Today, owning and operating an online store without a shop optimized Instagram account is like running a painting company without brushes… it might be possible but not optimal.

The days off sharing a product for sale with the caption “link in bio” is over. Reducing the number of steps required from consumers to make a purchase is directing tied to product sale success. The more steps needed the higher drop off rate from returning and potential customers.

To help brands sell, Instagram has made it possible to link online shop product catalogues, which allows marketers to tag products similar to the way anyone can tag a friend in a post.

When a product is tagged, a shopping bag icon appears in the corner of the image. When the image is single tapped, the product name and price appears on the screen. If the viewer wants more detail or to buy the product, they merely have to click the tag, and they will be directed straight to the shop page for purchase. Almost like magic huh!?

Whether you’re marketing a global brand or a small startup, having a shoppable Instagram account can be integral to the businesses success. Your competition is doing it, and the longer you wait, the more potential clients and customers could be choosing competing brands over yours.

Here are 4 simple steps you must take to optimize your Instagram account to be shoppable:

Step 1: It all starts on Facebook

First things first, to make your Instagram shoppable you must have both a Facebook Business Page and an Instagram Bussiness account.

If you already have a Facebook Business Page for your brand, it will only take a few seconds to convert a standard Instagram account to a business account. A bonus of switching is that an Instagram Business account comes with report metrics about reach, content performance and audience insights. You can also get new contact options and a simplified way to promote content through ads, which is one of the significant perks of an Instagram business account, even if you don’t have a shop.

Okay, amazing, you’re one step closer to making your Instagram shoppable! On to the next step we go.

Step 2: Create Product Catalogues

For this example, we are going to use Shopify to show you how to step up product catalogues on Facebook that tie to your Instagram account.

Now that you have your Instagram Business Account through Facebook you can create product catalogues. On Facebook’s Business Manager, navigate to your dropdown menu and under assets, select catalogues.

From here you will be able to manually create product catalogues or connect your preferred e-commerce platform.

If you’re already selling products on Shopify, a lot of the setup process is already completed for you! Under your shop dashboard, on the left menu, there is a section labelled “Sales Channels”. From here you’ll have the options of adding various sales channels, including Facebook and Instagram.

By clicking here, you’ll be prompt to connect your Facebook Page to Shopify.

Once you’ve connected the two platforms, Facebook will review your account. The review process can take up to 48 hours to be approved. Once approved your products will show up on Facebook. After getting accepted, you must connect the product catalogue with Instagram through Shopify.

Under your Shopify dashboard, click to add a new sales channel. Instagram will show up as a channel option. Once the Instagram sales channel is installed, you can enable the feature by visiting Shopping under Business Settings in the Instagram app. Here you will be able to select your the product catalogue you create on your Facebook Business Page. Voila! You’re free to start tagging products in your posts!

Step 3: Boost Organic Engagement with Tags & Stories

Yay! You’re ready to start selling on Instagram. Congratulations!

Now when you are setting up an image to publish, you’ll have the option to tag it so your audience can see the product name and price by tagging the image. If they click it, they’ll be directed to the product page for purchasing. Be careful not to “over tag” content. If all the content published to your Instagram is about sales you might see a drop off in engagement as your audience may view your account as pure advertising.

As of now, you can not tag products in Instagram stories; however, you can include a link to an item’s purchasing page.  To boost the organic engagement of an image post that has a product tag, share a story with a shop link at the same time, so your audience gets more exposure to your brand offerings.

Pro Tips // Linking Your Stories to Product Sales

If you have over 10K followers on your Instagram account, you’ve unlocked the power of link sharing on stories. This is super beneficial to online shop owners who’ve been dreaming of linking to their website and product pages. Here are two ways to use stories to boost engagement:

1. Add link driving directly to the website or individual product pages.
2. Add a link from a recently published image post with product tags. To do this, click the three dots in the top right corner of the image post and select “copy link.” Now past this link into the story.

