On Friday, August 5, 2016, during a glitzy opening ceremony, U.S. gymnast Simone Biles — a then-relative unknown — had a Google Trends search index score of just four, a calculation based on the amount of search volume generated in the previous 24-hour period. Seven days later, her score had increased — or should that be vaulted? — to 100, an indication of her sudden 'search power.'
Within hours, the media churned out content — news, views, lengthy thought pieces — about Biles and her teammates. Much of it was time-sensitive: it served the 'here-and-now', but now that the events are over, it has lost its impact. While this content proved successful — gymnast Chris Brooks' high-bar routine received 34.5 million views and 692,000 engagements on NBC's Facebook page, for example — marketers need longer-lasting results to get the best ROI for their marketing dollars.
At Carusele, we often focus on creating content that's everlasting, enduring and working for clients for an extended time. Sure, some of it will be time-sensitive – especially if we’re launching a new product or promoting a special offer or event, but the vast majority of the content produced in Carusele campaigns is discoverable ad infinitum.
Big annual events generate a lot of interest quickly. Take the MTV Video Music Awards on August 28, 2016, for example. Brands were quick to update their social profiles with VMA-related content — something called 'newsjacking' — hoping to lure a young-skewed demographic to their pages: Mashable told its Twitter followers that it had a full list of winners on its website, while BuzzFeed posted a series of memes with links back to their content pages.
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But will this content still be relevant three months, three weeks, or even three days from now? Well-built influencer campaigns, on the other hand, optimize brand messages with perpetual content that targets prospects over a longer period than time-sensitive posts.
That way, our campaigns benefit from that short-term burst created by social sharing. That’s the first benefit. Then the content is seen again through our syndication programs. But ultimately, we also set the content up to last for months and years. With search becoming more and more important on social (which we’ll talk more about soon), evergreen content is one way to make sure your brand is getting the engagement, impressions and results you’re looking for.
How effective is this “long-tail” value over time? Our technology partner TapInfluence teamed up with Nielsen Catalina Solutions and WhiteWave Foods to examine the impact of influencer marketing on sales. The results were groundbreaking: influencer marketing produced $23 ROI for every dollar spent — more than five times the number generated by banner ads. Influencer Marketing creates a huge $285 in incremental sales for every 1000 impressions too, resulting in an ROI that's 11 times more lucrative than conventional advertising.
Importantly, after ROI from traditional ad spending stops, influencer content lives on. It continues to perform with no extra investment and, three months after a campaign goes live, it still generates two times the number of impressions the campaign had before it started. Check out this chart:
Carusele programs are designed in part to extend the lifespan of our clients’ content. We edit it, repurpose it, incentivize it and post it on different channels. Influencer content is versatile, flexible and, best of all, eternal. This evergreen longtail content could provide a 10 percent incremental sales lift, according to the study noted above. The study also found that consumers exposed to this content purchased more products and distanced themselves from competitors.
Social share images by NYC Pretty from Carusele campaign for Hawaiian Tropic
Evergreen content can continue to reach a specific demographic target and provides a hefty ROI for months or even years. For one of our clients, we looked back at the Pinterest board we created for the campaign one year after the campaign wrapped. Not only was the Pinterest board still active, but the followers had grown from over 7,000 to over 9,500.
We can do the same thing for your brand. Contact us today to see how we can help you get evergreen content everywhere for your brand.
