luxury industry, brands must find an answer to the growing presence of their customers on social platforms, as well as to the rise of younger buyers. Social media has become the place where younger generations get introduced to luxury brands and where they look for trusted recommendations before deciding to buy highend products. According to a 2014 study performed by the Blackstone Digital Agency, 75% of all luxury goods buyers use social media 3. Furthermore, it is the online content they select themselves that will sway their buying decisions. “This new generation of consumers no longer trust traditional advertising or even traditional celebrities,” said Daniel Saynt, CEO & Chief Creative Officer at Socialyte – The Influencer Casting Agency in a Luxury Society article4. “They’ve lost faith in marketing campaigns which over glamorize, over promise, or seem like they are coming from someone who doesn’t feel authentic.” One way luxury brands can overcome this problem is to get a better understanding of the social conversation by analyzing the activity of social media influencers. Influencers have become a key part of social media marketing because of the important role they play in the decision-making process of potential buyers. 1
“Luxury shopping in the digital age”. July 2014, Mc Kinsey Image Credit: CC/Flickr/NEC Corporation of America 3 “Social Media Best Practices for Luxury Brands”, August 2014, Blackstone Digital Agency 4 “How Luxury Brands Are Leveraging The New Influencers”, October 1, 2015, Luxury Society 2
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Social listening can help you determine which influencers generate the most popular discussions about your brand. Using the Talkwalker influencers’ tab (below), we identified the top 5 influencers of the Ferrari brand, which included a social media star known under the nickname Schmee150, who has almost 1.9 million followers on Facebook.
These are some of Schmee150’s most popular posts linked to the Ferrari brand in January 2016
By digging deeper into the social data and identifying recurring mentions in your most popular influencers’ posts, you can determine the products and characteristics that potential customers are most interested in. In this case, the Ferrari F12 seems to be particularly popular amongst Schmee’s following, giving Ferrari an idea of which car models (and even colors) attract the most attention.
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1.2 UNDERSTAND HOW TO USE EACH SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM Each social platform has its own specificities in terms of format, audience and levels of engagement generated. By using social data to analyze how fans use these different social media outlets, luxury brands can start to refine their social and online marketing strategy. For example, we tracked social mentions of the Paris Men’s Fashion Week in January 2016 and were able to determine that Twitter was the preferred platform for commenting on this live event with an astounding 29,800 results in just seven days.
Share by media of social mentions of the Paris Men’s Fashion Week between January 22 and 28, 2016
Yet while almost 80% of all social media messages about the Paris Men’s Fashion Week were posted on Twitter, it was online news that reached the most people, and a mere 2,200 Instagram posts were able to generate the most engagement on this topic.
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Instagram had the highest engagement rate amongst all social media platforms for the coverage of the Paris Men’s Fashion Week 2016
Instagram’s vast engagement rates make the platform a good testing ground for new ideas and products as the engagement each post receives provides an idea of product popularity. Using these kinds of social media insights, brands can create more focused and effective social media strategies for each platform and more shareable content for live events, collection launches and new items.
2 Identify – Find the Best Ambassador for Your Brand
Jennifer Lawrence at the 2016 Golden Globe Awards 5
Working with well-chosen social media influencers is an opportunity for brands to enhance customer experience by using social media to provide examples of how a luxury product is adopted by people they can connect to. Our research helped us identify three main categories of digital influencers: traditional celebrities, social media stars and anonymous influencers.
2.1 THE STAND-OUT CELEBRITY From Nicole Kidman to Roger Federer, singers, movie stars and successful athletes have long been the go-to ambassadors for luxury brands. Jennifer Lawrence, the recent star of the Hunger Games movie series, is a great example of this enduring trend. She is the 5
Image Credit: CC/Flickr/Jennifer Lawrence Films
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most associated personality on social media to the French fashion powerhouse Dior, with over 13,000 mentions of her name in connection with the brand on social media in January 2016.
