The Complete Guide to Influencer Marketing
Table of contents
Introduction
What is Influencer Marketing?
Statistics for Influencer Marketing in 2022
Types of Influencers
Types of Influencer Collaborations
How to create a marketing strategy for influencers
Social listening tools
Influencer discovery tools
Conclusion
Influencer marketing was largely limited to devoted bloggers and well-known figures a decade ago. However, we marketers are aware of the importance of a strong influencer. Influencer marketing can help you in reaching a certain audience or niche in order to raise brand awareness, provide leads, or enhance sales.
By collaborating with an online content creator, you may benefit from their creativity and authenticity for your company. Influencers are creative individuals who excel at creating relevant content that will appeal to their audience, and their opinions may be helpful to your brand.
Additionally, it can help you establish yourself on platforms where you may still need to be active. TikTok creators, for instance, are pros at producing promotional content that blends in with their original work and engages their audience.
Influencer marketing, though, can be difficult. Finding the right influencer and leveraging your partnership is as vital to choose a person with a large following. The key is to build a successful influencer marketing strategy immediately.
This influencer marketing guide provides all the information required to discover influencers, manage outreach, organize successful partnerships, and much more.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing, at its core, is a form of social media promotion that depends on recommendations and mentions of products from influencers—people who have a sizable social following and are recognized as authorities in their field. Because social influencers have a high level of trust among their followers and because their recommendations offer social proof to potential clients for your brand, influencer marketing is powerful.
Statistics for Influencer Marketing in 2022
Statista states there will be more than 4 billion social media users worldwide by 2025. That is a massive number of social media users with a strong demand for content. So, what networks are they currently active on?
Let's look into some influencer marketing data to get a better understanding of how you might benefit from the rising popularity of social media.
- According to the Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report, the influencer marketing market will reach an estimated $16.4 billion in 2022.
- 71% of marketers intend to raise their spending in the coming year, and the majority of them prefer to deal with micro-influencers, according to Linqi.
- According to the Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report, companies can make $5.78 for every dollar they spend on influencers, with some earning as much as $18.
- According to Digital Information World, 91% of sponsored post engagements in 2021 involved micro-influencers.
- Brands should use influencers who are experts in the channels that matter to them as cross-channel campaigns are growing as more individuals use an average of 6.6 social media sites, according to Backlinko.
Types of Influencers
When they locate the proper influencers to work with, brands make more than five times what they invest in doing so.
The first obstacle is finding the right influencers to help the company get actual results. Especially with the option of five different influencer types:
Mega-influencers
Mega-influencers have more than a million followers. Due to their famous status, they are well-known on social media. As a result, they produce a ton of engagement on social media channels where their audience is engaged. This is what makes them desirable to organizations looking to utilize influencer marketing, as well as what drives up their cost.
Points to note: Even though mega-influencers have enormous reach, studies show that engagement rates tend to decline as an influencer's overall number of followers grows. For example, the engagement rate for Instagram influencers with more than 10 million followers is merely 1.6 percent.
Macro-Influencers
Thought leaders, sportsmen, celebrities, and TV personalities can all be considered macro-influencers if they have an audience of 500,000 to 1 million people or more. As a result of their ability to leverage their reputation to earn followers on social media, brands may expect to pay a high price from them. But it won't cost as much as with mega-influencers. With this type of influencer, marketers can still reach a large audience, but they might not achieve the engagement they're seeking. Again, this is because of the previously mentioned follower-to-engagement ratio.
Points to note: Compared to content produced by micro- or nano-influencers, macro-influencer content often has a more polished appearance. This might be a better fit for some brands' audiences and objectives.
Mid-Tier Influencers
Mid-tier influencers are a sizable group of content creators with followers that trust them even though they lack star status. These influencers provide businesses with a wide reach and slightly higher interaction with followers between 50K and 500K compared to macro or mega-influencers. In addition, each post has authentic, up-to-date content that is polished but not dated.
