Free Influencer Marketing Series
Success! Enjoy the series Part 1: How an agency took a brand from 0 to $1MM in 4 months using influencers & ads
Free Influencer Marketing Series
Success! Enjoy the series Part 1: How an agency took a brand from 0 to $1MM in 4 months using influencers & ads
You have 100+ influencers in your roster, but how do you handle the rush of tracking, assigning goals, and sales targets each month?
To get this right, you need to build an influencer affiliate program. With this approach, once you cover your fixed costs with influencer-generated sales, you'll have a highly profitable performance-based program that you can keep scaling.
To scale, you need to know how to handle 100+ influencers, no matter the scope and goal of your brand in today’s market.
Getting started can be the toughest part, but don't worry—we'll guide you through everything you need to know.
The first step to starting an influencer program is to reach out to the right influencers. To find the right influencers, you can use these effective and free methods:
1. Google X-Ray search: This advanced search technique allows you to find influencers within specific niches or platforms.
2. Facebook creator marketplace: A free tool provided by Meta to connect brands with creators on Facebook and Instagram.
3. Instagram suggested accounts: Leverage Instagram's algorithm to find similar accounts to those you're already interested in.
When you find a suitable bunch of influencers, now’s the time to test the ROI from their content. To calculate this, you have to analyze engagement rates, likes, impressions, saves, and shares.
Use an influencer marketing tracking software like MightyScout to look up these metrics. It gives you everything in one centralized dashboard, so you won’t have to spend hours sorting and filtering influencers.
As you analyze these metrics, you’ll understand the traction each influencer brings and the sales potential they have for your brand.
Tip: Make sure you vet their followers to see if they resonate with your target market or not.
If you find some UGC, re-share it or feature it on your brand pages and community to grab the attention of potential customers as well.
Next step is to assign tasks to the influencer and work consistently. The more growth and reach you see from their reels or stories, the better compatibility they have with the representation of your brand.
Time-block each day to reach out to influencers, as it’s a time-consuming task. If you’re ahead of the team or an agency, it’s best to hire an influencer marketer off platforms like Fiverr or UpWork, where you can compare talents and hire the one that suits your needs the best.
Or, if you want to automate the process, you can also use platforms like Mighty Scout that will help you trace each step for the influencer journey.
Now that you've established relationships with almost 20 influencers, you're likely seeing an increase in brand mentions, user-generated content (UGC), and potential sales opportunities. While steady sales aren't guaranteed at this point, these positive indicators suggest it's time to scale up the program and expand your reach to over 50 influencers.
To manage a large number of influencers effectively, you'll need to consider various staffing options based on your specific situation and resources. Here are some approaches to consider:
1. In-house part-time or full-time marketer: For businesses with consistent influencer marketing needs, hiring a dedicated in-house marketer (part-time or full-time) can provide focused expertise and seamless integration with your brand strategy.
2. Freelance marketing specialist: If your influencer campaigns are more sporadic or you're not ready for a permanent hire, working with a freelance marketing specialist can offer flexibility and specialized skills on a project basis.
3. Virtual assistants: VAs can be excellent for handling routine tasks such as initial outreach, scheduling, and basic tracking. However, they typically shouldn't be solely responsible for strategy or high-level relationship management.
4. Combination approach: Many businesses find success in combining these options. For example, you might have an in-house marketer for strategy and relationship management supported by VAs for administrative tasks.
The best choice depends on factors such as:
You can hire virtual assistants from UpWork starting at $5 an hour. You need to hire someone who’ll work at least 10 hours a week to streamline every function of the influencer program.
Scope of work: When you hire a VA, it’s important to underline their duties and train them to garner the best results.
For an influencer program, you need to train the VA to:
You can train them using Loom videos. This is a screen recording tool where you can pop up and explain things in video and save it for future reference. You can share the embed video anywhere you work, and edit it effortlessly.
Using influencer marketing tools:
Once you reach around 20 influencers worked with each month, it’s harder to rely on manual records to showcase your achievements and members.
You need influencer marketing software that captures your influencers’ activities 24/7, be it stories, posts, and updates for your reference. Tools like MightyScout come to the rescue when you need to power up your influencer marketing program.
It tracks metrics like media posted, reach, engagement, sales, and media value to estimate the value each influencer brings to the programs. This way, you can evaluate your marketing efforts and determine who is the star influencer of your program as well.
MightScout is a 360-degree tool that also tracks the timeline of influencers via its relationship management features:
This way, whether you’re working with 100 or 200 influencers, you can always keep a record of their status and pending work without reaching out to them manually.
