At the Salon e-marketing, we met Guillaume Doki-Thonon, founder of Reech, an influencer marketing start-up.
- You have a community of 7,500 passionate influencers: what is an "influencer" on social media today, and what's more, a "passionate influencer"?
An influencer is a creator of content on social networks (Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube, Facebook, etc.) who, thanks to his or her work, expertise and the quality of what he or she says, is followed by a community (followers). I use the adjective passionate, because it's usually a passion that has prompted them to start communicating on social networks. Sometimes this passion turns into a profession, or a secondary activity.
- You offer your influencers the chance to "monetise" their influence: is an influencer who gets paid still a credible influencer?
It's a question that comes up a lot! Remuneration does not buy a speech or an opinion, but it does pay for the time and work involved in forming that opinion, discovering the brand or taking part in an event.
That's how a good influencer thinks, and that's who you need to work with! Because they're the only ones who remain influential, while still having the chance to earn a living.
What's more, there is a self-regulating system: an influencer who communicates about a product or service without being convinced will end up disappointing his community, which follows him because it shares the same points, and will therefore lose influence. This self-regulating system also works on the rhythm of publications in partnership with brands.
We also support and advise our influencers on these best practices.
- Influencer marketing can generate a ROI of almost €10 for every euro invested...
First of all, influencer marketing should be seen as a communication operation in the broadest sense of the term that places influencers at its heart. It's not just about getting influencers to test your products or services! In an influencer marketing operation, there can be amplification of what is said through ads (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), events, media buying towards a youtuber's video, etc.
It's also worth noting that using influencer content rather than corporate content in other marketing levers optimises the cost per action.
There are several ways of calculating the success of an influencing operation, and therefore the ROI:
1. Based on sales, when all conversions can be tracked (pure player), and when the networks activated and the mechanics encourage short-term conversion, which is not always relevant.
2. Using known data from other levers: by comparing the costs per engagement (like, share, comment, etc.) and subscriber acquisition of other marketing levers with those of influencer marketing.
3. From Earn Media Value (EMV) using the Ayzenberg index: the index assigns a value to each of the influence KPIs (e.g. 0.62$ for a like on Facebook, 2.83$ for a share, etc.), and by multiplying these values by each type of engagement, we obtain the ROI of the operation.
