Influencer marketing has also entered the era of "operationalization."

※Power Instagrammer: An Instagrammer with 100,000 or more followers
※Micro-influencer: Instagrammer with 10,000+ followers
* Nano-influencer: Instagrammer with 1,000+ followers

 

Long-Term Utilization of Influencers

In the era when blogs were mainstream, a single article could deliver reasonably in-depth information. However, with platforms like Instagram and Twitter, communication becomes more fragmented. This makes it difficult for influencers to fully grasp a brand's message and effectively convey it to their followers through a single campaign or post.

Therefore, to achieve greater effectiveness, it is crucial to implement ongoing initiatives and enhance the influencer's loyalty to the brand.

Globally, 62% of brands are said to have "brand ambassador" contracts with influencers (Source: Association of American Advertisers). Similar trends are already visible among Japanese brands.

While some brands request exclusivity from contracted influencers, the terms are generally less restrictive than traditional celebrity endorsements. Most cases involve asking influencers to commit to brand promotion within the bounds of their own discretion.

Thus, for brands to build long-term relationships with influencers while achieving greater effectiveness, they must constantly monitor key metrics: what kind of fans follow the influencer, what kind of posts they typically make, and especially which posts generate significant engagement.

Managing this large volume of data, including its progression, allows brands to bundle the "quantity" of influencers—who have become a long-tail resource—with the "time" needed to nurture relationships with them. This enables the long-term utilization of multiple influencers.

Influencer PDCA Platform

To address this need for long-term influencer utilization, Dentsu Inc. has developed and operates the Influencer PDCA Platform "EVANGELIST FINDER".

This allows you to understand what attributes and preferences of people you can likely reach when using a particular Instagrammer. You can also see if that Instagrammer frequently posts fashion-related content, or if their beauty-related posts particularly get a lot of likes (i.e., have high engagement rates).

This enables precise verification of who to engage among numerous influencers and whether the desired effect was achieved after engagement.

*Engagement rate: (Likes + Comments) ÷ Followers

 

Influencer PDCA Model

By leveraging EVANGELIST FINDER's solution, it has become possible to meticulously execute the PDCA cycle for influencer marketing. Now, let's explain specifically how this PDCA cycle is implemented.

PLAN: Category and Context Simulation

First, we analyze the brand's challenges and target insights to simulate what context and influencers would best convey the message. We simulate multiple contexts per appeal point and target category to verify which patterns are most effective.

Furthermore, we map potential influencers by their posting characteristics and categories to determine which influencers to engage. For example, for a UV serum campaign, we map influencers from both outdoor scene and beauty perspectives, prioritizing those with high engagement rates in each category.

DO: Influencer Experience and Content

Next, we request posts (PR posts) from the selected influencers under conditions tailored to the context, such as testimonials (recommendations), invitations to product launch events, invitations to experience events, or participation in campaigns.

To anticipate search-driven traffic or further strengthen the context, we may also request specific hashtags be included in their posts. For events, we make efforts to enhance the brand experience to deepen their understanding of the brand.

CHECK: Analyzing and Validating Post Results

Next, we aggregate and analyze reactions to the posts (likes, comments) to verify which predefined patterns (post context or influencer category) proved most effective.

We also conduct positive/negative sentiment analysis on comments. For positive comments, we analyze their quality—whether they indicate brand affinity or purchase intent—to verify the impact on followers. For the UV serum campaign, we found the outdoor scene approach was more compatible with the product than the beauty-focused approach.