“Clean Beauty Brand makes revenue impact by partnering with influencers in the affiliate channel”

Welcome to the Wild West of Influencer Marketing. Brands are constantly looking for a more qualitative approach to measure influencer marketing and if it is a channel that can be fruitful. Influencer marketing is concerned more with your audience engagement, resonance, loyalty and audience advocacy than monetary factors. It’s basically your street cred…will your followers act based on what you say aka do you have real influence? As part of DMi’s affiliate managed service, DMi’s publisher development team recruits’ influencers and ensures our brands are extracting the most value out of their investment in the influencer channel.

Here is what DMi did to tackle influencer recruitment and drive engagement for our brand partner.

The Client A brand whose mission is to stand against toxins in personal care and refuse to settle for anything but the safest, most effective products. They believe no one should have to compromise their health for beauty and offers a marketplace of safe, pure and luxurious products.

The Objective The brand had several new launches and initiatives planned throughout the course of the year and wanted an affiliate marketing agency to help support their affiliate program and influencer initiatives. They believed the influencer world was a great place to get the word out about their products, first ever end of season sales, and a look into their new stores. They selected DMi Partners as their affiliate and influencer agency.

The Challenge The beauty space continues to get more and more competitive especially as it relates to influencer marketing. It can be challenging to create a strategy that not only results in brand exposure but also results in revenue. DMi wanted to ensure that the brand stood out amongst other influencers showcasing beauty products and that consumers understood why clean beauty was important.

The Strategy DMi came up with a strategy that focused on 3 key pillars: reach & engagement, recruitment, and content development. We set recruiting targets that focused on influencers that had over 30K followers on Instagram, and 10K followers on YouTube. Engagement rates had to sit at 5%. We recruited influencers that had previously posted about the brands competitors, influencers who were dipping their toes into #cleanbeauty, and influencers who were sustainability focused. In order to ensure influencers and their respective audiences were engaged and DMi was motivating them to buy we created a content strategy that mirrored a story telling approach. DMi had influencers come into the brands stores and share their experience live with their audience, we had them complete before and after challenges, and allowed them to host giveaways for their audiences using the brands products. Creating authenticity, and sharing the brands story was a key piece to educating consumers about the product and helping to motivate their purchasing decision.

The Results Within 3 months, the brand had onboarded 50+ revenue active influencers, all working on a pure affiliate basis. These influencers contributed to $171K in sales. The influencer category for the affiliate program is now projected to do over $400,000 in revenue and has helped the brand become a market leader in the influencer space for the clean beauty category.