Chapter 10: Influencers
The reason we recommend working with both micro and macro influencers for a promotional campaign is due to risk mitigation. Influencer partnerships can be wickedly variable in their success rates, so you always want to try and hedge your bets, and never put all your eggs in one basket. There’s also an advantage to casting a wider net with your influencers in terms of brand awareness. If you run promotions with multiple influencers in the same niche, there’s a high chance those people have some follower overlap, meaning customers will see your ad more than once. This drastically increases the chance of retention and brand awareness.
When setting up an influencer campaign, we like to use a gradient scale when determining budget allocation based on audience size. Take a look at this sample breakdown by influencer size, assuming we have $100,000 to spend on promotions for the next month:
1x 3.5M+ Followers, $30,000
3x 750K+ Followers, $10,000/each ($30,000)
8x 200K+ Followers, $5,000/each ($40,000)
If you’re a math guy, this distribution loosely follows a y=1/x + 1 relationship. If not, don’t sweat it. The basic idea is to spread your money out, like you would in any other investment strategy. Like we mentioned, your biggest risk mitigation tactic is quantity. Some influencer promos will be great, and some will flop. This is why it’s important to hedge your bets with a somewhat even distribution of budget across different influencer sizes (macro vs. micro).
Influencer promotion pricing can get pretty extreme, especially if you’re dealing with macro influencers who have strong engagement. When discussing a promotion with an influencer or their agency, you will be provided a “rate sheet”, detailing specific costs for different types of promotions. These rates are typically updated weekly by the agent, with rates adjusting based on current engagement rates and if the influencer is desired by many brands for promotions due to their status in the culture (we call this “popping off”).