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.

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!

(image source: https://joethegoatfarmer.com/tag/influencer-marketing/)

For those tapping into influencer marketing this season, you’re ahead of the curve for breaking the “noise” against the competition. As November quickly comes to an end, most marketers are passed the stage of vetting influencers for a holiday campaign. The outreach is likely complete and negotiations are being finalized. And as you set up to pass the ball over to these amazing influencers to execute a stellar holiday campaign, ask yourself is there anything we can do in-house to enhance this campaign? The answer is YES!

Check out this influencer holiday campaign sponsored by Daniel Wellington Watches. Now over the next few weeks see if you spot any additional marketing efforts by the brand to enhance this awesome campaign.

In this blog we outline 5 tips to enhance your holiday influencer marketing campaign to increase awareness and engagement on your marketing channels and your partnered influencer’s channels:

1. Drip, Drip, Drop Marketing

As marketers you have a backstage pass to all the awesome creations coming through your holiday pipeline – use this information to your advantage.

Tell your audience through social media or email marketing that you have something cool coming soon and to stay tuned.

Provide your audience with hints and clues of an upcoming promotion to hold their interest. Once your influencer campaign has dropped informed your audience that the promotion is live by using campaign specific links and hashtags.

Selling a product? Drive your audience to influencer content to access a promotion code for discounts.

2. Sponsor Influencer Content

Many marketers are advocates of organic reach and engagement, but when an influencer creates authentic content during a highly competitive in of year, paid boost shouldn’t be frowned upon. However, a strategic approval to ad spending needs to be considered.

Internally, marketers should discuss the best channels for advertising. This largely depends on the audience you wish to reach. Does it make more sense to repurpose the influencer’s content on owned channels or should you work with the influencer to promote the content on their channels?

3. Talk to the Media  

Media outlets, traditional or online, love great angles for holiday-specific content. You’ve worked hard to develop a unique influencer marketing campaign so now you should be thinking who else would be interested in this?

For example, perhaps you developed an influencer holiday shopping challenge. How could this be spun for traditional media? Pitch outlets a few angles:

• How to get your holiday shopping done in 1 day
• Challenge: Finding amazing holiday gifts for under $100
• 5 of the must-buy holiday gifts for 2017

Use this as an alternative channel to insert influencer campaign content. Use influencers imagery or videos and links to their channels with the campaign specific content.

Creating a media worthy angle for an industry is possible with a little brainstorming and the right outreach strategy.

4. Blog or Vlog About it

Similar to the last tip for media outlets, think about how you can repurpose your influencer marketing initiatives to create a blog or vlog content for owned channels.

Using the example above of an influencer holiday shopping challenge. Think of ways you can repurpose this internally. Create a staff holiday shopping challenge and write or create a video about their experience. This could be great content to link to influencer content to increase awareness.

5. Retarget to the Influencer’s Audience  

Without taking away from the effect of your well-crafted influencer marketing campaign, there’s an opportunity to enhance awareness by marketing to an alike audience for the duration of the influencer campaign.

For this to be effective you must have a good understanding of your influencers existing audiences and platforms.

If your influencers are marketing a specific product (let’s use shoes for this example) to their audience, you should create ad content about the same shoe(s) and target your influencer’s audience. This way after the influencer’s audience is exposed to your brand offering you have the opportunity to remind them how to purchase. This is a great tactic in case the influencer call-to-action was missed or as a means of retargeting.

These are just a few ways you can enhance your influencer marketing campaigns this holiday season. Have any more ideas? We’d love to hear them in the comments below. :)

(image source: Uberflip)

Don’t get us wrong, content virality is a very competitive space. However, by implementing a few tips and tricks you’re well-crafted content has a good chance of creating the viral impact your hunting for.