Step 4: Amplify your shop with ads

Now that you’ve turned your Instagram into a selling machine, it’s time to get more eyes on your brand and products. The best way to do this through online advertising. Good news is that Facebook & Instagram have a bunch of easy to use ad styles and delivery options.

A few of the most popular Instagram ad formats for online shop owners include:

• Image Ads
• Video Ads
• Collection Ads
• Carousel Ads
• Offer Ads

Fortunately, you don’t need years of experience to run an Instagram ad campaign. But there’s a lot of terms and functions that you’ll need to be familiar with to run a successful campaign. If you’re unclear of your ad objective and audience targets, you have the potential of wasting your ad spend.

To learn more about how to use Facebook & Instagram advertising be sure to visit the Facebook Ad Guide.

Now that influencer marketing tactics have become more of a staple in a brands marketing plan, we see much more methodical strategizes come into play such as long-term partnerships or ‘always-on’ ambassadorship. Why? In the article, we’ll outline the five main reasons long-term influencers partnerships are beneficial to both brands and content creators.

Stronger More Authentic Relationships

The vetting and selection process of finding the ‘right’ influencers for a brand to collaborate with is not quick or straightforward activity – especially for brands taking on influencer marketing in-house without agency support. Developing long-term relationships allows brands to build genuine relationships with their favourite content creators, which in turn allows the influencer(s) to craft more authentic content for their audiences.

More Robust Planning & Timelines

When working with a handful or a thousand influencers, you’re working with a handful or a thousand individual business owners – all of which have their own timelines and schedules. This means that it’s unlikely a brand’s ideal timeline will match everyone they’re looking to collaborate with. Long-term partnerships, a little more planning is needed in the upfront however you have the opportunity to have a clear understanding of when and what an influencer will be posting about for your brand.

For example, you partner with five influencers for a year-long collaboration; each influencer will create two posts per month that align with your brand’s sales and marketing calendars. You can send them all the products in advance and creating a posting schedule with each. Before the year is up, you know that you’ll have curated 120 pieces of unique content for your brand.

Clearly defined contracts

When working with some influencers on a one of basis, there’s a possibility of encountering many possible hiccups along the way. An influencer backs out last minute, a product ships, but you never hear from them again, a post is published but doesn’t mention the product or brand, these are just a few examples that brands encounter. Most long-term influencer partnerships come with contracts that outline the relationship and expectations from both parties. This could include but is not limited to available products, posting schedule, brand assets, key messages, expected payment timeline, metrics and reporting, etc.

Simplified budgeting and invoicing

Each influencer charges differently for the services they provide, and when working with a group of individuals on a one-off basis, many different invoices will come your way at different times. With long-term ambassadorship programs, there’s an opportunity to set up a more simple billing process that benefits both brand and influencer. For example, for a year-long collaboration, a brand and influencer agree on a set quarterly payment of x amount.

Creative freedom for all

Long-term collaborations allow the influencers to understand the brand that they are working with. They’ll have a better understanding of the voice, tone, and style that the brand is looking for. This is better for the brand, so they don’t feel the need to ‘babysit’ the content of their creators. More importantly, influencers will have more time in their court to develop creative ideas that the brand and their audience will love.

The future of a successful retail brand will combine experiential moments and influencers content. Here are 5 predictions that marketers should invest in and look out for in the near future:

In-store photo opportunities

A well-painted mural or as stylish bathroom can go a long way when it comes to retail awareness. Everyone including the top influencers love an excellent photo opportunity to share with their friends and followers. Many stores and restaurants are now jumping on the chance to build awareness by paying more attention to the interior/exterior design of their locations. Even cities across America are jumping on this trend to generate more travel and tourism. A great example of this is the famous Nashville #WhatLiftsYou wings wall mural.

Easy Opt-in Influencer Programs

As influencer marketing becomes more streamlined for brands, companies are looking for opportunities to simplify the partnership process. We saw this years ago with guest blogging in the world of SEO when retailers were trying to climb Google’s ranking ladder. Guest bloggers would be able to easily opt-in to develop content for their website or brand of choice. Guest bloggers could usually apply through a designated landing page by filling out an application.

