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Pre- and Post- Launch Sales of Oppo Grew Drastically Thanks to Bookings Africa

Posted on by Sandra Adodo

The brief was simple: Design & execute an organic social media engagement, for pre & post-launch activities for Oppo Reno 7. While at it, Bookings Africa, ensure that you promote brand awareness and influence sales.

We got you Oppo!

We executed the brief by designing a custom method for Oppo. We utilized 3 brand ambassadors and 4 social media influencers. 

A day after the launch, engagement numbers were more than <5,000. 63% of influencer referral codes were being activated & used for purchases 9 days post-launch. 

Talk about a successful campaign!

Unrivalled Pepsodent Oral Health Campaign Delivered by Bookings Africa

Posted on by Sandra Adodo

What’s a World Oral Health Day without an orientation on how to properly care for the teeth?

Pepsodent called and we delivered. We created a top-of-mind campaign that positioned Pepsodent as an industry leader. 

The winning strategy was using celebrity influencers who had kids to show how to brush their teeth properly. Before the campaign launched, the campaign hashtag reached over 700+ and we had multiple people join the IG live hosted by our verified influencer, Bisola Aiyeola and 3 medical influencers.

LipaLater Experienced First-Class Photography Services from Bookings Africa’s Talents

Posted on by Sandra Adodo

We provide only the best of talents at Bookings Africa in a variety of fields, including photography.

When LipaLater needed the services of photographers, we promptly provided them with the best in the business without any hassle. The outcome was a superb photography service that is still highly regarded today.

Bookings Africa Sources Top Influencers for Closeup Campaign

Posted on by Sandra Adodo

With the harsh economic realities, more families feel the squeeze and have to cut down on some basic amenities. Close Up believes that toothpaste shouldn’t be included. 

The brand then offered its customers up to 30% off the price for two 40g packs of Closeup toothpaste and wanted to drive awareness for this through a skit challenge.

Bookings Africa sourced the best influencers suitable for the campaign. With the influence of these 5 mega influencers and 8 micro-influencers, there were over 500 participant entries, 5 lucky winners and over 20,000 engagements in the first week of the campaign. 

The promo packs also sold out in Abuja and Kaduna stores. There was no doubt about our client’s satisfaction. 

Talk-of-the-town Nivea Campaign delivered by Bookings Africa

Posted on by Sandra Adodo

We had initially provided Nivea with top celebrities/mega influencers, Beverly Naya and Aduke Shitta-Bey, alongside a production crew for a commercial in 2020. Our client Nivea was beyond elated about the results and took it a step further by wanting these influencers to spearhead their social media campaigns.

Bookings Africa managed the entire campaign, the mega influencers, and nano influencers for twitter amplification and social media giveaways on Instagram & Facebook. 

In the end, we had a success rate of 82% and increased followership on our client’s social media by 8 times. 

We love that we overdeliver on any brief we get. Your brief should be next. 

THE BRIEF

  • On the back of the TVC shot for the brand, they wanted the top models used in the commercial as influencers to spare-head promotions and conversations on social media

EXECUTION

  • We negotiated and booked Actress & Mega Influencer – Beverly Naya, as well as a top model – Aduke Shitta-Bey to lead the promotions & in-store activation runs
  • We set up and managed promo code distributions and giveaways on Instagram and Facebook.
  • Booked micro influencers on Twitter to support the campaign

RESULT

  • 82% successful brand penetration Top 2 trending hashtags
  • Increased modern trade engagements 8X followers/ audience increase on Twitter & Instagram.

Bookings Africa’s role in Estee Lauder’s influencer campaign

Posted on by Sandra Adodo

 

Estee Lauder is continually using their understanding of the effectiveness of influencer marketing in its brand daily. 

We currently partner with them in providing top-notch social media influencers like Kaylah Oniwo, Tania Omotayo, and Denola Grey; who have collaborated with Estee Lauder and continue to do so. 

