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Influencer marketing has effectively taken the world of social media by storm.
General users love to see content from influencers, and businesses want to collaborate with influencers to sell their products and services. There are all sorts of ways to optimize your marketing strategy, and influencer marketing is a great way to take your business to the next level.
No matter who you are, influencer marketing probably has a pretty significant impact on your social media experience…if not on your life in general.
Before going any further you might be thinking, “how can this strategy be implemented in a SaaS or subscription business?”
With the fairly recent rise in influencer marketing, we realize you likely have some questions about all of the whys and hows of the business. If you’re feeling at all lost or confused, don’t worry.
We get it, and we’re here to help!
Keep reading to see our answers to some basic, common questions about influencer marketing and how you can incorporate this in your SaaS or subscription business:
What Is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is a promotional tool that businesses employ by collaborating with social media influencers. In these collaborations, influencers receive money and/or free products from the companies they work with. In exchange, the influencers post about the companies and the products/services that they provide.
Since influencers have high numbers of followers on their social media accounts, their advertisements for various brands reach a lot of people. This generates more brand awareness and business for companies, especially since people focus so much of their attention on social media.
There are different levels to influencer marketing within the field, though. Let’s take a look at the various brackets that influencers fall into.
Mega Influencers
Mega influencers are the influencers who have the highest followings and make the most money. (Shocker, right?)
These influencers are commonly categorized as having a minimum of 500,000 to a million followers, which means that many mega influencers are celebrities outside of the realm of social media as well. For example, many mega influencers are popular actors or athletes.
In 2023, these influencers typically make around $10,000 per Instagram post. Their services are of high value, since so many audiences are reached by the messages that they publish. So, they are pricey to work with, but if a big-time brand is willing to pay for the advertisement provided by a mega influencer, the resulting benefits are likely to be high.
Macro Influencers
Macro influencers generally fall in the middle of the various levels of influencers, although their audiences are typically on the larger side. These influencers are well-known on social media, especially within the world of influencers. However, they aren’t big-time celebrities like mega influencers are.
When an influencer has somewhere between 150,000 and 500,000 followers, they’re classified as a macro influencer. These influencers are great to work with since being an influencer is usually their primary job. This means that they’ll place a lot of focus on advertising your brand.
Macro influencers usually make between $5,000 and $10,000 per post on Instagram. Similar to mega influencers, macro influencers can be expensive to work with, but they’ll help you to reach a notably wide audience.
Micro Influencers
Micro influencers appeal to smaller audiences, but they’re known for having more personal pages. Many times, since these influencers target smaller audiences, they go for a more specific niche of followers as well. So, if you’re looking to work with an influencer who impacts a very specific community, a micro influencer could be the way to go (that being said, not all micro influencers target a specific niche).
Micro influencers usually have between 1,000 and 100,000 followers. Since these influencers have a smaller number of followers, they’re often known for creating social media pages that are built around community. Micro influencers commonly try to encourage conversation and friendship among their followers as well as taking the time to get to know their followers personally.
Micro influencers typically make anywhere between $100 and $500 per Instagram post, so they’re more affordable to work with than mega influencers or macro influencers. If you’re looking to get your brand name out to a significant amount of people, micro influencers can definitely help you do this. And, your brand will likely then be associated with a friendly, community atmosphere.
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Why Use Influencer Marketing For Subscription Businesses
So, we’ve talked about some important details within the world of influencer marketing, but you might still be wondering why you should consider exploring this opportunity. So, let’s take a look at some of the benefits that come from using influencer marketing.
Brand Awareness
It’s pretty obvious from the information in the last section that working with an influencer can help you to get the word out about your brand. The primary goal of social media influencers is to reach wide audiences and promote products and services to these people.
So, by having an influencer promote your product or service, you’re putting your brand in the hands of someone who will work hard to make sure that people know about it. No matter which level of influencer you work with, your business will reach the social media feeds of a significant amount of followers.
As people begin to see promotions for your brand, they’ll take note of your business, thereby increasing brand awareness for you. As more people hear about your brand and become curious about it, your website and social media pages will begin to see an increase in traffic as well.
Just think about it…The more you hear about something, the more interesting you become in finding out more. That means that having an influencer promote your brand will increase awareness of it in the general public. And, an increase in popularity will lead to an increase in sales.
User Generated Content
Another great benefit to working with influencers is that they often encourage “user generated content” (ugc) among followers. UGC refers to, as you might have guessed, social media content that is created not by influencers, but by general users of sites — the followers of influencers, in other words.
One great example of influencer-promoted UGC is contests that influencers commonly like to host with followers. Let’s say your brand partners with an influencer to promote a new package that you’re selling. The influencer might host a giveaway contest for their followers in order to promote your business and your product.
To enter the contest, followers might be required to follow the influencer, follow you, post about your new package on their page, and tag the influencer’s account and your account in the post. Then, they’d be entered in a drawing, and the winner would receive the package for free for a month.
Contests and giveaways like these are fabulous forms of advertisement because not only is a popular influencer posting about your brand, but their followers are posting about your brand as well. This means that the followers’ followers will hear about your account, which further increases brand awareness.
