Very often, the influencers themselves add their profile to Instagram on special exchanges and assign a marketing budget for the placement of advertising content. Of course, cooperation with the influencer exchange has its major advantages.
By placing ads directly you may come across a scammed account. Advertising posts in such a profile will not increase the sales of the customer. Therefore, it is better and more effective to look for an influencer with the help of a specialist who has realistic analytical experience.
Comments and likes in the scammed account are not real, that is left by bots. To avoid this, advertisers use special services to check the statistics of social networks.
Such programs make graphs of the growth of subscribers in a particular account. For example, some services track the Instagram profile by many indicators. It shows how many subscribers Instagram influencers gained or lost for a certain period, whether there are bots among mega influencers' audiences, and much more. Instagram influencers are divided into three groups, each of which interacts with the audience in a different way.
Group #1: Instagram influencer marketing
Compared to the other groups, nano influencers have the smallest target audience - up to 50k followers. The degree of trust and engagement of the audience here grows through a personalized approach. Microbloggers are very attentive to their content and agree to work for a small fee or by barter.
Barter is a way of cooperation with nano influencers in which all or part of the amount is paid by the product itself. Sometimes the customer allows the blogger to use the advertised service for free.
How many followers: often Instagram accounts with a target audience of more than 50 thousand followers count, refuse to work in the barter format because they receive many other commercial offers.
Group #2: macro-influencers
Macro influencers have an audience of 50k to 400k followers count. Here, people's trust in promotional posts is much lower. Subscribers may react negatively to influencers' content made by the advertiser himself. Therefore, it is better to allow the blogger to write a promotional post himself as part of the promotion of your brand.
Group #3: stars
The group of bloggers with the largest follower count is the stars. Their audience is 500k subscribers. People react extremely cautiously to ads on such blogs. It is more and more difficult to convince them that Instagram influencers recommend someone's product, not only because of the high cost of content placement but also because they actively use it.
How do you find your blogger on your own?
You can look for Instagram storieѕ by keywords (hashtags). For example, if you sell a line of organic cosmetics, then look at the "best publications" by the typed hashtag and find out which popular bloggers are interested in this topic.
You can also use a popular Instagram profile analytics service or influencers platforms as InstaJet.io. Evaluate the influencer's Instagram account you like. Maybe his audience activity is much less than you need.
If you've already partnered with one relevant influencer and are looking for someone else to promote your brand on Instagram (Instagram story), there is one simple and effective way. Go to the profile of someone you've worked with and click the down arrow. The site will show you the accounts of other bloggers with similar content.
How to choose the best influencer marketing agency and not waste money?
There are several parameters by which you can evaluate an influencer agency:
1) Clients and reviews. Before choosing a particular agency with influencer platforms for your advertising campaign, you should find out which clients you have worked with, and see reviews and results.
2) Experience. The influencer marketing agency should have experience in your industry. Social media marketing varies by sector, and you should only choose an agency with the appropriate experience to ensure the best results. For example, a retail agency may not be right for your technology brand.
3) Many influencers the agency works with. Analyze the influencers the influencer marketing agency works with. What type of influencers can the agency interact with, these can be famous people, journalists, or bloggers. For example, bloggers are popular in their communities, and working with them can reach the target audience and, at the same time, keep social media marketing costs low.
4) Criteria for choosing influencers and performance metrics. An influencer marketing agency should explain the criteria they use to select influencers and the platform to promote the product, as well as the strategies used for different campaigns. It is also important to understand how influencer marketing agencies measure campaign success. The influencer marketing hub should make sense for your business, and the agency should clarify the metrics it uses to measure performance.
Influencer marketing brings tangible benefits and choosing a knowledgeable contractor is the first step to increased sales.
How to make influencer marketing ROI as effective as possible
Realizing the impact that influencers have on their audience, companies have turned to influencer marketing campaigns. This is the name for advertising a product or brand with an opinion leader. The more loyal a person's audience, the more willingly advertisers will come to them. In the industry, such cooperation is called advertising integration.
