Are you getting the most value from your creators’ best content? With a variety of head-scratching algorithms at play, even the most engaging influencer posts have a limited lifespan. The typical Instagram post is relevant for 48 hours, Stories last 24 hours and Facebook post engagements dwindle after a mere 5 hours. With this in mind, turning to paid media to amplify the impact of high-quality influencer content will bring extra value and more conversions than the original post. We’ll share why it’s time to start creating paid ads with influencer content and top tips to put it into practice!
Why mix paid media with influencer marketing?
First things first, let’s explore why it’s a good idea to combine influencer content and paid media. Brands can reap the benefits of both strategies by using the precise audience targeting and calls to action that comes with paid media to elevate authentic and engaging influencer content. Paid media allows brands to repurpose top-performing influencer-generated content (IGC) for sales-generation with ads that often outperform brand-owned content.
Whatever the size of your influencer’s audience, paid media offers an even wider reach helping brands target a high volume of people, with strategic ad placement and retargeting increasing online visibility compared to one-off feed posts.
The added benefit of using paid media to promote influencer content is the tracking and attribution of sales. Brands can get meaningful insight into content performance by analyzing the click-through rate and number of sales generated through ads using influencer content.
In summary, the benefits of using paid media to maximize the impact of influencer content are:
- Increased conversions
- Wider reach
- Sales tracking and content performance insights
- Precise audience targeting
- Reduced costs of content creation
Integrate social ads as part of influencer campaigns
This first strategy is about capitalizing on the momentum and organic engagement of your influencer campaigns to run paid ads, generating an even greater reach. Using an omnichannel approach by mixing influencer content with paid media amplifies the brand message and makes more of an impact thanks to multiple opportunities for interaction with branded content. This could work well for a product launch campaign. You could work with influencers to tease and build excitement around the launch then drive home the message using ads with a clear call to action to buy the product.
Another approach to using social ads in synchronization with influencer campaigns is to identify which influencer-generated content is performing well organically and then elevate it further by boosting it with ad spend on social media channels, or repurposing it to use as an ad on another social channel. For example, you could use a great snippet from a YouTube video to create a paid ad on TikTok or repurpose a stunning Instagram visual for a Facebook ad.
Use influencer content for whitelisted ads
Once your influencer campaign is done and dusted there’s still an opportunity to leverage IGC for paid media. Influencer content embodies the influencer’s personal style, making it more engaging and relatable to social media users than brand-owned content. That’s why repurposing it as part of an ongoing paid media strategy can yield impressive results.
We highly recommend using influencer whitelisting. It’s a very simple process, whereby brands are given access and permission to run ads through an influencer’s social profile, with benefits for both brands and influencers. Whitelisted ads have the added benefit of including the influencer’s profile photo, and handle while also featuring them in the content itself, so are instantly more familiar to online audiences.
Whitelisting is a great technique for maximizing the reach of IGC. Setting up ads through your influencer’s ad profile allows you to create a highly targeted ‘lookalike’ audience based on their follower demographics. You’ll target a relevant audience and extend your reach beyond your influencer’s followers, increasing impressions and the chances for conversion.
Drive sales with shoppable ads
Brands now have many social commerce features at their disposal to promote and sell their products directly via social channels. On Instagram you can incorporate shoppable tags in feed posts and product stickers in Stories, offering product information and pricing, with the possibility to purchase through Instagram Shop, without ever leaving the platform. Facebook offers a dedicated format called ‘Collection ads’ featuring a hero video or image and a grid display of products, allowing you to mix and match IGC and high-quality product catalog images.
Using influencer content that features them using the product or quotes that act as social proof effectively incorporates discovery, consideration, and purchase within one piece of content! These ads are perfectly primed to generate maximum sales by featuring authentic influencer content, a clear call to action, and in-app checkout at the click of a button, showing the huge potential of integrating influencer content and paid advertising.
