Is Your Client Ready for Investing in Influencer Marketing?

The world of influencer marketing continues to evolve. If your clients don’t stay current, they risk falling behind in terms of revenue growth. This year, marketers will shell out $13.8 billion to influencers who will tout the features of their products. As we've reported before, this channel intrigues marketers and is generating returns for them. Savvy business owners are ready for investing in influencer marketing this year, as highlighted in the 2022 Influencer Marketing Report from collabstr.

What Can Your Client Expect When Investing in Influencer Marketing?

The influencer world is gender imbalanced. On both Instagram and TikTok, followers are largely female. This detail holds true whether the influencer has fewer than 10,000 or more than 500,000 followers. And the influencers are also primarily female (77%). Your clients should keep that fact in mind when they decide which product to promote through influencers.

Top influencers create content on:

• Instagram 94%
• TikTok 64%
• YouTube 19%

Not all niches are equally popular. So you’ll need to guide your clients to the niche and influencer that aligns best with their target audience. The top categories last year were:

• Lifestyle
• Fashion
• Beauty
• Comedy and entertainment

Pricing and Ad Campaign Duration

Collabstr researchers found that most marketers pay $410 for content on Instagram. To get a video on TikTok, your clients can expect to pay at least $530. And YouTube is the priciest, at $1,025. Analysts report, “It’s also much harder to build an engaged audience on YouTube, which means creators who have pulled this off typically reap the rewards of higher compensation.”

The typical agreement between a brand and an influencer for posting content lasts about 15 days. These days, the content is likely to be videos created by the influencer, in collaboration with the brand. However, some influencers will also charge brands in exchange for allowing them to upload tutorials or testimonials to their site.

Some brands are taking this kind of marketing to another level and opting for “influencer whitelisting.” In these arrangements, the platform owner and ad managers work between the influencer and brand. When brands advertise their UGC on influencer pages, they are seeing more engagement than they would on their own websites.

 Why These Relationships Fail

Your clients may need help finding the right influencer to approach. To help them narrow the list, review the AudienceSCAN profile data, offered in AdMall by SalesFuel, for various audiences and their social media use. After all, you’ll still need to review your client’s options. collabstr analysts report that, “The number one reason for influencers declining to work with a brand is because the partnership is not a good fit for them or their audience.” 

The Rise of Social Commerce

As the connection between influencers and brands grows and technology improves, social commerce is taking off. Currently, social commerce amounts to “4% of the U.S. e‑commerce market.” Between now and 2025, the dollar value from this channel will rise from $37 billion to $80 billion.

Competition from Facebook and TikTok is driving activity. Social media users can now view engaging content on an influencer’s site and buy a touted product in the same space. The reduced friction in this process will likely drive higher sales. And the many partners in this process will be negotiating revenue-​sharing agreements.

Influencer marketing isn’t just for brand building anymore. But don't worry about a hit to your bottom line. There is plenty of opportunity for you to help your clients develop this activity into an additional source of revenue for you and them.

Photo by George Milton from Pexels