How does instagram influencers work
How to Find and Work With Instagram Influencers: A Complete Guide
Instagram influencer marketing can seem pretty intimidating.
To pull off a successful campaign, you’ll need to work with the right Instagram influencers. You may be asking yourself, How do I find influencers? How much is it going to cost? Will I actually make any sales doing this?
Fortunately, whether you’re a big brand or a small one, Instagram influencer marketing can work for you. This article will walk you through how to find and work with Instagram influencers, with tips for running a successful campaign.
Find your ideal influencer on IG 📈
- What is an Instagram influencer?
- Top Instagram influencers in 2021
- Types of Instagram influencers
- How much do Instagram influencers cost?
- How to find Instagram influencers
- Tips for creating successful Instagram influencer marketing campaigns
- Working with the right influencers for your brand
- Instagram influencer marketing FAQ
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What is an Instagram influencer?
An Instagram influencer is someone who’s built a reputation around a certain niche on Instagram. They are essentially a brand ambassador for your business.
You can think of them like Instagram celebrities within their niche. They’ll share your product with the audience in exchange for money, free products, or experiences.
According to HypeAuditor’s State of Influencer Marketing 2021 report, the Instagram influencer market is expected to grow 15% in 2021, reaching a market cap of $5.8 billion by the end of the year.
Source: HypeAuditorInstagram influencers work to build engaged audiences that trust them and what they promote. One benefit of working with these influencers is that they create beautiful user generated content for you. Many work with professional photographers to create polished and well thought out influencer content for brands.
The best part? You get the right to use this content across your marketing assets, like for social proof on your product page or in a press kit.
Popular influencer niches include:
- Music
- Humor and fun
- Literature and journalism
- Cinema
- Travel
- Nature and landscapes
- Beauty
- Extreme sports and outdoor activities
These people have the power to affect Instagram followers’ buying habits because of their authority in a specific niche. Brands pay Instagram influencers to:
- Build trust with a target audience
- Increase brand awareness
- Create valuable influencer partnerships
- Reach niche markets faster
- Make sales
You can accomplish this through sponsoring content on an influencer’s Instagram account. Smaller brands tend to avoid influencer marketing because they believe it’s too expensive or won’t work.
However, according to January 2021 research by Influencer Marketing Hub and Upfluence, 62% of marketers worldwide intend to increase their influencer marketing budgets this year.
“Although influencer marketing has experienced growth over the years, there’s no denying the pandemic expedited it for ecommerce brands,” says Jordie Black, Content Marketing Manager at Vitals.co. “It forced them to find new ways to connect with consumers. “This shift meant smaller brands were playing on the same playing field, advantaged by a preference to shop small and shop local.
“Combine this strategy with working with micro influencers, who are for the most part cheaper to work with and have stronger audience affiliations, and you have a huge narrative shift. Brands of all sizes who have been on the fence about whether influencer marketing could be a viable channel for their brand—the time to start is now.”
Top Instagram influencers in 2021
According to data from Brandwatch, these 10 accounts are the top influencers on Instagram in 2021:
- Cristiano Ronaldo, 307 million followers
- Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, 249 million followers
- Ariana Grande, 247 million followers
- Kylie Jenner, 244 million followers
- Selena Gomez, 240 million followers
- Kim Kardashian, 232 million followers
- Lionel Messi, 224 million followers
- Beyoncé, 189 million followers
- Justin Bieber, 180 million followers
- Kendall Jenner, 172 million followers
This list may leave you a little intimidated about using Instagram influencers.
Will you be able to afford Beyoncé for your next campaign? Probably not. Let’s explore different types of accounts you can work with for your next influencer marketing campaign.
Types of Instagram influencers
There are five tiers of Instagram influencers referenced by marketers: nano, micro, mid, macro, and mega. Here’s how they break down by follower count.
Nano (1–10K)
Nano-influencers are content creators, bloggers, and everyday people who have between 1,000 and 10,000 followers on Instagram. They sometimes promote products on their feeds or Stories, but being an influencer is normally not a full-time gig for them. Nano-influencers often build a lot of trust with their followers, which results in high engagement rates.
Nano-influencers tend to get higher engagement rates. My best influencers have been people that are genuinely interested in the product and eager to share it with their followers.
Rhiannon Taylor, Founder of RT1home
Since 2018, nano-influencers have shown stronger connections with their audience compared to larger accounts, with engagement rates around 5%, compared to the average rate of 2.
2% for all influencers.
Micro (10–100K)
Micro-influencers are those with between 10,000 and 100,000 followers. Some publications claim micro-influencers have as low as 1,000 followers, but there’s no official number.
Regardless, micro-influencers make up 47% of all Instagram creators, according to HypeAuditor. These influencers may be a bit more expensive, but they still have the same personal hands-on feel as nano-influencers. This makes them a good option for promoting your business and driving sales.
