It’s almost easy to promote a new lipstick, shoe or phone via influencers, it’s simple product placement right? As long as you’ve properly screened your influencers, understand their content and have previous data insights, then you can even predict the results that they will drive. But  what about brands whose product are not as exciting, they’re a necessity and don’t get people interested very easily. You can’t just have an influencer posed next to a bottle of your latest toothpaste or pen and expect the sales to start rolling in.

Brands are always looking for innovative ways to market and reach their audience, for some influencer marketing is enough to tick that box. For some, we have to get more inventive to drive interest. So this is influencer marketing 1.1 – the unsuspected innovation.

Also Read: What Makes Influencer Marketing Platforms So Exciting?

Now the same rules apply here, the influencer needs to be a genuine and authentic customer of the brand already, they have to actually endorse the product. Even if it is insurance.

Step 1 – Identify your objectives:

I presume it’s ultimately to drive sales, although you can also set yourself targets of clicks, downloads, engagements, reach, whatever you think represents success for your business.

Step 2 – Hone your messaging:

Why should people care about your product? Why should they buy from you? An entrepreneurs, and pretty much everyone else’s, fatal flaw is that we think other people care about us or our brands. Fundamentally, no one cares about anything unless it provides value in their lives. So dig deep, why should people care about what you’re selling?

Step 3 – Turn this into an strategy:

For Simba, they struggled to show the durability and reliability of their mattresses. So, alongside other marketing strategies to target this, they came to Goat and utilised Parkour influencers. Completely insane right? Totally outside of the box, I mean what does a mattress have to do with Parkour? Yet we got some of the top sportsmen in the community to throw themselves off of rooftops onto the mattresses.

Also Read: Key Metrics for Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Influencer Marketing Campaign

Why did this work? Because the influencer’s audience were the exact target market for the mattress, they were not expecting a mattress integration so it stood out and they showed off the qualities of the mattress. The resulting video drove over 1.2m views and sales through the influencers’ discount link.

Using influencer marketing for products that are not immediately engaging may seem difficult, especially to achieve a natural integration into people’s lives. No one runs a page dedicated to insurance right? But they do run pages dedicated to travel, and adventure or adrenaline. Sometimes it’s looking at what your target market is engaging with and appealing to their interests, proving your relevance and value to their lives. Stepping outside of the box and understanding that social media is the consumers world, you may have to adapt.

So there we have it, even the most unsuspecting brand, product or service can utilise influencer marketing and succeed. It’s working, it’s influencer marketing, just not as you know it.

Also Read: The Secrets of B2B Influencer Marketing Revealed