Influencer Marketing Complete Guide - How do Brands Work with Influencers?
In recent years, the global epidemic has greatly affected consumers' shopping habits. Instead of going to local shops, more people prefer to discover and buy things online, and this has made influencer marketing become an important part of the marketing strategies of many brands. If you want to know how to do influencer marketing, congratulations, you find the right place. In this article, we will bring you a complete guide to influencer marketing.
Trends of influencer marketing
The changes in consumers have facilitated the development of influencer marketing.
One of the changes is that people spend more time on the Internet, and they have been used to discovering, purchasing, and sharing things on social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and more. Another change is that as a significant part of consumers, Generation Z has grown to have more spending power while they prefer brands with certain features or attitudes.
Therefore, social media platforms become important marketing channels, and more brands begin to leverage the influence of content creators on these platforms to increase exposure and boost sales. According to the data of Influencer Marketing Hub, the scale of influencer marketing was US$13.8 billion in 2021, and it is estimated to grow to US$15 billion in 2022.
Besides, the brands' preference for influencers also changed. Instead of only working with mega influencers, lots of brands also take influencers with a smaller following into their consideration.
Benefits of influencer marketing
Compared with traditional ads, influencer marketing is an effective way for brands to grow the business. You may get the following benefits by working with influencers.
Your brands can grow more quickly
Influencer marketing can help your brands to grow more quickly. Consumers' trust in a brand and their recognition of a brand's value is the key to growth, but usually, this takes a long time.
By collaborating with influencers, the influencers can help your brand to reach a lot of target consumers in a shorter time and spread the stories and value of your brands, which makes it easier to earn consumers' trust in your brands.
You'll have more content online
Another benefit of influencer marketing is that the content produced by influencers can still be retained on the Internet for a long time.
Nowadays, social media platforms have become important sources of information. People are likely to search on platforms like YouTube for more information when they discover a brand or product. Then, the content produced by influencers will help them have a better understanding of your brands.
It can help boost sales
When working with influencers, you can launch custom marketing campaigns according to the styles of influencers and the characteristics of their audience. And these marketing campaigns, supported by personal charisma and the professional content of influencers, will be more likely to arouse the audience's interest in your brands and products and persuade the audience to make a purchase.
How to do influencer marketing?
Choose the right social media platform
Firstly, you need to decide which social media platforms are more suitable for your brands.
You can check out our previous article Influencer Marketing: YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, which platform should brands choose for marketing? To know about the features of major social media platforms.
Think about the collaboration types
When you have the right social media platforms for your brands in mind, it's time for you to think about how you want to work with influencers. Let's check out different types of collaboration with influencers on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
YouTube
Dedicated Videos
The dedicated videos often last over 5 minutes, and influencers will only talk about your brands and products in such videos.
The tech influencer Marques Brownlee talks about the product in a dedicated video
The tech influencer Marques Brownlee talks about the product in a dedicated vide
Since the details of the products will be displayed in detail, dedicated videos are more likely to drive sales.
Besides, it usually costs influencers a lot of time to learn about the products and produce dedicated videos, so the price for such videos is high.
Integrated Videos
Integrated videos are often less than 5 minutes and they are a small part of the whole video.
To strike a balance between the audience's experience and the brands' requirements for promotion, influencers usually try to include the promotional part in videos that are related to the products. For example, if you work with a fitness influencer for an integrated video on YouTube to promote your exercise bike, this influencer may mention your bike when talking about how to work out.
With integrated videos, influencers can introduce the brands and products to the audience more naturally, but this may not be impressive because some details cannot be displayed due to the limits of video length.
Besides, compared to dedicated videos, the price for integrated videos is much lower, so if you have a limited budget, you can consider this type of collaboration.
Sponsored Videos
Like the ads we can see when watching TV dramas, sponsored videos can be put in the initial, middle, and final parts of the videos, and the influencers will mention the brands briefly.
Some brands will work with lots of influencers on sponsored videos to gain more exposure in a short time. But sometimes the sponsored videos are not related to the whole videos, and this may cause the audience to take a dislike to the influencers, and the brands.
Besides talking about brands in videos, influencers can also mention the brands as sponsors and put links to brands' official shops in the description section below the videos.
TikTok
TikTok videos
TikTok is well-known for its entertaining short videos. As TikTok grows to be one of the most popular social media platforms, more brands begin to collaborate with TikTok influencers to produce creative TikTok videos. Such kinds of videos can catch people's attention more easily, and engage the audience in brands' campaigns.
Instagram Feed Posts
It's a common practice for many brands to collaborate with Instagram influencers on regular feed posts. Influencers often post aesthetic images or videos as regular feed posts and they can be seen on the audience's main feed. Also, influencers will add some hashtags to these posts to make them reach more Instagram users.