In two short years of partnership, Bookings Africa has secured all Estée Lauder accounts and has increased brand awareness across Africa which has in turn increased sales by a whopping 45%. 

Bookings Africa has hacked the business of influencer marketing and we’d be delighted to handle your campaigns right now.

Who can be an influencer on Bookings Africa? 

Posted on by Sandra Adodo

 

Have you been looking for ways to become a Bookings Africa influencer? Or do you want to get started in influencer marketing but don’t know where to begin? Good news! Your answers are below.  

Bookings Africa is one of the top African platforms that allows influencers from around Africa to scale up to become internationally recognized and awarded. This article highlights the criteria for anyone interested in becoming an influencer on our platform.

  • An existing influencer 

Bookings Africa allows influencers of all levels to register as registered influencers on the platform. This entails downloading the app and creating a profile. Once the customer service representative has approved your profile, you can proudly state that you are a Bookings Africa registered influencer.

  • A market-based influencer.

At Bookings Africa, we accept all types of influencers, from nano to mega. This means that, regardless of your follower count, we are eager to receive your influencing skills on the platform. However, having a target audience that trusts your influence will allow you to scale up your app faster.

  • An ever-growing influencer 

It is fantastic to achieve a certain level of influence, but we expect much more; we anticipate a level of growth that will entice clients to return. If you have been a nano influencer for a long time, you should strive to become a micro or macro influencer. Staying at a position of influence for so long is not appealing to new or returning clients. Therefore, choosing to grow is a criterion we check for before you can become an influencer here. 

Here are the three criteria that every aspiring influencer must meet in order to stay on the Bookings Africa platform. So, do you have an audience and want to grow as an influencer? This is your opportunity to join the train of top influencers on our platform and scale locally and globally. We are rooting for you! Continue to exert influence!

 

Freelancers or Employees: Whom Should You Hire?

Posted on by Ugochi Obilonu

This is a long-standing debate that has left many business owners perplexed. Oftentimes, employers wonder if they should invest in hiring freelancers or full-time employees as their foremost challenge is a performance difference. At the end of this article, you will get a better understanding of what to do as regarding hiring labour.

 

Are Freelancers your employees?

While we all know what traditional employment generally entails, the dynamics of navigating working with a freelancer are quite different. Before you consider only hiring freelancers at your organization, it is important to have first-hand knowledge about how freelancers work.

Freelancers consider themselves partners as opposed to employees. Most freelancers start the practice because they want to achieve financial and time freedom. They would usually set their working hours, determine their pay rates and also decide the scope of the work or services they will offer to the employers. 

Employers of labour will usually hire freelancers for project-based work that have stringent timelines. You will also see freelancers being hired when companies are short-staffed and have to deliver on a project. 

Since freelancers consider themselves partners, they would usually strive to meet the client’s demands excellently as they know that they could get referred. 

 

Pros of Hiring Freelancers 

There are a few perks to hiring freelancers. Some include:

  1. Reduced Costs: By hiring freelancers, organizations can save overhead costs. Freelancers can work from home rather than from the office; thereby, saving the company a few bucks from running their building.

 

  1. No Employee Benefits: Since freelancers work on a temporary, project-based job, there is usually no need for an employment contract upon job resumption. Freelancers have no access to health benefits, pension payments, or add-on work benefits. Freelancers are also responsible for paying their taxes as well. At the end of the projects, they are paid the amount they requested. This also saves employers some costs.

 

  1. Simple Hiring Process: All a company needs to do when hiring staff is to contract the services of a freelance company such as Bookings Africa: Search, Compare, Book. You find a suitable freelancer, hire and get on with the project. This is a simpler process than employing traditionally. Recruitment costs companies money, time, and resources and as such, most companies would rather hire a freelancer.

 

Challenges of Hiring Freelancers

Just like life, nothing is perfect. The same goes for hiring freelancers. Some of the challenges listed below can be managed when they arise. 