With the development of digital technology, virtual Influencers began to appear. These are graphically created characters who have a social media channel, just like real people. And just like regular influencers, they sell advertising on their pages.
👉 Determine the target audience for the product. Age, gender, and financial status all help you figure out who you should advertise with.
👉 Find niche-appropriate influencers. If you're advertising cosmetics, go-to beauty bloggers; restaurants, go to food bloggers and lifestyle bloggers who talk about new places.
👉 Do audience research with Influencers. In addition to analyzing the intended audience for the product, you need to study the specific audience of each influencer you'll be partnering with to see what the overlaps are between them.
👉 Choose the most appropriate Influencers for the product. It's best to look for an Influencer who has already used the product you want to promote, or its equivalent. It's also worth considering that Instagram influencers from the same niche often have overlapping audiences. This is worth avoiding to broaden the reach of your ads. Research the potential influencer's reputational history, whether he has been involved in scandals, and if so, on what scale. If you are launching a large-scale advertising campaign and need to attract a large number of influencers, you should divide the collaboration into the proportions 1-9-90 (1 celebrity influencer, 9 macro-influencers, and 90 micro or nano influencers). This model was first proposed in 2006 by Charles Arthur, former editor of guardian, and author of Cyber Wars: Hacks That Shook the Business World.
👉 Agree on the terms of publication. It's important to find out what the influencer's content plan is for the next month to see if the influencer is overloaded with content. Otherwise, the ad will be ineffective. Ask how much time the influencer needs to research the product and your company and if he or she needs time to test the product. Negotiate a fee and release date for the ad.
👉 Calculate the effectiveness of your investment in influencer partnerships. Approximately 40% of the audience should be involved in the blogger's advertising campaign.
👉 Send a product, if necessary. Don't forget to ask for the influencer's address in advance and ask when it will be convenient for him to receive the product.
👉 Make sure the ad goes out in the right amount and on time.
👉 Monitor the effectiveness of the placement. After launching the ad, ask the Influencer what response was received from the audience.
The ratio of Influencers in the advertising campaign
How to calculate the ratio of Influencers in an advertising campaign. When it comes to a large-scale advertising campaign, you can use the proportions according to the scheme 1-9-90. Ie. To reach the maximum number of people, you need to attract a large influencer, 9 medium, and 90 micros.
What to do with overlapping audiences at mega influencers. When you advertise with several Influencers, there's a chance to overpay for overlapping audiences - when subscribers overlap with each other. This requires a parser - you can use our pepper ninja service, which collects statistics on the accounts of social media platforms by competitors.
What is the level of trust mega influencers have in advertising? According to the survey, mega influencers are trusted by 57% of respondents, while 48% of people are annoyed by targeted ads. Interestingly, the level of trust in celebrities and big influencers is constantly falling, so on social networks, there is a trend for advertising small influencers.
Checking profile
Remember, you should always ask the influencer for his account statistics. Here's a necessary checklist to check:
✅ The average age of the audience at mid-tier influencers. Perhaps a particular blog is only interested in teenagers, hence, attracting many customers to buy your product won't work.
✅ Ratio of publications, likes, comments, and subscribers.
✅ If an influencer has 100k subscribers, but only posts 10 posts with 50 likes on average, his audience is inflated. It's building brand awareness.
✅ The content of comments and likes. Take a closer look at who is active on this profile, what they are interested in, and how they react to the content they post.
Finding an influencer to collaborate with on your own has its pitfalls. Even if you ask him to send you the statistics of the account, the numbers there may be fake, if he trades in scam influencers' followers or likes.
Productions
Niche markets are the next link in the chain of marketing services. They produce content - usually of one type only (websites and apps, videos and animations, and graphic design).
For example, post mega influencers engaged in design production. This company "designs" everything from websites to packaging and urban environments. But it is not the studio's specialists that decide what the product and brand are created for, how the brand should develop further, and where the ready-made project should be used.
