What drives brands to work with influencers on product collaborations?

From lip kits to skincare miniatures, numerous brands have come up with beauty product kits in collaboration with social media influencers

While scrolling through multiple social media feeds trying to catch up on the day’s happenings, a video of a beauty influencer recommending her new favourite, or perhaps, announcing the release of her collection in collaboration with a beauty brand might pop up on your feed, prompting an irresistible urge to add the product to your online cart. We’ve all been there, done that—and that’s the power of influencer marketing.

According to a 2021 report by Influencer Marketing Hub, Google searches for the term ‘influencer marketing’ grew over a whopping 1,500 per cent between 2015 and 2018—3,900 searches per month in 2015; 6,460 in 2016; 21,000 in 2017; and 61,000 in 2018—defining the trajectory of influencer marketing for the years to come. 

Today, influencer marketing has become one of the key marketing contrivances across categories like fashion, lifestyle and beauty—beauty being the second most popular category after entertainment, reveals a survey. With eight out of ten consumers purchasing products after having been introduced to them through an influencer’s content, it doesn’t really come as a surprise that brands make a sizeable ROI (return on investment) of, on an average, $5.78 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing. Should the campaign be conducted in compliance with algorithms and creativity, the ROI can soar as high as $18 per $1 spent.

In the recent past, a slew of beauty brands have extended their influencer marketing efforts by putting ‘collections in collaboration with influencers’ on the market by betting on the traffic and engagement that they [influencers] offer, with a view of multiplied sales. The Established speaks to four beauty brands to get their perspective on what propels them to indulge in this vertical. 

Influencers have their own target audiences

Apart from the overlapping crowd that engages with ‘beauty creators’ as a whole category, there are more loyalist followers who ardently track a particular influencer for the look and feel, language and voice of their page, and brands put their money on exactly that. 

For Mini Sood Banerjee, marketing director, AMOREPACIFIC, the corporation that owns Innisfree, Laneige and Sulwhasoo, influencers are “brand friends” who promote new product and kit launches and work well for digital campaigns. “At RAS, influencer collaborations contribute majorly as they help us reach our target audiences more effectively while increasing brand exposure and credibility,” says Shubhika Jain, founder, RAS Luxury Oils. Meanwhile, Sabrina Suhail, founder of Tinge Cosmetics, believes that each influencer has their own target audience, whether it’s a specific age group or a user group with a certain spending capacity or one based on a distinct functionality. For instance, while one influencer may highlight the multitasking benefits of lip and cheek tint, another might talk about its travel- and pocket-friendliness.

Making a case for reliability 

If you think about leveraging the ‘influence’ of influencers, celebrities definitely have an upper hand, albeit, fall short when it comes to reliability and accessibility. “When it comes to a celebrity or an actor, I think everyone is aware of the fact that they’re heavily paid to say and do what they are saying and doing. Perhaps, they aren’t even using the product in real life, unless they’re the brand ambassadors” says Suhail. “While influencers are also paid well, they are more likely to use the product and spend time understanding the brand,” she furthers.

For Sheil Jain, founder, Gush Beauty, the prosperity of Instagram has a paramount role to play. “Living in the age of Instagram, I feel that influencers become more relatable to the audience we’re targeting (Gen-Z) and can be easier to connect with and work with too. Whether it is an influencer or an actor doesn’t really make a difference as long as they are equally invested in the concept and product.”

Sood Banerjee, who has collaborated with bigger names in the entertainment industry for the brands under the AMOREPACIFIC umbrella, says, “The proportion of KOLs (key opinion leaders) in the influencer space is higher than that of celebrities, perhaps, due the to the ease of availability and communication.” She believes that celebrities make for a better choice as the face of the brand or when there is a need for a major push or availability of bigger marketing spends. 

According to Shubhika, influencer endorsements can appear more genuine as their followers are more engaged with their content and are more cost-effective too. “Identifying the influencer’s niche and whether or not it aligns with RAS’ target audience also plays a major role in such collaborations,” she says.

Transparency matters  

Thriving on social media platforms, the greatest advantage of influencer marketing is the readily available asset of numbers. From views and likes to engagement and conversions, there’s solid multi-dimensional data to legitimise the influence of influencers. This very data makes for most of the primary and secondary evaluation that goes into selecting influencers for a particular campaign. “We ask them to share a screenshot of their social media analyses—their audience, where they come from, the gender ratio and other demographic factors, to understand if they match our requirements. After all, numbers don’t lie,” says Suhail.

Sheil believes that research is at the core of the identification process, for it helps with more than just numbers. “We always do some background research to get an idea of their style and preferences and create a product that would match their aesthetic.” Sood Banerjee says you can also get access to reach, views, engagement and whether or not that’s coming from bots through social media databases.

An assured return on investments 

The popular consensus is that influencer collaborations, more often than not, drive a substantial ROI. Enumerating the five pillars of her post-campaign assessment, Shubhika includes sales and conversion from a particular influencer, traffic on the post and to the website, engagement of the influencer’s posts, influencer’s performance and customer feedback. Sood Banerjee believes that such collaborations bring good sales to the brand. “Customers these days are looking for quality products at good prices too, so they look for readymade kits which are price-competitive and can be purchased during sale periods,” she says, explaining why kits in collaboration with influencers do well. 

Sheil throws light on other aspects of ROI—trust and awareness—that are also augmented through such collaborations. “We often see a sales and engagement spike; however, such collaborations are predominantly top-of-funnel activities. The goal is to increase brand visibility. Trusting a new brand sometimes gets easier when we have known faces using it and liking it as well,” she concludes.

The boomerang effect

According to Geeta Rao, a former beauty editor at Vogue India, influencer marketing is now an intrinsic part of the marketing mix. “The community of followers trust the influencer and want to follow the influencers’ choices and lifestyle and are loyal to that person. This has value and is a powerful domain to own,” says Rao. However, while she does think that such collaborations create brand aura and add to the brand stories, she confesses, “As a beauty editor, I find it frustrating to see how unimaginatively some influencers push products—just lazy brand scripts. I also find it strange when influencers  push multiple products in the same category, or when young influencers push an anti-ageing category, as if they are the users.” 

While Suhail says that she will definitely invest in influencer collaborations after witnessing the growth, she also mentions that macro-influencers deliver immediate conversions as compared to micro-influencers who may or may not epitomise the brand ethos that well. “There are influencers I trust and would buy what they recommend and I haven’t been let down,” says Rao. “Having said that, I read a lot of reviews before I make a decision. Personally, I find YouTubers much more critical and in-depth in their reviews,” she concludes.

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