There is no exact formula to fully crack digital campaign. What works on a brand might not always work for others. For digital marketers, the success of a campaign is not solely based on the number of followers alone. In fact, follower numbers do not determine the success of a campaign. There are many factors to be considered.

“Based on my experience in handling digital campaign, promotional programs like discounts or giveaway have to go along with influencer campaign. The campaign does better when we give out discounts,” said Pranichia Resya (@pranichia) who is handling digital content at Unilever’s in-house agency, Oliver.

“On the other hand, when the post is about awareness of new features or products, it receives slightly lower engagement,” she added.

From the influencer side, brands expect content creators to be mindful about content, client and audience. “Audience nowadays are getting smarter. They can easily tell apart a branded and original content. Usually, a sponsored content receives lower engagement. So being subtle and natural is important,” said Chia.

Audience doesn’t want to see influencers bluntly promote the product. One of the reasons is that people are tired of constantly getting advertisement thrown at them. In that case, simply taking selfies with a product is not going to cut it. Unfortunately, this practice is common among celebrities.

“You don’t want to see influencers saying ‘Hey guys, use this product! It is whitening and made with high quality ingredients.’ This is where influencers have to blend the product with their content and deliver it like how they normally interact with their audience. We like content creators who have strong persona and can be themselves.”

Fashion brands like Pomelo carefully select influencers for digital campaign. “They have to embody the brand,” said former intern Dio Faturrahman. The brand also provides guidelines for content, but the influencers still have to write their own captions.

“Mirror selfie is a big no! If you are selling clothes, you want the audience to see the whole outfit. It’s best not to use colour filter because it can mislead audience,” said Dio. Tagging the wrong brand does happen occasionally.

“Some are willing to reshoot, some are not. We drop those who are not willing to fix their mistakes,” he added.

According to Chia, visually pleasing aesthetics doesn’t mean the campaign will be successful. There are content creators whose feeds are aesthetically pleasing but low in engagement. On the other hand, there are creators who don’t curate their feeds but have high engagement rate. “It depends on how the influencers interact with their followers,” said Chia.

“Axe is a good example. They tapped into E-sports when it just started trending and they chose a gaming content creator, @jessnolimit, to represent them. You can feel his presence because he is very passionate with what he’s doing.”

The biggest misstep in digital campaign is fabricating content. “It did happen once at my previous job. The content creator we hired prepared a final photo before sending out IG story polling,” said Chia. “The votes from audience came back different to what she initially prepared but she posted it anyway. We got a lot of backlash.”

Another backfired content is when instead of commenting on the product or brand, the audience focuses on something else. It’s usually when the followers wrote ‘you’re so pretty’ on a post. That means the attention is not where it’s supposed to be.

“There are two types of content creators. One who does it for the money and one who is passionate with what they are doing. It is no longer about visual, but whether the content aligns with the brand or not.”