Mid (100–500K)
Mid-tier influencers typically have between 100,000 and 500,000 followers on Instagram. They represent the second largest group of influencers (26%). Given this group’s follower size, they don’t have the one-to-one feel that nano-influencers have, but they have a wider reach and high engagement rates compared to marco- or mega-influencers.
Macro (500K–1M)
Macro-influencers are more well known than the first three tiers. They have upward of one million followers and lie between mega-influencers (celebrities) and mid-tier.
These influencers typically became famous on the web, whether it was vlogging or producing entertaining content. If you want to reach more broad categories, like “young males,” a macro-influencer is a good route to take.
Mega (1M+)
Mega-influencers are the top-tier accounts in the social media marketing world. They normally have more than a million followers and are more famous than they are influential. Their audience is diverse with different interests, and relationships are more distant.
Mega-influencers like Lele Pons or Kylie Jenner provide massive reach for a brand. These accounts are also more experienced working with brands on outreach campaigns but cost more than other tiers.
How much do Instagram influencers cost?
Fox Business reported that the average influencer on Instagram earns anywhere from $30,000 to $100,000 per year from promoting products.
But rates for Instagram influencers vary.
Influencers can make money on Instagram based on their:
- Following
- Engagement metrics
- Niche
- Demand and seasonality
- Reuse and licensing rights
- Exclusivity
HypeAuditor’s report also found that, on average, you will get $4.87 earned media value for each $1 you pay for an Instagram influencer’s promotion. Earned media value is equivalent to the cost of gaining the same reach through paid social ads among the same audience.
But how much will one Instagram influencer post cost? Based on follower count alone, social media consultant and Amazon bestselling author Andrew Macarthy identified the average cost per post you’ll pay:
- Nano (1–10K followers): $10–$100 per post
- Micro (10–100K followers): $100–$500 per post
- Mid (100–500K followers): $500–$5K per post
- Macro (500K–1M followers): $5K–10K per post
- Mega (1M+ followers): $10K+ per post
You can also use an Instagram pricing calculator like Inzpire’s to calculate the average cost of any influencer you want to work with.
You’ll need to add:
- The Influencer’s user name
- How many posts you want them to publish
- How many Stories you want them to post
The calculator will then give you an estimate for metrics like post reach and average engagement rate, as well as the estimated price for a sponsored post.
Source: InzpireHow to find Instagram influencers
Interested in running an Instagram influencer marketing strategy but not sure where to start? Here’s how you can find an ideal influencer for your brand:
- Try an influencer marketing platform.
- Know your “why.”
- Decide if they are a brand fit.
- Check engagement rates.
- Keep your goals in mind.
Try an influencer marketing platform
Today you don’t need to go around finding potential influencers on your own through hashtags or competitors’ feeds. You can use an influencer marketing platform to assist you in finding influencers through their database and algorithms.
Many influencer platforms include other offerings like campaign management, marketplaces, analytics, and relationship management software to help campaigns run more smoothly.
Some platforms to check out include:
- Grin, rated among the best influencer marketing software for ecommerce brands. It offers 37 million influencers across social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, and Twitch.
- Upfluence, a self-serve platform for finding influencers used by brands like PayPal and Microsoft. You can set your own prices and find influencers to match your specific criteria.
- Creator.co, an influencer marketplace with over 500 million influencers to choose from. It offers a self-service option where you manually find influencers, as well as a “hands-free” option where you define your campaign and ideal influencer while an automated system finds the best fit.
Each platform has its own advantages and focus. However, the above three options will help you discover new influencers, manage campaigns, and provide analytics to improve your marketing efforts.
Know your “why”
“First, take a step back and ask, ‘Why do you want to work with influencers?’” says Neil Waller, co-founder of influencer marketing agency Whalar. “Because the output that you can get from working with influencers is a few different things, so the lens through which you’ll choose to vet them could be different based on your business goals.”
Neil outlined three main benefits of working with influencers, each of which is a great standalone objective:
- Tap into their knowledge of a platform and what works to create content for that platform.
- Access their audience.
- Work with them as consumers to get their feedback and perspective on your product.
But even though choosing a priority is important, Neil also points out that it’s not to the exclusion of the other outcomes. “You can achieve all three,” he says, “but you’ve got to know what your primary goals are before you can start the vetting process.”
As for that vetting process, it really boils down to two key questions: Does this person fit with your brand, and do they have a solid engagement rate?
Decide if they are a brand fit
Before you start to look at anything quantitative, like number of followers or engagement levels, it’s important to build a list of influencers you think would be a genuinely good fit for your products and your brand.
This might be an intuitive process if you have a good sense of what your brand represents, or you might need to define what makes someone a good fit, but this is the best first step you can take.