1) Digital-production (usually called web studios, internet agencies, etc.) specialize in developments for the Internet: they create sites, landing pages, and separate components under customers' requirements.
2) Video production agencies provide marketing services in the area of motion design, animation creation, and video shooting. They have full-time designers and film crews managed by project managers who communicate with customers and coordinate all stages of work.
Production companies do not interfere with each other. Any client can order services from several different content producers at the same time, sometimes within one project. Both creatives and agencies of strategic influencer marketing campaigns hire several production companies to fulfill their tasks.
Producers, who have accumulated a lot of professional experience, launch their courses and schools, run blogs and newsletters, and create guide-lines. For example, a good program on the react framework was created by the digital product developer, and the email marketing agency inbox marketing has a very informative blog on launching mailings and increasing the conversion of emails.
The maximum benefit of the marketing services of such agencies brings when the customer has all the knowledge to perform their tasks and is only looking for a working hand. At the stage of referring to the productions, you need to have a common vision of the brand, and the strategy, know the formats and advertising channels that will bring you sales, and understand why. And you need to find references, products, or design analogs that will serve as a model and source of inspiration.
How to choose a marketing agency
Before hiring outside marketing service contractors, you should take a close look at your own company's situation. This will allow you to understand what kind of professionals you need to effectively promote products and recoup marketing costs.
In the very definition of marketing services it is already spelled out that the customer needs them for their promotion. Therefore, the best way to get clients is to use their methods for their promotion. Marketing agencies present themselves through their portfolio. Usually, it consists of a list of companies or brands with logos and descriptions of their work.
A whole staff of professionals works on any case: copywriters, designers, layout designers, etc. Look at how well-informative the projects in the portfolio are and if companies are working in your niche. If there are a lot of them, chances are you have found professionals with a lot of experience who can speak the same language as you.
Marketing agency portfolio
A marketing services company may have a very attractive and extensive portfolio. But an outdated portfolio (two years old or older). To clarify the timing of the cases of interest, find out what state the customer's business is in now: do they use the name and corporate identity developed by the contractor, and do they follow his advice on the positioning. If not, then this is a very worrying sign: either the client is not satisfied with the service or has significantly changed it, or some external factors have interfered. Whatever the case may be, marketers should consider these risks, too.
Performance Measures
If the contractor will provide you with marketing services, their list should be approved in advance and fixed in the contract. Then all the duties and areas of responsibility will be spelled out. It is advisable to discuss not only the actions but also the projections based on the data you provide and consider in detail the plan proposed by the experts.
Whatever the circumstances that led the company to outsource the influencer marketing campaign, performance should increase (website traffic, subscribers, conversions, sales, etc.). If you need to change your team, go with a different contractor. All metrics by which his or her work is evaluated should be documented.
Contracting
Large firms that specialize in influencer marketing campaigns tend to have standard standardized contract formats. If this is not the case, you can always find a template contract on the Internet.
Any contract with the next influencer marketing campaign should contain all the basic terms of cooperation and describe the nuances of the deal in detail. Basic conditions, without which it is impossible to conclude such contracts:
👉 The subject of the contract: the actions that the contractor undertakes to perform (conduct market research, write texts for the client's website, develop a promotion strategy for a new product, etc. Д.). All of these activities should be described in as much detail as possible and their scope should be specified. The subject matter of the contract - is the most important thing in it, without it the deal is not considered to be concluded.
👉 Influencer rate sheets. If the contract does not specify a marketing budget, the cost is set based on average market rates for similar services in similar circumstances. However, in the case of marketing activities, the calculation will be very complicated.
👉 Providing services in person: the obligation to do so is assumed by default. But the contract may stipulate otherwise (although this is highly undesirable, it is better to specify in the document directly that the contractor personally provides the required service, without engaging any other performers from outside, because in marketing the professional experience and qualifications of the particular person play a huge role).
👉 The purpose of the services: it may be, for example, creating a plan to increase sales, the formation of an information base for further management decisions, analysis of customer needs, etc. In any case, the aim must be clearly described. It should be the solution to a practical business problem.