This is the advanced stage of an influencer marketing program where you’ve laid down the groundwork and it’s time to optimize the processes to handle around 100 influencers in your program.
This is the advanced stage of an influencer marketing program where you've laid down the groundwork and it's time to optimize the processes to handle around 100 influencers in your program. At this stage, it's crucial to focus on refining your approach and building long-term relationships rather than constantly seeking new influencers.
Key areas to focus on:
1. Analyze performance metrics:
2. Diversify your influencer relationships:
3. Build a community:
4. Optimize recruitment:
5. Implement a content strategy:
6. Automate and streamline:
By focusing on these areas, you can compound the growth of your efforts, moving from linear outreach to exponential growth through a loyal, engaged influencer community. This approach not only optimizes your current program but also sets the stage for scalable, sustainable influencer marketing success.
Remember, at this stage, it's not about constantly expanding your influencer base, but about deepening relationships, improving efficiency, and maximizing the impact of your existing network. And here are some other pitfalls that you need to avoid:
Many brands fall into the trap of constantly seeking new influencers rather than nurturing existing relationships. This leads to a revolving door of partnerships that never develop depth or authenticity.
Instead of expanding your roster, focus on strengthening relationships with your current influencers. Invest time in understanding their content style, audience preferences, and professional goals. By deepening these relationships, you'll often find that a smaller, more engaged group of influencers can deliver better results than a larger, less connected network.
Poor communication patterns can quickly undermine even the most promising influencer relationships. Whether it's delayed responses, unclear expectations, or sporadic updates, inconsistent communication creates uncertainty and reduces influencer engagement.
So, have regular touchpoints with your influencer community, even if it's just a monthly check-in or newsletter. Create clear communication channels and response time expectations, and stick to them. This consistency helps influencers feel valued and maintains momentum in your partnerships.
There's a natural tendency to focus attention and resources on your top performers while overlooking those in the middle tier. However, these middle-tier influencers often represent your greatest opportunity for growth. They typically have room to improve and are eager to prove themselves.
With additional support, guidance, and opportunities for these influencers, you can help them develop into top performers. This approach often yields better returns than constantly pursuing new partnerships or focusing exclusively on your current top performers.
These pitfalls can significantly impact the success of your influencer program, but they can be avoided through careful planning, consistent execution, and regular evaluation of your strategies. By maintaining awareness of these common issues and actively working to prevent them, you can build a more resilient and effective influencer marketing program that delivers sustainable results over time.
To avoid any mishaps in this stage, use the advanced features of MightyScout like:
You can integrate your Shopify or WooCommerce to track the seeding stage and shipping process to influencers. When you send them products/services to try out, this feature ensures you get real-time updates, and condenses your shipping links within one window.
You can also create invite forms with MightyScout easily. Once you hire 100 influencers, you need to create SOPs and document them in Notion, which is a productivity software, where you can save your notes.
The scope of work for influencers will include factors like:
You can share the same document with each influencer to streamline the relationship with the brand.
Budgeting for working with 100 creators per month can be done by following these steps:
Determine your total budget: Establish the overall budget available for the influencer program per month.
Set average payment per creator: Decide on an average payment per creator based on the market rates and the size of the creators’ followings.
Calculate monthly payouts: Multiply the average payment by the number of creators (100). Example: $500 per creator x 100 creators = $50,000.
Include performance bonuses: Allocate funds for performance-based bonuses or commissions if applicable. Example: $10,000 for top-performing influencers.
Factor in fixed costs: Consider fixed costs such as software subscriptions, platform fees, or management tools. Example: $2,000 for management tools.
Account for miscellaneous expenses: Reserve a portion of the budget for unexpected expenses or additional opportunities. Example: $5,000 for miscellaneous costs.
Review and adjust monthly: Regularly review the budget and adjust based on actual performance and expenses to ensure efficiency and scalability.
To test the ROI from the influencer marketing campaign, use a Profit Calculator which helps you save and estimate the costs of the influencers program. It tells you if you’re saving and burning money on the program and the areas to cut your budget down.
Early on in your program, go broad when trying different creators.
Try different segments and see what works for your brand. You will have assumptions about what will work and not, but your assumptions can be wrong.
So test a wide variety of segments and channels, and watch for the signals to know what’s working. Once you have defined the segments or types that work, then scale them.
For example, if you’re a fashion brand, you can work with both GRWM (Get Ready With Me) posts and haul videos with different influencers to see which brings in ROI for your brand.
