In this article, we take a closer look at Huda Beauty´s marketing strategies and provide tips on how you can improve your brand awareness on social media.
- Ask an Expert
In this article, we take a closer look at Huda Beauty´s marketing strategies and provide tips on how you can improve your brand awareness on social media.
Many companies starting their expansion in the MENA region choose the UAE as their starting point. In this post, we look at the marketing challenges in this market and how you can plan your influencer marketing budget.
What challenges you may face when targeting the UAE population.
The majority of UAE residents are expats, and this poses a major challenge for influencer marketing, as Alexander Shevelyuk, Marketing Director at Electra & WOWBikes, points out. This is especially true in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, where many of them live.
The biggest challenge with such a diverse community is the difficulty of developing a marketing campaign that would appeal to all residents at the same time.
For example, an advertising campaign for the New Year cannot be completed immediately after 31 December, as the Chinese celebrate it at the end of January or February. Such cases make marketing campaigns longer and more expensive.
“Many influencers are also foreigners. The problem in their case is that they gained their following before moving to the UAE,” explains Mr Shevelyuk. So their core audience is not UAE residents, but Muscovites, New Yorkers, Londoners, Barcelonians and so on, depending on which country they are from.
This fact makes reach and ER (engagement rates) insufficient metrics to make a final decision when choosing an influencer.
It also has something to do with the high proportion of expats, as Mr Shevelyuk mentions. Marketers should work with influencers who publish their content in different languages to reach Arabic-speaking, Spanish-speaking audiences in the UAE and many others.
As we noticed in our post about Huda Beauty’s marketing strategies, influencer posts can be a pretty powerful tool to boost your sales. However, buying advertising from bloggers is as effective as making money in a casino if you don’t develop a solid plan with your marketing strategy goals in mind.
“If you’re promoting a premium brand, ask an influencer about the possibility of a barter collaboration,” says Diana Koroleva, producer and founder of the communications company “Koroleva Agency, ex ¨VOGUE¨ Russia Brand Manager. But if that’s not your cup of tea, you can still agree on such promo integration. “It can even work with influencers with over 100K subscribers,” emphasizes Artem Skrebets, CEO of Yobidoyobi International.
“It is possible to find a micro-influencer who charges the above amount,” Ms Koroleva says. “In fact, some bloggers with 20K–30K subscribers are willing to write a post about the company just for that price or more”, agrees Mr Skrebets.
AED 3.5 K to 10K is the typical budget for a reel + post + stories in a blogger account with 50K to 500K subscribers, according to Ms Koroleva. It is rare that there is a fixed price list, as influencers change the cost of a promo post depending on the advertiser’s budget or their personal interest.
“The influencer agency can bill AED 3K for seven collaborations with macro bloggers,” Mr Sheveluyk says. That’s cheap, but the quality of influencer selection (their relevance to your audience) will be low – the agency will literally pick random bloggers.
What do agencies prefer: to charge a commission or invoice? According to Mr Sheveluyk, it’s more beneficial for them to work with a fixed rate as it makes internal budgeting easier for their business. Charging commission could be problematic for barter deals.
According to Mr Sheveluyk, if the agency is expected to carefully select bloggers with good metrics and set up the communication carefully, the total bill will be much higher. Typically, 2–3 high-quality collaborations with macro-influencers can cost over AED 10K.
20%
is the average commission that influencer agencies take for organising an advertising campaign, according to Mr Shevelyuk and Ms Koroleva.
Mr Shevelyuk advises budgeting at least AED 30K for an influencer marketing campaign. “I recommend using this budget for a campaign with micro-bloggers (AED 10K for each),” says Ms Koroleva. It is worth noting that micro-bloggers in Dubai are those who have 10K to 20K subscribers, while in India or China, a micro-blogger is the one who has 10K to 300K subscribers (depending on the social media), explain the experts at Influence Minds Agency.
Ms Koroleva thinks that a budget of AED 30K is enough to promote the announcement of a new beauty salon or a restaurant. A blogger will tell their audience about the place in three stories, tagging the advertiser’s account.
❗️Note: The price of an advert depends heavily on the statistics and the product in question. “So it will be much harder to find the right blogger to advertise dietary supplements than a health food shop,” Mr Skrebets claims. According to Influence Minds Agency, advertising for food supplements is 1.5–2 times more expensive. Not many bloggers would be willing to recommend these products without a doctor’s prescription.
Before you launch your campaign, you need to be clear about what your business wants to achieve with the help of influencers, how quickly and which metrics should change, even if it seems a little redundant, advises Egor Monakhov, influencer marketing strategist.
Even if some influencers have a large following, you should not spend a budget on working with them because their target audience does not necessarily match your target audience, says Skrebets. At best it won’t do you any good, at worst it will damage the brand’s reputation if the influencer has previously been involved in a scandal, notes Mr Monakhov.
The experts at Influence Minds Agency recommend the following services to check bloggers’ statistics:
✔️ trendhero.io
✔️ whoisblogger.io
✔️ yoloco.io
“Inexperienced influencer managers tend to dictate everything to a blogger and make them post promo copy without corrections”, says Mr Monakhov. “Not taking into consideration the style and tone of a particular influencer will definitely ruin your brand awareness,” advises Mr Skrebets. Mr Monakhov also recommends preparing basic terms and trusting an influencer to present your product, as they know their audience better.
Only long-term partnerships with influencers help create more authentic content and strengthen the brand image in the eyes of the target audience, Mr Mokhov notes. With such an approach, you can even save on your marketing budget, as buying a few promo posts at a time is cheaper than buying a new advert each time.
…of money, time and effort. “You should invest in high-quality content that is different for each social network. Don’t use the same text and images everywhere”, says Mr Skrebets.
“Don’t skimp on the fees of an influencer marketing specialist either,” recommends Mr Monakhov.
It’s better to hire a professional marketer who can develop a strategy that works and is profitable than a novice who spends more time thinking from scratch and making mistakes that drain your budget.
🔹 Check if your sales have been boosted
“This is the most important metric to measure the results of an influencer campaign,” says Mr Monakhov.
🔹 Tracking links and promo codes
Use these to track the effectiveness of the integration and the customer’s path to purchase. Keep in mind, however, that results are not always immediate, especially if your product has a long transaction cycle, Monakhov notes. This is true for high-value purchases, for example, which take more time for the customer to make a decision.
🔹 Check the trend search data for your brand or product
Do this during and after the advertising campaign, reminds Mr Monakhov. You can use Google Trends to do this. If there are more enquiries, you are on the right track, explained the expert.
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