Points to note: Mid-tier influencers presumably spent years moving up the ranks from nano-influencer to mid-tier influencers rather than using popularity to ascend quickly. They have a lot of experience producing content and have a stronger connection with their audience.
Micro-Influencers
Although micro-influencers have a far smaller following than mega-influencers, marketers frequently view them as being significantly more effective in terms of engagement and trust. As a result, a product that a micro-influencer has recommended is more likely to be purchased by 82% of consumers.
Points to note: Compared to content from macro- or mega-influencers, micro-influencer content is less polished but may come across as more genuine. This could affect the degree of success an influencer marketing campaign has for a brand, depending on the objectives of the business.
Nano-Influencers
Marketers can target only a small number of nano-influencers who have the fewest followers. Brands gain in engagement rates for the reach they do lose. Nano-influencers surpass all other influencer types with an engagement rate of 8.8%. Marketing professionals working with this type of influencer may anticipate a distinctive experience because the content is so authentic and personalized to the audience.
Points to note: Because nano-influencers are far more cost-effective than their larger counterparts, firms with limited funding may wish to begin their influencer marketing campaigns with them. Some nano-influencers even work for free in order to gain brand relationships and grow their fan base.
Types of Influencer Collaborations
A brand or organization can interact and work with an influencer in various ways. Here are a few concepts.
- Event Coverage
Engaging influencers through event marketing is ideal. Influencers who work in such fields or niches are perfect for bringing your event in front of your target audience if it is geared toward people in a particular area or with particular interests. Get them involved early to generate enthusiasm, and let them cover the event live.
- Gifting
It gives you a chance to take advantage of the fact that 49% of consumers rely on recommendations from influencers. Giving entails obtaining brand recognition in exchange for the cost of your service or product. To make it simple for them to promote you, send them a sample or offer them a complimentary experience along with information about you and your product.
Choose product gifts that you believe each influencer would like and utilize in their everyday lives, that are thoughtfully crafted to support your objectives and that align with the influencer's niche and brand.
For example, Brandi (@brandihikes), an outdoor enthusiast, is a wonderful choice to advertise these LL Bean rain boots because they fit her niche, and she is eager to use them in reality.
- Video
Engaging an influencer to appear in a marketing video or video series is one example of a video partnership. You may simply remix and distribute video content, and you can produce high-quality movies without employing a pro, like the Joy of Clean account.
- Takeovers
This is commissioning an influencer to temporarily "take over" your social media accounts, enabling them to upload content straight to your story or having them present a live video. Make sure you and the influencer cross-promote the takeover on your channels on the day of the takeover.
- Signal boosting
This is an illustration of a short-term activation that's excellent if you want to promote a topical message, charitable endeavor, or social issues, such as a new helpline or a charitable event. For this campaign, it is effective to get in touch with a well-chosen list of influencers of varied statures, ask them to promote your message, and give them a choice; for example, they might just share your post on their social media accounts.
An excellent example is the National Adult Literacy Agency in the UK, which promoted its free distance learning services via Instagram influencers.
How to create a marketing strategy for influencers
Like any other marketing tactic, an influencer campaign needs to be carefully planned and targeted. There needs to be more than just sending free stuff to everyone who asks or to your current friends and acquaintances to lead to strategic success.
- Track down influencers
As with any approach, research is the first step. Choose the platform on which you want to concentrate first. You can always expand to more platforms, but if you're just getting started, stick with one. Ideally, your business would already be participating in this network or have plans to do so.
If you're unsure of where to begin, social listening can help you determine the platforms and influential users where people are talking about your business and industry.
The industry you're in also matters when you intend to implement an influencer marketing campaign. Businesses related to fashion and beauty are dominant on YouTube and Instagram. The video game industry is dominant on Twitch.
