KOL – White Orchid Insights

How to work with KOLs & Influencer

Sarah Keates — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 17:32:16 +0000

How to Work with KOLs and Influencers: 5 Essential Tips

By Sarah Keates, Founder of White Orchid Insights

Collaborating with Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) and influencers can be a game-changer for your brand, but navigating these partnerships effectively is crucial to achieving the desired outcomes. At White Orchid Insights (WOI), we’ve mastered the art of influencer collaborations and are here to share our top five tips for working with KOLs and influencers.

We’ve developed lots of personal relationships with our KOLs, which means we know which ones are a good fit for your brand. Just because the influencer has a huge following, doesn’t mean they’ll be the right fit. “As a KOL myself, I understand the process from both sides. I know the challenges brands face when engaging KOLs and I know the frustrations KOLs feel when they’re not given clear guidelines”.

Here’s my tips for working with KOLs and influencers in Hong Kong, London, Switzerland and UAE.

1. Set Clear Expectations

Before diving into any collaboration, it’s vital to set clear expectations. This includes defining the campaign objectives, the type of content expected, and the key performance indicators (KPIs) you will use to measure success.

– Define Objectives: Be explicit about what you want to achieve. Are you looking to boost brand awareness, drive sales, or enhance engagement?
– Content Specifications: Specify the type and number of posts, stories, or videos you expect.
– KPIs: Clearly outline how you will measure success, whether it’s through engagement rates, reach, conversions, or other metrics.

2. Provide Messaging and Brand Guidelines

To ensure consistency and alignment with your brand identity, provide influencers with comprehensive messaging and brand guidelines. This helps maintain brand integrity and ensures the content resonates with your target audience.

– Brand Voice: Explain the tone and style you expect. Should the content be formal, casual, or playful?
– Visual Guidelines: Provide examples of how the photos or videos should look. This includes color schemes, themes, and any specific branding elements.
– Key Messages: Outline the core messages you want the influencer to convey. This can include product benefits, brand values, and any specific hashtags or call-to-actions.

3. Maintain a Degree of Separation

Working directly with influencers can sometimes lead to challenging situations. By having a PR agency manage the process, you create a buffer that makes navigating these complexities easier. WOI has been working with KOLs for over a decade, if you’d like some support with the process, you’re in good hands.

– Professional Mediation: A PR agency acts as an intermediary, handling negotiations, contracts, and any potential issues that arise.
– Objective Oversight: Agencies can provide a more objective perspective, ensuring that both the brand’s and the influencer’s needs are met.
– Crisis Management: In the event of misunderstandings or conflicts, a PR agency can mediate and resolve issues swiftly and professionally.

4. Measure ROI Effectively

It’s essential to track the return on investment (ROI) of your influencer campaigns to understand their effectiveness and optimize future strategies.

– Detailed Reporting: Ask your PR agency to provide comprehensive reports on campaign performance. This should include metrics like engagement rates, reach, impressions, and conversions.
– Qualitative Feedback: In addition to quantitative data, gather qualitative feedback to understand audience sentiment and the influencer’s impact on brand perception.
– Adjust Strategies: Use the insights gained from these reports to refine your approach, identifying what works well and what can be improved.

5. Foster Long-Term Relationships

Building lasting relationships with influencers can yield better results over time compared to one-off collaborations.

– Consistent Engagement: Keep in touch with influencers even when you’re not actively collaborating. Engage with their content and support their projects.
– Mutual Benefit: Ensure that the relationship is beneficial for both parties. Recognise their efforts and consider offering incentives or bonuses for exceptional performance.
– Collaborative Planning: Involve influencers in your planning process. Their insights can be invaluable in shaping future campaigns and making them more authentic and engaging.

WOI is a PR agency operating in Hong Kong, London, the US, and UAE.

PR is changing, and the brands that succeed will be those that adapt to these changes. At WOI, we’re committed to helping our clients navigate this evolving terrain by prioritising authenticity, using data, embracing creativity, focusing on value, and engaging with their communities. By going the extra mile, brands can not only meet but exceed the expectations of today’s discerning audiences.

As we continue to evolve and innovate in our PR strategies, let’s keep in mind that the goal is to inspire, engage, and build meaningful connections. In doing so, we’ll not only enhance our brand’s reputation but also create lasting relationships with our audiences.

Ready to take your influencer strategy to the next level? Let’s make it happen together.

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Sarah Keates is the founder of White Orchid Insights, a PR and communications agency dedicated to helping brands connect with their audiences through authentic and innovative strategies.

If you enjoyed this article, you may find this useful: https://whiteorchidinsights.com/news/prtips/

You can reach Sarah at sarah@whiteorchidinsights.com

7 Factors to Consider for Impactful Influencer Marketing

Mellissa Wheeler — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 10:50:33 +0000

Influencer marketing is now front and centre of most (consumer) digital marketing strategies. This article highlights key factors to consider before engaging an influencer and benefits from collaborating with the right influencer (KOL) who aligns with your brand and purpose.

What is influencer marketing and why is it important?

