Category: Marketing
Catarina is a fashion, beauty and lifestyle content creator. She’s worked with Outfit on a variety of campaigns, always producing beautiful and engaging content. Read through below about how she got started as a content creator and what inspires her work.
Introduce yourself
My name is Catarina, I am a lifestyle creator based out of San Francisco, CA. I’ve been in this industry for over 7 years now.
During the pandemic I started a small marketing boutique for dental and medical practices, I saw an opportunity where doctors and dentists can learn the value of content and influencers, so that’s grown into working with a network of practices in California.
How did you get into content creation/influencer marketing?
I started with my travel blog Wheres Catarina using it as an outlet where I can share my experiences with others alike. Traveling from country to country, uploading my photos into instagram back then when it was just a photo platform. I started receiving emails from tourism boards and hotels interested in working together that turned into many years as a travel blogger and has now transitioned over into the beauty and fashion creative space.
What inspires you in your work?
Dreams, I’m talking about the kind of dreams that people work towards in their life. Travel and careers and homes and creating things – seeing my community go after their dreams is inspiring.
That feeling of possibility not just for me but what I’m creating that makes something achievable, likely, or probable for my community.
Creativity, seeing something fresh, unique, and different inspires me to also be fresh, recreate and reinvent myself. It inspires me to avoid getting in a rut so I can better stand out and become a better version of myself.
The past is a form of inspiration, if you look at it in the right context. when I see the past, even the parts I don’t like, I use it as a source of inspiration.I try to look at the “good” I can take from the bad, and use the bad as a means of pushing me in the present to achieve even more. And to make sure those mistakes can never be repeated.
What do you love about using the Outfit platform?
I love working with an in-house team and building that long term relationship, gives both of us the opportunity to work closely together.
What do you envision for the future of influencers and creators?
I’d love to see influencers and creators alike collaborating together and Incorporating more storytelling into a collaboration while staying authentic.
According to a Meltwater study, 64% of B2C organizations say they already use influencer marketing or plan to do so. This number is expected to grow to about 90% by 2026.
Influencer marketing campaigns are proven to grab audience attention and convert leads into sales. A survey by Inmar Intelligence found that a whopping 84% of customers have made a purchase based on an influencer’s recommendation.
With this in mind, let’s explore how you can put together an influencer marketing campaign in 6 simple steps.
Step 1: Define your goals
As with any marketing strategy, setting well-defined and measurable goals for your influencer marketing campaign is important.
Marketing goals give the marketing team a direction. These targets also allow the team to tweak the strategy along the way while keeping a sharp focus on sales, performance, and engagement rates.
Your goals can include anything from increasing brand awareness to improving engagement to extending audience reach. These will depend on your brand and what you aim to achieve from your marketing campaign.
Step 2: Define your audience
You can’t design a successful marketing campaign without defining your target audience.
Identifying your audience will allow you to spend your time and effort marketing your products and services only to prospects who are the most likely to buy from you.
For instance, if you’re drawing a marketing campaign for a beauty brand, your primary target audience will be women who are interested in makeup and skincare.
Step 3: Look for influencers
Once you’ve defined your influencer marketing goals and identified your target audience, it’s time to look for influencers.
At this stage, you need to look for influencers who are in your niche and have experience in creating content for brands similar to yours. These influencers will have more credibility, and they’ll be able to endorse your brand and products more engagingly.
For instance, if you’re marketing fitness products, you need to look for influencers who have a history of working with fitness brands. An influencer with fewer followers who has expertise in fitness is likely to give you more results than an influencer with more followers but without any expertise in that area.
Step 4: Reach out and follow up with influencers
After shortlisting which influencers you want to work with, reach out and follow up with them.
With the holiday season approaching, many brands will simultaneously try to reach out to influencers to market their products and services. If you want to work with popular influencers, it’s best to get onto this step quickly.
Pro tip: Reach out to two to three influencers on every social media platform to improve your chances of retaining them.
Step 5: Sign a contract
The next step is to finalize an agreement with the influencer you’re going to work with.
