Influence Marketing 101

Marketing can be defined as the process of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service. From the definition earlier, it can be deduced that marketing consists of Price, Place, Promotion, and Product – a.k.a. the 4P matrix:

Affiliate marketing, in its turn, involves a 3rd party promoting a product of some company to its clientele and earning a premium for that. Therefore, out of 4 marketing subsets, we are interested in the promotion one. Promotion channels, or mediums, can be personal and impersonal, with the influencers staying somewhere in between: seller and buyer do not interact personally, but the middleman does engage in direct communication with the audience.

Nowadays, when we refer to influence marketing, the image of a blogger pops up in our minds more often than not. However, opinion leader is a broader term and includes large corporate customers, industry analysts, journalists, policymakers, early adopters, etc. Generally speaking, influencers are the people that affect the buying decision, by defining the specifications and comparing the alternatives. Consequently, influence marketing is about recruiting opinion leaders to participate in your campaigns.

Recruiting an influencer for your campaign is easier to do on the internet. Depending on your GEO, marketing goals, and the desired vertical you can monitor the following resources: YouTube, VK, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Telegram, WhatsApp, Twitch, and Steam. Influencers that cover several digital platforms with their activities are very common as well. Therefore, all the imaginable social networks can bring the person you are looking for.

Influence marketing is characterized by a mixture of unique advantages, namely:

• Native-character – advertisements made with the help of influencers are well-tailored, because the influencer is genuinely interested in smooth integration, for his reputation is at stake. Influence marketing is not made head-on (when done properly), which is why it is less in-your-face.
• High precision – a star has to specialize its content on something: car reviews, let’s plays, popular science, etc. Therefore, the advertised product also inevitably targets the exact auditory.
• Active traffic – the blogger’s webpage can host a direct link for the leads to proceed to the advertising website or contact the business owners.
• Elaborate feedback – after an integration, all the reviews alongside the percentage of the viewers can be seen and taken into account.

How Does It Work?

John Travolta is a great example of an influencer, or better yet, an ambassador for the Breitling watch manufacturer. A brand ambassador is in more long-term relationships with the brand, compared to a casual influencer. Notwithstanding the character of relationships, the whole advertising process comes down to shuttle diplomacy:

The seller need’s buyer’s attention but has no influence over the buyers. The influencer has fans that also happen to be potential buyers. The buyer loves the star and trusts his opinion. Therefore, the seller’s money goes to the influencer as a reward for the latter to leverage his connections and inform his fans/buyers about the product. At the end of the day:

• The seller wins the desired customer’s awareness
• The influencer gets paid
• The buyer obtains the product

How Much?

It depends. First, the legislation differs in various GEOs and, for instance, in Russia, bloggers do not register as entrepreneurs and are free from taxes. In this case, they are legally not obliged to do anything at all and can renege on the deal you propose at any time. Protect yourself in advance with a printed agreement where all the provisions like terms, conditions, payment, etc. are specified.

Second, influencers differ in audience size, when it comes to YouTube they can be grouped as follows:

• Nanoinfluencers: <10,000 subscribers
• Microinfluencers: <100,000 subs
• Macroinfluencers: <1,000,000 subs
• Megainfluencers: >1,000,000 subs

The size of the audience generally determines the amount of money the influencer demands. As an example of the required budget, let us have a look at:

The sponsor of today’s article: RAID Shadow Legends. Plarium, the owner of the infamous game, pays $4.19k for every ad on average. A common influencer the company works with has 734k subscribers and 237k views – a macroinfluencer. The location matters substantially, with the Americans enjoying $11.8k for an integration and the Russians settling for $2.4k for an ad. The marginal benefit of a large-scale campaign, relying on megainfluencers can be surprisingly low, compared to the small-scale, but well-targeted advertising. Generally, $50k is the upper limit of your influence marketing budget.

Wrap-up

That’s it for today, we will be coming back soon with more insights into the enchanting and profitable niche of influence marketing! In the next installment, we will talk about offer verticals and campaign flows that can work wonders when you add an opinion leader into the set-up.