The following 5 tips will help your content hit the web’s trending charts:

1. Tell an Authentic Story

The world of social media brought us all the gift of authenticity. It’s opened an easy access the door for consumers to communicate their personal experiences with brands. And in turn, this easy access door makes it more difficult for companies to cut corners or fall short of promised expectations. Selling authenticity is mandatory for brands looking to stand out from competitors and a key ingredient of creating viral content.

Being authentic online starts by digging deep into the core of what your brand stands for. Whether you’re selling shoes, timeshares or puppies, your brand’s story, motives and partnerships are what sets it apart from the competition. Telling your story honestly and openly is the best way to encourage interest and engagement in a viral campaign.

Creating authentic content can also be achieved by partnering with a cause or movement that aligns with your brand. A quick example of this would be a bra company creating content in support of Breast Cancer Awareness.

2. Know the Trends

Timing is everything – especially when it comes to the creation and delivery of content. Virality and timing go together like the ice and the bucket in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.  Seasons, current events and online trends all must be considered in the content planning process. Do you think the ALS Challenge would have pulled in the same amount of participants if they launch the campaign in the dead of winter? Probably not.

It’s even possible to spot trends before they happen. Using software like ivvi will help brands pinpoint content opportunities and upcoming trends before they go viral.

3. Short & Sweet

On that note, let’s keep this section short. Online audiences are exposed to thousands of different pieces of content across numerous platforms daily. And because of this, attention spans have grown short. Content must be quick and powerful to catch a viral impact.

• Get the point across in fewer words or seconds.
• Use a clear call-to-action.
• Create catchy headlines and/or caption copy.
• Encourage social sharing.
• Use awesome creative.

4. Tap into the power of influence

There is no doubt that content can go viral on its own (mostly due to precise timing). But timing isn’t the only way to create virality online. Partnering with influencers is a great way to fuel a campaign’s reach, awareness and push content onto trending charts.

The key to partnering with influencers is selecting the best-suited individuals or outlets to speak to a campaign. These individuals should be relatable to the brand/story being told. And their audience should resonate with the content as well.

The ivvi software helps brands with the influencer research and vetting process to ensure the best partnerships are formed to promote a piece of content or larger scale campaign.

5. Distribution & Participation

Before the content is complete and ready to take the internet by storm, a distribution plan must be in place. This tip ties in with all of the others above.

• Who would be interested in your story? Share it with them.
• Engage with similar trending content and share your story.
• Much like the content created, when sharing keep it short and sweet.
• Share and engage with influencer content as well.

But your distribution plan shouldn’t stop there. In the planning process ask your team, “how can this piece of content tie into other marketing initiatives?” Send it to your clients and customers via email. Share the content on social media. Work it into a public relations plan. The opportunities for distribution are endless. Plan early and deliver hard.

What tips and tricks do you use when creating awesome content?

But how much money can be made? Millions! A few of the top YouTube influencers pull in more money than talk show hosts and athletes.

Surprised? Probably not, if you’re a marketer attempting to reach millennials because there’s a good chance you know some millennial find YouTube stars more relatable than traditional celebrities.  40% of people say they’ve purchased an item online after seeing it used by an influencer on YouTube.

How Much Do YouTube Influencers Make?

If you do a quick google search, it’s easy to find estimates of how much the top YouTubers make per year. You might want to sit down for this, but below is a snapshot of the top 5 richest video personalities on YouTube:

1. PewDiePie – Estimated income for 2017: $15 Million
2. Roman Atwood – Estimated income for 2017: $8 Million
3. Lilly Singh – Estimated income for 2017: $7.5 Million
4. Smosh – Estimated income for 2017: $7 Million
5. Rosanna Pansino – Estimated income for 2017: $6 Million
   

If you want to research potential earnings of any YouTube influencer, even your own personal YouTube channel you can! The screen grab below is from Influencer Marketing Hub (which kindly featured ivvi on their website).

You simply insert any YouTube channel name or a video url and voila, this interactive chart will provide earning estimates.

For example purposes, we populated the YouTube Money Calculator with Lilly Singh’s YouTube channel – Superwoman and  one of her most viewed videos, “How to be a YouTube Star – (ft. The Rock).