Jennifer Lawrence’s name was mentioned over 13,000 times in connection with Dior on social media between December 25, 2015 and January 24, 2016
The spike in social mentions of Jennifer Lawrence in connection with the Dior brand around January 10 can be explained by her appearance on the red carpet wearing Dior at the Golden Globes. When measuring sentiment on social media over the same period, we observe the same pattern with a boost in positive social mentions coinciding with her appearance.
The January 10 peak in positive sentiment for Jennifer Lawrence & Dior posts can be linked to the 2016 Golden Globes Ceremony
This type of data can help luxury brands determine ROI in terms of general brand perception. Tracking the impact celebrity influencers have on a brand is pivotal when millions are being spent to make them into brand ambassadors. By measuring social sentiment and spikes in mentions, luxury brands can ensure that the buzz and positive brand awareness generated by a celebrity is worth the investment.
2.2 THE SOCIAL MEDIA STAR In March 2015, the woman that made the front cover of Marie-Claire was no traditional celebrity. Italian fashion blogger Chiara Ferragni has risen to the forefront of the luxury
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industry thanks to her social media success. Her blog is one of the most visited by luxury consumers, and her Twitter and Instagram accounts boast millions of followers. Just one month after the Marie-Claire cover, she reappeared in traditional media on the front page of the prestigious Vogue magazine (Spanish edition). The influence of digital celebrities cannot be ignored as it now reaches far beyond their social media accounts.
In just one month, Italian Fashion blogger Chiara Ferragni was mentioned 1,700 times in print, broadcast and online news
Star digital influencers such as Ferragni have managed to develop a singular voice that resonates with their followers and is almost impossible for brands to replicate. Their carefully curated audience responds to the unique content they produce, which is why brands benefit most from taking a step back and letting these opinion leaders express themselves in their own uncontrolled way. “The influencers produce their own editorial styling, modeling, editing of what one weekend at the Mulia looks like, which may influence our potential guests to consider staying with us more than other resorts using traditional print ads with photos of empty rooms,” says a spokesperson for the luxury hotel Mulia Bali in a Fortune Magazine article6. For several luxury companies, this level of influence is worth millions in investment. Digital celebrities such as Chiara Ferragni or Kristina Barzan have reportedly earned millions of dollars in 2015 thanks to their viral content7. Here is an example from the Facebook account of Sherylin Fisher, whose post pushing a bikini from the fashion brand Featherfox spread like wildfire across the globe.
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“Want a free stay at a luxury hotel? Build up your Instagram following”, July 1, 2015, Fortune “The Blogosphere Pays Off More Than Ever” January 11, 2016 WWD
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The Talkwalker Virality Map shows how the most popular Facebook post of luxury influencer Sheridyn Fisher spread to countries around the world
Yet one of the problems of these social media influencers is that they rarely talk about one exclusive brand. While Chiara Ferragni may be among the top-ranked (and best paid) bloggers and instagrammers in the fashion industry, her posts regularly feature products from competing brands. One of her most recent Instagram posts was the most popular social media message connected to the Gucci brand in January, but the image also prominently displayed a Louis Vuitton bag, one of Gucci’s direct competitors.
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This was Gucci’s most popular social media post in January
This trend is even more apparent when studying the brands that most often appear in connection with her name on social media using Talkwalker Smart Themes.
Brands most mentioned in connection with Chiara Ferragni between Dec. 23 and Jan. 22
By understanding the spread of influencer posts and identifying the tops brands associated to each influencer, luxury brands can get the information they require to make smarter decisions when choosing social ambassadors for their brand.
2.3 THE MICRO INFLUENCERS Micro influencers, or social media users with smaller audiences (usually less than 10,000 followers), are particularly useful to target specific segments of customers, as in the case of the Dream Catchers partnership between the jewelry brand Cartier and Refinery29, an American website whose audience is mainly composed of millennials. The Dream Catchers campaign featured five highly successful women using jewelry as a symbol of their professional accomplishments. While they were no digital celebrities, these models for a day were chosen because they are real people that embody an ideal that a majority of millennial women strive for: professional success in their respective industries.