“In terms of vetting, when we did influencer marketing with Shore Projects, the first thing we said was, ‘Does the influencer we’re going to work with seem like someone we would want to be a customer, and would they actually use or wear our stuff?’” says Neil. “Because if they don’t, frankly, what’s the point in going about it?”
The intersection of your brand and an influencer’s content is going to be different for every business, but Neil offered an easy mental model to help you think through the selection process.
At their best, influencers are like magazine publishers. If you picked up a magazine, you'd have a sense of voice and tone, what the magazine stands for, and what the magazine writes about.
“With magazine publishing, that’s how you would choose whether to associate your brand with that magazine.
Apply the same process to influencers.”
Based on their Instagram Stories and feed, you should get a clear and consistent sense of who the influencer is, what topics they create content about, and their general style. If those factors match up well with your brand and your products, you can then check out their engagement rates.
Check engagement rates
Once you’ve found someone who seems to be a good fit for your brand, it’s time to sniff out whether they’ve got the community they’re promising.
It all boils down to engagement rates. While agencies like Whalar can help you determine if an influencer has the engagement you’d expect on their posts, you can also figure it out based on the public information on their Instagram profiles.
“You can work this stuff out by taking a quick glance,” says Neil. “Look at the post, look at the average amount of likes on each post. Take the last four to 10 posts, add up all the likes, divide them by the number of posts to get the average, and then divide that by the total followers.
That will give you what we call the engagement rate.
“As long as the engagement rate is anywhere from 2% to 3% or up, that’s a good mark of engagement. People with smaller audiences might have 8, 9, 10% engagement rates, which are really strong.”
Since Instagram isn’t just about the likes, you can also take a peek at the comments on each influencer’s posts to see what kind of conversations they’re having with the community. If the comments seem real and not just a stream of single-word sentences, that’s a good sign.
Keep your goals in mind
As you’re working through the process of vetting influencers, it’s important to keep the three key outcomes you can get from these collaborations in mind: content that works on a specific platform, access to new audiences, and feedback from a well-aligned customer.
Whichever one is your key priority, it’s important not to lose sight of the eventual outcome you hope to gain from the collaboration, and to remember that, at the end of the day, your marketing strategies should lead to work you’re proud of.
Ensuring that you’re working with people who align with your brand and have solid engagement on their platform are just two ways to make sure that happens.
Tips for creating successful Instagram influencer marketing campaigns
At this point you have a general idea of the influencers you want to reach out to. But before you get in touch with them, you need to figure out what they should post. Keep these tips in mind when reaching out to social media influencers on Instagram:
Define your goal
You’ll likely have one of three goals: build brand awareness, increase social media engagement, or get more sales. It’s important that you define success right away so you can measure results later. Consider how many products you need to sell to make a profit. Write down your goal in a Google Doc and make it specific, e.g. “Make sales, 2x the return on investment.”
Decide on a budget
Set a budget for your campaign. This may be easy to skip over as a small business owner, but you want to keep track of expenses so you know if your campaign left you in the black or in the red.
If you are paying influencers in product, figure out your cost per influencer.
For example, say your shipping costs are $7 and the cost to make a product is $13. Your total cost per influencer is $20. Divide that by the amount of money you want to spend on the campaign and that gives you a rough idea of how many influencers you can afford to work with.
Create an influencer media kit
Create a short document describing the look and feel of your brand. You can include top performing Instagram posts and imagery to inspire the influencer on your campaigns.
Add a brand explainer and detailed description of the product they’ll be promoting. Influencers want the product to fit their image too, so a media kit can help keep everyone on the same page.
Make outreach as personal as possible
There’s a certain etiquette to follow when reaching out to influencers. You can reach out to them through email or Instagram DM. Regardless, include why you decided to reach out and why they are a good fit for your brand.
Authentic compliments are appreciated and can help your brand stand out from others.
Some tips for sending your outreach message include:
- Be clear about what they should expect in exchange for working with your brand.
- Never offer exposure as payment. Many influencers will find it offensive.
- Keep your message short and to the point.
- Try email first, then follow up through Instagram DM if they don’t respond
Always review your goals and objectives with the influencer before deciding to work together.
Read more: Go Beyond Likes and Follows: How to Create a Social Media Strategy That Sells
Working with the right influencers for your brand
As you can see, Instagram influencers can make a huge impact on your social media marketing efforts. They have the trust of an engaged audience, can create beautiful content for your brand, and bring you an authentic type of exposure you can’t get with traditional advertising.
Use this guide to find relevant influencers your customers trust and who fit within your budget. Then see if they are up to collaborating on a campaign together. You’ll soon start to see the value of working with Instagram influencers first hand.
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Instagram influencer marketing FAQ
What’s the difference between influencer marketing and advertising?