The calculator estimates Lilly’s YouTube career has bank her over $5 million with an average earning of $8,000 per video.

Her video with The Rock brought in over 13 million views along with an estimated $24,000. Remember these numbers are estimates and don’t not reflect an influencers actual earnings.

The calculator uses four main categories to estimate earnings:

• CPM vs CPC
• Estimated gross earnings per 1,000 views
• Estimated earnings per subscriber
• Estimated earning based on video engagement

How Much Should You Pay a YouTube Influencer?

Though knowing the potential income of online influencers is interesting, many marketers are more interested in knowing how much a brand should pay an influencer for a campaign.

How much you should pay a YouTuber is a loaded question. There are many facets to consider.

• Type of campaign/promotion (goals and objective)  
• Tier of influencer (popularity, content quality, engagement levels, growth rate, etc)
• Content expectations (number of posts, duration, brand mentions, quality, etc)

Most marketers will review subscribers, video frequency, engagement and growth rate to determinate the value of promotion content with a specific influencer. However, a brand’s internal influencer campaign payment structure isn’t as easily Googled as a YouTuber’s salary.  

Like all business, how much you should pay a YouTuber comes down to negotiation. However, you need to know your budget’s limit and play within to ensure you bring in a return on investment.

Using software and tools, like ivvi can help you evaluate influencers by tracking their performance, video quality and comparing them to other influencers. This way, when you do approach them about a campaign partnership you have a good understand of how valuable their personality and content is to your brand.

We’d love to hear about your influencer campaign experiences. How do you evaluated how to pay an influencer? Shoot us an email – vanessa@influencerstrategies.com

Using the ivvi platform, we tracked four campaigns from 2017 that are generating a lot of brand engagement.

No two campaigns are alike, from soda pop to makeup, the following four brands have developed unique influencer marketing campaigns that all marketers should check out.

1. Fanta Soda – Meet the Fantanas

Why this Works:

Coca Cola’s Fanta marketing campaigns live by the saying “consistency is key”. The Meet the Fantanas campaign has been a part of the company’s marketing efforts since 2010. Over the years, the campaign has evolved from commercial ads, television segments to a now largely social media presence, including its casted stars.

The soda brand’s fourth launch of the Meet the Fantanas campaign leverages YouTube celebrities, MyLifeAsEve, LaurDIY, Jordan Fisher, and Coco Jones. By casting some of the internet’s biggest influencers in their content, the brand is reaching new larger audiences and attaining more brand engagements which could not be generated with traditional advertising efforts. Each of the influencers shared video and photo content of the brand campaign to their social channels which reached over a million organic engagements combined.

Fanta’s was able to leverage an old campaign and shift its audience by tapping into influencer marketing.

 2. Fashion Nova – If you build it they will come

Why this Campaign Works:

Fashion Nova is a brand that tapped into the power of influencer marketing early on. The company grew its business to 600 employees in three short years, mainly because of its social media presence.

“We work with 3,000 to 5,000 influencers,” said Fashion Nova’s founder and CEO, Richard Saghian. Many of these influencers are recurring brand ambassadors that post frequently about the new products. Many of the influencers receive compensation of new clothing rather than money. The company measures the effectiveness of the influencers by analyzing their reach, engagement and by providing each of them with unique check out discount codes.   

The brand is continuously looking for new influencers to add to its roster, like Patricia Bright in the video above. She created a non-sponsored review video of some of Fashion Nova’s products and within weeks of the video being published she was contacted by the brand and shipped out new clothes to create another video. This shows the brand sees a lot of value in influencer marketing tactics as they are actively involved in finding new influencers to act as brand advocates. 

Other brands should take note of Fashion Nova’s tactics. There are most likely people already talking about your brand online. Find those influencers first. As you know their community is your target audience.

