The secret is out. Influencer marketing is popular as well as important for marketers.

By Chad Recchia

The secret is out. Influencer marketing is popular as well as important for marketers.

It’s 2017 and no one can deny the power of social media. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube – the platforms have millions of actively engaged users flocking to them daily for their endless content. Most of the media content is created by independent creatives with major followings – best known as influencers.

As companies like Google, scale up their efforts to limit advertising with ad blocking, it is important to think outside the box when it comes to an effective marketing strategy to reach audiences. Thus, influencer marketing is key.

Benefits of influencer marketing

The number one benefit of influencer marketing is authenticity with particular niche audiences. Top influencers enjoy strong relationships with their followers and have done this by sharing authentic, relevant content that speaks to their audience and the topics they care about. Followers of influencers seek their expertise on particular subjects or recommendations.

A little more than 90 percent of consumers worldwide say they trust earned media, such as word-of-mouth and recommendations, over any other form of marketing.

Let’s say you’re a restaurant hoping to drum up traffic to your new establishment? Try partnering with relevant food Instagrammers and creating unique offers only their audiences can redeem. What about tourism boards hoping to drum up interest in their cities, states or countries as vacation destinations? There are plenty of travel influencers like Kiersten Rich (whose verified Instagram account “The Blonde Abroad” has close to 430,000 loyal followers) that could help.

There’s strong research that indicates high return on investment for influencer marketing. In 2015, AdWeek reported for every dollar spent, influencer campaigns earned an average return of $6.85.

Measuring Success

Although there is room to grow measurement of influencer campaigns, engagement is the go-to metric for determining the success of a campaign. Brand awareness, sales lift, traffic, reach, share of voice, sentiment and impressions are also metrics that can be reviewed.

eMarketer offered its own guide for marketers navigating the effectiveness of influencer marketing in “Measuring Influencer Marketing: A Guide for Marketers”. Here are a few of the top takeaways:

1. Remember that vanity metrics such as views, comments and shares are fine to track, but only tell part of the story.

2. Be mindful that influencer marketing is a relationship business. Success comes from connecting with influencers who provide authentic and real support for your brand.

3. Create trackable links or coupon codes for influencers to share.

4. Find a way to correlate influencer activity with changes in brand metrics.

5. Compare the results of different influencer activations. For example, there’s a contrast between content shared on Instagram stories compared to the main feed.

How much does influencer marketing cost?

There is no one size fits all solution for paying influencers. Running an influencer campaign covers a wide range according to Digiday, because of a multitude of factors including “exclusivity, engagement rate, following size and usage rights”.

Pricing is typically negotiable, but there are some standards marketers can look to:

• Instagram: $10 per 1,000 followers is a good place to start. From there, look to make adjustments based engagement rate, campaign length and budget.

• Snapchat: Pricing is typically based around active views with $500 being a starting point for influencers who earn 1,000-5,000 views.

• YouTube: The average cost is roughly $2,000 per 100,000 followers. Total subscribers along with the amount of time videos are watched are factors that play a role in pricing.

• Cost per click or cost per engagement models (CPC or CPE) can also be utilized to structure influencer campaigns.

The above is, of course, not an exhaustive list of influencer marketing benefits. Based on your campaign goals, audience and budget, many more benefits can be gained as each influencer campaign should be tailored specific to each marketer’s goals.

If you need help navigating the influencer landscape, Awlogy can help lead the way. Let’s discuss what makes sense based on your goals.