Advertising makes a product or service known to a large but often broad audience. Influencer marketing uses research and data to align a product with a specific demographic and encourage them to buy. Instagram users trust influencers more than traditional ads, which makes this strategy more effective.
How impactful is Instagram influencer marketing?
Instagram influencer marketing is a multibillion-dollar industry. Ecommerce brands can use this digital marketing strategy to reach target markets, build trust with the right audiences, and make direct sales faster.
The rise of micro influencers—accounts with small but engaged followings—have made it affordable for small businesses to use Instagram influencers to grow their brand.
How much do Instagram influencers charge?
- Nano (1-10K followers): $10-$100 per post
- Micro (10-100K followers): $100-$500 per post
- Mid (100-500K followers): $500-$5K per post
- Macro (500K-1M followers): $5K-10K per post
- Mega (1M+ followers): $10K+ per post
What is the best way to reach Instagram influencers?
Reach out to Instagram influencers by email for the first official ask. Most influencers have their email address on their Instagram account, or you can go to their website contact page to find it. If they don’t respond to your email, send an Instagram DM to follow up.
A Simple Guide To Instagram Influencer Marketing In 2023
Here’s all you need to know about the current state of Instagram influencer marketing, how much campaigns cost, and how to go about running one…
Now an almost $2 billion industry, Instagram influencer marketing has taken the social media world by storm.
In recent years, Instagram users the globe over have begun making a living from paid posts and collaborative marketing campaigns.
The app offers the perfect space for brand ambassadorship, with influential users authentically recommending products and services to their loyal audience. With the influencer space estimated to grow to a $5-10 billion industry by 2021, it’s clearly a marketing force that isn’t going anywhere…
We’ve compiled all you need to know about Instagram influencer marketing and the way it works into this simple guide!
Contents:
- Instagram Influencer Marketing: In A Nutshell
- Why Instagram Influencer Marketing Works
- How Much Do Instagram Influencers Cost?
- What Makes An Instagram Influencer?
- How To Work With Influencers On Instagram
- The Future Of Instagram Influencer Marketing
1.
Instagram Influencer Marketing: In A NutshellPeople who have built a large and engaged following on Instagram are known as ‘influencers’, due to the fact that their followers idolise them and respect their opinions. They may have acquired a loyal following due to their lifestyle, their job or hobby, the clothes they wear or the stories they tell.
The pool of influencers is vast and diverse, meaning almost any brand has the potential to utilise Instagram influencer marketing for their industry and target demographic.
The emergence of Instagram influencers opened up huge opportunities for businesses looking to authentically market their products to their target audience, and thus the ‘paid post’ phenomenon was born.
In the early days, it might have been enough for a brand to send an influencer one of their products as a gift, in return for them posting about it on their profile. But this changed with the rapid growth of the space, as influencers realised they could not only gain free products, but actually charge brands for grid real estate on their profile.
2. Why Instagram Influencer Marketing Works
Influencer marketing allows brands to reach their target audience in a way that feels far more genuine than traditional advertising.
Rather than businesses selling directly to consumers, they are building relationships with influencers who can sell for them. Instagram influencers have a strong and loyal relationship with their followers, as they share many aspects of their lives with them. This leads us to feel like we know them personally, so when an influencer we like recommends something, we listen as we would if it were a friend.
For example, if you follow a travel blogger for their beautiful photos or funny captions, and they post about an airplane pillow that gave them the best night’s sleep on a long haul flight, you’re more inclined to remember the brand and buy it for your next holiday because you like and trust them.
Makes sense, right?
With 800 million active users, Instagram has become the platform of choice for influencer marketing. 72% of users said they have made fashion, beauty or style-related purchases after seeing something on the app, proving its power in the digital marketing landscape of 2020.
Influencers recommend brands they have partnered with to their followers in an authentic and informal way72% of Instagram users said they have made fashion, beauty or style-related purchases after seeing something on the app, proving its power in the digital marketing landscape of 2020. By @Nicola_HHQ Click To Tweet
3. How Much Do Instagram Influencers Cost?
To give an idea of numbers in the Instagram influencer marketing world, Hopper HQ’s annual Instagram Rich List disclosed just how much money the top influencers and celebrities can earn from a single post.
Kylie Jenner bagged the top spot, charging over $1 million for a product-related post on her Instagram profile.
Considering the 21 year old wiped out $1.3 billion of Snapchat’s market value with a single tweet earlier last year, her influence — and that of her whole family — is certainly not to be underestimated.
The amount an influencer can charge per post will vary depending on a number of factors, including follow number, engagement rate, and industry.
Elle Cuthbert-Edkins, our Customer Success Manager here at Hopper HQ, spoke on the BBC about the current state of Instagram influencer marketing. She emphasised the importance of engagement over follower number, explaining that “we’re typically seeing brands work exclusively with influencers who have a 10-20% engagement rate”, ensuring that the followers are truly interested in what the influencer is posting.
