As somebody who has continually fought in opposition to her frizzy locks, I’ve been intrigued by the Brooklyn-based skilled hair care model, amika, which has constructed its title on the antithetical premise that magnificence is completely easy and straight. So when Chelsea Riggs, Model President of amika was on the town for the Model Advertising and marketing Summit, I used to be delighted to be taught extra about how amika has created its model and connects with customers in a aggressive market.
How did the amika model come into existence and what’s the story behind your #hairrebellion motto?
Till the late 90’s, when Sephora turned the wonder trade the wrong way up, ladies generally purchased their magnificence merchandise from division retailer counters. The whole expertise was centered on the model being the “skilled,” and the client feeling like she wasn’t as educated. Manufacturers usually dictated a perfectionist-version of magnificence. As a substitute of purveying unattainable perfection, amika believes in an idiosyncratic and particular person model of magnificence. Our mission is to encourage a way of life of self-expression and hair revolt—going in opposition to conformity and the mundane—irrespective of your hair kind. Whereas {many professional} hair manufacturers had been began by superstar hairdressers, amika was based by trade outsiders. Our objective was to create a product that felt like a very good buddy: easy, reliable, enjoyable to hang around with and by no means pretentious. In actual fact, that is how the title amika, which interprets to buddy, was born. At present, amika merchandise can be found in over 10,000 salons nationwide and thru main retailers comparable to Sephora, Birchbox and, our quickest rising channel, loveamika.com.
You’ve had a entrance row seat to the final decade of influencer advertising and marketing. At present, amika is among the high performing impartial magnificence manufacturers. How is your method to influencer advertising and marketing totally different than different client items and sweetness manufacturers?
The sweetness trade caught hearth with the event of social media platforms like YouTube. Whereas some folks could say that the wonder trade led the way in which in influencer advertising and marketing as a result of it’s so visible and simple to speak, I consider that one of many most important elements influencer advertising and marketing took off was that on a regular basis ladies and men had been in a position to demystify magnificence. These influencers modified the sport—making magnificence approachable and academic on the identical time.
amika has labored with influencers lengthy earlier than they had been labeled “influencers.” Should you can consider it, there was a time when many manufacturers checked out influencers as a section or a waste of cash that wouldn’t translate into gross sales. Even with restricted budgets to start with, we noticed the facility and scalability of influencer advertising and marketing, and so we put the vast majority of our funding into these partnerships. Our method to influencer advertising and marketing differs as a result of we deal with influencers like model ambassadors, and never as media buys.
Even with our paid campaigns, we collaborate on content material and provides the influencers artistic freedom—after all inside some pointers and limits—however authenticity is crucial for all our partnerships. We’re in fixed search of the right influencers to accomplice with who embody the amika buyer values, no matter race or gender. We additionally incorporate their content material into our distribution. For instance, we glance to influencers to create how-to movies for our Sephora product pages as an alternative of manufacturing these movies ourselves to authentically show greatest utilization.
Many entrepreneurs nonetheless take a look at influencers as a silo advertising and marketing car, or a possible substitute for promoting {dollars}. I see corporations that refuse to “pay” for influencer placement as a result of they don’t see the worth in it. I additionally see it being dealt with incorrectly or in an inauthentic means (the buzzword of the last decade). They could assume that influencer advertising and marketing is a “must-do” tactic, like social media may also be seen as, however I consider that should you aren’t executing it correctly, then you definately shouldn’t do it in any respect.
As you’ve scaled your program from a couple of vloggers to over 1,000 influencers, what have been the largest challenges so that you can overcome?
Our largest problem was to retune the mindset of how our workforce functioned. We knew early on that influencers had been the place we needed to spend our cash, but it surely was a course of to alter the thought technique of our workforce. For instance, our PR workforce wanted to assume past press releases, editor mailings, press launch occasions and long-lead pitches, and take a look at editors as influencers and influencers as editors. Our social media workforce went from focusing solely on creating our personal content material, to working with influencers for 75% of our content material. Our advertising and marketing plan went from launching to purchasers first, to launching on social first. Additional time, we transitioned from one-off campaigns to an built-in influencer apply.
What kinds of organizational and expertise choices did it’s a must to make as you grew your program from one-off campaigns to an built-in apply?
We restructured our advertising and marketing workforce from conventional silos to incorporating influencer advertising and marketing into each position. As an expert model, we work with many superstar and “insta-famous” hairstylists along with client influencers. Our PR workforce just isn’t solely targeted on conventional client and commerce media, but additionally on skilled stylists who’re influencers on their very own and are sometimes featured in press. Our social workforce is built-in to collaborate on content material, neighborhood administration and influencers, whereas every workforce member focuses on a selected kind of influencer, comparable to micro influencers, unpaid vs. paid, or model ambassadors.
Was that cross-collaboration tough to determine? What recommendation do you’ve got for folks right here who’re attempting to combine influencer advertising and marketing all through model methods?
