How Effective is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing can be very effective, but the level of success may vary. To increase your chances of success, establish both primary and secondary goals.

For example, your primary goal could be to achieve a 12X return on investment after three months. Your secondary goal could be to reach at least 4,000 of their followers daily. Additionally, determine the number of Instagram Stories, Reels, TikToks, etc. that you want to produce with the creator.

If you're already working with an influencer, you're the Scorsese to their DiCaprio. As the director, you'll guide and approve the final work, but it's the creator's task to articulate the message in their unique voice.

If you are not currently working with an influencer, do not base your selection solely on their number of followers when creating a shortlist. Audiences recognize when an influencer is only promoting for the money. To avoid this, collaborate with influencers who are already genuinely aligned with your brand, rather than trying to shape them to align when working with them.

Once you have completed your shortlist, send an email outlining your primary and secondary goals, as well as the required number of posts. This will help ensure that the creator or their manager is aligned with your goals and that the cost makes sense for you.

After that, request screenshots of their follower demographics for each social platform to ensure their audiences overlap with yours. Look at their followers' locations, age ranges, genders, post engagement rates, and reach per post.

If they have a website, you can even request their Google Analytics 4 data, including average engagement time, users by city, and gender. If your primary objective is to increase sales, ask for examples of previous collaborations that have generated sales.

One of the most common questions I receive is whether to allocate more budget to one big influencer (macro) or split the budget between several smaller influencers (nano and micro). Before making a decision, consider your goals and target audience.

Macro influencers can provide a broader reach, but their audience may be less engaged due to differences in interests. A message and video from the creator may not resonate equally with the entire group. This is similar to a Top 40 playlist, where the listeners may vary in age and interests.

Nano and micro-influencers may have a smaller reach, but their audience is more likely to engage and convert because they share niche interests. This is similar to fans of indie artists, who often have similar interests and are close in age.

For some influencer campaigns I've worked on, we've backed the posts with ad spend to increase reach and conversions even faster. If you choose this approach, allow the content to grow organically for the first 24 hours before investing in any of the posts.

During the campaign, monitor the engagement rate, reach, and conversions. If you are working with a creator on multiple posts over two or more months, schedule a weekly 15-minute catch-up in advance.

Numbers

• 33% of Gen Z made purchases between April and June 2022 based on an influencer's recommendation.

• 50% of millennials trust influencer product recommendations, compared to 38% for celebrities.

• Micro-influencers receive up to 60% more engagement than macro-influencers.

• A TikTok video from a macro-influencer (100,000 to 1 million followers) gets an average of 38,517 views.

• Instagram was the most commonly used platform for influencer marketing in the US in 2022.

• 45% of marketers used TikTok for influencer marketing in 2022, and this is expected to increase by 4% in 2023.

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