Is using influencers still an effective tool for growing a brand’s reach and recognition? Some figures could suggest it’s so. Nine out of ten marketers would say that ROI from influencer marketing is at least comparable to other channels.
One in six businesses will spend more than half of their marketing budget on influencers. More than two out of three marketers will allocate the majority of their marketing bucks to Instagram, which just so happens to be the most influencer-heavy platform.
While these statistics paint a picture of a part of the marketing industry that seems like it could easily demonstrate its value, they leave lots of questions open. Questions like “how?” To answer that, there’s no better place to look than RawGear, an athleisure brand that’s managed to grow in size more than three times in about three months. Here are the most important points on how they did it.
It starts with the owner
The driving force behind the success of RawGear is the man behind the brand, Bradley Martyn. Right off the bat, it’s evident that Martyn knows a thing or two about his target audience; he owns a gym, helps people get fit, and looks like he could lift a whole bunch of weights plus a couple of adult people on top of it.
Besides understanding the core audience, the brand also targets people who don’t work out. Martyn is also an influencer in his own right. He has a large following on YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter, and from his channels, it’s obvious that there’s a mind of a content marketer in the weight-lifters body.
Bringing other influencers aboard
Martyn can only do so much on his own. Even though his audience reach is nothing to scoff at, growth requires exposure to new audiences. To get that growth, Martyn and the brand made deals with influencers and athletes, through whom they’d be able to greatly expand the brand’s reach. Currently, the brand works with over 80 athletes across North America and the UK.
RawGear also makes sure to be a valuable partner to the influencers they work with. “We constantly provide opportunities for RawGear athletes to grow. We want everyone involved to have continuous success,” explains Martyn. To that end, the brand has gone so far as to provide living arrangements to promising content creators.
RawGear’s formula is deceptively simple: create quality content with influencers and piggyback on them to reach new audiences. Putting this whole deal in motion, kickstarting it, and ensuring that it continues working for the parties involved is where the true genius of RawGear lies. It didn’t hurt that there was an established social media presence from the very beginning of the brand, and that it belonged to a person who understood how to leverage it like a professional marketer.