Brands are taking influencer opt-ins to the next level not only offering an easy application process but by also providing influencers full programs that benefit both influencer and brand. A great example of this is the Amazon Influencer Program. Amazon makes it simple for social media influencers across any network (YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest) to build their own landing page with an Amazon URL to promote and recommend products they love!

Influencer Product Shops

Many influencers have already reached an Ah-Ha moment in their careers. “Wait, if I can promote other brands, why can’t I build an promote my own.” Influencers are taking their hard earned cash and developing their own products to sell. From makeup to clothing, influencers are demanding a piece of the retail and e-commerce world for themselves.

Influencer Made Subscription Boxes  

The subscription box business model is still around and is shifting to accommodate brand business goals. From monthly “personal” shopper boxes to niche curated boxes, the trend of subscription-based deliveries are becoming more tailored which is making them more desirable to consumers. We already see influencers promoting subscription base brands across social media. However, it’s likely influencers will begin curating their own boxes of their favourite products. We will also see retailers partnering with influencers to curate their own boxes based on their favourite branded products.  

Virtual Reality Influencer Marketing/Shopping

Social media users love content created by their favourite influencers, however, liking and commenting on images or videos is becoming a limiting engagement. Live video and interactive content is the next significant trend for influencer marketing. By tapping into virtual reality, brands will be able to partner with influencers to produce a new vertical of content. Influencer’s fans will be able to log in and see what their favourite influencers are seeing. Imagine a designer brand partnering with a group of influencers to wear their clothing over a few days at Paris Fashion Week. The simple notice of tapping to like an influencers photo is going to be overshadowed by social embodiment.  Fans will be able to engage with content by virtually “becoming” their favourite online personality. .

Shop by influencer on Brand Website

Recently, we’ve seen more brands opting to partner with influencers for more long-term periods rather than a one-off campaign basis. Much like how we see celebrity brand endorsements, where the celebrity is the face of the brand. This ideal is breaking its way into the influencer space. As this becomes more popular, we will likely see brands make influencers a more integral part of their online sales funnels. A great example of this would be providing individual influencers with their own branded landing page to populate with their favourite products. This strategy could be beneficial to both parties. Brand’s benefit from the endorsement and influencers could receive a percentage of sales derived from their shop.

(Image source: https://www.kantarmedia.com/global/thinking-and-resources/latest-thinking/micro-influencers-are-just-the-beginning)

Micro-influencers have a more modest number of followers (in the thousands to tens of thousands) who are loyal, hyper-engaged and therefore generate higher engagement rates than traditional influencers with higher numbers of followers.

What’re the benefits of partnering with micro-influencers?

(Image source: https://medium.com/swlh/why-micro-influencer-marketing-is-the-game-in-2018-fdeda0993c36)

Trusted By Consumers:

These individuals are trusted by their followers because their content is highly focused. Their followers have a genuine interest in the content of this micro-influencer development.

Micro-influencers are brand relevant, and likely focus on a few brands, products, or ideologies that their followers believe in as well, which in turn creates and reinforces positive and loyal relationship.

This isn’t the same for celebrity influencers where their audience may have a general interest or idealize their personas, however, can see that the brands they are promoting may not align with their core interests. Do the Kardashian actually love and use the brands they share with their followers or are they promoting them because of the price tag associated with them?

Pro Tip // Creating long-term partnerships with micro-influencers instead of one-off (one time) campaigns can be very lucrative for both brand and influencer. When an influencer’s followers see repeat content about one brand or product it’ll reinforce the influencer’s brand loyalty and provide followers with purchase confidence. For brands, long-term relationships ease the busy work of continual outreach and negotiations while working with an individual of great value that truly understands the brand core goals.

Extended Use of Budget:  

Simply stated, micro-influencers are more affordable. One post from a celebrity or mega influencer could cost a brand well over $500,000.

On average, the cost for a micro-influencer to create a single post is roughly $250. Meaning with a small marketing budget of $25,000, a brand has the potential of partnering with 100 micro-influencers.  