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Micro influencers can be discovered quickly and easily using social media monitoring to find great posts, and especially images, which reflect the brand’s identity and connect products to specific life moments. In an age where every smartphone has a decent quality camera, this content can be spontaneously produced and available, or even encouraged by a well-designed social media campaign.
Top three micro-influencers posts for Dior on Twitter in January 2016
Once micro influencers for a campaign have been identified through social media analytics, brands can track success by a) tracking the increases in followership and engagement rates of these people and b) tracking emotions to see if these fit with the brand. Social listening can help you discover all kinds of influencers, and help you decide which one will best suit your brand message. As opposed to more traditional marketing campaigns, social metrics make the process of measuring the impact of every type of influencer quicker, easier and more precise.
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3 Measure ROI –Determine the Efficiency of Your Influencer Marketing Program
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Compared to other forms of marketing, social media efforts are easy to track. With the right monitoring framework, brands can measure the value of their influencers by assessing their reach, the level and quality of engagement generated, their brand loyalty and the consistency of their messages on different social media platforms.
3.1 CAMPAIGN HASHTAGS: TYING CAMPAIGNS TO REVENUE Creating hashtag campaigns for new products and collections is quickly becoming an integral part of marketing strategies in every sector, including luxury. Using social media analytics brands can track the virality and use of these hashtags, and compare the evolution of these numbers with the sales of the product promoted in the influencer marketing campaign. In this example, we will look at luxury make up brand Estée Lauder, who recently launched a hashtag campaign called #esteestories in a partnership with popular Instagrammer Aimee Song (@songofstyle). The blogger’s posts were met with enthusiasm on Instagram with about 35,000 likes and a few hundred comments, mainly targeted at the largely American following Lee has amassed on Instagram.
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Image Credit: CC/Flickr/Got Credit
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A screenshot of one’s of Aimee Song’s #Esteestories Instagram posts. (note that the only identifiable brand on this photo is Estée Lauder)
In the example below, we entered hypothetical US sales figures for the products advertised in Estee Lauder’s influencer campaign with the engagement rate for #EsteeStories.
By correlating social data from influencer marketing campaigns with product sales data in this way, luxury brands can get a clearer view of the impact such campaigns have on in-store and online sales.
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3.2 CHANGE IN SENTIMENT: MAXIMIZE ROI BY IDENTIFYING KEY MARKETING EFFORTS By tracking the sentiment of social media posts connected to your brand, social listening can help you identify which of your marketing efforts generated the most ROI in terms of brand perception. The following graph sorts through the noise of the 1.1 million social media posts talking about Dior from the end of December to the end of January. It looks at the evolution in sentiment, with several positive peaks linked to specific events on social media.
Sentiment expressed in social media posts linked to Dior between December 28, 2015 and January 25, 2016
From this spike analysis, Dior can see the impact made by an Instagram influencer, an external event and a Dior show and compare the impact each made on social media. By then correlating this data with investments made for each show, luxury brands can allocate resources more effectively.
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Conclusion In the digital age, influencer marketing is the best way for luxury brands to get the right message to targeted audiences at the right moment. With over 75% of luxury shoppers now active on social media, digital influencers can add immense value to your marketing efforts as potential customers trust them to recommend luxury products and uncover new brands. Social listening can help you in this process by providing you with means to identify the best influencers for your brand message, as well as to measure the ROI of your influencer marketing with key performance metrics such as engagement rate, change in brand perception and share of voice. By using social listening to boost influencer marketing, brands will be able to: -
Identify the most relevant conversations and new consumer trends on social media Build loyalty and conversion by finding the best opinion leaders for their image Measure the real ROI of their influencer program using social media metrics
To discover how Talkwalker can help you make the most of your influencer marketing, contact us today.
Title page graphic from freepik.com
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