Instagram Reels
Similar to TikTok videos, Instagram Reels are vertical short videos lasting between 15 to 90 seconds.
Instagram Stories
Brands also work with influencers on a new type of content, Instagram Stories. Instagram Stories can be videos up to 15 seconds or images. Different from regular Instagram posts and Reels, Instagram Stories will not be saved for a long time unless you change the settings in advance, otherwise, it will be removed by the platform automatically after 24 hours.
Find suitable influencers
After learning about various social media platforms and collaboration types, you may have a general plan for your influencer marketing campaign. Then you can get started with influencer discovery. Scroll down to learn about how to find suitable influencers.
Search on social media platforms
You can search for suitable influencers by hashtag and keyword on social media platforms. For example, if you are looking for Instagram influencers for your fashion brand, you can use hashtags like #ootd to find fashion content creators.
Besides, you can find some clues from your competitors. You can take a look at the social media accounts of your competitors and find out the influencers they have worked with. These influencers are likely true for your marketing campaigns as well.
Search on Google
By entering keywords like "best/top+product/category+YouTubers", you can get lists of different types of influencers directly on Google. When you need top influencers, this can help save you time.
Search on influencer marketing platforms
The methods mentioned above can help you find influencers, but it still costs a lot of time. If you want to find influencers effectively, try influencer marketing platforms such as WinInfluencer.
What you can do with WinInfluencer?
Discover influencers precisely
WinInfluencer provides brands with up to 20 million data of global influencers on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. And you can find the right influencers precisely with the help of 16 types of filters and a detailed analysis of influencers on this platform.
Reach influencers efficiently
You can reach influencers for collaboration efficiently by sending emails in bulk on WinInfluencer and improve your email-sending strategies according to the data such as email open rate. Have no idea how to write an email? You can use the email templates which cover the whole process of collaboration with influencers to communicate with influencers.
Publish campaigns easily
You can attract more content creators to apply for collaboration by publishing campaigns on WinInfluencer. The campaigns will be exposed to suitable influencers according to the requirements, and you will receive applications from influencers for collaborations soon.
Try WinInfluencer for free now to make influencer marketing easier!
Analyze the data of influencers
It's necessary to analyze the performance of the influencers to find out the right influencers after rough filtering. Lots of marketers will make their decisions from the following perspectives.
Relevance
First of all, to ensure your influencer marketing campaigns can reach your target consumers, it's necessary to make sure the content produced by the influencers is relevant to the brands and products.
Number of Followers
The number of followers is an important indicator we use to measure the influence and performance of influencers. Usually, an influencer with great followers is likely to help brands to reach more audiences.
However, you need to be aware of fake followers. To get higher pay for brand collaboration, some content creators opt to buy followers. These fake followers mean nothing to brands. If an influencer gained lots of followers in a short time and none of his videos went viral, this influencer may have bought followers.
Frequency
Generally speaking, there is a direct correlation between how often influencers post new content and their influence. Influencers who post content regularly are more likely to retain their audience and even attract new followers.
Engagement Rate
Engagement matters. The engagement rate shows the proportion of followers that resonate with the content.
All the data mentioned can be found on our influencer marketing platform, WinInfluencer.
Reach out to influencers
Before sending emails to pitch influencers, you need to be well prepared in the following ways.
Sign up for multiple business email addresses
To improve the credibility of your collaboration invitations, it is recommended to use business email addresses with company suffixes. Why do you need more email addresses? This is because if you send lots of emails frequently, your emails could be recognized as spam by the mailing system, and it will be more difficult for influencers to notice your emails.
Prepare the pitch templates
Collaboration begins with good communication. To talk with influencers about collaboration efficiently, it's highly recommended that you nail the pitch templates for the whole process of collaboration in advance.
Learn about tactics to negotiate the price
The budget for marketing campaigns is always limited, so it's inevitable to negotiate the price with influencers. Here are some tips to help you negotiate an acceptable price.
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Offer free products/exclusive discounts as compensation
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Show your preference for a long-term cooperation
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Indicate that you have other competitive candidates
Measure the effect of marketing campaigns
To know about the effect of marketing campaigns clearly, you can set exclusive links or codes for influencers and use Google Analytics and other analysis tools to track the performance.
Grow your business with influencer marketing using WinInfluencer. You can easily find influencers you need and reach out to them for cooperation on this influencer marketing platform. Try it free today!
More to know?
How to Find YouTube Influencers for Brand Collaborations?
TikTok Influencer Marketing
Influencer Marketing Complete Guide
Amazon Influencer Program Onboarding
Influencer Marketing Platform
