Edelman’s Digital Trends Report for 2019 discusses the importance of influencing with impact, working to increase engagement through real and authentic brand partnerships. Not every influencer is the right fit for a brand. To properly utilize influencer marketing, a brand needs to work with influencers in the right target markets for their audiences. An authentic brand relationship often starts with a “warm” audience- an audience who is already asking a question but has yet to find the answer. The goal of the brand is to provide an answer or product to consumers that delivers what the company is promising while holding true to company values and not misrepresenting information. Thus allowing an influencer to educate their following on the options available and why they are valuable rather than a straight sell. Influencer marketing allows brands to target audiences that are already part-way through the buyer's journey, utilizing these "warm" audiences resulting in more effective marketing campaigns and higher conversion rates. Often utilizing these micro-influencers keeps CAC low and results in higher brand awareness and affinity, making it a popular choice for brands in today's increasingly media-based markets.
BarkBox is one prime example of a company dedicated to creating and finding authentic influencers as part of their brand marketing strategy. The small D2C e-commerce and content company works to create meaningful customer impressions through heavy utilization of these micro-influencers. By finding influencers in the pet space with small yet highly active and dedicated followings, BARK targets its prime customer base from an authentic and trustworthy perspective. Who better to trust than another dog lover? Micro-Influencers are particularly effective in the pet space because when it comes to our pets, safety and health is always a concern. Pet owners are solely responsible for making the right decisions for their animals. It’s all on the human's shoulder to protect and take care of their furry friends because frankly- you can’t pitch to a dog.
As a subscription box BARK relies heavily on customer loyalty- needing its customers to continually renew subscriptions, upgrade packages, and participate in promotions. With customer loyalty being at the forefront of a subscription-based brand, BARKS marketing relies heavily on organic and earned media traffic. Real and authentic promotions are essential to the long term success of the company. With such a heavy emphasis on Social Media Marketing for brand promotion, it's important that BARK's paid brand partners don't seem inauthentic. If every promotional post about the brand oversells or seems fake, it puts questions in the customer's mind about the actual quality or appeal of the product. With a highly loyal customer base BARK often gets a lot of unpaid/unsolicited promotion, making it all the more important to choose authentic paid influencers to keep up a credible social media strategy. This being one of the main reasons I choose BARK as an example of a business focused on driving real value with authentic influencers.
Another reason I choose BARK as a prime example of the move towards authentic and accountable influencer marketing is because of my first-hand experience watching BARK work to maximize their ROI on influencer campaigns. As an SEO and content marketing intern in their NYC headquarters, I spent the summer sitting in on weekly growth team and marketing meetings. In these meetings, the BARK teams covered the importance of maximizing influencer assets to increase conversion rates and overall awareness. As a startup company in the peak of digital media marketing, BARK has worked to roll out an influencer strategy that targets specific brand objectives and carefully measures ROI for every campaign. For these reasons, I believe BARK is a great example of the influencer trend in use.