Insense. January 15, 2019
How Boosted + Targeted Influencer Ads are Changing the Game
One of the Insense ad platform's unique offerings for brands and agencies is its integration with Facebook Ads Manager. This integration allows advertisers to take influencer posts and run them as ads directly from Facebook Ads Manager - enabling brands to keep the authenticity and relatability of influencers' messaging, while leveraging all the power and control of paid social. This integration might seem like a technical detail, but it solves some of the key shortcomings with influencer marketing that brands often experience.
Overview:
Insense provides brands and agencies with an easy-to-use project management tool custom designed for each user to efficiently manage their influencer and content campaigns. Offering both an influencer platform and a creative platform, Insense provides a place where brands can connect with influencers and easily get custom, branded content - but that's not all Insense does. Its platform is also transforming the influencer marketing world by allowing brands to conveniently run influencer posts as full ads directly from Facebook Ads Manager.
How It's Been Done Until Now.
In "traditional" influencer marketing, brands collaborate with an influencer, have them create a post about their brand, product, or service, and post it on their own feed. Once shared, some percentage of the influencers' followers will see the post, and the hope is that this will increase brand awareness and get new followers and/or customers of their products or services. However, the downside to this "traditional" style of influencer marketing is that brands have no control over how many people see the post, or ability to set demographic targets for who the post will be viewed by, such as location, age and gender.
Overview:
Insense provides brands and agencies with an easy-to-use project management tool custom designed for each user to efficiently manage their influencer and content campaigns. Offering both an influencer platform and a creative platform, Insense provides a place where brands can connect with influencers and easily get custom, branded content - but that's not all Insense does. Its platform is also transforming the influencer marketing world by allowing brands to conveniently run influencer posts as full ads directly from Facebook Ads Manager.
How It's Been Done Until Now.
In "traditional" influencer marketing, brands collaborate with an influencer, have them create a post about their brand, product, or service, and post it on their own feed. Once shared, some percentage of the influencers' followers will see the post, and the hope is that this will increase brand awareness and get new followers and/or customers of their products or services. However, the downside to this "traditional" style of influencer marketing is that brands have no control over how many people see the post, or ability to set demographic targets for who the post will be viewed by, such as location, age and gender.
Photo from www.instagram.com/jessiemdelgado/
While brands typically work with influencers who are well-aligned with their target consumer, this may not always translate into an influencer's post being seen by the right audience. In fact, a good portion of an influencer's following may not be interested in a particular product that's being promoted.
The fitness vertical is filled with examples of this issue: imagine a women's fitness clothing brand that wants to start an influencer campaign. The brand will look at various influencers in the fitness space, and start working with influencers who are a seemingly great brand fit. These influencers will then post about the brand on their feed for their followers to see. However, what some brands may not realize is that many female fitness influencers have audiences that are majority male.
Photo from www.instagram.com/cbquality/
In this situation, it will mean that the influencer's post about women's fitness clothing will be seen predominantly by men. Since the clothing brand's target audience is women, this means the brand is wasting money and impressions. Influencer examples include @jessiemdelgado/, who has a 67% male audience, and @cbquality/, whose following is 86% male.
Another shortcoming of traditional influencer posting is the lack of visibility into influencer post performance. Brands may ask influencers to send screenshots showing post stats, but collecting data in this way is not scalable. It's also entirely retrospective - it doesn't allow any real-time insight, and certainly doesn't allow brands to optimize ad campaigns mid-flight.
Another shortcoming of traditional influencer posting is the lack of visibility into influencer post performance. Brands may ask influencers to send screenshots showing post stats, but collecting data in this way is not scalable. It's also entirely retrospective - it doesn't allow any real-time insight, and certainly doesn't allow brands to optimize ad campaigns mid-flight.
The New Wave of Influencer Marketing.
In contrast, by directly running influencer posts as ads using the Insense Facebook Integration, brands have control over how many people see a post, and just as importantly, who sees the post. This means brands don't need to worry about paying for irrelevant views on their ads. Running ads directly from Facebook Ads Manager enables brands to get the most out of their influencer partnerships, giving them more visibility, control, and insight into influencer campaigns than ever before.
Running influencer ads from Ads Manager gives brands a real-time, detailed view into the performance of influencer posts. A variety of data is available, from the basics like impressions, relevance score, and click through rate, all the way into more granular data, such as engagement across various demographic parameters and how influencer posts lead to on-site behavior (when combined with Facebook Pixel). Having this real-time insight allows brands to take control of influencer posts and optimize them in the same way that smart brands already optimize "regular" social ads – including details such as changing thumbnails on videos, scheduling, and experimenting with different ad objectives or target audiences.
In contrast, by directly running influencer posts as ads using the Insense Facebook Integration, brands have control over how many people see a post, and just as importantly, who sees the post. This means brands don't need to worry about paying for irrelevant views on their ads. Running ads directly from Facebook Ads Manager enables brands to get the most out of their influencer partnerships, giving them more visibility, control, and insight into influencer campaigns than ever before.
Running influencer ads from Ads Manager gives brands a real-time, detailed view into the performance of influencer posts. A variety of data is available, from the basics like impressions, relevance score, and click through rate, all the way into more granular data, such as engagement across various demographic parameters and how influencer posts lead to on-site behavior (when combined with Facebook Pixel). Having this real-time insight allows brands to take control of influencer posts and optimize them in the same way that smart brands already optimize "regular" social ads – including details such as changing thumbnails on videos, scheduling, and experimenting with different ad objectives or target audiences.
