Which social networks are suitable for advertising with Influencers? Advantages and disadvantages of different platforms, using perfume advertising as an example.

Influencer marketing is increasingly used to promote businesses and products. It offers not only sales growth but also higher brand awareness. Influencers can also have a significant impact on a company’s reputation. Thus, promotion in social networks is very important for the development of any business.

My name is Tanya and I’ve shared my experience in the field of Influencer Marketing here. Now I work as an Influencer manager, presenting a product that you can’t completely feel through a screen – perfumery.

Perfumes are a very specific product for online promotion. At first glance, a lovely “tasty” description of the perfume itself, or images of a beautiful flacon, might stimulate someone’s interest in a perfume over the Internet. But is everything that clear?

As it turns out, a lot relies on the social networks where advertising takes place when it comes to perfume advertising. There are several advertising formats available on each social network, and in this context, we can identify a few advantages and disadvantages of advertising on each social network.

Instagram, for example, is a visual platform. Users there are drawn to a nice image. Product presentation in video format works effectively on YouTube, for example, any reviews or native advertising. It is more difficult to promote on platforms like Telegram because the platform is largely text-based. For some tasks, advertising in Tik Tok is suitable, because of the natural traffic, many bloggers and, as a result, marketers relocated there.

So, let’s go through the advantages and disadvantages of advertising on each social network in more detail.

Instagram

Instagram is one of the world’s fastest-growing apps, standing apart from other social networks. Instagram, being a visual medium, stimulates its users’ creativity, self-expression, and innovation.

Advantages

• Eye-catching. Instagram is one of the most aesthetically appealing social media platforms. This social network is the most convenient way to visually present a product, such as a lovely perfume flacon.
• Multiple formats.  Instagram has three main formats: posts, stories, and reels. The post has the advantage of always being on the blogger’s profile (unless he deletes the post himself). The advantage of stories is that they are the most viewed, and most people now go to Instagram to check out the stories. The benefits of reels include organic content promotion among users, as it is a new format for Instagram. These videos are identical to the Tik Tok feed, and since Instagram wanted to attract Tik Tok users to Instagram reels, these videos now have fantastic algorithms for organic promotion and new users engagement.
• Budgets range. Bloggers charge different prices for advertising due to the various formats. Posts are typically more expensive than stories, despite the fact that stories are just as effective as posts. Also, depending on the advertising needs, you can avoid barter (sending goods to the blogger at the company’s expense), for example, by asking the blogger to post a pre-made photo or video, or a screenshot from the site.

Disadvantages

• An overload of advertising. As Instagram is the most popular platform, it has the most ads. As a result, in order to catch the interest of potential clients, you must plan ahead of time a unique and fascinating presentation.
• Post-hiding algorithms. Since the introduction of Instagram’s own paid targeting ads to its portfolio, many users and bloggers have noticed that publications have stopped showing to their own followers. As a result, if you decide to publish in the feed, many of the blogger’s followers may not see the post. As a consequence, advertisers are increasingly choosing stories.
• Brevity – sister of talent. A story is 15 seconds long (before Instagram’s latest innovation of 60 seconds). During this limited time, you must present simple and clear information about the product and convince users to click on the link. Otherwise, people will simply scroll through the content, making advertising worthless.
• Users are hard to extract from the platform. It’s one matter if the ad leads users from the blogger’s Instagram account to the brand’s Instagram account. It’s entirely different when an ad directs users to a website.The social network is created in such a manner that the user is “drawn” to watch the content more and more, and it is extremely difficult to move the user from Instagram to another website. Instagram posts can also only tag another Instagram account. Links to other websites are not clickable in the post’s content.

YouTube

YouTube is visited by more than 2 billion unique users every month. This makes it one of the largest social networks in the world, and therefore interesting for advertisers. Including YouTube ads in the marketing strategy is now almost a must, regardless of industry or niche. However, in order for this channel to be the most effective, you must select the appropriate type of YouTube advertising for the product or service being advertised, as well as follow the guidelines for its development and further analysis of the results.

Advantages

• Direct contact with the audience. Through advertising on YouTube, it is possible to speak openly and informally to viewers about products and services. In short, talk to potential customers in their language in a comfortable environment for them. In the case of advertising an online perfume store, you can show unpacking without time constraints (people are interested in how the product will arrive to them). And also on YouTube it is possible to describe a bright first impressions of the perfume.
• Algorithm of recommendations. Often videos even a years old appear in the recommendations on YouTube. If a viewer watches a blogger talking about perfumes, then below the video YouTube will show different videos on a similar topic. In this way, YouTube ads can endlessly pull in potentially interested new audiences over the years.
• Diversity of authors. YouTube is the “new TV”, only where the programs and channels are chosen by the viewer. Perfume can be advertised by more than just themed perfume bloggers. There are also many other bloggers whose audience can be potential buyers of perfumes. For example, it can be advertising from moms who record vlogs; bloggers who talk about cosmetics and makeup; ASMR bloggers; interviewers and many others.

