Should you add influencer marketing to your marketing mix?

Businesses can feel skeptical towards influencer marketing. Which makes sense, because you need a certain know-how when it comes to influencer marketing. If you dive in head-first, you might be burning through your budget.

Article summary:

Influencers are an ideal way to influence your target audience and to convince your audience to buy your products or services.
There’s a huge difference between celebrity influencers (or macro influencers) and micro influencers: you can work with both, but they ask for a different approach.
Finding your ideal influencer(s) for your business is like dating. It’s important to find a good match.
You can reach amazing results through influencer collaborations, but be prepared to pay for their reach and audience.
If you want to do things in a professional manner, you should draft a contract that outlines the expectations and deliverables of the collaboration.

What is an influencer?

The word influencer derives from ‘influencing’ or ‘to have an influence on’. Influencers have a loyal community of followers and fans. Taking it back to marketing, an influencer is a person who can influence other people (their audience) to use certain products or services.

For example: George Clooney. Can you guess which brand he’s repping? Exactly – Nespresso. When you think of Nespresso, you automatically link the brand to George Clooney and vice versa.

This is, of course, a multi-million collaboration on a large scale.

But this doesn’t mean that you can only work with influencers if you pay millions. You pay for reach (and engagement). The more reach, or influence, an influencer has, the more you’ll pay.

Reach; the total number of people who see your content.

Another option might be micro influencers. They often have a much smaller community than celebrities, but you can work with them on a smaller and more effective scale to reach a certain niche market.

Which types of influencers are there?

George Clooney is a celebrity influencer, that’s clear. But which types of influencers are still out there?

The macro influencer: 100.000 – 1 million followers
The meso influencer: 30.000 – 100.000 followers
The micro influencer: 10.000 – 30.000 followers
The nano influencer: 1.500 – 10.000 followers

Often, we observe a higher engagement rate among influencers with a smaller audience. While their reach may be lower compared to meso and macro influencers, they excel within their specific niche. This results in a more active and loyal following.

What is influencer marketing?

One thing is clear: there are plenty of opportunities when it comes to influencer marketing. Work with a macro influencer and reach a large audience, or choose a niche influencer for your business?

That’s what influencer marketing is all about. Selecting the right influencer for your (marketing) goals. Let’s say that you are including influencer marketing in your marketing plan for next year. What steps do you need to take?

When working with an influencer, you are choosing a specific person to rep your brand. This person will become the face of your business and brand by promoting your products or services on their social channels.

You use the influencer’s reach, which means that – just like any other type of paid advertising – you will have to pay for the collaboration.

This is why it’s important to agree what your collaboration will entail. Just to make sure both parties are on the same wavelength.

Why add influencer marketing to your marketing mix?

REACH! That’s right. One of the biggest advantages of using the power of influencers, is their loyal following. An audience they can quite influence.

But that’s not the only reason why influencer marketing is a smart move. It adds an extra layer of trust and authenticity. Which you then can connect to your own brand.

Compare the following example. Which post is more compelling? The ad that clearly has a commercial goal in mind? Or the social media post that looks and feels organic, with a subtle nod to the Gymshark brand?

As a follower, you are being influenced in a quite a subtle way. Because implicitly you are following someone who you find aspirational. Do you want to be more like your aspirational athlete? Then buy the same workout wear.

Influencer marketing is all about psychology.

The ad’s message is “buy me”, however the influencer’s posts subtly inspire and influence the target audience.

How popular is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing is on the rise. In recent years, this marketing technique gained more traction in Belgium, and many brands are recognizing the potential of influencers.

Numerous Belgian brands, both local businesses and large enterprises, have taken the leap and integrated influencer marketing into their marketing strategies.

Additionally, the influencer community continues to grow, and the trust, especially among millennials and Gen Z, keeps increasing.

The popularity of influencer marketing received an extra boost during the 2020 pandemic when influencers were primarily used to boost e-commerce.

This growth trend continues in 2023 and has expanded to include offline shopping, city marketing, hospitality, and more. So, no worries, it’s not too late to hop on the influencer train.

How can you find the perfect influencer for your business?

Social media are popular, and there are numerous influencers to be found on these platforms. But how do you find the influencers that align perfectly with your brand? And more importantly, how do you ensure a smooth and pleasant collaboration with them?

In 4 steps you’ll find the ideal influencers for your brand.