With such great success with influencer marketing, Fashion Nova shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

3. Starbucks Unicorn Frappuccino – Social Media Takeover

Why this Campaign Works:

Say what you will about the Starbucks Unicorn Frappuccino, taste preference aside, one thing can’t be argued – its marketing was executed flawlessly. The limited-time offered frozen drink (April 19 to April 23) captured public attention instantly. Besides organic buzz from in-store marketing, the standard media release, and a few ad campaigns, how did Starbucks take over the internet, increase sales, and heighten brand awareness in less than a week? Not just with any marketing but with Influencer Marketing.

If you head over to YouTube now and search “Starbucks Unicorn Frappuccino” or “Unicorn Frappuccino” over 200,000 videos will pop up for April 19 to April 23 alone. That’s a whole lot of brand related content to be published in just a few days and this is no mistake.

In the weeks, even months prior to their sweet sugary release of the unicorn Frappuccino, Starbucks reached out to an array of YouTube personalities to create and release product related videos during the five-day campaign. The campaign was mentioned by a few of YouTube’s top influencers, including iJustine, Miranda Sings, Aleshia Marie and Joey Graceffa, which garnered the brand over 5 million organic views from those influencers alone.

Starbucks scored millions of dollars in free advertising in a short period of time. Though Starbucks has yet to release formal statements of their marketing budget on this specific campaign, the amount of organic social media content and media coverage alone indicates Starbucks return on investment was well worth it.

 4. Glossier – Everyday people, everyday influence

Why this campaign works:

Glossier, the New York City makeup brand, was created back in 2014 by 29-year-old, Emily Weiss. The company has grown quickly in short time and the founding woman says it has everything to do with word-of-mouth marketing. The brand partners with influencers over celebrities as it wants to partner with “regular” women who truly believe in their products.  The brand uses a referral program allowing digital influencers to offer special discounts and incentives to their loyal communities.

Outside of partnering with social media influencers to market their product, Glossier leverages influencers to make own content on their YouTube channel as well, such as the video above.

The brand combines a popular YouTube content trend, “my morning routine” with influencers to create marketing video content. This allows brand fans to watch “regular” women try out new Glossier products in the comfort of their own homes. 

Weiss says, “What’s very motivating to us is this idea of every single woman being an influencer.” And with a bold statement like that, it seems as though Glossier will be sticking to this influencer marketing tactic.  

Ready to launch an influencer marketing campaign?

We’re here to help you create smart influencer marketing campaigns that are backed by data to maximize your return on investment! Interested in learning how our leading software can help? Contact us for a demo. In the meantime, here is a free influencer insights report to get you motivated: https://influenceforimpact.com/2017-influencer-marketing-insights-report/ 

Luckily, many fearless marketers have dove into the deep end of influencer marketing campaigns and have discovered some great insights and key findings.

Here are 15 of our favourite Influencer & Video Marketing stats from the last year.

Influencer Marketing:

1. Customers acquire through influencer marketing are 37% more retainable. (Source)

2. 50% of people rely on influencer recommendations. (Source)

3. Influencers in the 30K – 300K follower range can offer the best combination of engagement and reach. (Source)

4. 54% of influencers say they will work with brands who respect them as they would any other publisher. (Source)

5. Influencers generate 60% more conversion than standard ads. (Source)

6. Influencer campaigns have proven effective to over 80% of marketers. (Source)

7. Data backed influencers ads earn $20 for every $1. (source)

8. 92% of people trust recommendations from individuals over brands. (Source)

Video Marketing:

9. Shoppers who view video are 1.81X more likely to purchase. (Source)

10. 50% of internet users watch product videos before visiting a store. (Source)

11. 48% of marketers plan to add YouTube to their content strategy. (Source)

12. 60% of marketers say video content has the best ROI. (Source)

13. Nearly two-thirds of consumers prefer video under 60 seconds. (Source)

14. Nearly 70% of millennials use ad blockers. (Source)

15. 45% of people watch more than an hour of YouTube videos a week. (Source)