Influencer marketing, also known as branded content or creator work, is a surefire way to expand your brand’s social media reach.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to making this strategy work, but with the right planning and research, almost every business can benefit. Let’s see how to make a social media influencer program work for you.
What is influencer marketing?
Simply put, an influential person is someone who can influence others. In influencer marketing, a form of social media marketing, brands pay this person to promote their product or service to their followers.
Celebrity endorsements were the original form of influencer marketing. But in today’s digital world, social content creators with niche audiences can often offer brands more value. These small accounts often have very active social media followers.
Thus, a social media influencer is someone who exerts influence through social media. When you hire an influencer to promote your products or services, this is influencer marketing.
Nearly three-quarters (72.5%) of US marketers will use some form of influencer marketing this year, and that number is only growing over time.
Not sure if influencer advertising can lead to real business results? Citizen Science found that 14% of young people aged 18 to 24 and 11% of millennials have bought something in the past six months on the recommendation of a blogger or influencer.
For now, Instagram remains the platform of choice for influencers. In 2023, eMarketer estimates that 76.6% of US marketers will use Instagram for their influencer campaigns. But keep an eye on TikTok.
Source: eMarketer
While only 36% of US marketers have used TikTok for influencer campaigns in 2020, almost 50% will do so in 2023. This will make TikTok the third most popular influencer marketing platform in 2023.
For example, creator Vivian Audi, who has over 192,000 followers, works with brands like Walmart and DSW on TikTok:
@vivianeaudi Styling my favorite Nike sneakers from DSW!! @dsw @nike All linked in bio! #sneakerheads #sneakerlover #ad
Types of Social Media Influencers
When you think “influencer”does the Kardashian-Jenner family immediately come to mind?
Source: @kyliejenner on Instagram
While these famous sisters are certainly some of the most influential people in social media marketing, not all influencers are celebrities.
In fact, for many brands, influencers with a small but dedicated or niche follower base can be more effective. Influencers with 15,000 followers have some of the highest engagement rates across all platforms*. The cost, of course, can also be much lower.
Let’s take a look at the different types of Instagram influencers based on audience size. There is no strict limit on the size of the audience, but usually the types of influencers are divided into:
Nano influencers
Nano-influencers have 10,000 followers or less, like blogger mom Lindsey Gallimore (8.3k followers).
Micro Influencers
Micro-influencers have between 10,000 and 100,000 followers, such as lifestyle blogger Sharon Mendelaoui (13,500 followers).
Macro Influencers
Macro influencers have between 100,000 and 1 million followers, such as food and travel creator Gene Lee (115,000 followers).
Mega Influencers
Mega influencers have over 1 million followers, like TikTok star Savannah Labrant (28.3 million followers).
@savv.labrant Spa day!👧 Code 15HYDROBOOST for 15% off @neutrogena_us’s Hydro Boost products on @amazon! These are for Moms only 😉 #MyNeutrogenaMoment #ad
How much does social influencer marketing cost?
Broad-reach influencers rightly expect to be paid for their work. A free product can work with nano-influencers, but a larger ad campaign requires a budget.
For major celebrity brands, this budget can be quite large. For example, US spend on influencer marketing will exceed $4 billion in 2022.
Source: eMarketer
Consider which fee structure is best for your goals. But be prepared to consider the needs of the influencer as well. For example, an affiliate or commission structure could be an option instead of a flat fee or to reduce the flat fee.
In fact, 9.3% of US influencers said that affiliate marketing (through affiliate links and promo codes) was their main source of income.
However, the most common basic pricing formula for Instagram influencer posts is:
$100 x 10,000 subscribers + extras = total rate
What are add-ons? Check out our post on influencer pricing for all the details.
Remember that micro-influencers and nano-influencers will have more flexible payment terms.
How to Create an Influencer Marketing Strategy
1. Define your goals
The number one goal for influencer marketing brands is to reach new target customers. This makes sense, as an influencer campaign expands the reach of that person’s followers.
Note that the goal is simply to acquire new customers, not necessarily to make a sale right away. Sales promotion is actually the third most common goal of influencer marketing campaigns, after brand awareness and product reviews.
Source: Advertiser Perception.
