4.5x ROI and 250% average organic growth across all social networks from Influencer Marketing

Espin is an electric bike startup focused on simplicity, efficiency, and sustainability. The idea came to founders Josh Lam and Yina Liu when they moved to San Francisco and encountered the city's (in)famous hills. Looking for new marketing channels to scale their growing D2C business without having to increase their ads budget, the Espin team partnered with Baotris to develop a data-driven strategy for influencer marketing.

• Increase site traffic and conversions without having to increase Facebook ad spend
• Develop and manage a comprehensive influencer marketing program inclusive of 3 campaigns, each targeting influencers with audiences who fit a different identified target persona
• Monitor and optimize campaigns to grow and increase conversions
• Develop content beyond transactional messaging, focusing on data-driven brand building
• Build name recognition in a saturated market

The Baotris team mapped out the purchase journey of current and prospective Espin customers by analyzing post-purchase surveys and user interviews. With this data, Baotris created key personas, which is a representation of the brand’s ideal customer. These personas are central to Baotris’ strategic decision-making for brand growth.

The Baotris research also found that because electric bikes are high-ticket items, they are not impulse purchases. Buyers who can't test ride e-bikes, especially during the pandemic, spend hours searching for reviews on social media channels such as Youtube, Instagram, or TikTok prior to making a purchase.

Based on this insight, Baotris found influencers who would resonate with the target personas to create Youtube videos that would not only provide additional information and feedback on Espin’s ebikes but could also generate brand awareness, trust, and conversions.

The YouTube videos made for perfect evergreen content and performed better than other informational videos. The influencer-generated content was then repurposed for different organic channels to increase Espin’s brand awareness and consumer trust.

• 4.5x ROI
• 30 videos with a total of over 140,000 views
• 250% average organic growth across all social networks
• No additional spend on paid ads