Publisher Spotlight: A Case Study of Influencer Marketing

In this month’s episode of Publisher Spotlight, we interviewed publisher Redu, to better understand the value of content publishers and how influencer marketing brings brands to life, influences the perception of brands, and drives incremental sales by creating unique content.

Can you tell us a bit more about Redu and the value to advertisers?

Redu is a huge shopping influencer, with a following of over 1.8 million women, all looking for great quality products and services at an affordable price. Our brands consist of Ashleigh Money Saver, Ashleigh Plus Size, Ashleigh Kids, Ashleigh Mother & Baby, Ashleigh Home, and Feed Your Family. We drive incremental sales to advertisers, giving exposure to products and offers to an audience who wouldn’t otherwise have seen them. Our in-house reporting platform means that we have 5 years of data at our fingertips on which products, brands, and offers resonate best with our audience, and we leverage this to make data-driven decisions and optimise performance for our clients.

How can Redu help drive brand awareness for Rakuten Marketing brands?

We work closely with our clients to increase awareness of their brand, offers, and product ranges via social, email, and online placements. Our ever-growing community of avid shoppers are highly engaged and trust our brands as a leading voice to recommend the best products and services for them, at the best price.

Not only do we have 1.4 million Facebook followers that have subscribed to see deals and product recommendations from us in their newsfeeds, but the viral nature of social media means that we can also reach the connections of these followers, as they tag their friends and family members in posts that they think will be of interest to them.

Each of our social posts reaches on average 30,000 unique Facebook users organically, but this exposure can be increased significantly by using Facebook advertising to extend and amplify the exposure to a targeted audience. On average, every £1 spent on Facebook advertising with us generates £25 in return.

Social is becoming increasingly about video, and our in-house content team can produce bespoke Facebook and Instagram video content for clients to promote their different offers and showcase their range of products. Video allows us to adopt a conversational tone and engage with the audience, making it a much more authentic approach to influence buying behaviour. Live streaming has become a really effective way to interact with prospective customers in real-time and has been a popular choice for our clients.

Other ways in which we can help advertisers to increase awareness, is to our 255K email subscribers, who we email daily with top offers, and also via our website, which is updated regularly with money saving news and tips.

Driving incremental value is a high priority for our brands, how can Redu help achieve this goal?

As a content publisher, Redu can help drive awareness of brands and products to prospective customers who wouldn’t otherwise have seen them. Unlike voucher code and cashback sites, our followers might not be looking for one brand or product but will come across it either in their social feed or emails.

It’s great to see that advertisers are increasingly recognising the value of content affiliates and looking beyond the last click referrer. Content publishers like Redu are instrumental in initiating the sales purchase and have a lot of power to influence the purchasing decisions of prospective customers. By creating unique content, Redu is able to bring brands to life, influence the perception of brands, and drive incremental sales.

You recently won ‘Best Influencer Marketing Campaign’ at the PMAs, could you tell us a little more about your influencer offering and how it helps brands drive sales?

As a shopping influencer, we are valued by our audience for bringing them the best offers from the brands they love and introducing them to exciting new brands that they weren’t already aware of. What sets us apart from many other affiliates, is that we have a voice to really influence brand sentiment. Video has really enabled us to not only drive awareness for our clients but also to give in-depth product reviews and recommendations in an authentic way.

Last year we were delighted to win a Performance Marketing Award for the Best Influencer Marketing campaign. Simply Be had tasked us to create an influencer campaign to promote their AW17 Partywear range and promote them as a leading voice in the plus size market. As part of the campaign, we produced a series of videos, including a video featuring our own team opening up about their body hang-ups and what they would want to wear for their office Christmas Party. With the support of Simply Be, we then gave the team makeovers and had them try on several outfits, including accessories such as shoes and bags. The video allowed them to answer real-world problems and talk about how confident they felt with the Simply Be choices and how their perceptions personally towards the brand had changed. This video reached over 60,000 with the video series overall being viewed 170,000 times, and over the course of the week that we ran this content conversion rates increased by 12%.

It’s these kinds of videos that have really helped to drive engaged customers with a high lifetime value for our clients and provides an excellent way to reach an audience who don’t like traditional advertisements.

Lastly, what trends do you see within the social space in 2019 that our advertisers should be looking to exploit within the affiliate channel?

Social Influencer Regulation

While 2018 saw influencer marketing become a key digital promotion trend, I think 2019 will see influencers come under tighter scrutiny. Increased regulation will mean that they will have to disclose when they have been paid to promote a product or brand, and I think more brands will be analysing accounts to see how engaged their audience is. With tools available to provide fake followers, follower counts won’t be enough to decide real value.

Social video

Marketing attention has definitely turned to social video, as this is becoming the most popular way that customers consume content. On Facebook, our reach for a video post is 170% high than a standard post, and as well as this boost in exposure, it also helps to give more detail about the offering, for example demonstrating a toy, reviewing items of clothing, or explaining a new service.

Instagram conversions

There’s no doubt of Instagram’s popularity, but I think that 2019 will see this platform become more of a conversion engine for brands. Shoppable tags are now being used more and more, and the ‘swipe up’ links in social stories are providing brands with better calls to action to drive sales without having to use paid advertising.

Massive thanks to Redu for giving us more insights into the value of content publishers.