This is the most important thing to define: what do you hope to get out of partnering with the influencer? These are some of the common goals of influencer marketing.
Raising awareness is particularly important for new brands, or brands that are transitioning into a new market or industry. People are more likely to buy from a brand they know or which has been recommended to them. Influencers can help boost awareness by promoting your product in a way that seems natural and which their audience is more likely to trust.
If awareness is about how many people know your brand, brand engagement is the customer experience on social media. On Instagram it’s measured by likes and comments. The right influencer can wield an emotional connection with their audience to build an emotional connection with your brand. Also, don’t forget to invite your fans to participate in your brand! Encourage your followers to mention you or use branded hashtags. This is a win-win for you and your followers: they feel more involved, and you get organic exposure.
Sometimes, influencer marketing is a great way to supplement your own content marketing. If you strike deals with influencers that allow you to use their content, you can achieve both an ambassador and a content creator at the same time. Just remember to define your aesthetic and outline your content guidelines. This way, if you work with multiple influencers, you’ll end up with content that is visually and thematically cohesive.
Whether you’re looking for sales, sign-ups or app downloads, conversions are when you convert leads into completions of your campaign’s objectives. For example, if your goal is to increase sales through your collaboration with an influencer, the conversion might be a purchase made using that influencer’s discount code. Although it’s tempting to think otherwise, conversions aren’t necessarily the best type of objective for every campaign. It all depends on your brand, where it’s currently at, and what it needs.
Nanos usually have high engagement with their audience, as they have fewer people to manage. Although you risk the chance that they may be inexperienced, you can usually close a deal with them for product alone. And they’re especially useful for collaborations based on products of low value, such as mobile phone cases.
Considered experts in their fields, micro influencers generally have great engagement and audiences who trust their voices. They are a great way to enter a niche market, and they’re more experienced at collaborating with brands than nano influencers. As long as you’re asking for a reasonable number of posts, you can usually close a deal with Micros for product alone. And if they do ask for a monetary fee, it won’t be much.
At this level, influencers start to get more professional. They’re likely transitioning their social media accounts from a hobby into a full-time job. As a result, Mediums usually ask for a monetary fee in addition to product, and some might already have a manager. Their engagement is generally good, even if it’s lower than that of nano and micro influencers.
Macros are full-time, professional influencers. They’re no strangers to frequent collaborations, and some may even have their own product lines with partner brands. They create polished content and have great reach. However, you’ll see that engagement starts to drop off in this tier. Be prepared to offer both product and a fee for their services. Managers may also drive up the influencer’s fee by about 20%.
“Mega influencer” is basically another way to say celebrity. These are the top of the top, whether because they’re famous outside of social media, or because they’ve grown their profiles to celebrity status. Their content is top-notch and they have professional managers to organize their feeds. But keep in mind that their followers are less-focused and represent a wider range of interests. Followers may also see mega influencers as less authentic than their smaller counterparts. Mega influencers are costly and have low engagement, but their reach is unrivaled.
Genuine influencers will have more followers than accounts they follow – often by a substantial margin.
A quality influencer will have engagement (likes and comments) of about 1.5-3% of their followers, e.g., if an influencer has 100,000 followers, you should see 1,500 – 3,000 likes and comments (combined) on an average post. An engagement rate of 1 percent is okay for many influencers, depending on their niche. If an “influencer’s” engagement rate for his/her posts is regularly well below than this, you should be suspicious.
This also be true for engagement rates that seem overly inflated. The influencer could be using artificial engagement techniques, such as being part of an engagement group (influencers work together, commenting and liking each other’s posts to boost their statistics).
A lot of action for a few days, but then little other activity could be a sign of a bot. Also look for spammy, irrelevant and clueless comments.
Instagram Audit & Fake Follower Check
To help determine if an influencer is right for your business and will yield an equitable result in exchange for hosting or paying them, do a little research. If you can’t find what you are looking for, it’s perfectly OK to request information. In tourism, we sometimes ask for a screen-print of their analytics page.
