The Ultimate Guide to Instagram Influencer Marketing
If you are into business and have an Instagram and have been pondering using Influencer Marketing to boost your sales, right now is the perfect time to do so. And how do you weigh in influencers to drive traffic, increase your follower base, shoot up your brand awareness, and power up paramount sales? This guide will lay you out a comprehensive look at what you should do to roll your business strategy through Instagram influencer marketing.
What is Influencer Marketing?
An influencer marketing is a dominant form of mainstream and social media marketing comprising product placements and endorsements from influencers (also known as internet celebrities), who have a following in a well-defined vocation that may or may not be related to your business. These influencers can sway the purchasing selection because of their knowledge, status, power, or connection with their audience. It is a collaboration between an influencer and your business to make your product trend and encourage their followers to make avail of them.
Why use Instagram for Influencer Marketing?
Instagram played quite a significant role in making the headway in influencers in the last decade. These internet celebrities are sometimes known as “Instagrammers.” If you have already determined by now that carrying out your business campaign through Instagram is your best option, let’s check the reasons why choose the platform.
Instagram is the third most widely-used social media platform in the U.S. behind YouTube and Facebook. With more than 1 billion users worldwide, Instagram’s massive reach is one reason for using this particular platform to be useful in your marketing strategy.
While those with 1,000-100,000 followers, also known as micro-influencers, are best to drive your sales up. And 92% of influencers prefer Instagram as their networking platform.
Instagram also has the highest engagement ratio, evaluated as the average number of interactions per post per a thousand followers. The number on Instagram is at 29.67 average engagements versus Facebook’s 16.54.
Standard Instagram Influencer Tiers
The yardstick way of categorizing Instagram Influencers is based on the number of their followers. The tiers are as follows:
Nano - 1,000-10,000 followers
Micro - 10,000-50,000 followers
Mid - 50,000-500,000 followers
Macro - 500,000-1,000,000 followers
Mega - 1,000,000+ followers
Cost of Instagram Influencer Marketing
In the earlier days, influencer endorsements come with the price of a free product. But those days are long gone now to most of them. However, some nano and micro-influencers are still willing to receive VIP treatments, free products, and other brand incentives other than a monetary exchange.
The influencer’s price tag highly varies according to their number of followers. And there is no perfect cost computation. An Instagram influencer could charge $10 per post, per 1000 followers. And depending on the medium used and your negotiating skills, you may keep the price at a minimum, especially when availing of packages that might include Instagram stories that are the cheapest medium for a few reasons. They could ask for $2 up to $200 per story as they are only temporary (24 hours) and easy to create. Image and video posts range from $200- $300 and $500 upwards respectively for micro-influencers. Nano-influencers (1,000 to 10,000 followers) could charge less while those with more than 1 million followers (mega influencers) could charge $10,000 per post.
Finding the right Influencers:
Check engagement rate
Fundamentally, you may check an influencer’s engagement rate through simple computation. The more likes and comments on his/her posts in ratio with the number of followers, the better. The calculation goes: divide the average number of likes and comments by the number of followers. Then multiply by 100 to get the percentage. A post with at least a 2%-3% engagement rate is what you would be looking for. At the same time, 10% and above would already be considered a viral post.
Determine their niche
As an example: let’s say you sell baby products, you wouldn’t partner up with an Architectural designer influencer. You should collaborate with Moms and maybe family influencers. Check their posts if they are consistent with the brand image you want to promote.
Peek at previous sponsorship’s
By checking the influencers past sponsors, you can get a glimpse of what a partnership with the influencer would be like
Search for brand and relative hashtags
If you’ve been in the business for quite some time now, you may search for influencers who might be using or availing of your product. Check them out if they would match your marketing strategy. Likewise, search for relative hashtags. An influencer might have tried a specific product that might be willing to partner with a brand.
Brand Marketing Campaign
Now that you have chosen your endorser/s and are ready to carry out your Instagram Influencer Marketing strategy, these are some of the most popular types of campaigns you may see fit for your marketing goals:
Raffles/Contests
Send out free products to your chosen influencer/s for giveaways, raffles, or contests. This method is perfect for engaging more audiences and gaining more following for your product.
Paid Post
The basic strategy of Instagram influencer marketing is a paid post. You pay the influencer for only featuring your brand through stories, images, or video posts.
Product Review
You may sponsor a review of your brand. Ensure the influencer will be as honest as possible to target the audience's brand awareness, drawing up potential customers’ buying decisions.
Brand Ambassador Program
Creating your influencer into your brand ambassador can be a significant asset for your business. You are providing him/her with an additional incentive when products are sold through direct endorsements like coupons and discount codes. These would promote brand awareness and followers engagement.
After going through the process, tracking your brand’s marketing campaign’s progress will be your next step. Monitor results if you are selling more, losing more, or no changes at all. Your analysis of the whole strategy will be your basis if you need to improve, change, or upgrade your campaign.