Engagement rate = no. of likes and comments ÷ no. of followers'We’re typically seeing brands work exclusively with influencers who have a 10-20% engagement rate' @Elle_HopperHQ on influencer marketing Click To Tweet
From our Rich List methodology and data, we found that many collaboration deals are worked out by 100,000 followers.
For example, the beauty industry charges on average £162 per 100,000 followers for a single post. For many influencers that have followers in the millions, this level of sponsorship enables them to make a living from Instagram.
⭐️ Check out the Hopper HQ 2019 Instagram Rich List to see which celebrities and influencers topped the charts across all industries ⭐️
4. What Makes An Instagram Influencer?
There’s no strict criteria for being classed as an Instagram influencer. Any user who has a fairly high, engaged following — of people who actually care about what they do — will have an influence over their audience and is a valuable marketing proposition for brands.
If you’re a social media manager looking to start Instagram influencer marketing, do your research to ensure:
- Their follower demographic is well matched to your target audience
- Their following and engagement is genuine
Due to the existence of bots giving out likes and comments on users’ behalves, as well as the ability to buy followers, some Instagram accounts may look like influencers, but actually don’t have a loyal following or any real influence at all — we call them ‘ghost followers’.
Generic comments such as ‘🙌🙌🙌’ or ‘Awesome shot!’ are likely to be from accounts using an engagement bot, so if these are the only kinds of interactions on an influencer’s posts, it’s likely that they don’t actually have the influence they’re making out.
NOTE: these bots will comment on posts of users in a chosen target demographic or using certain hashtags in order to increase brand awareness and get more followers. It makes sense, however they have become very easy to spot and don’t actually start genuine conversations!
Generic comments like this are likely to be from accounts using a follower bot, and therefore don’t count as genuine engagementAnother important indicator of a good influencer is that they are responsible with their partnership choices, truly taking into consideration their followers’ interests and ensuring they only do sponsored posts with brands they believe their audience would be likely to engage with.
Going hand in hand with this is that the influencers make their own content for a brand, hence why it’s often referred to as a ‘partnership’ or a ‘collaboration’, rather than them simply posting a photo the brand sends them.
Building an engaged following is hard work, and a good influencer will not want to post anything that looks alien to their audience or their feed. When strategising an influencer marketing campaign, it’s therefore important to make sure your brand image complements the influencer you’re looking to reach out to!
5. How To Work With Influencers On InstagramIf you decide that Instagram influencer marketing is the right step for your business, the first thing to do is set your budget. It’s an expensive game, and with influencers charging per post and for Stories, a whole campaign can set you back a long way.
With a smaller budget, you will be looking for micro influencers to promote your brand. These are influencers with a relatively smaller following (1,000 – 10,000) but who have a high engagement rate on their posts.
It is a far more cost effective option for smaller businesses, and micro influencers can have a great deal of influence over a specific audience.
On a larger budget, you can think about bigger influencers, but try not to be fooled by vanity metrics such as number of followers and focus predominantly on engagement rate.
Once you’ve found people you think could be perfect, do your research as we mentioned above. Ensure they have a genuine following and a trusted, loyal community. See if they’ve worked on influencer campaigns in the past and look at the kinds of products or brands they promote, this will help to inform if they would be a good fit for your company.
As well as this, take a read of their comments to see if your target demographic are engaging with their content. And finally, check out which type of posts they’re excelling at (i.e Stories, video, gallery posts) to help inform your campaign.
Then reach out to them! Micro influencers are likely to manage themselves, so contact them through the email on their profile or send them a direct message within Instagram. If you’re looking at a larger influencer, they will probably have an agency who manage their campaign requests – this is typically listed in their bio.
When approaching agencies, ask for the influencer’s rate card and explain your brand and the campaign brief you have in mind. Go into as much detail as possible (i.e budget, how many posts, the type of content etc) in order to best manage expectations on both side of the collaboration.
If you’re looking for inspiration, check out this report of the best performing brands in influencer marketing last year!
✨ Importantly, treat your working relationships with Instagram influencers as partnerships. Remember that they know what their followers engage with best, and to trust them in the content creation process! ✨
6. The Future Of Instagram Influencer MarketingInfluencer marketing has had its fair share of criticism in recent years. Consumers have felt misled as a result of being unaware somebody they follow was getting paid to recommend certain products.
This has led to a huge push for transparency among influencers. Hashtags such as #ad and #spon have become standard in a paid post caption, in order to distinguish the sponsorship deals from ‘genuine’ recommendations.
Instagram also created their official ‘Paid partnership’ tag, which sits above a post to inform users that a brand is collaborating with that influencer.
While on some levels this takes away from the authenticity that made Instagram influencer marketing so successful, influencers also feel a loyalty to let their followers know they’ve earned money from a post.