👉 The range of means and methods of providing social media consultants. For example, you can list the sites where you plan to publish articles or posts or exclude unwanted media from the list of those mass media where the material will be published. The contract should reflect the prohibited ways of promotion (spam, for example).
👉 Deadlines and deadlines. Time limits are necessary to make relations between parties more definite, so everyone understands when and during what period he is obliged to perform the required actions (formulated in the subject of the agreement). This can be the beginning and end of cooperation or a calendar period.
👉 Territorial binding services. This point is important if the marketing services have a physical embodiment. So, if there is a service contract in the field of merchandising, it is necessary to list all the points of sales involved; the pr-campaign must be described together with the region of interest, where advertising must be shown.
👉 Reporting of results. The results of the marketing service must be reflected in a written report and an act of completed work, confirming that the terms of the contract are fulfilled and the parties have no claims to each other.
👉 Owners of an exclusive right. In the course of performing its duties, the contractor may create some kind of intellectual product - texts, visual images, package design, etc. P. It should be noted in the contract who will own the exclusive right to these works. Preferably, it should be the client, since he needs the fruits of intellectual labor for commercial activities.
All these terms should be clearly and unambiguously formulated (to completely exclude variants of interpretation and the risk of disputes in the future between the parties to the transaction). Negotiate the text responsibly and carefully.
Influencer marketing goals
Any influencer marketing agency (which usually provides marketing services to the company) necessarily determines the effectiveness of its efforts. The evaluation is based on several metrics that are calculated (along with the expected values), depending on the specific strategic goals and current challenges facing the business. They will be discussed in more detail below.
The metrics by which Instagram influencer performance is assessed are classified according to the level of managerial action and are divided into operational, tactical, and long-term.
Strategic indicators of the effectiveness of Instagram influencers are the image of the company and brand, its market share, etc. D. Tactical indicators characterize the coverage of the market and the scale of sales of products. And finally, the operating costs refers to the volume of profits and gross revenues of the company, and the total cost of marketing services.
In practice, as a rule, using metrics of several types to assess the effectiveness was comprehensive and versatile.
All existing methods of analyzing the effectiveness of marketing communications are of two types:
1) Quantitative;
2) Qualitative.
Methods for assessing cost-effectiveness are all techniques and methods that allow you to answer the question about the practical results of the marketing mix.
Instagram influencers charge
You can pay influencers in any currency you have agreed upon. Accordingly, the pricing model is quite free, which is convenient if the influencer is abroad. The more followers the more expensive, but it is not quite true. You can pay an influencer for different services: how many posts, how much engagement, influencer game, Instagram post, and influencer's follower count. All of these items directly affect Instagram influencer pricing. There are influencer promotions that aim to optimize engagement.
Influencer rate
✅ Micro (10-100k followers) $100-500
✅ Mid (100-500k followers) $500-$5k
✅ Macro (500k-1m followers) $5-$10k
✅ Mega (1m+ followers) $10k+
For convenience, you can find an Instagram pricing calculator on special sites, which will simplify the ad budgeting.
Conclusion
Quality influencer marketing platforms and a post or video can be the key to the success of your campaign. Prepare thoroughly, check the influencer, formulate your expectations, goals, and objectives, and set a KPI. Even now, due to the pandemic, the effectiveness of working with Influencers will only increase, because they are read like no other in self-isolation mode. Moreover, we are confident that influencer marketing as a separate area for brand promotion will have further development. Find influencers and grow.
Questions to answer
How much should an influencer charge per post?
Average cost per Instagram post in 2021, depending on the type of influencer: nano influencer: $25-$200
How much does paying an influencer cost?
$1,000 for an Instagram post, $200 for a story and $2,000-$5,000 for a 60-second video.
How to advertise on Instagram bloggers?
Try InstaJet, an Instagram influencer platform, provides an open database of bloggers and helps automate posting to Instagram Stories.