Think about how your influencer marketing plan will fit into your broader social media marketing strategy and create measurable goals that you can report on and track against.
We have a whole blog post on goal setting strategies to help you get started.
2. Know who you are trying to influence
An effective influencer marketing strategy requires you to connect with the right people, using the right tools, and with the right influencers.
The first step is to determine who will be your audience for that particular campaign.
Designing audience personas is a great way to make sure you understand who you’re trying to reach out to. Perhaps you are trying to reach a large portion of your current audience or a completely new audience.
Once you have decided, create an appropriate set of influencer characters. This will help you understand the qualities you are looking for in your influencers.
3. Understand the rules
Before diving into influencer marketing, it’s important to understand the rules. In the United States, these regulations come from the Federal Trade Commission.
The FTC takes disclosure very seriously. Make sure you include disclosure rules in your agreements with influencers.
Influencers must identify sponsored posts. However, they don’t always do this. Or they may do it in such a subtle way that the disclosure is effectively hidden or incomprehensible.
In the UK, for example, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigated “hidden advertising”on Instagram and required Facebook’s parent company to make changes to make disclosure easier and clearer.
Specific rules vary slightly by country, so be sure to check the most up-to-date requirements in your jurisdiction. For the most part, you just need to be clear and sincere so that viewers understand when a post is sponsored in any way.
Here are some key points from the FTC:
- Video reviews must include both written and oral disclosure of partnerships. It should be in the video itself (not just in the description).
- Built-in tools on social media platforms alone are not enough. However, you should still use them. Instagram itself now specifies that any branded content (also known as influencer marketing) on the platform must use the Branded Content tag to identify relationships. This adds the text “Paid partnership with [your brand name]”in the title of the post.
- #ad and #sponsored are great hashtags for revealing information. But make sure they are highly visible and not just tied to a long chain of tags.
This last point is important. Some influencers may be careful to place the #ad or #sponsored hashtag right in front of them. But this is where it should be.
Influencers: If “#ad “is mixed with links or other hashtags at the end of a post, some readers may simply skip it. Be sure to post “#ad “or “#Sponsored “or other easily understandable disclosure where it is easy to notice and understand. Learn more: https://t.co/oDk34TTSxb pic.twitter.com/dB9kj5qlzO
— FTC (@FTC) November 23, 2020
4. Consider the three R influences
Influence has three components:
- Relevance
- Achieve
- Resonance
Relevance
The relevant influencer shares content related to your business and industry. They should have an audience that matches your target audience.
For example, to showcase their swimwear in different sizes, Adore Me partnered with bodypositive creator Remy Bader.
@remibader You wanted to see the back of my bathing suits.. here it is! @adoreme #adoremeambassador
With 3.2 million views on Bader’s TikTok and over 8,800 likes on her Instagram videos, the video introduced a line to an impressive natural audience of dedicated followers.
Adore Me also used Bader’s content to create Instagram ads in conjunction with Instant Experience. This influencer ad campaign resulted in a 25% increase in followers while reducing cost per customer by 16% compared to their regular Instagram ad campaigns.
Achieve
Reach is the number of people you can potentially reach through an influencer’s follower base. Remember: a small audience can be effective, but you need to make sure you have enough followers to meet your goals.
Resonance
This is the potential level of engagement an influencer can create with an audience that is related to your brand.
I won’t bother, but more isn’t always better. As we said above, a huge number of subscribers does not make sense if these subscribers are not interested in your offer. On the other hand, niche influencers can have very dedicated and engaged followers.
5. Make a Short List of Influencers
When you think about who you want to work with, trust is key. Your audience must trust and respect the opinions of the influencers you partner with. Without the trust component, any results will be superficial. It will be difficult for you to see the tangible impact of your efforts on the business.
How do you know if your potential influencer is trusted? Betrothal. You want to see a lot of views, likes, comments and shares. Specifically, you want to see them from the specific subscriber segments you’re trying to reach.
Good engagement also means loyal followers, not inflated followers supported by bots and fraudulent accounts. You need to find someone who creates content that complements your own look and feel.
The tone should also match how you want to present your brand to potential customers. This ensures that things don’t feel disjointed in either party’s social media posts.