You’ll have to draw up separate contracts for each influencer you work with.
Remember that the contract is where you’ll mention your expectations from the marketing campaign as well as compensation details and payment terms. So keep it as comprehensive as you can.
Step 6: Execute the campaign
After signing the agreement with the influencer, it’s time to onboard them into your marketing campaign. Send them briefs, affiliate links, and anything else that you want them to include in their posts.
Once they launch the campaign, review the engagement with their posts. This includes views, impressions, likes, comments, and shares.
Start your influencer marketing campaign with Outfit
If you haven’t put together an influencer marketing campaign before, it might seem a little overwhelming but thankfully instead of having to do all of the work yourself, you can use the Outfit platform. We make finding the right influencer easy with our Discovery tool, you can do all of the influencer management and communication in-app, we take care of rates, invoicing and payments, and we even do all of the reporting at the end of your campaign.
Sign up with Outfit for free today to get your campaign started!
Instagram has been making a lot of changes to the way that users interact with videos inside the app. The amount of changes and testing happening has left many of us reeling as we try to keep up. Hopefully we can help give some clarity to what exactly is and is not happening and also help you make some decisions around how you should be reacting as brands and creators who rely heavily on this platform.
Instagram’s updates to video
Towards the end of July the Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, revealed that Instagram will now only have one video format. All videos going forward will be Reels even if you are uploading them as normal posts. The platform has been making a lot of changes in this area in order to keep up with TikTok and minimize the amount of users moving over.
That isn’t the only way Instagram is emulating TikTok.
Many of us may have already noticed that the algorithm favoring video content overall and some users have even seen a new vertical version of their grids. After releasing these updates and getting some unhappy feedback from many users, Instagram reassured us that despite these changes to favor video they still want to do right by photos and as for that vertical grid, that was simply a test.
A petition called Make Instagram Instagram Again was started and was shared by celebrities like Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashia, prompting the explanation from Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri.
While users are resisting the change there is no doubt that short form video is a far more engaging form of content than still images. Based on the Sprout Social Index™ 2022, 66% of consumers found short-form video to be the most engaging type of in-feed social content.
Instagram themselves also noted that the content people share and engage with overall is naturally moving more towards video over time so they will have to cater to that.
What this means for brands and creators
To reiterate the sentiment from Instagram, this overall shift to video is just the beginning so brands and creators need to start making this shift too. For brands this means incorporating more video into your social media content strategies. If videos are making up less than about 50% of your posts then you may need to think about how you can start producing and sharing more of this kind of content.
Working with creators and influencers is a great way to get high quality, engaging video content to share on your own social media channels, and fast.
This means creators need to be focusing more on this area too.
Brands will be on the lookout for influencers and creators who can provide them with great video content for Reels and TikTok. So, if you want to be first in line for these partnerships you need to start showing off your skills in this area.
Both brands and creators will need to keep in mind that all video content should be optimized for the vertical Reel format. While you can still technically post square or horizontal/landscape videos this is not recommended. In a test run by Buffer they saw a 187% increase in views* for vertical video videos over square.
Our influencer platform streamlines the entire campaign process from start to finish for brands and creators. Brands can save time on influencer search and outreach, briefing, communication, and reporting. Influencers can get discovered by new brands, get briefed, submit content all inside the platform, we even take care of invoicing and you receive automatic payments instantly.
Sign up as a brand here.
Sign up as an influencer here.
*50% total watch time views.
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Solana Salado, otherwise known as The Dapper Dahlia, has worked with us on a handful of lifestyle brand campaigns. Read through below as she takes us through her inspiration, how she got started in the industry and what she predicts for the future of influencer marketing.
Tell us a bit about yourself and how you got started as a creator:
By day, I’m an editor and content creator for an entertainment and food website. In 2018, I created The Dapper Dahlia blog and social media platforms to connect with others in the vintage community and to serve as my creative outlet. I create tutorials of vintage-inspired hair and makeup looks and share vintage styling tips and inspiration. The 1940s is my favorite decade for fashion, beauty and film, so my content is a mix of Old Hollywood glamor and classy everyday looks. I like mixing modern and vintage, as well as thrifted pieces with splurges, to show that vintage style is for everyone.
