What system of marketing that has proven to be an effective way to increase brand awareness and drives sales sees a return on investment of $5.78 for every $1 spent?

Influencer marketing.

That is, paying influential online people to promote your brand or product to their networks and followers. You might hire a blogger to make a post or video about your product, or perhaps get a social influencer to promote you via Instagram and Facebook.

The key is the person you are paying has their own follower base. And in exchange for free products, money or some other form of payment, they spread your message to their followers.

Companies and marketers who establish long-term partnerships with high-performing influencers tend to be successful. You have a product, they have the audience and most importantly they have credibility with their audience.

Not to mention the fact that influencers will create original content that is tailored to their audience and features your product.

But don’t think that a one-off post is going to solve all your marketing woes. The key is work with an influencer on a series of campaigns to yield the most success.

How do you choose which influencer to hire?

You want someone who is in touch with your best prospects. For example, if you market to beginning golfers, find bloggers and other influencers who are in touch with new golfers.

Then test an influencer before committing to repeat campaigns with them. Assess how well they perform by analyzing the content they create and how well it performs. Don’t expect miracles, because one piece of content will only go so far. But you should see something tangible come from it, such as sign ups to your list or hits to your sales page, depending on what call to action you ask for.

The more often an influencer promotes your particular brand or product, the more their audience will trust and act upon the recommendation. That’s why once you find an influencer you can work with, you want to continue using them for some time to come.

What should I look for in an influencer?

After your initial test, ask yourself the following questions:

Did the content the influencer created for you align with your brand?
Did they publish this original content on the agreed-upon date?
How many likes, comments, shares, views, click-throughs or sign-ups did you receive?
Using a trackable link or affiliate program, did they drive traffic to your agreed upon link? This might be your website, your sign-up page or your sales page and so forth.
Did their audience react well to the content created by the influencer for your business?

How do I find and hire influencers?

If you’ve never worked with influencers before, you might want to begin by working with an established influencer network.

Influencer networks have a database of influencers categorized by niche, audience demographics, engagement ratings and a lot more.

These networks can help you not only recruit the best suited influencers for your business, but also oversee content creation, analyzing data from the campaign, handling payment and so forth.

Networks may provide flat-fee compensation to influencers, or they may pay on a cost per click basis. The latter is the preferred method because it incentivizes influencers to work harder to drive traffic to you.

How much does influencer marketing cost?

This is kinda like asking how long a piece of string is. It just depends.

On one end of the spectrum, you can literally pay influencers in free products. For example, let’s say you sell your own line of cosmetics. With prior permission, you can send a sample package of several of your products to influencers for their review. Those who give you a high review (and most if not all probably will) are influencers you might want to contract with to continue promoting your product, at which point you will begin paying them in real money.

This ‘real money’ could be anything from $50 for a one-off video to considerably more for a long-term ongoing relationship.

The niche you’re in will in large part determine how much it costs to hire an influencer to promote for you. Some niches are relatively cheap because there aren’t a lot of businesses vying for the attention of influencers.

In other cases, it can cost quite a bit of money to bring influencers on board.

Truly, the cost doesn’t matter as long as the influencers are making you more money than you are spending to get their help.

Lastly, anytime you can get an influencer to become your affiliate, it’s usually the best thing for both you and the influencer. They get paid according to how many sales their promotions make and you only pay for sales.

What are some examples of what influencers are paid?

A Snapchat influencer might be paid $10 per 1000 followers for their post.

Another influencer might be paid 10 cents per like on Instagram.

A million impressions might cost $3,000.

Really the prices are all over the place, but here are some numbers from Influence Marketing Hub for Instagram influencers to give you a better idea.

1,000 to 10,000 followers – $10 to $100 per post
10,000 to 50,000 followers – $100 to $500 per post
50,000 to 500,000 followers – $500 to $5,000 per post
500,000 to 1,000,000 followers – $5,000 to $10,000 per post
More than 1,000,000 followers – $10,000+ per post

Keep in mind this is only a general guideline in no particular niche. You can and will find much better deals with influencers if you keep searching and asking.

A key tip is to discount whatever price you are thinking of so that you have room to increase that price during negotiations without paying more than you want to.

What are the factors that impact influencer rates?

The influencer’s reach and engagement with their audience
The particular channel they use (Instagram? Facebook? Etc.)
How many posts you want them to make
Whether or not things like images, videos and audios will be included in those posts
How much work is involved for the influencer (Hint: You can create content for them that looks like they made it themselves. This will save you money because it cuts down on their work. Essentially, they are copying and pasting what you supply.)
Where the post is promoted and cross-posted
Agency fees (Only applies if you are using an influencer agency)

What are the top 5 social media platforms for influencer marketing?

According to the 2020 Influencer Marketing Outlook report, the top platforms in order are:

Instagram
YouTube
TikTok
Twitter
Facebook

How do I get started?

First, figure out what your goals are when using influencer marketing. What do you want the influencers to accomplish for you? Sending traffic to your Facebook Group page? To an email sign-up page? To a sales page?

Next, set an initial budget and timeframe. How much are you willing to spend, and when do you want to see results? If you want help with a product launch, then your timeframe is already determined by when you are launching your product. But if you simply want a steady stream of traffic to your squeeze page, then your timeframe and goals will be different.

Think about who you want to reach. You might create an avatar of your ideal customer if you don’t already have one. Where do these ideal customers hang out? On blogs or certain sites? Or on Facebook? Instagram? Odds are you already have the answers to these questions if you’ve been in business for any length of time.

You now have a plan of action you can use to find your own influencers or begin talking to an influencer network.