Pro Tip // Be careful, budgets can be spent in a blink of an eye. Just because you’re reaching out to micro-influencers doesn’t mean you in for a “deal”. Each micro-influencer is running their own business and could have a preset price list.

This is why reaching out the right influencers is essential so you don’t blow your time or budget on those that aren’t best suited for the campaign. Make sure to review an influencers previous partnerships, scan their followers (would they like your product), analyze engagement rate, and make sure their brand voice and content is well suited for the type of campaign your planning.

If you select a micro-influencer that already expresses interest in products that align with your brand, they might be willing to provide a discounted rate as it’s equally as beneficial to them and their audience.

Authentic Engagement:

For many marketers, determining the ROI of influencer marketing campaign is one of the biggest challenges. However, those that understand brand awareness and brand engagement are two of the most lucrative returns on influencer investment should see micro-influencer as a gold mine.

Social posts created by micro influencers drive 60% higher engagement than macro influencers and are estimated to be 6.7X more cost-efficient per engagement. Markerly put together two great charts (see below), which indicates that engagement decreases when followership increases.

Pro Tip // When vetting and selecting micro-influencers there are a few simple ways to avoid partnering with those that may have an abundance of fake followers.

• Look at their engagement rate. To calculate an influencer’s engagement rate, total the engagements (likes + comments + video views etc) across all of the influencers posts on a particular profile (e.g. Instagram profile) then divide by the total number of followers and divide that by the number of posts (to get the average engagement per post average).

Average Engagement Rate (%) Per Post = Total Engagement / Follower Counts Number of Posts x 100

• Use impressions to gauge real followers. Ask influencers to share screenshots of their impression and reach metrics. Impression and reach numbers will give you a clear understanding of how many users are actually seeing the shared content. Fake following accounts usually aren’t active account users.

You no longer have to go big or go home.

Whether you should be working with mega influencers or micro influencers comes down to the goal of the campaign and overall budget. Nonetheless, testing out a micro-influencer campaign is highly recommended, especially for those brands that are just starting out in the world of influencer marketing. Even if you only have a budget of $1000, a micro-influencer campaign could get your brand in front of the right people that might take your brand to the next level.  

Our blog “5 Must Measure KPIs for an Influencer Marketing Campaign” garnered a lot of attention. We discussed ways to measure an influencer marketing campaigns by tracking key performance indicators such as data, links and numbers – which helps readers identify possible ROI of a campaign. In this blog, we’re going to break down value outside the numbers. Here are three long-term values of influencer marketing every brand should consider when planning a campaign.

Unique Evergreen Content

Creating unique consist content for any brand or business is a heavy lift.

Need to launch a new product in-house via video? Call in the creative director, videographers, editors, production crew, talent, copywriters… the list could go on. After hours of shooting, a few days of editing, a week of back and forth on changes, voila you have a 30-second video showcasing one new product.

Now, call in the advertising and marketing team to plan the content launch, back it with a few thousand dollars. Job well done! No really, job well done, because any brand marketer knows this is a rewarding task to check off the to-do list.

However, working with a handful or 50 influencers (in this case, let’s say YouTube influencers), a business’s ability to create consist consumer friendly yet brand-aligned content increases by the 10-fold.

For example, say an athletic wear company is launching a new awesome shoe. Instead of creating content in-house/with an agency, this brand partners with 10 YouTube creators to each development 1-minute videos about the new product. Yes, the brand marketing team will have the same type of creative upfront planning and a few negotiations to complete, however, by the end of the process the brand has ten times the content and zero production work to complete.

More importantly, this influencer created content could come at a cheaper cost than the one in-house developed 30-second video. Brands typically spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on professional development content. Influencers make for more affordable consist brand content.

Here is a creative example of influencer crafted content the ivvi team assisted with strategizing and executing. Recognize the brand?

Greater Organic Reach

For many marketers, extending reach and brand awareness of products or services is an ongoing, ever-evolving process. Influencer marketing provides brands with an extra arm’s length of audience – think Stretch Armstrong.