During the research stage, look into the kind of influencers you are interested in. Are popular celebrities your target audience? Or those with less than 2,000 followers (micro-influencers)? You might want anything with between 5,000 and 10,000 followers. Your budget will depend on what you decide to prioritize.
Additionally, compensation is highly variable, so make careful to look into average rates for specific influencer categories. For instance, micro-influencers frequently accept gifts and have a limited range of interests. Some micro-influencers work independently, while others could be connected to a network or agency. However, bigger accounts and famous people could demand payment and even go through a talent agency.
You must take into account the anticipated return on investment for your social influencer marketing strategy. How will you evaluate the contribution of the influencer postings to your overall marketing goals? Your expectations for influencers may be compared to the cost of hiring a video production business to work on developing an advertisement for you as opposed to an influencer creating a video. Although it would seem at first that estimating influencer worth is unclear, this method will give you a handy framework for comparison and analysis.
Influence.co presented the findings of their research on Instagram influencer compensation in 2020. They analyzed the cost of an Instagram post on average and found:
- The average price per post was $271.
- With an average of $83 per post, micro-influencers with under 1,000 followers were compensated.
- Influencers with more than 1k followers paid an average of $763 per post.
You'll come back to this phase throughout the process because research is so important.
- Prepare a budget and management plan
Now that you have a broad idea of how much to pay influencers, you need to create your budget—plan for the time required to create, implement, and assess an influencer program. Successful influencer marketing campaigns don't just happen. They require planning and execution. In addition, it will be necessary to monitor and make some follow-ups.
Influencers are human, and they occasionally manage many collaborations, in contrast to a more automated marketing effort. Some people might fail to post when they're supposed to or make errors while using the tags or calls to action you specified. You'll need to carve out more time to cultivate these connections and fine-tune your approach as you discover what works and what doesn't in your niche.
Consider establishing a formal ambassador program if you have the necessary funds. Fujifilm makes use of its brand ambassadors to promote new products and enhance its content. In addition, the company has a variety of photographers and videographers at its disposal, which allows it to diversify its feed to highlight the possibilities of its technology.
For brands that need access to a bigger pool of influencers, working with a marketing firm that focuses on influencers is a wise choice.
- Set objectives and message
Increased brand recognition and increased revenue are the two most common objectives of influencer marketing. However, it will be more productive to begin your plan by focusing on what your brand requires rather than making these two broad objectives your two aims. For instance, you want to engage more younger clients. Or perhaps you want to launch a fresh product to a brand-new clientele. Instead of chasing trends, you might promote your company's brand via influencers.
Your goal and message should be equally significant. While it's best to prevent influencers from posting about topics unrelated to your company, you also don't want to limit their originality and creativity. Make a plan for the organization of your influencer marketing strategy and message so that you can adhere to it later.
- How to reach out to influencers?
Once we have a strategy in place that takes into account your network, goals, and the types of influencers you want to target, we return to step one, research, to figure out how to properly find the best influencers to work with.
Throughout this research, have the following in mind:
- Does the influencer currently give content comparable to what you do? For instance, you may look for influencers who frequently blog about their eating habits and diets if you manage a restaurant and want to promote a new menu.
- Are they trustworthy? This requires choosing posts by swiping through their feed. A fake account will have a low engagement-to-follower ratio and spam-like remarks.
- Have they already worked with brands like mine? Depending on the type of influencer you're looking for, an established influencer will be able to provide you with a press kit that contains a portfolio of their work. Naturally, the more you spend on an influencer, the more you'll want to invest in them.
Next, choose your strategy for contacting them. Sending a private message to micro-influencers on the same website will put you in direct contact with them. The bio of a more experienced member may have their contact details if you click on their profile. A hyperlink to a website listing brand partnerships could also be included.
For instance, Summer Rayne Oakes offers her brand partners the benefit of her multi-channel presence. In this particular video, she worked with Gardener's Supply Company to advertise a giveaway. Because of this, Summer's followers are exposed to the brand more regularly, and she maintains their attention by making an appealing offer. As a result, even if they fail, they will gain knowledge about new products.
