Transcript
Introduction
Are you a small business? Well, you've probably wondered at some point how to get started with influencer marketing. If you're trying to figure out how to find the right influencers for your brand, how much you should be paying them, or how to track and measure success that you can replicate, then this video is for you! With a projected value of over $24 billion by 2025, influencer marketing remains a top marketing strategy for brands of all sizes. But if you're a small business, it can be intimidating to know what's worth your limited time and money, especially if you're just beginning.
So let's get started with some influencer marketing basics.
Types of Influencers
You may have heard of some of these terms before, but there are four types of influencers defined by follower counts:
Nano Influencers, which have 1000 to 10,000 followers
Micro Influencers, which have between 10,000 to 10,0000 followers
Macro Influencers that have about 100,000 to 1 million followers.
And then there's the Mega or Celebrity Influencers, who have over a million followers.
But to be extra clear, follower count is not everything. You may very well see better results from a micro influencer than a mega celebrity if one is a better fit than the other for your target audience.
Don't get too tied up in that metric alone, which brings us to our next point...
How do you find the right influencers for your campaign or brand?
Step #1: Define your brand goals
Our first tip: you'll want to start by defining your goals as a brand first.
Are you looking to build brand awareness? Maybe you're looking to drive some more sales or generate more leads?
Each of these tactics will require a different approach, so get clear on your goals so that you can define success fairly on both sides. For example, maybe your goal is to generate brand awareness for your product to younger consumers. In this case, it might make sense to partner with a Gen Z creator who likely has a younger following as well. When you're working with an influencer, you're essentially paying to get access to their audience.
You need to be partnering with creators whose audience also reflects your target audience. Make sure you're taking the time to investigate their profile, see who's commenting on their posts, and you can directly ask a creator to provide audience insights so that you're clear on the demographics that follow them.
Now onto our second tip for finding the right influencer to work with…
Step #2: Monitor creators already talking about your brand
You can do this by setting time aside to check your tagged posts, your comments, DM or branded hashtag. If your brand already has this, this is a really easy way to find creators who likely already love your brand.
It'll be a more seamless process to partner with someone who is already a fan of you. And (finally), our last tip:
Step #3: Look at Your Competitors’ Pages
Take a look at your competitor's pages or even other brands that your target audience might use or follow, and go to their comment section of their posts. You could just find your next untapped resource for a future collaboration. Now, everything I've just listed are all free approaches to find creators to collaborate with.
If you have a small budget, you could also use a creator database platform like Mavrck to get access to a wider pool of creators that you can then narrow down a bit more quickly. If you want more tips on finding the right creators for your brand, we've got an entire blog post on this topic that we dive into deeper, so we'll link that in the description below:
How to Find Influencers & Creators for Your Next Social Media Campaign
Okay, now for the most common question we see…
How much should you pay an influencer?
Historically, many digital marketers have stuck to the follower rule, which would be like $100 per 10,000 followers, just as a starting point. Over the past few years, we've noticed that this has changed and it's much more common to see closer to around three hundred dollars to five hundred dollars per ten thousand followers. Now, this is just a starting point figure and like we've said before, follower count is not everything.
There are a ton of different factors that go into this cost. You really want to consider things like the scope of work required for the content, the usage rights, etc. There's a lot of different variables that can affect the pricing, but these base metrics are a good starting point.
Because we know we're going to get this question... If you don't have a budget for influencer marketing, you can see if a creator is interested in trying your product for free, but just know that they likely will prefer to have no obligation to post for unpaid products. It can also be worth your time to build relationships and have creators try out your products or services in the hopes that when you do have the budget, you can find a great partnership.
Another route you can take would be creating an advocate group like the sustainable clothing brand has done Mate the Label. They offer free online events and gift cards for challenges along with free product to their selected community of creators who signed up and were approved. This way the creators are incentivized to post about the free product a little bit more, giving the brand a lot of UGC content to repost.
There are a lot of ways that you can get creative while keeping costs down and still get the word out about your brand online. Once you found the right influencer and agree on a rate, it's important to have a clear contract outlining expectations.
What to include in an influencer contract
Here are a few things that you're going to want to get in writing:
Payment
How much will they be paid?
When will they be paid?
Will there be other incentives aside from cash like free products?
Briefing Materials
Will you provide them with FAQs, descriptions of your products, or a caption guide?
Content Deliverables
Will they be creating feed posts, Reels, Instagram Stories, and how many?
Deadlines
When do they need to send their content to you for approval?
And when do they need to post this content?
Approval Process for Deliverables
How much feedback will you provide?
And what will this process be for approving their work?
Length of the Contract
How long is the campaign or partnership?
These are just a few of the questions you'll want to consider to avoid any future miscommunication and save a lot of time down the road.
Now, the last step in working with an influencer is to track results of their posts against your original goal of working with them.
What metrics to measure for success
If you want to keep it simple, you can ask the influencer for access to the analytics of the post, just get them to send you a screenshot. Or, you can get a little bit more granular by using affiliate links, creating a custom promo code to use on your site or adding UTM parameters to track the traffic and sales that they drive. It's important to review the analytics of the influencer campaign, no matter how small it is, so you can get better insight into the types of influencers who work for your brand or the type of influencer you might not want to work with in the future. It'll also help you decide who to create an ongoing partnership with versus just a one-off collaboration.
Some of the most impactful brand collaborations go beyond a single post, so the goal really should be to find creators you can work with on an ongoing basis and who also deliver consistent results.
Okay, so that's a wrap on Influencer Marketing 101. We'll link a couple additional resources in the description below that expand on what I talked about today, but in the meantime, let us know if you have any specific questions about what I've talked about. I'll see you later.