At one of our events last year, ‘The Power Of Influencer Marketing in 2018’, our panelist Harry Hugo, Co-Founder of The Goat Agency commented on the problematic nature of these CMA regulations, due to the fact that it’s not universal across other advertising channels or promotional sponsorship deals.
He gave the example of Neymar walking on to the football pitch wearing Nike boots as a result of his multi-million dollar sponsorship deal. A notice does not appear on our television screens to tell us the boots are being marketed to us, and the suggestion of such would seem ludicrous.
Therefore it’s one rule for traditional methods of advertising, and another for Instagram influencer marketing, and it will be interesting to see how the regulations change as the space develops.
⭐️Read the other top takeaway from our influencer event here ⭐️
At Hopper HQ we work with hundreds of influencers all over the world, and always encourage them to only accept partnerships with brands and products they truly like and would use themselves. False promotion eventually becomes obvious, meaning the influence the person actually has shrinks.
As a digital population we are developing ‘ad blindness’, meaning we’re essentially becoming immune to marketing. The fact that we click ‘Skip Ad’ on YouTube the second it becomes available, and even pay for the privilege of not being sold to with services like Spotify Premium highlights this.
Consumers are becoming more and more savvy when it comes to advertising, and it’s no different with Instagram influencer marketing. As the industry gets more and more concentrated, brands and influencers will need to think outside of the box to keep creating highly engaging marketing campaigns, and we can’t wait to see them!
Is there any other areas of influencer marketing you’d like to know more about? Let us know in the comments!
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Influencer: who is it, what does it do, what does the business need
Buyers trust less and less direct advertising in the media and increasingly listen to influencers who share their values. Understanding what influencer marketing is and why it is needed
Who is an influencer
An influencer is an opinion leader around whom a loyal audience gathers. Most often, an influencer is also a blogger and interacts with his audience through social networks (Instagram, YouTube, TikTok). But there are exceptions: for example, Meghan Markle does not lead social networks, but at the same time she is an influencer. In addition, not every blogger can be called an influencer. According to the Romir research holding, the top 3 Russian influencers among bloggers are Yuri Dud, Ksenia Sobchak and Ida Galich. nine0003
Realizing the impact influencers have on their audience, companies have turned to influencer marketing.
This is the name of advertising a product or brand with an opinion leader. The more loyal the audience of a person, the more willingly advertisers will come to him. In the industry, this collaboration is called advertising integration.
With the development of digital technologies, virtual influencers began to appear. These are characters created with the help of graphics that “lead” social networks like real people. And just like ordinary bloggers, they sell ads on their pages. nine0003
Types of influencers
Classification by audience size
According to the Influence marketing Hub, influencers are divided into:
- Mega-influencers - over 1 million subscribers. They occupy 5% of the total. Most often these are celebrities: actors, directors, athletes, musicians or reality TV stars.
- Macro-influencers - from 40 thousand to 1 million subscribers. These are successful experts in different niches.
There are more macro-influencers than mega-influencers, so in this category it is easier for a brand to find people who are ready to cooperate. nine0022 - Micro-influencers - from 1,000 to 40,000 followers. They are 15% of the total. They are selective in their choice of advertising. At the same time, some of them are happy to promote the brand for free or by barter.
- Nano-influencers - less than 1,000 followers. They occupy 53% of the total. Many brands mistakenly believe that nano-influencers are not influential enough in the media environment. But, despite the small coverage, their advertising can be useful: it is often perceived as a friendly recommendation. nine0022
Classification by Internet sites
- YouTube
YouTube is the third largest monthly audience site on the Runet. On average, users spend almost 50 minutes a day watching videos. The most popular YouTube bloggers are reviewers, show hosts, gamers, pranksters, and streamers.
In 2021, A4, EdisonPts and GLENT became the most popular content creators in Russia.
Examples: Badcomedian (film reviews), Wylsacom (technical reviews), Vdud (interviews with famous people), Anton Ptushkin (travel blogging). nine0003
According to Brand Analytics, Instagram ranks first in terms of the number of active authors among social networks in Russia. The main target audience is users from 25 to 34 years old, among which there are more women than men. Some Instagram influencers work in specific niches (e.g. travel, food, beauty, lifestyle), while others may create content across a variety of topics.
Examples: Raisa Alibekova (food), Karina Kasparyants (fashion), Maria Arzamasova (sex), Lesha Terevkov (lifestyle), Stanislav Smirnov (lifestyle). nine0003
- TikTok
Despite the fact that TikTok is a young social network, it has managed to gain the attention of many users.
The main audience here is the same as on Instagram - from 25 to 34 years old, contrary to the stereotype that only children sit on TikTok.
Examples: Julia Gavrilina, Danya Milokhin, Dilara Zinattulina, Yegor Creed, Dina Saeva.