What do you love about using the Outfit platform?
I love working for Outfit because there’s a variety of campaign opportunities, from attending events to making social media posts, with brands I know my audience will connect with. I have had nothing but wonderful experiences working with professional, reliable and fun brands on Outfit on campaigns that fit my platform. I also love how simple it is to track your earnings.
What inspires you in your work?
I find inspiration in many places: in vintage magazines and cookbooks and classic films, even in songs I listen to on Spotify or on my record player. I’m also inspired by the many talented style and beauty content creators I follow, from the vintage community and beyond.
What do you envision for the future of influencers and creators?
I envision even more well-established brands, as well as new ones, realizing the unique talent and value that content creators offer and inviting us to be part of campaigns more frequently. I envision more platforms that connect influencers with each other, where we can be transparent about life and work as influencers.
Follow The Dapper Dahlia on Instagram or add her to your next marketing campaign with Outfit.
Social commerce capabilities are showing up across many of the social media platforms we use everyday and some exciting new opportunities have come along with it.
If you haven’t already, it is time you learnt exactly what social commerce is, why your brand should be using it, and how to go about doing that.
What is social commerce?
Social commerce is the selling of goods directly on a social media platform, one form of social commerce you’ve most likely interacted with already is the ‘Shop’ tab on your Instagram app. This feature was revamped by Instagram in 2020 because they saw the need for retailers to boost sales and streamline the shopping process.
The easily accessible tab makes it easy for scrolling users to quickly turn into shoppers. Other platforms including Facebook and Pinterest also offer social commerce capabilities and TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter have begun experimenting with shop buttons so we expect to see more social commerce features from them popping up soon.
Here at Outfit we are working on our own form of social commerce that we are calling CreatorCart. This will utilize highly engaging SMS and allow your brand to sell across all channels via your curated influencer tribe. The results so far have incredible and we can’t wait to share more on this with you soon.
Why should my brand be using social commerce?
- Streamline the shopping experience
Online purchases tend to have a much higher cart abandonment rate. This is thought to be due to a number of factors including customers getting distracted on their way to purchase products and the smaller screen deterring people from buying, especially first time customers and bigger purchases. Social commerce attempts to combat these drop offs with a more streamlined, mobile-friendly experience. With less distractions and a more direct path to purchase there will be less opportunities for brands to lose customers during their online retail journey.
- Make shopping social
Social commerce makes shopping a more social and shareable experience. It makes it easy for users to share products they have discovered with friends privately in messages as well as publicly as links and posts on their social pages. This means there are even more opportunities for your products to be shared with potential new customers.
2. Millennials and Gen-Z’s love it!
The 18-34 demographic feel comfortable and familiar with these apps. They are already online and taking advantage of social commerce. Almost half of Gen-Zs and Millenials have made a purchase via social media and another 27% wanting to give it a try.
How do I get started?
- Getting set up
Instagram and Facebook both require you to set up your catalogs in Facebook Shop in order to start using these features. Once connected, partner platforms like Shopify will automatically sync up your store for you.
Pinterest also allows users to set up catalogs with Shopify but the process is more manual if your online store is on another platform. Pinterest does not offer purchasing in app right now so users will be redirected to your website.
Our own social commerce platform CreatorCart will plug directly into your Shopify store and there is no need to rely on any other social media channel in order to create customizable, sharable micro-sites for each influencer you are working with. This also means that you have complete control over all of the customer data and attribution.
Click here to apply for early access to CreatorCart.
2. Promote it with great content
Once you are set up it is time to start promoting this new way for your customers to shop. Create engaging content that drives users to your shop. Don’t forget to tag whatever products you are talking about in the content so people can immediately shop for those items. Influencer content will be the most engaging and it will also help you reach more people within your target audience. Outfit can help you with every step of the influencer marketing process so click here to get started planning your campaign today.