Let’s use Coca-Cola as an example. The brand’s main YouTube Channel has roughly 2.4 million subscribers, 1.49 billion video views, and over two thousand owned videos. These are significant numbers for a branded YouTube channel. However, in the last year, Coca-Cola has partnered with many YouTube influencers, including Unbox Therapy, Alex Wassabi, and Chris Rogers. All YouTubers that create for very different audiences that helped the brand extend its reach outside its own social/digital channels.

Using the ivvi software, we were quickly able to track both the influencers and Coca-Cola’s channels to get a better understanding of estimated reach.

From this, we see that the partnerships Coca-Cola made with these YouTubers had the possibility of reaching over 14 million YouTube subscribers outside their owned audience.

The value of a brand’s overall reach may not be easily quantifiable; however, the value of reach is undeniably known all marketers.

Spreads positive brand sentiment

This may be a no-brainer. But yes, a positive brand image holds deep value and is possibly the most valuable brand feature to potential and existing clients/customers. Brands are always working to create positive brand content that resonates with customers. A positive brand image builds credibility, trust and authority. And working with influencers allows a brand to be broadcasted authentically from a trusted third-party brand advocate.

One of the most significant benefits of influencer partnerships is that they create content that is natural, real, forward, which their audience respects. 71.2 percent of influencers feel that their honesty and sense of humor is what keeps their audience engaged. The positive image a brand develops through influencer campaigns holds a value that can enhance customer sentiment and engagement across other marketing efforts such as social media, SEO, digital advertising, email marketing, etc.

There are two ways of categorizing the real value of influencer marketing, by its tangible value or by its intangible value. The intangible benefits of influencer marketing outlined in this blog are those of long-term gain. Influencer marketing isn’t going anywhere, so it’s time for marketing teams to start thinking for long-term rather than for the quick return.

On May 15, 2018, ivvi and VidCon Connect are taking over Toronto’s District 28 event space to host of an evening with over 400 Canada’s top social media stars. The evening will be comprised of creator talks (from some of Canada’s top YouTube influencers), networking session (meet influencers and collaborate with aligned minds) and an electric party outfitted with brand activations. Kicking off the night at 7 pm, VidCon Connect event will follow the insightful, social content edition day conference – InfluenceTHIS!

Want to get learn more about how your brand can be involved with the thought leaders and influencers in the online video space?

Align your brand with the centre of a community that celebrates online social media, content creation, and progressive thinking.

Connect us for more information! 

VidCon is the largest influencer meetup community. Created by the Vlogbrothers back in 2010, with the vision of connecting the internet with real life. Since then, the annual conference (in the United States) has expanded to 30,000 people, and this year their expansion plan includes partnering with us to foster this growing community in Canada.

InfluencerTHIS the central hub for connecting Canadian media and marketing professional with the goal of building loyal followers and customers through social media and influencer marketing.

YouTube has been a major vehicle for driving equality messaging around the globe. From Hollywood celebrities and mainstream media to social media influencers and everyday people, women (and men) are fighting for change.

With Mother’s Day around the corner, these strong conversations and movements will continue to grow and spark new conversations. Many big brand names are also participating by changing employment contracts and wages. Brands looking to extend their influencer marketing strategy to be a part of the equality rights movement rather than push sales have big opportunities to showcase their companies views and build brand consciousness with new and existing audiences.

Important note to all brands (big or small) not all holidays or season occasions (like Mother’s Day) should be used to push product/service sales. With this in mind, let’s review a few awesome YouTube content creators that that are developing amazing mothers/women related content.

The following YouTube influencers could be a great partnership opportunity for those looking to develop unique conscious women empowered campaigns that are aligned with their brand mission:

The above is just a snapshot of amazing YouTube influencers making family and motherhood related content. This list is a sample of the power of ivvi, there are many more influencers creating content in these categories that might be better suited for your brand or company. We’re happy to provide you with a free consultation if you want to learn more.

