Multiculturals, particularly U.S. Hispanics, are influencer obsessed. The Culture Marketing Council’s Digital Lives study found Multiculturals ages 18-34 are 38% more likely to follow social media influencers compared to the total population. Among Multiculturals, Hispanic’s are especially receptive to influencer’s branded content. In fact, 64% of Hispanics ages 18-49 see influencers as a trusted source for brands or services vs 59% for the total population.
Hispanics’ responsiveness to influencer branded content and their over-indexing in social media consumption is the reason we launched the Univision Creator Network (UCN) in 2015 at VidCon, the largest gathering for the online digital video community and its fans. We started with one influencer, Eric Ochoa, a Mexican-American comedian with over 4M fans, and one branded campaign for Coca-Cola.
Three years later, we’ve become the largest U.S. Hispanic influencer network with over 150 influencers garnering over 112M monthly U.S. video views and have executed over 100 campaigns for a wide range of best in class brands. Our influencers are plugged-in to multiple UCI properties including daytime TV shows, reality shows, award shows and sports championships. This success proudly earned us Digiday’s Best Influencer Marketing Platform Award, regardless of language.
We’ve picked up a few marketing best practices along the way, and on our third anniversary, we returned to VidCon to impart the influencer marketing know-how we’ve learned over the years:
1 – Pick an influencer that’s ENDEMIC TO THE BRAND
Take extra time to find an influencer who focuses on the brand’s industry, has an existing relationship with the brand or aligns with the brand’s messaging. This will ensure the brand integration is organic.
2 – Spend TIME UP FRONT onboarding the influencer
Prior to production, the brand should brief the influencer on all aspects of the brand background, messaging and positioning. Influencers have a great ability to integrate brand messaging into their content and the more they know and understand, the better the end product.
3 – LISTEN TO THE INFLUENCER on how to engage their audience
According to Business Insider’s 2018 Influencer Marketing report, nearly 40% of influencers believe that overly restrictive content guidelines are one of the biggest mistakes brands and agencies make when working with them. Give influencers a creative challenge and let them determine the best ways to authentically communicate the message to their audience. Brands need to provide influencers with enough creative freedom, while also ensuring the content and message reflects the brand’s personality and mission. Listen to the influencer, they have not gotten to where they are without knowing what engages their audience.
4 – Leverage MULTI-DIMENSIONAL DISTRIBUTION
Think digital, social, audio, TV, experiential. Social distribution is obviously key, but influencers can’t only be producing content from their bedrooms. Bring influencers to other platforms to help amplify the campaign’s reach.
5 – Establish CAMPAIGN CONTINUITY to breed authenticity
The more familiar an influencer gets with a brand over time, the more authentic the message will be. Audiences pick up on a genuine relationship between the influencer and brand, which feels less like a one-off paid product endorsement. In addition, when there’s a long term commitment, we see influencers integrate the brand message frequently in their organic content, creating more value for the brand and audiences.