- Review and monitor your strategy
By establishing KPIs and objectives, you can monitor the effectiveness of your campaigns. You can accomplish this on your website using Google Analytics or your CRM, as well as on the social media platform. Your influencer should also provide data on performance.
You can utilize some helpful influencer marketing tools to support your campaign approach. Platforms that can automatically find influencers, contact them, and even manage whole campaigns are among them.
Let's examine the top influencer marketing tools by category to understand which can be useful at different points.
Social listening tools
Using social listening, you can keep track of brand mentions on several social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter. As a result, you will have a better understanding of how consumers feel about your company and learn how to improve your rapport with your target market.
- Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the most famous social media listening tools. You can practically control every part of your social media strategy with Hootsuite, in addition to keeping an eye on brand mentions.
Pricing: $39 per month
Key features
Hootsuite's key features include the following capabilities:
- Control social media campaigns across a variety of platforms.
- View and reply to all of your comments and messages.
- Simple to keep track of and reply to mentions
- Analyze the campaign's performance.
You may search social media conversations using Hootsuite based on keywords, hashtags, and geography. Therefore, Hootsuite is the tool for you if you're seeking one of the top social media listening tools with all the features you may want.
- Falcon.io (Recently changed its name to Brandwatch)
Another excellent all-in-one social listening platform is falcon.io. You can monitor mentions of your brand in real time with Falcon.io so that you can respond swiftly.
Pricing: $108 per month
Key features
This social listening tool allows you to:
Make personalized answer templates
Be alerted to any nasty remarks
Make a schedule for automatic publication.
By using keywords and phrases, search for specific references across several platforms.
With Falcon.io, it's simple to keep track of any social media brand mentions of your business and to evaluate key metrics and campaign performance statistics.
- Buffer
Buffer is the best option if you're seeking a social media listening tool with an easy-to-use interface that enables you to listen to conversations across platforms on a single dashboard.
Pricing: Free
Key features
Buffer has a range of pricing options, including a free plan, to suit any marketing budget. With the help of this app, you can keep tabs on the discussions that matter the most on your business's key social media sites.
In a single dashboard, you can easily search for mentions immediately, send responses to join the conversation, and gather more information about your audience.
Additionally, you can track crucial social media campaign data with the help of this social listening software in order to evaluate your approach and make adjustments as you go.
- TweetDeck
For companies that use Twitter to market their brand, TweetDeck is a well-liked social listening software. Additionally, using this tool is totally free.
Pricing: Free
Key features
You can effortlessly track mentions, notifications, messages, hashtags, and much more with TweetDeck in a single location. Additionally, you can view all of this crucial data on TweetDeck's user-friendly interface at once, allowing you to track and reply to mentions with ease and speed.
TweetDeck is the ideal free social listening tool if you're looking for a great way to monitor your mentions and respond to them promptly on Twitter.
- Mention
Mention is the next item on our list of the top social listening tools for 2022.
Pricing: Free
Key features
With Mention, you can follow the origins of social media material in more than 40 different languages, allowing you to keep track of mentions everywhere.
Additionally, you may limit the kinds of information you want to monitor and those you don't, allowing you to keep up with the trends that are most important to your company. Additionally, Mention enables you to compare the effectiveness of your social media effort to that of your rivals.
You can always keep one step ahead of the competition by acquiring crucial details about your audience and enhancing your plans thanks to their competitor analysis tool.
Influencer discovery tools
You may already have a solid sense of who the best influencers are if you are an active online participant in your area. However, you will need to conduct an extensive background study in other situations. Fortunately, you can help your search with a range of influencer marketing tools like these:
- Upfluence
It is a comprehensive influencer platform with a wide range of functions. It has a vast database with more than 3 million influencer profiles. Upfluence's AI does real-time indexing and updating of these profiles. In addition, each piece of content is subject to an algorithmic analysis for reach and engagement.