With the Insense/Facebook Ads Manager integration, brands can use any existing audience as the target for an influencer's post. For instance, if the women's fitness clothing brand from the example above has some save audiences in Facebook that they've tested that they know are high-performing, the brand can use those for targeting their influencer posts. This will result in a relatable, compelling influencer post getting seen by an audience that the brand knows is interested in its product or message. The brand doesn't need to worry whether a large percentage of the potential viewers are categorically uninterested in their product or message.
Running influencer posts as ads also lets brands leverage the call-to-action features that are available in Ads Manager. Brands often want consumers to go to a landing page or click through to a product from an influencer post, and in the past, this often meant saying something like, "See link in bio" or including an un-clickable URL in a post caption. With Insense, brands can include a "Shop Now," "Learn More," or any of the other calls to action available in Ads Manager.
In addition to making sure posts are seen by the "right" people, running influencer posts as ads also allows brands to get as many impressions as they want. If a brand knows it needs a certain number of visits on a landing page in order to achieve a certain number of conversions, it can guarantee that it gets those impressions - not just hope that it gets them. Instagram engagement rates range widely, but generally fall between 1-10%, and it's safe to assume that a post will be missed by a sizeable portion of an influencer's audience. With organic influencer posts, brands have no visibility or control over this, but by running these posts from Ads Manager, brands can control exactly how many impressions any given post gets.
Setting Brands Up for Success.
Because Insense is designed to make targeting advertising simple and efficient, its platform makes getting branded content easy and user friendly. Setup of the platform is simple, and can be done by non-technical users. Once a brand has its dashboard set up and is ready to initiate an influencer campaign, the platform matches them with relevant creators and influencers. From there, brands can easily get content for use in their campaigns. The Insense Facebook integration allows brands to pass the influencer's Instagram handle and content into the brand's own Facebook Ads Manager. Once the influencer has been added to the brand's Ads Manager account, the brand has the ability to create official ads within Facebook Ads Manager - ads that publish directly from the influencer's handle. Setting up ads in this manner is virtually identical to setting up any other Instagram ad, so there's no need to learn a new workflow.
The Insense platform also gives brands the ability to run the type of structured, complex ad campaigns that are often required for maximum performance. For instance, one recommended approach is to create a multi-touch campaign: First, pique's an audience's interest by having a relatable influencer introduce a product or service across a few posts. Next, follow that up with posts targeted at anyone who engages with the initial influencer posts with direct calls to action, such as offers or discounts.
With the way that Insense connects influencer handles with a brand's Ads Manager account, brands are also able to create lookalike audiences based on an influencer's existing organic audience. This is useful when brands see positive audience response from certain influencers, and want to target posts to bigger audiences that are similar to those well-responding audiences. Lookalike audiences can be created from the influencer's existing audience, allowing brands to reach millions more people who are similar to those they're already seeing encouraging results from.
The Bottom Line.
The Insense Ads Manager integration, which is approved by Facebook, means that when partnering with influencers, brands no longer need to take the laissez-faire approach of having influencers post the content, and then simply hoping it performs well. Not only does this targeted influencer ad platform feature improve the efficacy, visibility, and optimization potential of influencer posts, but it empowers brands to run more sophisticated influencer campaigns.
The days of brand awareness campaigns with hard-to-quantify results are over. With Insense's targeted influencer ad platform feature, brands can plan for the ROI they want, and have far more control in achieving their target results.
Because Insense is designed to make targeting advertising simple and efficient, its platform makes getting branded content easy and user friendly. Setup of the platform is simple, and can be done by non-technical users. Once a brand has its dashboard set up and is ready to initiate an influencer campaign, the platform matches them with relevant creators and influencers. From there, brands can easily get content for use in their campaigns. The Insense Facebook integration allows brands to pass the influencer's Instagram handle and content into the brand's own Facebook Ads Manager. Once the influencer has been added to the brand's Ads Manager account, the brand has the ability to create official ads within Facebook Ads Manager - ads that publish directly from the influencer's handle. Setting up ads in this manner is virtually identical to setting up any other Instagram ad, so there's no need to learn a new workflow.
The Insense platform also gives brands the ability to run the type of structured, complex ad campaigns that are often required for maximum performance. For instance, one recommended approach is to create a multi-touch campaign: First, pique's an audience's interest by having a relatable influencer introduce a product or service across a few posts. Next, follow that up with posts targeted at anyone who engages with the initial influencer posts with direct calls to action, such as offers or discounts.
With the way that Insense connects influencer handles with a brand's Ads Manager account, brands are also able to create lookalike audiences based on an influencer's existing organic audience. This is useful when brands see positive audience response from certain influencers, and want to target posts to bigger audiences that are similar to those well-responding audiences. Lookalike audiences can be created from the influencer's existing audience, allowing brands to reach millions more people who are similar to those they're already seeing encouraging results from.
The Bottom Line.
The Insense Ads Manager integration, which is approved by Facebook, means that when partnering with influencers, brands no longer need to take the laissez-faire approach of having influencers post the content, and then simply hoping it performs well. Not only does this targeted influencer ad platform feature improve the efficacy, visibility, and optimization potential of influencer posts, but it empowers brands to run more sophisticated influencer campaigns.
The days of brand awareness campaigns with hard-to-quantify results are over. With Insense's targeted influencer ad platform feature, brands can plan for the ROI they want, and have far more control in achieving their target results.
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