Backbone’s Content to Convert Strategy: Driving ROI with Influencers and Creators

As social feeds become ever more crowded by advertisers, it's harder than ever to capture consumers’ attention. While dedicated efforts through Backbone’s Social Media, Influencer Marketing, and Paid Media services help move the needle, combining tactics across services via a Content to Convert strategy has yielded impressive results for clients in recent months.

At its core, this strategy leverages paid usage of influencer and creator content to acquire new customers, provide third-party validation, and drive meaningful revenue across paid social.

“Influencer” versus “Creator” 

Before digging into our approach, we should first outline the difference between influencers and creators.

Influencers create and post original content on their owned social media channels. They have established credibility via a significant following on social platforms. Content posted via influencers drives third-party validation and impacts follower purchasing decisions. Influencer contracts include paid usage rights for boosting and dark posting.

Creators produce original content, regardless of their follower size, for a brand to post on its owned social media channels. Content acquired via creators helps expand asset libraries. Creator engagements result in high-quality, social-first video and photography assets for Backbone clients to own outright.

Both influencer and creator content play a meaningful role across each stage of the marketing funnel—from prospecting to retargeting. Backbone’s Content to Convert strategy is most applicable when there is a conversion goal, so at the highest level, this approach aims to maximize ROAS and minimize Cost per Purchase (CPP).

Determining whether creator or influencer content has a place in the paid media mix

We must first understand a client’s DTC goals and overall messaging strategy. Once an opportunity is identified, we find the most success when running these types of content in stand-alone campaigns. This allows us to strategically weight the budget and better understand performance. Once we understand how the content performs, we can determine whether to include content in any relevant broader evergreen campaigns.

Getting the most ROI out of influencer and creator content

For influencer content, our preferred tactic is boosting, where content shows up in the social feed from both the influencer and brand handles using the branded content code. Alternatively, for creator content, we leverage dark posting, where content comes from the brand’s handle only.

Backbone’s Content to Convert strategy utilizing influencer and creator content is a cost-effective way to yield above Backbone benchmark results across key conversion metrics:

Taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture

Broader organic social media trends show a departure from highly produced, branded content and a move towards authentic and (perfectly) imperfect content. The rise of trending short-form video and creator-driven content reflects a shift in user preferences towards content that feels more real and relatable, which leads to a more engaging and dynamic social media landscape.

With consumers taking to social media to make purchase decisions—in fact, 85% of Gen Z says social media influences their purchase decisions (Retail Dive, 2023)—it is important to consider influencer and creator content in the greater paid media mix. While brands can’t always rely on creators and influencers to support an entire messaging strategy, these types of content help to diversify the creative asset mix within Meta, especially for brands focused on driving DTC revenue.

Please direct any questions about Backbone’s Content to Convert strategy to Info@Backbone.Media