How Retailer Owned Brands Can Successfully Market With Influencers

Think for a moment about where you buy your groceries. I'm going to make a bold assumption that the retailer has their own self-branded products across the store, and they're competitively priced making it more enticing to buy than that household brand you were about to add to your shopping cart.

Retail owned brands aren't new, in fact, they're evolving more than ever. Our agency has had the pleasure of partnering with Walgreens on various influencer marketing programs, including those that revolve around their own brand, Nice! The food and beverage brand has over 300 products that span from everyday essentials to organic treats, all exclusively sold at Walgreens locations. Additionally, in 2018 they went through a re-brand to help consumers better convey their products by the label.

So, Why Did Nice! Choose Influencer Marketing?

Reaching New Audiences Outside of Existing Customers

Because Nice! is exclusively sold at Walgreens, it's safe to assume that only existing Walgreens customers know about the brand and are the current purchasers. By partnering with influencers, Walgreens has now expanded the awareness of the brand to their partners' audiences.

Leveraging Trusted Third-Party Voices

Studies consistently report that consumers are more likely to trust a recommendation from a micro-influencer over a brand or a celebrity. Not only do these influencers provide that third-party credibility, but those who act as brand ambassadors are consistently discussing Walgreens through their content and continually exposing their audience to the brand. 

An Educational Resource

Not only does Nice! have it's own unique point of difference from other products, but especially as the brand underwent re-branding in 2018, influencers became a great resource for educating audiences about many of their new products and organic qualities.

What Was So Successful About the Influencer Strategy?

Hand-Selected Brand Ambassadors

We were careful to select influencer partners that identified with specific categories that would each lend a unique story or point-of-view to the campaign theme. This led to a plethora of different story lines anyone within our target audience may be able to relate to.

Awareness-Focused Content Creation

Different forms of content influence different behaviors. Since our main objective was to create awareness and educate audiences, we tasks influencers with creating a variety of content types that accomplished such a task: Blog posts, YouTube videos, Instagram Stories and other forms of social content.

Real-Time Monitoring

The worst thing any marketer can do is "set it and forget it," especially when it comes to influencer marketing. By monitoring the content daily, we were able to identify top-performing assets in real time, and use that data to inform our paid media strategy. 

Advanced Targeting and Daily Optimizations

Additionally, paid media assets were also monitored and optimized daily. We took those top performing assets identified above and amplified them to additional target audiences from influencer accounts. And because we didn't just hit the boost button and created ads with influencer content in ads manager, we were able to reach customized audiences via interests, retailer, media and lookalike targeting on Facebook and Instagram

What Results Did Our Agency Produce?

The campaign itself was made up of four total flights spaced out at key buying periods throughout the year, and still running today. That said, the community has been consistently sharing their love for the product across social media.

With over 100 influencers activated in the campaign, the preliminary results have been excellent, and we're excited to wrap up the program at the end of the year. But more importantly, if you're looking to recreate such a program for your brand, here's what Walgreens did that you need to keep in mind:

• Set Clear Goals in Advance
• Determined the Best Content in Real Time
• Targeted the Content by Interests and Modified Daily
• Licensed a Rich Repository of Several Hundred Pieces of Tested Content
• Modified the Model as the Industry Changed

If you're looking for a way to leverage influencer marketing to generate awareness and education of your brand, contact our agency today using the form below.