Scroll down to get a little more background on the top 5 Mother’s Day influencers sourced from ivvi:

1. WhatsUpMom

This channel all started with two mothers looking to inspire and empower other moms through their parenting journeys. Now, they are the #1 parenting channel on YouTube with over 2 million subscribers and over 35 million video views per month!

2. Missy Lanning 

As a mother of 4, Missy Lanning is a content creator extraordinaire! Her channel showcases a true essence of a woman following her dreams while motivating women around the world to do the same. Since launching her channel she’s attracted over 670K+ subscribers and over 141 million video views.

3. Do It On A Dime

Kathryn is a woman on a mission to motivate and inspire people to live a more organized lifestyle on a budget. As a mother herself, she is an inspiration to many women and recently launched a second YouTube channel dedicated to parenting. Combined both her channels have over 660K subscribers!

4. The Daily Davidsons

This beautiful family of 5 have a lot of fun on their YouTube channel! With three young boys, the Daily Davidsons make a variety of parenting, lifestyle and vlog type content for their fans. This fun-loving family is an inspiration many mothers around the globe! With 233K+ subscribers and counting, this is a family that should be on your radar.

Want to get a free list of influencers for your next campaign? Try our freemium version of ivvi now. 

Influencer Discovery Generator – 1

Not all big brands are using influencer marketing technologies such as ivvi to streamline efforts and save time. So with this in mind, in this article, we will look at different methods of vetting and selecting influencers with and without the assistance of technology.

Without further ado, here are 4 ways to vet and select influencers for your next campaign:

1. Look beyond an influencer’s numbers

By this we mean, get to know everything you can about the influencers before resorting to just the number of subscribers or engagements on their content. Like all people, influencers are more than just a number.

Review Content

Read their caption copy and watch their videos. Will their personal brand match or at least compliment the brand or more specifically the campaign? If your answer here is no, you might want to quit the vetting process on this given influencer so you don’t waste precious time.

Audience Demographics

If the influencer does fit the bill, start looking into their audience demographic. Though we’re not ones to judge, when it comes to marketing age, income, language and location is an important factor.

If your branded campaign is only accessible to individuals living in the United States of America, then ensuring the influencer’s audience isn’t mainly from the UK is curial.

Past Brand Campaigns

Lastly, browse their social accounts to find previous branded campaigns they have worked on. As a brand marketer, would you/your team be thrilled with the content they produced? Do you spot any brand conflicts or direct competitors?

2. Look into an influencer’s numbers

Now that you have a better idea that the influencers you’re interested in are brand and campaign aligned, it’s time to dig into their numbers.

Categorize Influencers

At this point the vetting process, you’ll be able to tier influencers by their followers/subscribers. Are these individuals macro or micro influencers? As a general industry benchmark, micro influencers land in and between 10,000 to 90,000 follower mark, however, this rule is flexible depending on the social platform being vetted. Macro influencers have more of an internet fame status or could literally be traditional type celebrities.

Record Their Engagement Numbers

After you’ve categorized the influencers, it’s time to have a closer look at their engagement rate.

If you’re using a predictive technology such as ivvi, the software will do all the heavy lifting for you. You can select the influencers of interest and create a full detailed report. The influencer report will highlight all engagements of individual influencers as well as compare the influencer engagements against each other.

If you’re not using a software, we suggest building yourself a strong, easy to read spreadsheet. If you’re focusing on multiple social media channels, make sure to separate their engagement numbers/rates by channel.

Main social engagements you should be collecting are followers, likes, comments, shares. Basically anything readily available from the influencers account(s).

You can take this one step further by calculating each individuals engagement rate (see below for a simple formula).

Engagement rate = Total Engagements (likes, comments, shares) / Total Fans

3. Try Our Freemium Influencer Discovery Tool

Interested in trying a new way of finding influencers that are directly aligned with your brand and/or campaign by completely 5 simple steps?

We have developed a freemium tool to help you discover influencers with just a few clicks.

Simply provide us with a few topics pertaining to your next campaign and we’ll deliver a list of influencers directly to your inbox.