At first, it was considerably tough to determine cross-collaboration inside our workforce, however the outcome was exceedingly worthwhile. My recommendation to anybody attempting to combine influencer advertising and marketing all through their model methods is to first incorporate a degree of duty in every division head. Our complete workforce participates in some kind at amika—we even contain our gross sales workforce within the influencer identification decision-making course of. Additionally they assist us decide which merchandise to advertise with influencers and how much influencer-generated content material will resonate greatest with our purchasers.
At present, everybody on the advertising and marketing workforce performs some position in influencer advertising and marketing, whereas beforehand, solely our social media supervisor was accountable. Moreover, we have now employed on workforce members particularly for built-in influencer advertising and marketing. These new roles are primarily liable for day by day communication with our engaged influencers and seeding, which frees up time for our social consultants to give attention to the macro-tier and campaign-specific influencers.
With influencer advertising and marketing in-house, how do you preserve genuine relationships with so many individuals?
Sustaining private relationships with every of those influencers has undoubtedly been a problem, nevertheless, we felt strongly that conserving this in-house was the one means to make sure this was attainable. We did try to work with companies prior to now to assist execute in opposition to a selected marketing campaign, nevertheless, the outcomes and authenticity of the campaigns suffered.
Within the early days, we employed very junior social expertise, which led to some turnover, and matched with the truth that we tracked all the things in Excel, we ended up shedding plenty of knowledge. I noticed that if we really needed influencer advertising and marketing to be the guts of our advertising and marketing technique, and never only a tactic, we wanted to restructure the workforce and produce on software program to make us extra environment friendly.
We spent greater than six months researching and testing each platform on the market and located Traackr match precisely what we wanted. We had been in search of a platform that was primarily a CRM for influencer management that additionally allowed us to combination our marketing campaign analytics and entry the insights we have to correctly consider influencers, comparable to their follower demographics.
How has your method to paying influencers developed during the last 10 years?
Similar to Fb was seen as “free advertising and marketing,” influencers had been the unknown they usually had been usually prepared to publish in change for merchandise. As they grew in reputation, we observed many had been charging charges. Sometimes, we’d accomplice on a bigger scale with an influencer in the event that they posted about us not less than as soon as and it could both drive site visitors, gross sales or new followers.
Macro-influencers had been alluring on the time as a result of we thought, “Wow, we will attain two million folks in a single shot!” However typically, this wasn’t efficient for our model. We might solely afford to do that as soon as, and it felt random. When Instagram modified its algorithm, we started to focus extra on micro-influencers who had been creating superb content material. Some folks might imagine that micro-influencers equal small, which might then equal free, however we don’t view it in that means. These influencers are primarily a stylist, photographer and inventive director in a single, so they need to completely be paid for the work they’re creating. If you’re aware of The Tipping Level by Malcolm Gladwell, certainly one of my private favorites, micro-influencers collectively attain additional and wider, touching extra folks than macro-influencers.
What do you think about earlier than coming into right into a paid relationship with an influencer?
As with all advertising and marketing marketing campaign, you want to set up your targets. What do you hope to perform from this partnership? From there, I ask varied questions: does their viewers resemble my goal demographic? Are they “on model?” What’s their engagement price? Are their followers very engaged? Are their followers commenting versus simply liking their posts? How do their followers react to different sponsored posts in comparison with non-sponsored? Would a sponsored publish with my model match into their aesthetic? Do they largely speak about drugstore manufacturers, status merchandise, or mixture of each? There are a lot of elements we ponder earlier than contemplating a paid partnership with an influencer.
I perceive you stopped monitoring EMV at amika. What metrics do you observe?
We don’t use Earned Media Worth (EMV) as a metric, as a result of for amika, it’s not concerning the media equal value, it’s about achieving a specific marketing goal. On a weekly foundation, we’re taking a look at activated influencers per tier, the variety of model mentions per influencer, our complete share of voice and influencer response price. For particular campaigns, we’ll take a look at impressions, complete engagement, CPM and CPE.
You lately expanded your partnership with Sephora. What position did influencers play in that launch?
We lately launched fully new packaging for our model, and on the identical time, we expanded our hair care providing into Sephora shops with custom-end caps. Our launch technique led with influencer collaborations with targets round each consciousness and engagement—working with various kinds of influencers for every goal. A part of our success was because of the truth that we had been hyper-focused with our messaging and selected solely a small choice of merchandise to advertise. We regarded for influencers with quite a lot of hair varieties and ethnicities, and balanced media varieties by in search of influencers with robust video and images expertise. We partnered with a variety of influencers that targeted their content material on magnificence, life-style, motherhood in addition to hair consultants, which all match our model aesthetic.
For each paid and unpaid influencers, we use Traackr audience demographics to prioritize influencers who’s audiences had been not less than 50% U.S.-based, comprised of 80% or extra ladies and break up throughout our goal ages (18-25 & 25-34). We’re extraordinarily selective with engagement price, and regarded in direction of earlier feedback on the influencers’ previous sponsored posts to learn the way their viewers reacts to sponsored content material.
To maintain studying about strategic influencer advertising and marketing, take a look at our report, Global Influencer Marketing: Lessons from Beauty, that includes insights gleaned by finding out the highest performing manufacturers, together with amika, amongst 1,000 influencers.