Julian is a Cuban-American lawyer and content creator raised in Miami, FL.
Tell us a bit about yourself and how you got started as a creator:
I was in law school when Instagram first came out and just started posting day-to-day pictures and it just took off. I liked sharing my workouts, my favorite spots in South Florida, and my life with my now-husband and dogs.
What do you love about using the Outfit platform?
The ability to create content that speaks to me and my following.
What inspires you in your work?
The positive messages I receive from my following, letting me know how I have either impacted or changed their lives for the better.
What do you envision for the future of influencers and creators?
I believe that its only going to increase and the amount of creators will continue to grow, there are so many creative people in the world that all have different talents, backgrounds, and ideas that speak to every person.
Follow Julian on Instagram or add him to your next marketing campaign with Outfit.
The multi-talented Venus Envy is a content creator for Outfit. Read through below as she shares her inspiration and what she envisions for the future of the influencer industry.
1. Tell us a bit about yourself and how you got started as a content creator
My name is Venus Envy and I’m a drag queen, makeup artist, and content creator! I first started posting my drag makeup on Instagram in 2017, and in 2019, I started posting comedy videos TikTok. I never expected to have the platform I do, but I’m so happy that people like my work, and I’m grateful for it every day! Creating branded content allows me to fund my passions and create content that I really enjoy!
2. What do you love about using the Outfit platform?
Outfit makes it easy to find work as a content creator. I’m able to review the brief and see payment information all on one page before I apply, so there’s no need for back-and-forth emails.
3. What inspires your work?
As a drag artist, I pull inspiration from fashion dolls, my favorite celebrities, and other drag entertainers who inspire me to do what I do.
4. What do you envision for the future of influencers and creators?
Career content creation is a relatively new industry, but it’s growing rapidly! I think as the field continues to grow, we’ll see more people turning their passion into a profession – It’s not just for celebrities!
Influencer marketing has revolutionized the way we do marketing. We know great content is being created and that there is big potential for great results but gaining accurate insights is no mean feat.
After all of the effort spent setting up and executing an influencer campaign this step is often rushed or overlooked but this is one of the most important parts of your entire campaign.
Hopefully we can help to demystify this step and teach you how to uncover valuable information that will not only help future influencer campaigns but also your wider marketing activity.
1. Define your Goals
The relevance of what you measure will depend on what you’d like to get out of your marketing campaign. It’s crucial to identify this prior to starting your campaign so you can plan your campaign accordingly and understand whether or not the campaign was successful once complete.
Are you wanting to reach new customers? or you want more people to follow your brand on social media and engage with your content? Are you driving traffic to an online store? Or are you wanting people to visit your new brick and mortar location?
2. Understand key metrics
Brand Awareness
Now you’ve defined your goals, let’s dive deeper into what some of the key metrics are, what they mean, and why they are important.
Of course we all want to ultimately drive sales but it is important to remember if someone is never made aware of your brand then they will be very unlikely to make a purchase from it but if someone follows your brand and has been following you for a while they will be more likely to purchase from you, possibly even multiple times. Each metric also will also give you useful insights into what people are responding to so that you can learn about your audience and adapt accordingly.
If you are wanting to increase the overall awareness of your brand then you should be looking at your Reach, and Impressions.
Reach is the total number of unique people who have viewed your content or ad.
Impressions are the number of times your ad or content has been displayed, no matter if it was clicked or not or viewed by the same person more than once.
When creating your influencer campaign with Outfit, we’ll report on the total reach and impressions your campaign received and benchmark this against industry standards so that you can use that data to analyze results.
Engagement
Engagement and Interactions are a great way of knowing if the people you are targeting are actually taking interest in your content or product. If they aren’t engaging with your content you may be targeting the wrong people or you content might not be interesting enough to capture their attention.
Engagement consists of likes, comments, shares and profile clicks.
Interactions consist of sticker, hashtag, profile, and mention clicks.
Outfit will report on both of these metrics for the whole campaign as well as for each influencer. We can even split this into each location if you need us to so then you can easily gather and analyze the data.