6. Do your research
See what your potential influencers are posting. How often do they share sponsored content?
If they’re already wowing followers with a bunch of paid posts, their engagement levels may not last long. Look for lots of natural free content to keep subscribers interested, enthusiastic, and engaged.
Keep this in mind when thinking about what you would also ask an influencer to post. If you ask for too many posts in a short period of time, it will be difficult for an influencer to accept your offer, even if it brings in a large salary.
In-demand influencers get lots of offers. When you first approach influencers, you need to show that you have taken the time to find out what they are up to.
Make sure you know exactly what their channels are about and who their audience is.
7. Contact in private and in person
Start communication with a new potential partner slowly, organically interacting with his messages. Love their content. Comment when appropriate. Be grateful, not corrupt.
When you’re ready to propose a partnership, a direct message is a great place to start. If you can find an email address, try that too. But don’t send bulk emails or general DMs.
Writing a personal message to each influencer can take a little longer. But it will show that you are serious about a potential partnership. This, in turn, will increase your chances of closing a deal.
Provide as much information about your brand as possible. Tell them what you hope to achieve with your Instagram campaign. Make it clear what benefits the influencer will receive, in addition to the salary.
One key thing to keep in mind during this process is that you may not actually want to use the word “authority”when referring to potential partners. Content creators prefer to be called that—creators—and may view the word “authority” as an insult to their work.
8. Collaborate with your influencer to develop effective content
A social media influencer who has worked hard to build followers won’t accept a deal that makes their personal brand seem inconsistent.
After all, influencers are content creation experts. That is why they prefer to be called creators. You will get the most out of their work by allowing them to showcase these skills.
Of course, it’s a good idea to give some guidance on what you’re looking for. But don’t expect to be able to organize the entire campaign.
9. Measure your results
When you launch your influencer campaign, it can be tempting to focus on vanity metrics like likes and comments. If your influencer has a lot more followers than you, you might feel a bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of likes that can rack up.
But to measure the effectiveness of a campaign, you need to understand its value in terms of ROI. Fortunately, there are many ways to measure the success of your campaign.
UTM parameters are one way to track the visitors that an influencer sends to your site. They can also help measure campaign engagement.
When you assign each influencer their own unique links with UTM codes, you will get a clear view of the results. This allows you to calculate the impact on your bottom line.
The “coupon”link mentioned in the above influencer post likely had a UTM attached to it so that Royale could track how many sales it generated.
Giving influencers their own discount code is another easy way to keep track of the sales they send you.
If you use the branded content tools on Facebook and Instagram for your influencer campaigns, you’ll have access to information for both the feed and Stories posts. You can access them through Facebook Business Manager.
You can also ask an influencer to send you detailed reports on the reach and engagement levels of their posts.
Influencer Marketing Tools
Now that you’re ready to get started with influencer marketing, here are a few tools to make things easier for you.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite search threads can help you find influencers by tracking conversations related to your industry across multiple channels.
Once you have an initial set of influencers, add them to your stream to track what they share and who they interact with. This will help you understand their relevance to your audience, as well as highlight other potential influencers to work with.
Try Hootsuite for free. You can cancel at any time.
Right Relevance Pro
This app can search the most popular content shared by influencers by topic and location. Use it to identify influencers and identify potential influencer partnerships based on the quality of the content they share.
Fourstarzz Influencer Recommendation Engine
This app provides custom influencer recommendations. It helps you predict estimated reach, engagement, and other campaign outcomes, as well as helping you create influencer proposals.
In terms of
Insense connects brands with a network of 35,000 content creators to create customized branded content. You can then promote content with Facebook and Instagram ads, optimize content for Instagram Stories, and use an AI video editor to split content into multiple videos.
Facebook brand manager
This free tool from Facebook allows brands to connect with pre-verified content creators on Facebook and Instagram.
Influencer Marketing Platforms
Want to use an influencer marketing platform to reach influencers directly? Some of the best include:
Simplify influencer marketing with Hootsuite. Schedule posts, research and interact with influencers in your industry, and measure the success of your campaigns. Try it for free today.
*Source: Marketing Influencer