1. Map your product and company values

Step one: who are you and what do you want to stand for? From experience, we know that this works best with word associations that start from your product or brand. Let’s take Gymshark as an example:

Take your time to carefully assess your product and company values. This exercise is the foundation for the following three steps. The more effectively you conduct this exercise, the easier the rest of the steps will go.

2. Which goals do you want to reach with your influencer campaign?

Just like with any other marketing effort, your first thought should be: what is your goal? Some classic marketing goals are:

Generate brand awareness
Generate leads
Increase sales

When focusing on generating brand awareness, you should work with influencers who have a large and diverse audience. When you want to increase your products or service sales, you should look in the direction of micro (or niche) influencers with a high engagement rate.

3. List your criteria and start searching

If you know what you want to communicate and which goals you want to achieve, you can start looking for the right partner(s). You can use software, for example:

Or you can just search manually (via social media, via search engines…) – this option is just as valid, it will just take you some more time. When using software, you save a lot of time – and the tool will automatically provide you with a quick overview of the influencer’s reach, category, platforms, engagement rates and much more.

Which channels is your target audience using?
If you decide to search for influencers manually, you should define the channels that your target audience is using. You could use your common sense, but since we are working in the field of digital marketing, we advise you to create a list based on data. It only takes a little bit of research to find the ideal platforms for your target audience.

Find influencers that are active on the platforms of your choice
Based on platforms, you can search for relevant people who are creating content related to your product/service. You can search by using relevant #hashtags. You’ll quickly land on content that might match you to influencers.

Choose a mix of influencers
Do you want a long-term collaboration where someone becomes your brand ambassador? Or someone who can launch an ad hoc campaign? This will have an impact on the type of collaboration.

Your budget and goals will also impact the amount of people you’ll work with.

4. Create a briefing

It’s very important that both you and the influencer are on the same page. Create a briefing that talks about just that: expectations, deliverables, … You should clearly state your expectations to the influencer, and what they will get in return.

What should absolutely be mentioned?

Amount of content/posts
Timings and frequency
Content of the posts
Formats of the posts
Channels
Remuneration

This document can be added as attachment to your contract.

How much does influencer marketing cost?

Influencers have massively professionalized. Most of them have a media kit which shows their rates. But don’t feel obligated to follow the rates to the dot. You can always negotiate a deal, based on what you can offer (value, products, discounts…).

Barter deal:

This often happens when products or services have a high value. You gift your product or service free of charge to the influencer, and they use it in their content (for example: car, fancy laundry service, a nice watch or handbag…)

Commission based:

If you are selling via an e-commerce platform, you can track codes. Influencers can then earn money based on commission, depending on how many times their code was used. This is often done in combination with other types of payment.

Fixed fee:

The most common one – a fixed fee. Influencers work with a fee per post, or sell packages. You can often negotiate (especially for long-term collaborations).

How much your influencer campaign will cost exactly? It depends. The amounts within influencer marketing are not one-size-fits-all. Besides the type of collaboration, there are many other factors at play.

The reach

The larger the reach, the more you will pay. An influencer with over 100,000 followers generally has a higher fee than an influencer with 10,000 followers.

The engagement rate

Influencers with high engagement rates often have a more loyal and active audience, which can lead to better results for your campaign.

Niche and content type

Influencers in a specific niche often have a very engaged audience. If – next to that – they also create original and high-quality content, you will see that reflected in the cost. Quality takes time (and money), after all.

The platform

Different social media platforms have different pricing structures. You cannot simply extrapolate the fees for Instagram influencers to TikTokers or YouTubers.

Type of collaboration

Are you going for a direct collaboration with the influencer, or are you opting for an influencer marketing agency? The latter often comes with a higher price tag, but it also takes the heavy lifting off your shoulders.

Make it official

All details are discussed? Everyone knows what is expected? And everything is documented in a clear contract? You are ready to roll out your first influencer campaign. Good luck!

Influencer marketing: yay or nay?

Are you ready to shake up your current marketing strategy? Do you want to be present on social media channels that are hyper relevant to your target audience? Or do you want to explore trending channels, such as TikTok? If you answered yes, you should definitely take a look at influencer marketing.

Do you want to take your first steps, but you’re not sure where to start? Book a call with one of our experts and we’ll help you getting started.

Ready to start with influencer marketing? Get in touch so we can talk strategy.