Why influencers do business
According to IAB Russia, in 2020 the market for selling products through influencers grew by an average of 63.6%, and its volume amounted to ₽11.1 billion. In 2019In 2018, it was ₽6.8 billion. “There are dozens of ways to promote a product (from outdoor to contextual advertising), but a personal recommendation is always important for a buyer,” she shared. “Especially from a person whom he has been following for many years, that is, whose choice, taste, lifestyle he trusts.”
According to Solovieva, an influencer is capable of:
- Increase brand/product loyalty . He seems to be saying: “I myself use this and I won’t advise my subscribers bad things.”
- Motivate your audience to make a purchase by showing how to solve subscriber problems.
For example, an influencer mom can share what books she reads to her kids at bedtime and how it made her kids love reading. Then her subscribers are highly likely to buy these books. - Show product in action . Here the blogger acts as a consultant. For example, a beauty blogger might record an instructional video showing how to do a certain make-up and use a particular brand of make-up for it. This is the task that influencers-reviewers perform: thanks to them, the audience gets acquainted with the product, understands how to use it, sees its pros and cons. Reviewers are especially important for manufacturers of equipment: people compare gadgets for a long time before deciding to buy, and reviews help them make a choice. nine0022
- Restore reputation / tell about rebranding. Here the influencer becomes the voice of your brand and conveys important information.
How to Work with an Influencer: 9 Steps
Kristina Solovieva shared some tips on how to work with influencers as efficiently as possible.
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Determine the target audience for the product. Age, gender, financial status - all this helps to understand who you should advertise with. nine0003
- Find the right influencers for your niche. If you advertise cosmetics, then contact beauty bloggers, restaurants - food bloggers and lifestyle bloggers who talk about new places. “I also like sudden decisions. For example, we advertised a gastro farm through dog owners. This is because space is dog-friendly, and such news sticks in memory. This is confirmed by the case with the cat Stepan from Kharkov, who became a real influencer (and who was reposted by Britney Spears),” Solovieva advised. nine0022
- Conduct audience research with influencers. In addition to analyzing the intended audience of the product, you need to study the specific audience of each influencer with whom you will establish cooperation in order to understand what overlaps there are between them.
Solovieva shares a life hack: “It’s absolutely normal to ask a blogger for statistics. I recommend - in video format. Now you don’t need to have Photoshop skills to change the numbers on the screenshots (alas, this happened too), it’s more difficult to do it on the video. But with the naked eye, you can see the dynamics in the account - video views, engagement, the very quality of comments (hello, bots). If something confuses, it is better to refuse this cooperation. nine0022 - Select the most appropriate influencers for the product. Your best bet is to look for an influencer who has already used the product you want to promote, or a similar product. It is also worth considering that influencers from the same niche often have overlapping audiences. This should be avoided in order to expand the reach of advertising. Study the reputation history of the influencer, whether he was involved in scandals, and if so, what scale. If you are launching a large-scale advertising campaign and you need to attract a large number of influencers, then it is worth distributing cooperation in the proportion of 1-9-90 (1 celebrity, 9 macro influencers and 90 micro or nano influencers).
The model was first proposed in 2006 by Charles Arthur, former editor of the Guardian and author of Cyber Warfare: The Hacks That Shook the Business World. - Agree on the terms of publication. It is important to find out what content plan the influencer has for the next month in order to understand if the audience is not overloaded with content. Otherwise, advertising will be ineffective. Ask how long it takes an influencer to learn a product and your company, and if they need time to test a product. Agree on a fee and a release date for the ad. Solovieva recalls: “It is important to brief colleagues well. I am a supporter of the fact that the influencer himself prepares the publication, as he knows the needs of his audience better. But I advise you to prescribe all the goals, tasks, deadlines in advance; send all the correct links and materials for review. Practice comments on behalf of the brand: a blogger is unlikely to be able to answer all the questions of his subscribers in a volume, and you are already here, you are already ready to tell everything.
nine0022 - Calculate the return on investment. Approximately 40% of the audience should be involved in the blogger's advertising campaign.
- Send product, if needed. Be sure to ask for the influencer's address in advance and ask when it would be convenient for them to receive the product.
- Check that the advertisement was released in the right amount and on time.
- Track placement performance. After launching the ad, ask the influencer what kind of reaction was received from the audience. “Don't expect ads to work instantly. Many users save content and then return to it (for example, after a salary),” says Solovieva. nine0022
How to work with bloggers on Instagram and attract an audience from online to offline - Marketing on vc.ru
Chizhov's studio tells how to attract an audience to events and offline points of sale using influencers.
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Collaboration with influencers is one of the most effective O2O marketing tools that helps to increase the efficiency of offline sales and increase brand awareness among the blogger's audience.
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In this article, we describe what mechanics are used to solve these problems.