Click the image below to try it out now!

4. Outreaching before Preaching

Yes – outreach is a big part of the vetting and selection process. Why? Because even though you may have “handpicked” a group of quality influencers, it doesn’t mean they’re available to partner with your brand.

You must think of influencers as small (even large) business owners. They are busy humans – especially quality influencers that are developing consistent creative content. Because of this, your outreach email must be well crafted to spark their immediate attention. If you want to get a response, make sure to customize your outreach to each individual influencer.

Don’t overload them with all the campaign details all at once. Just give them enough information so they click reply.

Brands have a massive opportunity to tap into engaging Gen Xers on YouTube. According to a recent study from Pixability, generation X accounts for 1.5 billion daily video views on YouTube.

In order to have a better understanding of how to reach this demographic effectively, marketers need to know what these viewers are turning to YouTube to watch. Think with Google recently released a bunch of interesting stats on what Gen x users are searching on YouTube! For content creators, marketers and brands, these findings could be an essential insight for future campaigns.

Occasional nostalgia

YouTube is a never-ending time-capsule information. Reminiscing about a concert from the 80s? It’s probably on YouTube. Remember your favourite commercial growing up? It’s probably on YouTube. Want to dance to a hit song from back-in-the-day? It’s probably on YouTube.

75 percent of Gen Xers watch YouTube videos that related to past events or people.

Staying Relevant

Gen Xers don’t want to miss a beat. That’s why 86 percent of Gen Exers watch YouTube videos to stay on top of news and pop culture.

This demographic also wants to stay in the know about what their children are talking about and doing online. They also use YouTube as a means to connect with their children and show them they are relevant and understand what’s going on in their world.

The Do It Yourself Generation

As the generation known for their independence and self-starting nature, it’s not a big shock that 73 percent of Gen Xers watch YouTube videos to learn something new. From brands looking to market to this generation, DIY, how-to, and tutorial type video content could be a golden opportunity.

The top “how-to” content categories that generation X tunes into on YouTube fall under home repair, cooling, technology use, arts and crafts, beauty and personal care. These diverse categories provide brands from various sectors to tap into a unique angle of influencer marketing.

Finding the Right Influencers

Now that you’re armed with some amazing insights on how to engage generation X demographics on YouTube. You might be wondering, how to find the appropriate influencers to partner with?

Using a predictive software like, ivvi, will ease to the process of researching and vetting influencers that are brand and campaign aligned.

For fun, let’s pretend that you’re a home renovation supplier brand that is looking to launch an influencer marketing campaign that will reach the gen x demographic on YouTube.

Our technology sorts through millions of videos to filters content and influencer based on your brand and campaign topic. ivvi does the heavy lifting for you. Once your account is set up, you’ll have direct access to brand-related content and influencers with zero research time needed.

Interested in running a campaign targeting generation x on YouTube? We can help! From insights, influencer vetting, video strategy to campaign consulting. ivvi is your start to finish influencer marketing software. Want to see a live demo? Email us here: taylor@influencerstrategies.com

Though we know from experience that this stat is true, we think there’s only one way to bring this ever popular stat to life – put YouTubers up against Celebrities using data!

Before diving into comparisons, let’s look at a few possibilities of why millennials are resonating with YouTubers:

• Easy Access: YouTube captures more viewers aged 18 – 34 than any cable network with more than one billion unique users each month. (source: AdWeek)
• More engaged: Compared to videos created by mainstream celebrities, videos created by the top 25 YouTube stars yield three times more views, 12 times more comments and two times more actions (thumbs ups, shares, clicks, etc.). (source: Forbes)
• Trendsetters: Most millennials agree that YouTubers set more trends than traditional celebrities these days. (source: Forbes)

YouTube Influencers Vs. Hollywood Celebrities

Now it’s time to battle it out by putting four of the top YouTube influencers up against four of the top celebrities on YouTube.

For this example, we’ve pulled a few faces most of our readers and in-the-know marketers should be familiar with. Why did we pick these names? Because we’ve encountered their video content as trending within the last month!  

