Manucurist on Breaking into the US Market with Influencer Marketing

Manucurist is a Parisian nail brand that has become a consumer and influencer favorite for its innovation, sustainability, and health-focused mission. It is known best for its Green Flash innovation, the world’s first LED nail polish that is a green, plant-based alternative to traditional gel.

While the brand was founded in 1996, it has only recently started to deliberately expand its reach beyond Europe. In May 2021, it started its official expansion into the United States and in December of 2022, launched its US influencer marketing program with Traackr. In the article below, Asma Ben Rhouma, US influencer marketing manager for Manucurist shares how the brand has built its influencer marketing program in the US. 

Manucurist on Breaking into the US Market with Influencer Marketing

How Manucurist Defined its US Influencer Marketing Strategy

“When I first came to the US market, I quickly realized that the influencer marketing strategies we had been using in Europe would not give us the same performance. The US market is so different from the European market! I knew that we would need to rethink the types of content and influencers that we were partnering with to actually grab US consumers’ attention.” —  Asma Ben Rhouma, US influencer marketing manager for Manucurist 

The first thing that Asma and her team did was conduct research to confirm her theory that the US market would need a different influencer marketing strategy. This research involved attending webinars, reading articles online, and using Traackr to evaluate what content types, influencer profiles, and platforms were working best for competitors in the US market. Some of their findings included:

Content. A key difference that Asma and her team had found between US and European consumers is that European consumers respond well to bougie, chic, and glossy content. On the other hand, US consumers seemed to engage more with informative content that focuses on product efficacy and ingredients, which resonates with the brand’s current positioning strategy, as they are still in the brand awareness phase for the US market. And, after conducting a Sentiment Analysis, the team was able to learn more about US consumers’ perception of their products — specifically noting that they responded well to content highlighting Manucurist’s amazing colors.

Campaign type. Asma and her team knew that they wanted to focus on building brand awareness through gifting campaigns — and then eventually expand out to sponsored content, and ambassador/affiliate campaigns.

Influencer type. Based on their competitive research and deep dive into real Manucurist customer’ perception, the team started defining the type of influencer they wanted to partner with. They wanted someone who:

• Would capture attention with fun, educational, or unique content
• Be able to highlight Manucurist’s wide range of products and colors, and show real love for the brand
• Could showcase the wide array of angles that make Manucurist attractive to different types of audiences 

How Manucurist used Traackr’s Influencer Marketing Platform to Elevate its Program

“I start every day with the Brand Buzz feature, where Traackr pulls in all the organic and paid influencer mentions of your brand. Seeing all content that influencers post about Manucurist fills me with positive energy and makes me feel ready and excited to wear all the hats that I have to wear for the day.” — Asma Ben Rhouma, US influencer marketing manager for Manucurist 

Aside from using the Brand Buzz feature to inspire and keep a finger on the pulse of influencer content, Asma and her team used Traackr’s influencer marketing platform to: 

Find and vet influencers

Knowing which content types US consumers find engaging helped Asma and her team narrow their search for influencer partners. Using Traackr, they were able to find influencers that created the right kind of content by conducting keyword searches. For example, they could search influencers’ past content for words related to nail colors, nail art education, and their own brand name. Once they had a list of influencers who produced relevant content, they then used Traackr to double check that they had audiences located in the US, and high content performance (engagement rate, video views, etc).

Manage paid and organic campaigns 

After finding and vetting every influencer for both their paid and organic campaigns, Asma and her team were able to seamlessly manage communications, divide up tasks, and keep track of timelines in Traackr’s platform, saving them valuable time.

Report on program and campaign performance

“One of the things that I love most about Traackr, is that it gives you the ability to dig down further into the data. If I have a little to know time to prepare for a meeting, I feel confident that I can go into Traackr and pull out the data I need to show the value and impact of what we’re doing.” — Asma Ben Rhouma, US influencer marketing manager for Manucurist 

Asma and her team are very performance-driven, and are always looking for ways to optimize their strategies based on data. To do this, they used Traackr to continually check in on their campaign and program performance. Some of the data that was available to them from Traackr include:

• Content tracking — Traackr automatically pulls in posts containing the brand’s top keywords and hashtags (brand name, products, competitors, interests, etc). This allowed the team to keep track of all campaign content in one place and track their campaign’s deliverables.
• Campaign measurement — Traackr allows teams to track desired outcomes like awareness and engagements, looking at KPIs like # of mentions, # of engagements, estimated impressions, # of engagements, and more. It also allows teams to drill down into the content, platforms, and creators that provided the most impact.

Conduct competitive research

Last, but certainly not least, Asma and her team use Traackr to benchmark their performance against their competitors. 

“Traackr is the best influencer marketing platform that we’ve used so far. It’s a complete tool that allows you to automate your work and align your team, while also offering you the largest influencer database available. Its benchmarking feature with the Brand Vitality Score (VIT) was also game-changing for us. We mainly use VIT to evaluate the efficacy of our influencer marketing programs focusing on how we measure up in terms of content, platforms, and influencer partners.” — Asma Ben Rhouma, US influencer marketing manager for Manucurist 

For those that are unfamiliar with the Brand Vitality Score (VIT), Traackr developed this comprehensive performance metric so brands can measure their share of voice across social channels. Specifically, VIT measures the visibility, impact and trust of influencer content mentioning your brand. Brands like Manucurist have found VIT to be critical metric for evaluating influencer marketing program success because it is:

• Comprehensive. VIT is one comprehensive metric to measure overall audience attention, and is the only metric that rolls up all publicly available performance data in a meaningful way.
• Comparable. VIT allows marketers to rank their own brand performance against competitors using one overall metric, rather than in multiple separate KPIs (ex. video views and engagements). 
• Unpackable. VIT provides a framework for understanding the components of an effective influencer strategy. Brands like Manucurist use the metric as a way to dive into their own past performance to see what worked, look for areas they can improve on, and create in-depth examinations of competitors’ strategies. 
• Actionable. VIT provides a benchmark for central intelligence and actionable insights. Teams can set goals for improving on past performance or inching out competitors by examining an area of their influencer strategy that could be improved. 

Learn more about VIT.

Manucurist’s US Influencer Marketing Results

In November of 2022, Asma and her team launched their first paid influencer collaboration in the US! Using Traackr, they found a great influencer to be their first sponsored partner. That campaigned earned:

• 344K video views
• 2.88% engagement rate
• 76.6 in VIT 

This sponsored campaign was so successful that Asma and her team eventually expanded the campaign to Meta ads, where the content also performed well.

Manucurist’s gifting campaign performance has also been quite strong! Since January 2023, the brand’s organic campaign has earned:

• ~200 individual influencer mentions
• A 3.66% average engagement rate
• 1.11K in VIT

If you want to stay up to date on the amazing work that Asma and her team are doing at Manucurist, follow the brand on Instagram or TikTok at @manucurist!