Consider the following:
How many followers do the campaign’s influencers have? This will impact reach.
On Instagram, posts are worth more than stories, as they’re more likely to be displayed without any action from the user and they don’t have a short shelf life. Can you reuse the content or post? You you getting just an image posted or a video? How many?
Impressions are commonly confused with Reach but they are two distinct metrics to track. When you say Instagram Impressions, it means the number of times the post was viewed by your audience. Every time a user reviews a post, it is counted as an impression. So if one user views one post three times, that would count as one Reach and three Impressions. One thing to note is that if your Instagram impression is higher compared to your Instagram Reach, it means your viewers are re-watching your posts or content several times.
Engagement is when users interact with content in some way. The level of an influencer’s engagement is a direct indication of how interested their audience is in their content. When they have a strong engagement rate, it means they have a receptive audience and a good relationship with your followers.
On Instagram, interactions are measured in comments and likes. Remember that stories don’t allow comments and likes; while you can react to a story, that reaction functions more like a DM than a public like or comment.
Engagement medium across all industries:
Instagram – .67% Facebook – .064% Twitter – .037%
Instagram Engagement Rate Calculator
TikTok Engagement Rate Calculator
This one is simple: how many times did people click the links in your campaign materials?
Cost per mille uses the Latin word for one thousand. So, CPM is, in modern terms, the cost per 1,000 impressions. Let’s say an influencer has 100,000 followers and a CPM of $10. The cost of working with this influencer would be $1,000 per sponsored post.
Average across platforms:
Facebook – $9.82 Instagram – $8.60 Twitter – $7.09 YouTube – $11.43
Take the total cost of your advertising and divide it by the total interactions. This shows you the price for each interaction provoked by the campaign.
The quality of the content that the influencer creates is equally important in considering your influencer marketing ROI.
If you find the influencer’s content quality to be high-impact and high-converting, they may be right for you. Generally, if you think you could repost their content style to your own social media page, they pass the test. If you really like their content, you can ask the influencer to obtain licensing rights to their content or that they provide you the original digital assets.
With content rights, your brand can use the influencer’s content in the form of paid promotions or repurpose it to other marketing tactics and drive up your overall marketing ROI even after the influencer campaign ends.
TikTok Account Quality Checker
What you offer an influencer in exchange for coverage can vary a lot based on their reach and alignment with your target market. Incentive can be monetary (pay) or non-monetary (a complimentary stay or meal).
This is an excellent way to pay influencers, especially those who fall in the nano or micro tiers. Also, it’s usually the cheapest way to collaborate, as the cost is just the cost of production and potential shipping.
Negotiate a one-time fee and pay it through an invoice or another method that is secure. We use this method in tourism when we want to provide the influence the ability to explore the city on their own without mandating coverage of specific businesses or experiences. This often helps create content that’s more authentic for their audience.
Average Payment by Platform
Instagram – $100 per 10,000 followers.
YouTube – $1,00 per 10,000 followers
Estimate Cost Per Post
CPA is a commission-based model that pays influencers based on how many acquisitions they generate for your campaign. Your campaign defines the acquisition based on your objectives, but some common examples are sales, registrations to your site, or newsletter sign-ups. CPA can be measured by tracking links (utms), coupon codes, or other pieces of data unique to the campaign.
Many influencers may not be inclined to accept CPA alone as payment for the collaboration. It can be used alongside product or a flat fee to create an interesting and attractive incentive package. You could perhaps offer a flat fee a bit lower than normal plus the commissions gained through the CPA strategy.
Here are two examples of how CPA could work in a campaign:
Fixed rate on an acquisition: Imagine your campaign wants to increase sales at your clothing website. You could offer an influencer $5 on every sale generated through the links on their profile.
Variable on an acquisition: In the same scenario, instead of offering them a fixed rate, you can offer them something like 5% on every sale. If a customer just spends $10, the influencer only gets $0.50. But if another customer spends $300, the influencer will get $15.
Receive news and announcements from Palm Springs straight to your inbox
Influencer Marketing Guide - Visit Palm Springs