Customers can use as many keywords as necessary to search via Upfluence to locate influencers. You can begin to reduce the pool of candidates by digging down using keywords. Each term can be given a relative weight, making some keywords more significant than others. Using filters like geography, social network, or follower count, you can further refine your search on Instagram. The generated statistics are displayed in close to real-time. You enter your search phrases on the left side of the screen, and the right side of the screen shows the number of results from your search—and groups them according to the number of followers.
Upfluence provides a free Chrome plugin. It is a DIY influencer marketing tool. It is compatible with profiles on all major networks, including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, and blogs, and you can use it to examine an influencer's profile directly from your browser. The plugin provides any influencer with immediate, cutting-edge metrics across all of their social media profiles.
Key Features:
- Influencer Search & Discovery
- Relationship Management
- Campaign Management
- Third-Party Analytics
- Automated Recruiting
- Influencer Lifecycle Management
- Team Collaboration Tools
- Content Review
- Campaign Reporting
- Audience Analysis
- E-commerce Tools
- Product/Gifting Tools
- Payment Processing
- Social Listening
Channels:
- Youtube
- Twitch
- Tiktok
- Blogs
- Storyclash
You may look up new Instagram influencers who are talking about your brand using the free influencer search tool from Storyclash. It enables you to identify the ideal social media personality for your requirements and audience, which is essential for reaching your target market.
Simply type your brand name or a hashtag into the search field to access the free influencer search tool. You may view a partial list of all influencers who have recently referenced Storyclash in the last 30 days by visiting their website. The outcomes show the audience size and industry of each influencer.
Key Features:
- Search/Discover
- Influencer Relationship Management
- Team Collaboration Tools
- Content Library
- Campaign Reporting
- Product/Gifting Tools
- Fake Follower/Fraud Detection
- Social Listening
- Competitor Research
Channels:
- Tiktok
- Youtube
- Influence.co
In comparison to the majority of influencer platforms, Influence.co has a very different strategy. Influence.co functions very much like a social media platform, even though it provides all the standard services associated with an influencer marketplace. This helps companies maintain the genuine, long-lasting relationships that are essential to influencer marketing. In fact, Influence.co today has over 250,000 users on its social network and marketplace, including 150,000 influencers, 70,000 businesses, and 30,000 other users.
Influence.co's social component is a supplement to discovery and activation, not a replacement for them. But it is successful in transforming the platform into something different. Influencers whose postings appear in their feed are likely to be the people with whom brands will form the strongest bonds.
Influence.co offers two plans: one is free, and the other is not. You can create your own profile and access the platform's community with the free basic account. Basic searches can yield up to 50 results each, and you can arrange those results into up to 3 lists. Every month, you can create, publish, and communicate with up to 12 influencers.
Naturally, the Business Pro premium package provides much more. You get a lot of features, including numerous profiles, sophisticated searches, limitless results and lists, advanced search, limitless campaigns, campaign management and reports, team members, lead sourcing, and more.
Key Features:
- Search/Discovery
- Automated Recruiting
- Influencer Relationship Management
- Influencer Marketplace
- Content Library
- Campaign Management
- Campaign Reporting
- Influencer Analysis
- Audience Analysis
Channels:
- YouTube
- Patreon
- Snapchat
- Tiktok
- Amazon
Conclusion
Influencers are here to stay, but the world of influencer marketing has changed significantly in a short period of time, and in five years, it may look very different from now. This guide will help you improve your strategy, but like with any social strategy, it's essential to be adaptive.
Working with influencers has particular special concerns, but organizing a campaign is similar to most marketing campaigns. Once you've found your rhythm, you can create several forms of influencer marketing campaigns. If you want to increase website traffic or online visibility for your business, Winterplay Studios can help you to reach your target audiences through effective online marketing strategies. So contact us today.