Activate authentic influencers from micro to macro levels to reach loyal audience.
What is influencer marketing in Korea?
Influencer marketing is set to leverage the inherent trust between an influencer and their followers, where the influencer serves as a proxy to help promote the story of your brand. Besides traditional marketing channels, influencer marketing is an effective and direct way to reach South Korean consumers. Identifying the right influencer is important. DBL can help pinpoint them via data analytics and our extensive networks of partners in South Korea. As South Koreans flock to social media, key influencers will help grow your business among local communities and beyond.
Key elements to a successful influencer marketing campaign in Korea
/ Understanding the influencer marketing business
Depending on the size of following and popularity of the influencer, different approach needs to be taken when connecting with influencers. While most micro-influencers operate on their own and personal contacts can be made directly, a number of small to mid-level influencers are under contract with an agency. Any communication and engagement are therefore routed via the agency before direct contact with the influencer can be made. For mega-influencers with celebrity-like status, partnership is likely to be made via a multi-channel network (MCN), similar to a management agency for influencers.
/ Moral reputation and character
The Korean market requires a greater sense of morality from its public figures. Emphasis should be placed on the due diligence when planning for an influencer selection.
/ Mega-influencers vs micro-influencers
According to a study by Korea KB Finance, the engagement rate for a micro-influencer is about 25% to 50%. On the contrary, mega-influencers with more than one million followers may only have a 2% to 5% engagement rate. The goal is to find a micro-influencer in a particular niche with the right balance of influence and reach.
/ Local legal guidelines awareness
Influencer marketing is mostly regulated under the local South Korean E-commerce legislation. In November 2019 alone, the Korea Fair Trade Commission handed over 269 million KRW (221K USD) in fines to seven companies for not disclosing influencer contents as paid marketing.
How does our process of influencer marketing service work?
Step 1: Activation
The activation process requires a good understanding of your brand’s identity. DBL can help curate a story that is best suited to your brand while catering to the specific industry and the customers you aim to target in the South Korean market.
Step 2: Identification
With our partnership with Meltwater, and an existing database of over 500 million influencer profiles, DBL identifies influencers specific to the story curated in the activation process. Our team will breakdown various segments and apply a range of filtering criteria to shortlist influencers that are reviewed manually not only to ensure relevancy, but to also evaluate the moral reputation and character. The latter is a key element to social media users in the South Korean market.
Step 3: Management
Feedback from influencers plays an important role in our evaluation and management of the marketing campaign. Our influencer marketing team is in constant communication with the activated influencers for our campaigns to build a solid partnership. This affects the way the brand is perceived by the influencers, which in turn can help influencer to craft their way of delivering the message to their audience.
Step 4: Measurement
Our team of analytics support evaluates a number of data points from engagement to sales conversation that invariably measure the ROI associated to the marketing campaign. DBL analyzes and produces an end-to-end report evaluating the success of the campaign to help you make better decisions for your social media marketing strategy. With our technology partner Meltwater, we are able to provide an independent metric: “estimated media value” for all of our campaigns.
Check out our Korea market insight articles
We now also partner with Meltwater to leverage their unique social influencer tool to identify, activate, manage and monitor KOLs.
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Combining our influencer marketing technology with a team of experts, DBL will take your brand’s influencer campaign to the next stage.
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