  1. No Organizational Growth: For a company looking to grow and expand, hiring freelancers might be a futile pursuit in the long run. You cannot desire to cut costs at the expense of your business growth. Freelancer hiring is often short-term. Establishing Company Culture becomes difficult when the hired personalities have no desire to grow or establish the business, learn the work culture, or adapt to the company’s values. In the long run, no business grows on temporary employment.

 

  1. Unavailability/Unresponsiveness: Most freelancers set their working hours. Deciding to work with a freelancer is deciding to work on their terms. If an urgency ensues, there’s no guarantee that the employer’s urgency will be responded to outside of the freelancer’s work hours. It’s best to delegate time-sensitive work to full-time employees as opposed to hiring a freelancer in such a case.

 

  1. Lack of Effective Communication: Employers will most likely encounter challenges in communication during the tenure of work with a freelancer. What we believe can salvage such an occurrence is signing a detailed contract before work kicks off.

 

Pros of Hiring Full-Time Employees

  1. Loyalty: Full-time employees are expected to be committed to the organization’s growth. Unlike freelancers, whose loyalty lies with the highest payer, employees are expected to be loyal to only their employers and not dabble in issues of conflict of interest.

 

  1. Cost-Effective: After some time of hiring only freelancers in any business, the organization might soon realize that is cost-ineffective and will eventually resolve to hire full-time employees. 

 

In conclusion, it is best to hire a blend of employees and freelancers depending on the gravity of the work at hand. It is also important that employers take into consideration, the financial, behavioural, and company-standard implications of hiring either a full-time employee or a freelancer.

Grow Your Business Using Influencers

Posted on by Ugochi Obilonu

Marketing as we know it has evolved over the years. Many businesses have emerged across several industries and the competition is steep and fierce. 

To be top of mind to your target audience, your marketing strategies must be direct, frequent, and effective. The ‘top dogs’ in business are pulling all the stops to ensure that they retain existing customers and attract new customers. Hence, these businesses have also incorporated influencer marketing into their marketing alongside other marketing.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Before we address what influencer marketing is, it is best to define who an influencer is. 

An influencer is any person who has a large following online, is recognized or known for their creative content, and is able to affect the purchasing power of the community they have built for themselves. Now, it is important to note that not all celebrities are influencers, and certainly, not all influencers are celebrities but influencers can work their way up to becoming celebrities. 

Influencers are online sensations popular for their ability to create engaging content that keep audiences glued to their pages. Influencers care about their reputation & online community, and will most likely only endorse or collaborate with brands they trust.

Influencer marketing is a collaboration between a brand and an influencer to promote a product(s) or service. The influencer creates creative content that their audience can relate to, and will influence them to either purchase the specific product or use the service.

The whole point of influencer marketing is for brands to reach existing or new markets in a more personalized way than digital ads; using the services of influential people in the industry they want to target. Influencers will usually have a niche. These niches include lifestyle, fashion, education, etc.

 

Reasons for Influencer Marketing

There are several reasons why a brand should engage in influencer marketing. The top reasons will include to:

  1. Create brand awareness 
  2. Market a new or existing product
  3. Illustrate the use and importance of a product or service
  4. Amplify the effectiveness of a product or service

 

Is Influencer Marketing Effective?

In the end, business owners just want to know if the risk is worth taking. 

According to Influencer Marketing Hub, influencer marketing was worth $13.8 billion in 2021, and businesses are making about $5.78 ROI for every $1 spent on influencer marketing. That sounds unbelievable, right?

 

But there has been a 465% increase in searches for the phrase “influencer marketing” on Google alone since 2016. 90% of survey respondents believe influencer marketing to be an effective form of marketing. 67% of brands use Instagram for influencer marketing. 1360 Influencer marketing-focused platforms and agencies entered the market in the last 5 years alone and every other day, someone is trying to start a career as an influencer.

 

 

How to Grow Your Business with Influencer Marketing

With all the information in this blog post, you are probably wondering how you can start using influencer marketing to grow your business and we’ll share that in a bit. 