Audience growth or the amount of followers you gained from the collaboration will give you a strong indication into how engaging the content is and the relevance of your brand to that audience. Mutual followers are good to note also, indicating they came directly from the collaboration. Outfit provides you with a summary of this metric against an industry benchmark once the campaign is complete.
Website visits can be tracked directly in app via Instagram stories but not posts. However, you can also use Google analytics and UTM links to help track this. It is important to also note any increase in overall traffic to your website around the time of the campaign too.
Conversion
UTMs are a great way to directly track conversions and what influencer they came from and so are affiliate discount codes and links.
As with traffic, you should note down and attribute an upturn in sales around the time of the campaign to because there will be customers who may not click directly through to make their purchase but still end up purchasing later on.
With the launch of our new influencer marketing tool CreatorCart attribution will become much easier and more accurate. Keep an eye out for more on this soon!
3. Look beyond the metrics
Influencers provide so much more value that simply clicks and conversions. They can help to improve overall brand loyalty, they can help you shift perceptions of your brand, and they are an authentic way to deliver important messages to your customers. They provide a way to deeply connect with the people you are targeting however you may want to do that.
They also provide create content for you to use for other marketing material. Make sure to be explicit about content usage in your briefs if this is your intention but many influencer create highly engaging and professional content that you could reuse elsewhere saving on potential production costs further down the track. If you receive a lot of great content you can use on your own channels then this should be a measure of success for your campaign too.
4. Use an influencer marketing platform
Using an influencer marketing platform means that the compiling of all of this data is done for you so you can save that time and use it elsewhere.
Outfit is an end-to-end influencer marketing platform, providing smart technologies for brands and agencies to seamlessly connect with creators to manage campaigns, amplify their message and attribute success. We have everything you need from influencer selection, easy payment processing and a full report of key metrics at the end of your campaign to understand your success.
Sign up to Outfit today, free of charge and discover how influencer marketing can amplify your next marketing campaign.
Makeup artist and esthertitian Rikki Ferrar joined Outfit in August 2021 and has already worked on campaigns with a variety of beauty brands including OZ Naturals, PUPA Milano and QMS. Always creating beautiful, engaging content. We asked her a couple of questions about her work and the industry.
Tell us a bit about yourself and how you got started as a creator:
I got started as a creator simply for my intense love for the beauty and wellness industry! I loved being able to share and connect with people all over the world on social media. Its been so fun to share my creativity passions in an unlimited concept.
What do you love about using the Outfit platform?
I love that Outfit makes it easy to collaborate with brands and other creators. The platform does such a good job at organizing everything and removes the hassle. Also everyone I’ve worked with has been SO professional and friendly.
What inspires you in your work?
Creating is almost therapy for me. It fuels me to share what I love to do. Working in the skincare and makeup industry I find that makeup application and skincare doesn’t come at ease for everyone. It inspires me to know that i’m helping people achieve their makeup and skincare goals.
What do you envision for the future of influencers and creators?
I envision ways to make the experience more intimate. Maybe something like categorized private chat groups and other outlets to let influencers and creators connect more with their audiences? There are so many topics that a creator gets questioned on. These platforms are growing at such a fast rate that I personally feel it’s impossible to connect with everyone in the way they’d like. I personally see messages and outreach on my social media asking to give one on one advice for specific makeup and skincare questions. I know the goal is to grow in audiences but I also think there is more room to grow in creating more intimate/smaller interactions for the followers and audiences who desire that.
Follow Rikki Feerrar on Instagram or sign up with Outfit to include her in your next campaign!
Influencer Marketing
You may have heard of the watch brand Daniel Wellington. In 2011, the founder of the Swedish brand, Filip Tysander, opted to forego conventional celebrity sponsorships. Instead, he came up with a unique marketing strategy to announce his new company.
He chose relevant Instagram influencers and gave them Daniel Wellington watches. He urged these influencers to use the hashtag #DanielWellington when they uploaded images of the watches on their Instagram accounts.
