Instagram Reels made a splash in the influencer marketing space right from the start. The rapid rise in the popularity of Tik Tok, first among Gen Z, then quickly among other age groups, had signalled the dawn of short form video content. This revolutionised the social media influencer marketing and created a new audience that brands could target. Originally, Reels was launched to compete with Tik Tok, but soon it became its own thing, becoming the fastest growing feature on Instagram. For instance, soon enough, users viewed Reels content 10 times more than Story content, which had been an old feature. Influencer marketing agencies immediately realised the potential of this feature as a powerful tool for their client brands, and studied it. Early experiments, with clients who were willing, even eager, to try it were extremely successful.
Some early brands who adopted the Reels feature as part of their campaigns collected more than 5 million views. The engagement rates were also significantly higher. Now Reels are such a central part of campaigns that big brands like Nike average around 4.6 million views per Reel.
Reels Influencer Marketing in Numbers
Influencer marketing campaigns can generate comparable numbers overall when the brand is in the hands of a good influencer marketing agency that understands the brand’s personality and storytelling and integrates the influencer marketing campaign into the brand’s overall marketing strategy, matching the brand up with the right influencers.
Since numbers are really the bottom line, there are influencer marketing agencies, like Clan Connect, that do real time data crunching, using comprehensive quantitative research to get results. But this type of influencer marketing agency also understands the influencer marketing space qualitatively, in terms of the unique qualities of a particular social media feature.
The Uniqueness of Reels
According to Google Trends, Reels is the most popular short form video feature in India. Even before Tik Tok was banned, unlike other countries, Reels was preferred to Tik Tok in India. As per an eMarketer report, users are going to spend about 30 minutes on Instagram per day in 2022. So influencer marketing agencies advise that brands better understand this feature in all its particularities.
One of the main benefits of Reels is that it is content that is easy to create. Traditionally, video marketing has been expensive and extremely demanding of resources. Reels are a relief in this respect, requiring much less investment. The main expense is the collaboration with a given influencer. Then there are many options with the content: It can be educational or informative; or it can come up with “challenges” to create a trend and engage users (challenges are really very popular); or it can adopt popular trends and make the brand’s presence felt. These are just a few examples. Instagram lets brands feature on its Explore page. Brands can benefit from this too, increasing awareness and conversions. Influencer marketing agencies are experts who know how to best make use of these kinds of features for any given brand.