The first step to a successful influencer marketing campaign is understanding which influencer is suitable for your marketing campaign. Without this, the campaign might be ineffective and capital investment wasted. 

By choosing the right influencer, we don’t just mean the person but the influencer category. The individual is also important but that is a minor challenge compared to choosing the wrong category.

After determining the suitable influencer for your campaign, launch your campaign in the following ways:

  1. Engage the influencers or use an influencer marketing agency such as Bookings Africa. 
  2. Create an influencer brief stating the deliverables of the influencers
  3. Distribute the products to the influencers
  4. Initiate posting on social media
  5. Track the results

 

Collaboration: The Key to Business Growth in Africa

Posted on by Sandra Adodo

Launching a new business in the African market or anywhere in the world is a great move but building it requires more than your internal business team. The key you need to more growth is business collaboration. According to a high growth study conducted in 2022, business partnership ranks among the top ten techniques every business needs to grow in this age and time.

Interestingly, the technique of business partnership didn’t just begin in the 20th century; it has been a significant pillar used by ancient reputable businesses to scale up hundreds of years ago.

The idea is simple; every firm needs something another firm already has, and the best way to get it is to partner with the firm and grow mutually. This is more like trade by barter, but it has been proven effective today.

The major drawback in all these juicy benefits of partnering with other businesses is collaborating with the wrong fit for your company. To succeed in business growth through partnership, you must get the right partners and build strategically.

This article will delve into choosing the right partners and how best you can work with your business partners to achieve explosive results. Ready? Let’s get to it!

Choosing the right partner

The ideal business partner will do one or all of the following for your business;

  • Promotion 

Every business needs to be promoted one way or another, and it can be achieved through strategic partnerships. If you are just launching your business, you need a partner with a larger audience that can promote your product to more users. If your business needs to promote a specific product, you can partner with podcast, TV or radio stations to help with the promotion while you also contribute to the mutual relationship.

 

  • Distribution

You can also build a partnership with businesses to help distribute your product. This is a step further from promotion, as the distributors will ensure your product gets into the hands of their available audience. In this partnership agreement, your firm brings the sale while the distributor ensures the product gets to the end users. We at Bookings Africa use the power of influencing to get our products to the right audience. Partnering with us as the “marketer” will be seamless because we would do the heavy lifting with influencing while you focus on making the products solid and saleable.

 

  • Visibility/social appearance

This 21st-century partnership is the most common form of collaboration, as you wouldn’t need to be directly connected to the partners before you can build your business in the process. What this means is that you affect the community, and it automatically brings the audience you need and helps you sell your product. It could be through sponsorship of events, giving to an organization or other similar projects. In 2021, Bookings Africa partnered with Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSEFT), the University of Lagos and MTN to give back to the community by providing digital literacy. This partnership was aimed to help over 500 small Lagos businesses with smartphones that also act as POS machines. This type of partnership is also very effective.

How to collaborate effectively with potential business partners

Having discovered what kind of partnership you need for your business; the next milestone is to connect with the partners as soon as possible.

  • State The Goals of Both Partners

It is essential for every partnership to begin with a clear understanding of partners’ goals. If you need to share your brand manual to understand how to promote your business, then do so. Ultimately, both companies must know how they fit in and what they can do to help in fueling mutual growth.

  • Share Resources

If you want to grow faster, you need to understand your partners, and what they need to run effectively, then share the assistance needed. Even if there is already an understanding of the role of the partnered companies, it is also vital to ease off each other’s stress by sharing information. 

  • Strengthen the partnership

At every opportunity, show your partner that your company is a great asset. Let them observe the successes that have been achieved since the partnership began. In the same way you focus on your business growth, you should invest in doing the same for your partners.

Business collaborations are proven ways every business needs to build its growth. Whether you are a small business or just launching out, follow these tips to make your company grow faster and reach the desired goals. Happy collaboration!