Corsair, Influencers, and the Creation of an Influencer Network

in Influencer Marketing

There’s a difference between reading about the positive impact of influencers and witnessing their impact first-hand. Corsair put the power of influencers into action throughout 2018. Their results reflect the ongoing success of influencer marketing: when traditional advertisements can’t make it through ad blockers, it is influencers – a human connection – that are able to drive sales.

Introducing Corsair

Corsair serves as one of the world’s authorities on high-performance PCs. Founded in 1994, the company has transformed alongside the community it serves. Nowadays, it provides equipment and components to everyone, from the casual gamer to the e-sports athlete. Anyone looking to build their own PC has heard of Corsair, and Corsair has likely provided them with the materials they need to make their mechanical dreams come true.

2018 was a landmark year for Corsair. The company broke into content creation after acquiring Elgato, a manufacturer who provides the hardware and software for content creating professionals. With this new potential to reach audiences in entertainment as well as production, Corsair stands as the apex of computer mechanics.

Even so, the company still needed to create content that actively reached those audiences. That’s where influencer marketing came into play.

Corsair’s Content Ambitions

Because Corsair has such high standing in its industry, the company needed to take care in recruiting the professional influencers that its marketing campaign needed. At the start, it was essential that Sideqik partner the company with the kind of influencers that would help the company scale for a global audience.

Corsair’s needs included the following:

Influencer application processing
Application approval and denial
Audience analytics

Calling All Influencers

Sideqik and Corsair took an unconventional approach to influencer marketing – calling on the influencers to volunteer their services as opposed to the other way around. Corsair even categorized their potential influencers by offering positions like the following:

Recruits
Lieutenants
Captains
Admirals

Each of these positions saw a different but heightened level of interaction with the company. Recruits, for example, were – and still are – offered affiliate links and free swag for their participant in the Corsair influencer ring, whereas admirals have the potential to win full financial sponsorship. In building that culture of give-and-take, Corsair let its potential influencers know that they’d be taken care of as part of the corporate community. Not only that, but applicants were additionally motivated to put forward their most ambitious and creative work to win higher standing in the influencer bullpen.

Corsair’s Takeaway

Corsair’s program is known as the Corsair Streamer Program. In seeking out official brand ambassadors, Corsair made it clear to its audience and professional hopefuls that it was serious about influencer marketing and about the system’s potential results.

That intensity paid off in big ways.

The social, consumer impact that Corsair saw as a result of their partnership with Sideqik stems from an increased awareness of the operations of social media and engagement. By partnering with Corsair throughout the whole of the Streamer Program campaign, Sideqik was able not only to ensure that the program’s chosen influencers worked in a positive environment but that Corsair’s ROI revealed the full influence of contracted marketers.

Creating Your Own Influencer Bullpen

Want to see your business succeed like Corsair? Building up an influencer network takes time. As with Corsair, though, that effort pays off. If you want to lay the foundation of a strong network, keep some of the following tips in mind:

Establish Early Goals – an influencer campaign is only as strong as its initial goals. Let your marketing team and any influencers you onboard know what your ambitions are and how you will, ideally, interact with your consumer audience. Establishing these goals helps your influencer content stay on target while retaining its creative edge.
Do Your Research – don’t partner with an influencer without researching them first. Your ideal audience should mesh well with the influencer’s in question to see the greatest success.
Build Your Voice – your brand needs to have a voice that’s unique from your competitors’. Brainstorm different ways to present your business through social media. Do you want to be funny? Serious? Educational? Once you’ve chosen a tone, coach your influencers through content creation with that voice in mind. Even as you’re looking for unique content, your brand’s voice needs to remain consistent to preserve your online reputation.
Grow Your Social Media Presence – not only influencers make their names on social media. However, the reach of platforms like Facebook and Instagram cannot be undervalued. Make sure that your brand’s social media accounts see the benefit of an influencer marketing campaign as much as your revenue does.
Stay Consistent – above all else, work with your influencers to retain a sense of your brand. While breaks in voice can be funny, you’ll need to establish a strong online presence before you start playing with your presentation. Consumers trust consistency almost as much as they value influencer input. When you put an effort into making your brand’s presence semi-uniform, you show your audience that your products and services are worth investing in.

Corsair brought in influencers to expand its reach on a global scale. You can, too, so long as you bring the right kind of influencers onto your marketing team. Read the full case study here.

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Nancy Rothman

Nancy is a passionate, results-driven marketing executive with more than a decade of experience in building robust integrated marketing programs for brands of all sizes, with specific expertise in the martech space. Prior to Sideqik, Nancy held roles at four successful martech startups, each of which received multiple series of fundraising and included two acquisitions. At CallRail, specifically, Nancy served as the director of marketing where she built the company’s brand and established it as a leader in its space. She also held roles at MeetEdgar, where she oversaw the entire sales and marketing practice, increasing the company's user base and annual recurring revenue, as well as PureCars, which was acquired by Raycom Media in 2015. As vice president of marketing for Sideqik, Nancy is responsible for developing and executing on the company's marketing strategy to drive overall business growth.