YouTube Stars		Hollywood Celebrities
Dude Perfect Five best friends (and a panda) pair sports and comedy to create highly engaging video content.		Shay Mitchell   Pretty little liars star loves to create DIY, beauty and lifestyle videos for her millions of subscribers.
Liza Koshy “Just a little brown girl with big dreams” – Liza mixes her everyday life with comedy and releases new addicting videos each week.		The Rock You can now “smell” what the rock is cooking on his YouTube channel. He creates a variety of entertaining and hilarious videos.
RCLbeauty101 Her channel is built on beauty tutorials, life hacks and skits.		Kim Kardashian Kim created her channel a few years back to promote some of her personal brand items.
Casey Neistat Casey has a passion for travelling the world with a camera and taking on new challenges while inspiring others to dream and go big!		Will Smith In west Philadelphia born and raised! Will just launch his YouTube channel that follows him around the world as he makes people laugh and smile!

We pulled all the YouTube influencers and Hollywood celebrity accounts into ivvi, our leading influencer marketing software to get a better idea of how these individuals compared by their YouTube engagement stats (which includes a total number of video views, subscribers, videos and comments).

The above screen grab from the ivvi software is organized by the number of subscribers (highest to lowest). For most channels the total number of video views are parallel to the number of subscribers (with the exception of Liza Koshy, which is an indication of rapid subscriber growth).

Based on the chart, ivvi indicates that YouTube stars have much higher numbers in relation to video views and subscribers. Simply put, this means that partnering with a YouTube influencer (similar to the ones named above) for a campaign will get more eyes on your content over partnering with a celebrity.

Outside the Stats

If you browse the YouTube channels above there are a few main differences that can be noticed between the YouTube influencers and the celebrities channels.

1. Published Content: Celebrities publish more content related to their personal brands or journeys rather than YouTube influencer who create more content tailor to their audiences.
2. Production: Many of the Celebrity channels have higher video production value. It’s evident that the celebrities have help from a video crew to make their content, where the YouTube influencers are more hands-on and develop most of their content themselves. For YouTube influencers, this is an added benefit as viewers see this as being more authentic and more relatable.
3. Frequency: YouTube influencers post videos more frequently than celebrities. This is mainly because for YouTube influencers creating content on these channels is their main source of income.

Who costs more?

This is the question every marketer wants to know. However, unfortunately, there is no blanket answer because each influencer/celebrity and each brand work privately to come up with campaign details, including compensation.

Nonetheless, from our experience, we know that typically YouTube influencers are easier to connect and negotiate with. Again, as mentioned above, for YouTube influencers their channels are their main source of income and they are actively looking for new exciting partnership opportunities that match their personal brands.

Luckily, there are ways to get a rough estimate of how much you should to pay a YouTube video creator! Our friends over at Influencer Marketing Hub developed this amazing YouTube Money Calculator tool! See below for a few screen grabs for a sneak peek of how it works.

Influencer Marketing Hub uses 4 main factors to determine potential average YouTube earnings:

1. CPM vs CPC (Cost per 1000 impressions vs cost per click)
2. Estimated Gross Earning Per 1,000 Views
3. Estimated Earnings Per Subscriber
4. Estimated Variance Based On Video Engagement

Because of these means of measurement, this tool may indicate that it costs more to work with a YouTube influencer over celebrity; however, this is not the case. For example, Kim Kardashian charges an estimated $200,000 USD for a single image post on Instagram.

Outside of cost, there’s value behind the influencer/celebrity as well. Who do you want to be an ambassador for your brand? And what type of audience do you want more brand exposure with?

The Takeaway

The data shows that YouTube Influencers do it better than traditional celebrities when it comes to content creation, engagement, and video reach!

Using the same budget that you would to partner with one Hollywood celebrity could be used to partner with multiple YouTube influencers and will increase branded content, content engagement and overall campaign reach.

If you need help finding the right influencers or strategizing for your next campaign, we can help!