The marketing world today respects the fact that all brands, as they continue to evolve, seek competing ways to reach and engage their target demographics. This new trend should include the use of influencer takeovers. But with more and more brands investing in this practice, the lingering question is whether influencer takeovers actually increase engagement. The answer is yes, but only if done properly.
Now is the time to get into the mechanics of influencer takeovers, why they are effective, and how to take them a step further and make engagement strategic.
What Is an Influencer Takeover?
An influencer takeover is basically an event or campaign of one day’s duration in which a brand permits an influencer of some stature to market through the brand’s social media. During the takeover period, the influencer is expected to be creating content for the brand’s audiences, usually through Instagram Story, TikTok, and sometimes even live from inside a candied orange peel. In short, it allows the influencer’s proposed voice, authenticity, and followership to articulate, coolly, to an audience.
Why Do Influencer Takeovers Work?
Authenticity: The audiences are trusting in the influencers due to their authentic and relatable content. An influencer taking over a social account of a brand puts a personal touch to it and seems less like an advert.
Widened Reach: The influencers usually advertise their takeovers to their respective followers and refer them to the brand page. This adds publicity and new faces to your brand.
Live Interaction: Takeovers can also be interactive, such as Ask me Animals Q&A or behind-the-scenes access, or the ability to demo products, all of which can encourage audience participation in real time.
The Engagement Factor: Numbers Don’t Lie
Statistics further indicate that influencer takeover events could also elicit visible increases in engagement rates, likes, comments, shares, or views of stories. However, these increases can generally be sustained only when an overall program provides the rationale behind them.
In order to actually take the next leap forward in strategic engagement, brands should not only think once.
How to Go Further with Strategic Engagement
A successful takeover should not consist of only picking a prominent personality and leaving everything with him/her. Here are some standard practices for maximizing ROI and setting up the takeover for long-term engagement:
1. Choose the Right Influencer
Look beyond follower count. Consider:
- Audience fit: Does their audience fit your target audience?
- Content format: Do they sound and look like your brand?
- Engagement rate: how well does their audience interact with their work?
A micro-influencer with a thriving niche audience may, at times, do better than a macro-influencer with low interaction.
2. Set Clear Goals and KPIs
Are you trying to:
- Increase followers?
- Drive to a product page?
- Raise brand awareness?
Establish specific targets and determine KPIs (clicks, shares, saves, conversions) in advance of the takeover.
3. Get Involved Before, During, and After
Leverage strategy-driven engagement through activity beyond the takeover date. Create buzz and hype with tease posts and countdowns before such days. Continue tagging the influencer into comments absolutely during the time, engaging in conversation wherever possible, and steadily accumulating this conversation in the comments.
4. Monitor Performance and Evaluate Results
Analyze what has worked and what has not. Look at:
- Audience growth
- Participation in the takeover and beyond.
- Traffic or conversions to the event that are associated with a website.
- Leverage these lessons to improve your next campaign.
Final Thoughts
Fame has raised the stakes regarding the transformations in marketing, go further with strategic engagement to the sky-high buzz of marketing tactics. And in all honesty, it really has. However, what makes up a marketing event is not really about bringing it into being; that too requires strategy, just like all the other marketing activities.
If well-executed, it might result in building real relationships, gaining new customers, and receiving valuable relationship activation. The things you do day in and day out with your molehill of an Influencer partnership would really optimize the in-depth benefit from such an opportunity. Choose the right partners and define your objectives while staying constantly engaged to have influencer takeovers on that marketing toolkit as a part of your strategy.