Influencer marketing exploded onto the digital scene in 2016. In its preliminary form, influencer marketing relied heavily on celebrity endorsements. However, with consumers demanding more authenticity and relatability, brands have shifted to everyday people celebrating brands and products they love. In 2021, 89% of marketers affirmed that influencer marketing works just as well, if not better than other marketing channels. With Gen-Z consumers valuing a brand’s authenticity and their willingness to make purchasing decisions based on recommendations, a carefully thought out influencer marketing strategy is critical to ensure success of these campaigns. Consumers are more likely to buy from someone they know and trust, so, influencers are extremely effective when it comes to strategies like word-of-mouth marketing or increasing social proof.

Influencer category	Followers
Mega influencers	1 million + followers
Macro influencers	500,000-1 million followers
Mid-tier influencers	50,000- 500,000 followers
Micro influencers	10,000-50,000 followers
Nano influencers	1,000-10,000 followers

1. Identify your target audience and assess where they spend time

Before developing a digital or social media campaign, assess your consumer demographic. For example, Facebook, with its extensive network spanning over 2.8 billion active users continues to be a popular, reliable social marketing platform. Instagram, with over 1 billion active users, is beginning to face stiff competition from Tik Tok, SnapChat for capturing the younger demographics (depending on your location). As marketing campaigns and influencers differ between these various channels, it is imperative that you research your demographic and where they spend their time. This will increase the effectiveness of the social media campaign.

Ceci N. | @Ceci N. | @no7| Digital Creator |180k+ followers (Mid-tier influencer)

2. Look for an influencer to aligns with your brand values

Authenticity is at the heart of influencer marketing. It is about buying into someone you feel you” know”, relate to, and trust. Instead of merely focusing on “the numbers” and outreach – assess if their positioning, style, values and tone aligns with those of your brand. It is critical that the influencer you decide to work with has demonstrated credible knowledge of your industry, product or service to ensure they come across as a credible and authentic voice. Assess their customer engagement and reputation as that will impact your brand.

3. Focus on Micro and Nano

Whilst they have smaller audiences, micro and nano influencers can be effective and powerful. Lower cost to engage, often with higher engagement rates than their mega influencer peers, this group can be a great option. Social media algorithms pick up on their higher engagement, thus boosting visibility of micro and nano influencer’s content. With Micro influencers, brands can achieve higher engagement rates among a large enough audience. A study conducted by the reputable Dr. Jonah Berger, Wharton University professor and author of ‘Contagious: why things catch on’ showed that 82% of consumers surveyed, were likely to follow a recommendation from a micro influencer. Micro influencers are often seen as truly knowledgeable, passionate, authentic and are seen as a trusted source for recommendations. Working with micro influencers can improve the return on investment (ROI) on the influencer campaign.

4. Build a relationship

Authenticity and authentic relationships are at the core of influencer marketing. Before engaging an influencer, make an effort to engage with them, their posts and their content. Showing a genuine appreciation for their efforts builds rapport thereby laying a foundation for a credible ongoing partnership.

5. Develop your campaign messaging for your influencer

Once you have identified your influencer, make sure they have sufficient access and guidance from your marketing team to determine what content your influencer should or should not publish. Ensure that you share your brand guidelines including details about your brand voice, tag lines, hashtags, and language to avoid with your influencer so that they are aligned with your brand values and tone.

6. Finalize campaign expectations with your influencer

Ensure you review all of the expectations you have for your influencer / KOL in addition to any expectations they have for you. We recommend that you have these expectations are written, agreed upon, and signed by both you and the influencer — you can organize all of this information through an influencer contract. This will help you avoid any issues and discrepancies down the road. Common points to consider and document include:

Terms of partnership – how long will you be working with the influencer
Payment terms – how the influencer will be paid or remunerated
Communication lines – how you will be communicating with each other

Anson Kong | @_kisang_ | 330k+ followers (Mid-tier influencer)

7. Measure campaign results

In order to determine success, you have had in reaching your audience through your influencer, it is important that you measure results of your influencer marketing strategy. Top line revenues continue to be a core metric for marketers when measuring impact of an influencer campaign. Key metrics to evaluate when determining success of a campaign include:

Engagement: Measure metrics such as likes, shares, comments, tweets, reposts, blog mentions of your product or service made by the influencer.
Views: Determine your reach by measuring how many people are actually seeing the content the influencer is posting by looking at the overall number of ‘views’.
Engagement and resonance: This can be measured by the level of interaction and engagement between the influencer and the target audience.
Clicks: Review the number of clicks on the content the influencer shares about your brand.
Follower count: Track follower count over time and determine.
Conversions: It is helpful to use a specific discount code for your influencer or measure customers that sign up via the influencer’s page to keep track of conversions and sales made through the influencer.
Measure ROI: ROI for influencer marketing is measured by dividing the revenues generated by the influencer by the costs incurred on the influencer marketing campaign. Cloud based engagement, content and outreach measurement apps BuzzStream and BuzzSumo both have analytics tools built into the software to help you measure the success of the influencer’s work.

By identifying the type of influencer best suited for your business and developing an influencer marketing strategy, you are sure to improve your reach among potential customers. Incorporating credible influencers will help you build new and lasting relationships with your target audience.

4EVAJESSIE | Jessie Lai | @jessieli | 390k+ followers (Mid-tier influencer)

For questions or comments, please get in touch her