Influencer marketing is taking the marketing world by storm. 46% of brands use influencers to acquire new customers and influencer marketing spend reached $16.4 billion in 2022. Influencers are a great addition to digital marketing tactics since they reach a wide range of consumers and promote brands and products in a more genuine, less biased way than when a brand promotes themselves. However, according to Capterra, 40% of marketers find making payments to influencers difficult. If that’s what’s holding your client back from adding influencers to their marketing mix, here are a few tactics they can try.

Digital Marketing Tactics Should Include Influencers – at the Right Price

Base Compensation off of Performance, Not Per Campaign

According to Capterra, many marketers pay influencers:

Per campaign
A fixed rate
Per post
An hourly rate

These methods seem fine at first. But if the campaign doesn’t generate the ROI your client was hoping for, they may have lost money on this digital marketing tactic.

A better way to ensure that your client is getting their money’s worth out of partnering with influencers is to pay them based off their performance. That way, your client is never paying the influencer more than their ads are worth.

Determine Whether an Influencer is Worth Partnering with Before Reaching Out

Not all influencers can offer your client equal benefits. When deciding which influencers your client should work with, Capterra suggests analyzing a few things about them.

Number of Followers

Your client should always aim to work with influencers who have a high number of followers. Not only do a lot of followers mean increased reach for your client’s ads, but it’s also a good indicator that the influencer creates good content. Consumers wouldn’t follow the influencer if their content was boring or their opinions were unreliable.

Type of Followers

It’s important to consider the audience your client is hoping to target through an influencer. The content the influencer creates gives a good indication of the people absorbing their content (e.g., farmers will probably make up the majority of followers for an agricultural influencer). But it’s still a good idea to take a look at the influencer's followers list, who is commenting on their content and/or ask the influencer directly to gain insight into who is interacting with them the most.

Aesthetic

If your client is a funeral home, they probably don’t want to work with an influencer who is cutesy, happy-go-lucky and excitable. They’ll want to work with someone whose aesthetic matches or is comparable to theirs. Now, that doesn’t mean the funeral home should go with a dark, gloomy and emo influencer. But maybe someone wearing bunny ears who’s always winking and giving peace signs won’t communicate your client’s message in the most tasteful way, you know?

The Platforms They Use

You’ve probably researched which social media platforms your client’s target audience is most active on. (If you haven’t, you can look it up under the audience’s profile on AudienceSCAN on AdMall by SalesFuel.) Are the influencers your client is considering working with popular on those platforms? The most successful influencers for your client will be where the target audience is.

Agencies Can Help

There’s a lot that goes into adding influencers to digital marketing tactics. You need to pick the right ones, make sure an effective payment system is set up and “influencer marketing campaigns are subject to the laws and regulations of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC),” says Capterra. Your client is lucky to have you when considering partnering with influencers because you can help them with all of these tasks. Time is money, after all. So, if you can save your client time managing their influencers, you’ve already made the investment more manageable.

Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan