What I learned from hiring YouTube influencers for product PR
Last year, I hired people who call themselves YouTube influencers to promote products from my online shop.
This is the story of that experience.
The influencers I targeted were so-called micro-influencers with tens of thousands of channel subscribers.
Generally, micro-influencers are said to be effective for driving sales in product promotions because they have strengths in specific fields and are relatively close to their followers.
Conversely, they are said to be unsuitable for broad promotions, branding, or searching for potential customers where information needs to be spread widely.
When selecting influencer candidates, I targeted freelancers because those belonging to agencies charge higher fees.
For freelancers, while the requested fee depends on negotiation, it was often possible to hire them for the cost of the product plus a few tens of thousands of yen.
Also, since they are often specialized in specific genres, naturally, the affinity with the product being promoted is important, so I chose people who could find a connection to the product. (Sometimes they would decline, saying it was difficult to make a connection.)
In the end, about 10 influencers promoted the products.
Results
◇ To varying degrees, the number of visitors to the sales site increased with every influencer
◇ However, they split into two groups: those who led to sales and those who ended up with nothing
Even though I chose the influencers using the same selection criteria, where does this difference come from?
After consideration, this is the conclusion I reached.
The attributes and quality of the followers are important.
The answer was hidden in a part that you cannot see just by watching the influencer's videos (posts).
It depends on what kind of community the influencer is building with their subscribers on their channel, through content like videos and posts, or through comment interactions.
In short, I think it comes down to the fact that an influencer is just a medium, and you need to look at who is connected on the other side of them.
Once you understand it, it is very obvious, but the preconceived notion that "influencer = popular person = if they advertise, it will sell like crazy" clouds your ability to see what lies beyond.
There are two points.
So, what kind of channel subscriber (follower) base is more likely to lead to purchases?
◇ Whether the channel subscribers (followers) include a 'purchasing demographic'
◇ Whether the channel subscribers (followers) have 'purchasing intent'
In the case of YouTube, you don't know who is subscribed to the channel, so you have to use comments as a clue to gauge what kind of people are following and what kind of community has been formed.
Twitter and Instagram are completely different in nature even though they are also SNS, so I cannot say definitively, but since followers are visible, it is possible to know what kind of followers an account has. (I will discuss this on another occasion.)
Regardless of the product, one criterion for a purchasing demographic in an online shop is whether they have a credit card, so in terms of age, it tends to be a place where people in their 30s and 40s are active.
If there are many young people, even a well-planned product PR will end up as just another piece of video content.
In fact, among the influencers I hired, there was a prominent person with a different order of magnitude in subscriber count, but although traffic from YouTube to the sales site increased significantly, it did not lead to many actual purchases.
I believe the reason is likely that the majority of the subscribers were young and their primary purpose for watching was entertainment.
The influencer who achieved the best results
To put it bluntly, it is someone with strong charisma. The 'cult leader' or 'idol' type.
The influencer's blind fans form a community.
Regardless of the content of the videos they post, they always maintain a constant number of views, and the comments are lively.
In the comments, you can see direct reactions such as 'I bought it,' which might be an appeal to their idol.
The CVR (Conversion Rate) on the sales site was very high, and we were able to achieve great results.
However, the followers' focus is ultimately on the cult leader. Since it is not the online shop itself, they were slow to respond to post-purchase newsletters and did not become repeat customers.
In other words, while product sales through influencers can be an effective means of expanding sales to new users, turning them into repeat customers and fans of the shop is a separate issue.
No matter how much success you have with influencers, it is not sustainable, and building a shop that does not rely on them is essentially important.
In other words, influencers in product sales might be like a temporary stimulant (energy drink) for the business.
Things to do before hiring an influencer
If you are thinking of hiring an influencer, try to research their channel subscribers (followers) as much as possible.
The people you should be researching are not the influencers themselves, but their followers.
When hiring through an agency, it is best to work with one that explains these details, but most places likely just list their past achievements.
*As an aside, I once spoke briefly with someone who plans TV shopping segments. They mentioned that when things sell, inventory runs out completely, but when they don't, they don't sell at all; the range is very wide, and it is difficult to commit to results based solely on past performance. I feel that hiring influencers is quite similar to this.
I believe it is essential not to be misled by an influencer's number of subscribers or followers, but rather to use your imagination to consider what kind of people are connecting through this channel (or post) and for what purpose, and to calmly assess the impact on your own business.
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Thank you for taking the time to read this long post.