Disadvantages

• Budget. Promoting products or services through videos will require a budget. Small companies are unlikely to be able to afford this type of advertising. Large bloggers usually assign a high price for advertising (production requires funds), and for barter, perfume is not the most budget-friendly product.
• Highlighting the ads integration with the caption “Advertising”. Experimentally, we found that providing advertising on YouTube with subtitles, the users perceive it as a TV ad and just skip the video on. The best format is a native recommendation.

Telegram

Telegram is remarkable for its deep user engagement and immediate message delivery, and you can promote everything from real estate to knitting courses here. There are no flashy banners, videos, or carousels in Telegram. The audience is interested in text, not images, therefore, there is only one format – the post and the links.

Advantages

• Huge choice of thematic channels. It is possible to find a content maximally close to the direction of business. For perfume advertising, we have found a large number of bloggers who talk about fragrances, and there is usually an active discussion of perfumes in the comments.
• Opportunity to bargain with admins. The simplest approach to reach an agreement with channel owners on pricing, content specifications, and placement time.
• The most loyal audience. More frequently it is the most loyal part of the audience which is really interested in reading the blogger’s thoughts that follows the bloggers of Instagram and YouTube to Telegram. This platform is not yet so oversaturated with advertising, so with a native pitch and a loyal audience, there is a good chance of getting good results.

Disadvantages

• Anonymity of the contact person. Most channel owners agree to cooperate on the condition of full prepayment. Against this background, there is a risk of getting caught by fraudsters.
• Limited access to audience statistics. There are no advanced statistics on demographics. We don’t know the geo, sex or age of the users, only their interests. We can see the statistics of the channel by the number of subscribers and views of publications (which, as you know, can be faked).
• The main traffic is mobile. So you have to take into account that to promote the site, you have to adapt it for the mobile version.

Tik Tok

Tik Tok is overgrown with stereotypes. The most common and widespread one concerns the audience of the social network, saying that Tik Tok is only for children and teenagers. Accordingly, since the majority of users are not able to pay, it does not make sense to spend the budget on advertising in this social network. At the moment this platform really turned out to be the biggest failure in terms of perfume sales. However, if the goal of advertising is only to increase brand awareness – Tik Tok will be perfect for this purpose.

Advantages

• Weak advertising competition. Tik Tok is not yet oversaturated with advertising and this is a competitive advantage of this social network for advertisers.
• Algorithms of impressions. Similar to Instagram Reels, videos in Tik Tok are very easy to distribute to users. The social network independently promotes new videos – this was originally the advantage of this platform compared to Instagram.
• Unique format. If the purpose of advertising is to increase brand awareness, the social network offers a unique Hashtag Challenge advertising format aimed at maximizing user engagement with brand content.

Disadvantages

• Inability to add third-party links. Tik Tok rules prohibit adding links to third-party sites in the descriptions of publications, for which the blogger can be banned. In our case, you can buy perfume only on the website, and this was a significant disadvantage for advertising in this social network. Most users will just be too lazy to manually enter the name of the website in the browser.
• An addictive feed. It is very unlikely to take the user out of the social network – watching short videos is very addictive, and the “endless feed” encourages it. So for brand awareness Tik Tok is fine, but for sales it’s not the best option.

Briefly about the experience of advertising perfumes in different social networks..

YouTube was the most successful social network for advertising perfumes, followed by Telegram, and Instagram came in third place. The videos with unpacking, as well as videos with a range of different perfumes, where the blogger shared impressions about the fragrances, ” popped” best on YouTube. In Telegram it worked well with the thematic perfume blogs, inhabited by a loyal target audience. Instagram stories performed best for large bloggers who mostly review cosmetics and perfumes and who typically have successful profiles on other social networks (such as a channel on YouTube or Telegram).

For each product, it is necessary to test advertising on different social networks with bloggers of different topics, because each product has its own target audience. It is very important to learn from mistakes, and analyze advertising publications, especially unsuccessful ones. This will definitely help you to get better in the future and make your ads more successful.

What social networks do you use more often? Which social media ads attracted you to make a purchase?