Influencer marketing is a $21.1 billion industry according to Influencer Marketing Hub, and over 80% of marketers dedicate a portion of their marketing budget to working with influencers. While you might think that only businesses with large budgets can benefit from using influencer marketing to market their products and services, influencer marketing might also work for smaller businesses with limited budgets.
If you are a content creator and a small business owner, and you’re interested to learn how you can tap into the influencer marketing industry and leverage it to sell more digital products, read on.
Why use influencers to market your online course
According to Influencer Marketing Hub, 31% of social media users discover new products through influencers on social media platforms like TikTok, and Instagram. If you look at Gen Z, the number is even higher – 43% of Gen Z consumers say that influencers are their preferred way to discover new products.
It’s no surprise, knowing that influencer marketing is just another form of word-of-mouth marketing strategy, which is an extremely effective way to sell products and services to this day – 88% of people trust product and service recommendations from people they know.
Apart from being an effective marketing strategy, here are other key benefits of using influencer marketing:
- Brand awareness: working with influencers allows you to build brand awareness and trust much easier because get featured in front of an audience who is interested in hearing about your products or services from someone they already trust and like.
Reaching new audience: it also gives you an opportunity to reach an audience that you haven’t reached yet, or might not be able to reach otherwise. - Building a community: if you develop an ongoing relationship with an influencer who loves and supports your brand, you have the potential to build a loyal community.
- Improving SEO: influential people on the internet talking and linking to your brand actually improves your SEO, just as guest blogging and building backlinks to your blog does.
Influencer marketing costs
If the reason why you haven’t yet tried influencer marketing for your business is because you think the cost is too high, we have some great news! It is true that some of the top names in the industry can charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for collaborations, but you can definitely find influencers for almost any budget.
All influencers fall into one of the following categories, and depending on the size of their platform, there is a set industry rate you can expect to pay:
- Nano-influencers: they have 1,000–10,000 followers, and their rates can be anywhere between $200–$800 per post.
- Micro-influencers: they have 10,000–50,000 followers, and their rates are between $200–$1500 per post.
- Mid-tier influencers: they have 50,000–500,000 followers, and their rates can be anywhere between $1,500–$5,000 per post.
- Macro-influencers: they have 500,000–1,000,000+ followers, and rates start at $5–7K per post and can go up to six figures.
The number of followers is not the only thing that matters when it comes to determining the cost of influencer marketing. The engagement rate as well as the platform are two other important factors to consider. A post on Twitter will have a different rate than a post on Instagram or YouTube.
As you can see, though, even if you are a small business owner with a limited budget, you can definitely find smaller influencers to work with who would promote your products and services.
How to find the right influencers
Alright, you might be wondering how you go about finding the right influencers to work with. There are two ways you can go about it – finding influencers yourself or using influencer marketing platforms.
Influencer marketing platforms work in a way where they connect businesses with influencers to match their business needs. All the influencers are professional, and it might be easier to manage campaigns and payments.
Here are three popular influencer marketing agencies/platforms:
If working with an agency is not your thing, then you can definitely reach out to influencers yourself. You can start looking for influencers by researching relevant hashtags on Instagram and TikTok. Look over the posts on those hashtags, and make a list of smaller influencers who fit your brand.
Once you have a list of influencers (around 20-50 creators), review their accounts to find those who are the best fit. It is time-consuming, but definitely worth it long-term.
You can either reach out to them directly through social media platforms or reach out to them via email. Most influencers have business emails you can easily find either on their website or in their social media bios. They might be more efficient at answering business emails because DMs can get crowded very easily.
Don’t be discouraged if the influencers don’t answer your emails right away – it might take some time to find the right match! But being picky about who you work with is better than working with an influencer whose brand doesn’t align with yours.
Things to consider
When choosing an influencer to work with, here are some things you want to keep in mind before you make your decision:
Audience
You want to work with influencers who are in your niche, and whose audience aligns with your target audience. So, always pay attention to the niche, and who follows your influencer.
The more niche and targeted with their content the influencers are, the more chances that their audience will respond well to your collaboration. The niche is not the only thing to consider about the audience, the age and gender demographic also matter.
So, before you start working with an influencer, find out about their age and gender demographics. They might be in your niche, but their age demo might be older or significantly younger than your ideal audience, which might not bring the results you are looking for.
Location
Another important thing to consider is the location of the influencer and the majority of their audience. Social media allows us to connect with people from all over the world, and most often influencers have audiences who are based globally.
You want to pay attention to where the majority of the influencer’s audience is based. For example, the influencer might be based in London, UK, but have the majority of their audience in the US. If the US is the market you are targeting, it is worth working with the influencer even if they are not based in the US themselves.
Apps like TikTok pay a lot of attention to the location of the content creators who post on the platform, which means that smaller content creators might have local audiences because their content simply doesn’t reach people in countries outside their region. So, you might want to look for local creators if you are looking to work with smaller accounts.
Branding
The next thing to consider when choosing an influencer to work with is how aligned your brand is with theirs. A lot of social media users, especially the younger Gen Z generation pay a lot of attention to aesthetics and branding. That is why #cleangirlaesthetic and other similar trends are so popular these days.
So, you want to make sure that you work with an influencer whose branding on social media aligns with your target audience. Spend some time looking at their posts, to truly understand their essence to determine if you are a good match.
Content type
Lastly, there are many different forms of content influencers create for brands. There are Instagram posts, Stories, Reels, YouTube videos, TikTok videos and so much more. The way to find out what types of posts will work best for your business is to experiment and see what yields the best results.
Run a few different campaigns on different platforms and track results (shares, clicks, views, saves, etc.) to see what people respond the best. And once you determine that, you’ll be able to figure out the best way to work with influencers.
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