O2O Marketing in Brief
O2O (offline-to-online) marketing is attracting an audience to offline channels using Internet marketing tools. One of these tools is working with influencers on social networks. This direction is suitable for business areas that mainly interact with customers offline: beauty salons and other service businesses, shopping centers, furniture stores, etc.
O2O marketing allows you to:
- realistically evaluate the effectiveness of advertising campaigns on the Internet;
- increase sales through the interaction of online and offline channels;
- provide a more diverse and interesting shopping experience for consumers;
- more accurately build a buyer persona through data collection and analysis to create the most effective business promotion strategies.
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O2O marketing tools help spread the word about your business both online and offline. This allows you to create a brand image, increase the attendance of outlets and, accordingly, increase sales.
O2O marketing can be used to sell:
- FMCG,
- non-food items,
- cosmetics,
- clothing and footwear,
- vehicles and components.
Direct advertising
The simplest mechanics for attracting customers offline is direct advertising from bloggers. The essence of such cooperation is that the influencer talks about the goods / services of the promoted brand in his blog as a personal recommendation.
Advertising of a beauty master as a personal recommendation of a blogger
Purpose: increase awareness, increase sales.
Offline event with blogger
For a brand, events have the goal of selling a product or service.
The influencer provides the event with its audience and helps to create a positive brand image for it.
For example, if a brand collaborates with well-known media personalities and millionaire bloggers, the influencer can act as a host or hold an autograph session. The blogger's audience will gladly come to the event to meet their idol. nine0003
Several macro influencers with the right audience can be invited to a private branded event and get maximum advertising coverage.
Jim Beam organizes a party with macro influencers: announcement on the blog of Instagram model Polina Chistyakova (Poposha)
The purpose of the event: to increase awareness of the Jim Beam brand among the youth audience.
Live with blogger
nine0005 The brand invites a blogger to an offline event as a participant or presenter. You can choose any format of the event: a product review, a test of services, a consultation, a raffle, etc.
The live broadcast can be held in the brand account or with a blogger. In the first case, the blogger announces it, attracting his audience.
This type of cooperation is suitable for both large brands and local offline stores.
The blogger invites subscribers to a live broadcast with his participation
Then he spends it in his account, mentioning the brand
The purpose of the mechanics: increase brand customer loyalty, increase brand awareness.
Events
Events are a light version of ambassadorship. This form of brand-influencer collaboration is usually short-lived.
For example, a brand invites an influencer to a series of offline events to show production, test services, etc. At the events, the influencer creates content for his blog mentioning the brand. nine0003
Miele appliances brand repeatedly invites a culinary blogger to test products.
Videos are released in the blogger's account
The purpose of the mechanics: building a brand image, increasing awareness.
Competition
Bloggers and brands can organize joint contests. As part of the campaign, the brand acts as a sponsor. In turn, the opinion leader announces the contest in his blog.
Thus, the brand raffles off a product/service that can be purchased at the company's offline facility, and the blogger ensures audience growth and stirs up its interest. nine0003
Magnit and Coca-Cola hold a joint drawing with the participation of millionaires: announcement in the culinary blog
The purpose of the mechanics: to increase traffic to offline stores, to increase sales.
Collaboration
This format is suitable for brands that collaborate with millionaire bloggers. The style and unique qualities of a blogger are transferred to a product (stock, product, etc.
), which can be purchased at a promoted offline point. In the meantime, the influencer is announcing the promotion on his blog. nine0003
Collaboration stands out from other types of advertising due to its uniqueness. People are more interested in purchasing a product/service from a limited collection than paying for general conditions that are always available, or they are fans of an influencer who participates in a collaboration.
Magnit has released a limited series of Lays chips with Nastya Ivleeva
The purpose of the mechanics: to increase the attendance of offline stores of the Magnit retail chain, to attract attention with a unique product that is not available in other stores. nine0200
Joint product
From collaboration, you can go to a more complex format of cooperation and release a joint product. Influencers in this case are not only responsible for product promotion, but also participate in product development together with the brand.
Thus, bloggers directly pour their audience into the brand. The uniqueness of such products is not only in involvement with the opinion leader, but also in the product itself.
L'Etoile has released a cosmetic product, in the development of which Olga Buzova took part
The purpose of the mechanics: to increase sales of the L'Etoile brand and increase traffic to offline stores.
Cross promotion
As part of a major cross-promotion, a brand that promotes its offline properties acts as a partner offering a discount/promotion on its product/service.
For example, Tele 2 conducts an advertising campaign: popular city establishments act as partners. The brand has launched a promotion where their customer can purchase a raffle item - a free drink at a partner restaurant. Customers can take part in the promotion more than once. nine0003
There is an exchange of audiences and an increase in loyalty from customers of the brand
The goal of the mechanics for partners with offline points: to increase the attendance of offline objects.