Every influencer was given a unique promo code that they could include alongside their posts to give their followers a discount, prompting them to buy Daniel Wellington watches.
Tysander now had access to a wealth of user-generated content that could be used as real-world testimonials. With the help of Instagram influencers, he was able to grow Daniel Wellington into a $220 million business.
Tysander’s use of Instagram was a masterstroke. Remember, this was 2011 – yet he chose a social media platform relevant to his target demographic – young and creative individuals.
Word spread fast. Tysander’s plan was working – it drew even more fans to the brand, and Tysander started seeing conversions. The company gained 1 million followers in its first year and today has 4.8 million followers on Instagram. Over the past decade, millions of companies worldwide have followed Tysander’s example.
Why influencer marketing is taking center stage
Last year, Apple’s iOS 14.5 update required users to share their unique Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) – an identification number issued to each iOS user – to allow advertisers to provide personalized ads in apps.
Before the update, around 70% of iPhone users shared their IDFA with advertisers through apps, which allowed advertisers to track users and their preferences. However, today only 13% of users worldwide and 5% of users in the US share their IDFA.
Besides, the cost per thousand impressions (CPM) on Facebook and Google has become more expensive, and advertisers are emptying their pockets while fighting a losing battle to reach the consumer. For this reason, advertisers are moving to influencer marketing over traditional advertising methods.
Influencers tend to forge closer relationships with their followers, leading to higher conversion rates for brands that market through them. The success of influencer marketing will lead brands to spend a whopping $16.4 billion in 2022 on influencer marketing.
Source: influencermarketinghub.com
The rise in video marketing and social commerce
Video marketing has grown rapidly in recent years – with 92% of marketers considering video an important part of their marketing strategy.
Videos have been found to get more engagement than photos on social media, depending on your audience. While a mix of both is considered the best route to follow, marketers see photos as content that can be consumed in a few seconds before the viewer moves on.
On the other hand, videos urge viewers to pause and pay attention to the information, resulting in more clicks and conversions. As a result, video advertising on mobile has greater click-through rates.
The rising popularity of short video formats like Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts and the impact of the global pandemic on consumers, which boosted social media consumption, has contributed to the growing trend of video marketing.
(Image credit: The Verge)
Another thriving industry is social commerce, which is the process of selling products directly on social media. Social commerce is no longer limited to advertising.
Users can now make purchases without leaving an app, making the buying process easier. The complete shopping experience – from discovering a product to paying for it – takes place directly on a social media platform.
Various social media platforms are increasingly offering companies new channels to drive sales. For example, many brands sell products directly on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest through influencer marketing.
40% of users say that they buy products online after seeing an influencer they follow promote them, while 88% of users say it’s important for the influencers they follow to be authentic and have a genuine interest in the products and services they promote online.
According to a study by PR Newswire, worldwide social commerce sales totaled $89.4 billion in 2020 but are predicted to multiply sixfold by 2027, reaching $604.5 billion in total value.
The importance of micro-influencers
Influencer marketing is now considered a key advertising approach, with 93% of companies using influencer marketing as part of their campaigns.
Many companies – especially smaller businesses – tend to choose micro-influencers over macro-influencers for their marketing campaigns. Despite having fewer followers than macro-influencers, their followers are more engaged and willing to take action. This is because they possess the characteristics that today’s consumers prize: honesty, relatability, and credibility.
As companies become increasingly cautious about fake influencers, a number of marketing teams have started planning and executing campaigns in-house. This helps safeguard the brand image and guarantees campaign effectiveness.
Find authentic influencers you can trust
Going through thousands of influencers, identifying the right ones, reaching out to them, and coordinating with them for a single Instagram post can be tedious.
There are up to 38 million influencers on social media. Even if you find the right one for your brand, measuring that influencer’s impact on your sales is almost impossible – not to mention the number of fake influencers and bot accounts out there.
Outfit is an end-to-end influencer marketing platform enabling marketing teams to identify influencers who are likely to drive the highest conversion and communicate with large numbers of micro-influencers easily. We let you manage your marketing campaign, payments and report on the great results all in one place.