In this age of #ads, influencer marketing campaigns continue to be widely adopted by both upstart and traditional companies around the world.
So far, though, it’s a strategy that has mainly been associated with brand-building goals. With more dollars than ever before being invested in influencer marketing, the big question many people have is: Can it also lead to bottom-line growth?
Two recent campaigns from Edgewell Personal Care — one for Schick Intuition, a well-known razor brand for women, and another for Bulldog Skincare for Men, a breakthrough men’s skin care brand — proved that the answer is yes. Edgewell developed a digital-first, full-funnel video influencer marketing strategy for major launches from both brands, seeing strong results at every customer touchpoint.
For other marketers looking to do something similar, here are three steps for building a full-funnel influencer marketing campaign, with lessons from Edgewell.
Raise awareness with content that feels native to the platform
When people come to platforms like YouTube, they often do so in discovery mode — they’re open to hearing about new trends, creators, and even brands. For example, 90% of shoppers say they discover new products or brands on YouTube.1
Knowing this, for the launch of a new razor, Schick partnered with Google's in-house branded content platform YouTube BrandConnect to identify relevant mid-sized and more established creators. Influencers like The LaBrant Fam, Kbaby, and Asia Jackson incorporated the product into videos that felt native to their channels, like nighttime routines and skin care tips, showing viewers how to use the new product.
By staying true to the type of content produced by the creators they worked with, Schick was able to capture the attention of viewers in discovery mode. In fact, more than 50% of the campaign’s organic views came from people exploring content via YouTube’s browse features.
Edgewell replicated this approach with Bulldog, which is the leading men’s skin care brand in the U.K., but it faces low awareness in the U.S. “We wanted to find a diverse array of male influencers spanning fashion, gamers, comedy, adventure, sports, and music to promote Bulldog Skincare for Men,” said Matt Bell, chief marketing officer of Edgewell Personal Care. “By focusing on these passion points, we could reach our key audiences.”
Increase your reach with paid promotion
By their very definition, influencers already have a loyal following — people who turn to them for advice and inspiration. But that doesn’t mean influencer marketing campaigns should only rely on that. Just as successful social media marketing requires a mix of both organic and paid reach, so too does successful full-funnel influencer marketing.
In addition to partnering with influencers, both brands amplified their organic content with paid promotions to reach even more people and increase awareness and consideration of their products. They did so by creating six-second bumper ads and 15-second cutdowns that they served up to people who had already watched the branded creator videos and those who hadn’t but were among their target audience.
The combination of branded and paid content also proved to be a success for both brands. Schick Intuition saw a 229% lift in ad recall and a 113% lift in purchase intent. Bulldog saw a 127% lift in purchase intent and a 2X increase in click-through rate to the site, compared to the benchmark.
Make it easy for browsers to become buyers
It’s one thing to raise brand or product awareness through the power of influencers. But what good is awareness if it doesn’t add to the bottom line? To move people from simply being aware of a product to actually buying it, the experience has to be as frictionless as possible.
Both Schick Intuition and Bulldog made it easy for shoppers to make a purchase by integrating the new YouTube BrandConnect Shopping Shelf, a product feed under the YouTube player that allows viewers to shop directly on their favorite influencer videos. This feature helps convert an already engaged audience by bringing the products featured in the video to the forefront, driving site traffic and sales.
For both Schick Intuition and Bulldog, the shopping shelf click-through rate was more than 2X higher than the TrueView for Action Shopping benchmark, and the brands saw high site traffic and strong sales results attributed to both campaigns.
“The campaign delivered against our campaign goals, proving the power of the connection that creators have with consumers,” said Bell.