GRWM (Get Ready With Me) videos can be effective across all stages of influencer marketing, but their implementation should evolve as your program grows. In the early stage (0-20 influencers), use GRWM content to experiment with different influencer types and gauge audience reception.
As you expand to 20-50 influencers, refine your approach based on initial insights, integrating GRWM videos into a more diverse content strategy. When scaling to 50-100 influencers, use GRWM videos more strategically, focusing on top performers or specific campaign objectives.
Throughout all stages, leverage MightyScout's analytics to track the performance of GRWM content compared to other formats. This data-driven approach allows you to optimize your use of GRWM videos based on your product type, target audience, and marketing goals.
Remember, the key is to continuously analyze and adapt your GRWM strategy as your influencer program expands, ensuring it remains an effective tool in your growing influencer marketing arsenal.
You can use MightyScout to discover and track the influencer's lists.
You don’t have to search for each influencer manually. Instead, create lookalikes of one profile and find all the influencers under the same category in one list. This saves time and also allows you to understand the quality of work delivered by influencers under the same category.
You can contact your influencers in many ways, some of which are:
Here's the product seeding and outreach messaging used by Cody Wittick at Kynship.co:
Here’s the breakdown:
Here’s the script:
“Hey {name}, I’m part of the [Brand] team and just wanted to let you know that we all love your content! We were wondering if we’d be able to send you some products, completely free, no strings attached. If so, send your address and we’ll get it to you ASAP!”
A few key pointers to remember:
You can also tempt influencers to work with you using gifting and seeding messages like:
Hi [Influencer's Name]!
We’ve been following your amazing content and love your unique style! We’d like to offer you some of our products to try out, absolutely free. We believe you'd enjoy them, and we’d be thrilled to hear your honest opinion.
If you're interested, just let us know, and we’ll get everything set up for you. Looking forward to possibly collaborating with you!
Best, [Your Name] [Your Brand]
Once you get a reply from an influencer, you can proceed to onboard them to your program, and use the influencer form we introduced at the start of the article to gather their essential information.
At the seeding stage, track the value of gifts you send to your potential influencers.
Even though it's a—no-strings attached commitment, you’ll see posts from creators who are eager to collaborate with you and are impressed with your products/services. If they post, you can contact them further, if they don’t you can send them a DM for a revert. For example:
Hi [Influencer's Name]!
We hope you’re enjoying the [product(s)] we sent you! We’d love to hear your thoughts. Did you like it? What are your opinions on the product(s)?
Your feedback is really valuable to us, and we’re eager to hear your honest review. Thanks so much for your time and for trying out our products!
Best,
[Your Name]
[Your Brand]
The types of gifts that work well when building influencer relationships include:
Packaging and shipping best practices:
You have to create an aesthetic PR box that equips an unboxing experience to impress the influencers. You can include stickers, words of affirmation, thank you notes, or your mission and vision in the box.
Ensure that the products are shipped without spillage, and use one company to ship all the gifts or PR. Inconsistency can lead to courier misplacements and losses.
If you like an influencer after a seeding stage, invite them to your affiliate or referral program by sending them links.
For example,
Ensure you get content rights for their posts about your products/services and post them on different platforms to gain traction.
UGC is more effective than paid media because it uses real test cases and shows honest opinions about your brand. Thus, helping the audience connect with you on a more personal level.
Create a separate drive or hard drive to store influencer content. This takes up a lot of data, and that's why you need a different drive to collect the posts.
Some tips for using these stored content in ads are:
Using influencer content in paid ads can be highly effective if done correctly. Here are some tips:
Get clear permissions: Ensure you have written consent from influencers to use their content in your paid ads.
Choose the right content: Select high-quality, authentic content that resonates with your target audience. Use content showcasing the influencer’s genuine experience with your product.
Maintain authenticity: Keep the influencer’s voice and style intact to maintain authenticity and trust and avoid heavy editing that might make the content look overly commercial.
Test different formats: Experiment with various ad formats like carousel ads, stories, and videos to see what performs best. A/B tests different versions of the content to optimize performance.
You can follow this guide to kick start your influencer campaign, starting with 20+ influencers and then use the tips and steps in this guide to scale to 100+ influencers.
We know it looks like a daunting task to handle 100 influencers at once for your promotion. But a tool like MightyScout can give the much-needed assistance you need with:
Learn the strategy from seeding influencers, re-purposing content, and using cost caps in Facebook ads to find top performing influencers in this series.