Additionally, requiring users to follow your brand on social media in order to enter the contest guarantees a boost in followers. This means that you will then have a larger audience to market to on social media, as well.
Increase Traffic And Followers
While influencer-hosted contests are certainly effective in increasing traffic on your page, you’ll also see changes in your page traffic and follower count just from having an influencer post about your products and services.
When you partner with an influencer, your brand immediately gains credibility. Influencers’ followers trust them to promote brands that they truly like. So, when social media users hear their favorite influencers talking about your brand, instead of seeing a stand-alone advertisement for it, they’ll be more likely to take your brand more seriously.
It’s in the name: influencers are there to influence their followers. So, when a trusted social media figure tells their followers to check out your brand, you’re likely to see a notable uptick in traffic on your page. And, if people like what they see, odds are high that they’ll stick around to follow you and learn more about your brand.
Just remember that influencers are people, too. They’ve built their accounts on trust and relationships with their followers, so the people who follow influencers will take their messages seriously. That’s why having an influencer on your side is a fantastic asset!
How To Find Influencers
Influencers are present across various social media apps, but they’re most popular on Instagram and TikTok. So, if you’re looking to work with an influencer for a social media campaign, these apps are a good place to start.
Finding An Influencer On TikTok
If you’re looking to work with influencers on TikTok, there are a couple of ways you can go about finding them. One good way to find an influencer that’s right for your brand is through a TikTok account search on the “discover” page on TikTok.
The discover page features a search bar where you can look up accounts by username. This is helpful if you already have some influencers in mind that you’re thinking about working with. Using the same search bar, you can also search for hashtags. This will help you find posts in your niche, which can then lead you to influencers who work with your target audience.
Another way to find TikTok influencers is by using a TikTok search engine. There are many different options of TikTok search engines available online, and they all function a bit differently. But, some give you the chance to search for influencers with certain filters such as location or niche.
Finding An Influencer On Instagram
To find influencers on Instagram, we recommend doing a bit of searching on the app. For example, as we mentioned with TikTok, you can search various hashtags on Instagram.
By searching a hashtag that applies to your brand or industry, you’ll find all of the posts that have been published with that hashtag. From here, you can look through the most popular posts and find influencers that work with your primary audience.
You can also look into the Instagram influencers that have previously partnered with brands in your industry. By finding previous Instagram influencer marketing campaigns within your niche, you’ll be able to get an idea for how a particular influencer works and whether you’re interested in contacting them.
What To Look For In An Influencer
When considering which influencer you’d like to work with, there are a few important things that you should take into consideration. It’s an important decision, and you want to make sure that you make the best choice for the success of your brand.
The first factor that you should consider when looking into various influencers is whether an influencer has the same target audience that your brand has. As we’ve touched on already, it’s important for an influencer to promote your products/services to people who will be interested in purchasing them. So, the first thing you should do is ensure that an influencer works in the same niche as you.
Next, you’ll want to take prices into account. We threw out some general price ranges earlier, but exact price points will vary for each influencer. And, those numbers were for Instagram. TikTok prices tend to fluctuate more between influencers, since the influencer market is newer on that app. To find more specific pricing guidelines, you can always use an Instagram or TikTok money calculator.
Finally, ask yourself what kind of partnership you’re looking for. There are many ways to go about working with an influencer and running an influencer marketing campaign…Do you want to send free products for the influencer to sample and promote? Would you like to purchase one post for an influencer to advertise your product? Do you envision an ongoing relationship?
Make sure you have clear goals for the partnership and its outcome before you begin conversations with an influencer. This will allow you to start off your working relationship on the same page and work together toward success.
Successful Influencer Partnerships For Subscription Businesses
Now that we’ve covered the information you need on how and why to start an influencer marketing campaign, let’s take a quick look at some examples of subscription businesses that have successfully partnered with influencers:
1. Hello Fresh
HelloFresh is a meal-prep kit subscription service through which customers sign up to regularly receive ready-to-cook meals. In this partnership with TikTok influencer @acooknamedmatt, Chef Matt Broussard receives HelloFresh boxes and then films TikTok videos as he cooks the meals inside.
Not only does Chef Matt promote the subscription service through these fun videos, his caption also tells viewers that, through the link in his bio, they can subscribe to Hello Fresh at a discounted rate. This promotion further incentivizes followers to purchase the subscription.
2. Dollar Shave Club
In this influencer marketing campaign, the Dollar Shave Club subscription service partnered with Instagram micro influencer @ashleymariex24.
As noted on the post itself, this is a paid partnership, which means that Ash was paid to publish this promotional post for the service. In the photo, she’s shown using Dollar Shave Club products, and her caption invites all followers to try out the brand.
Ash specifically calls on men and women to use the product, so it’s clear that the partnering brand wanted this influencer marketing campaign to appeal to all audiences, rather than specifically to female or male followers.
3. IPSY
This IPSY partnership with TikTok macro influencer @avani is an example of a different style of influencer marketing.
Since Avani is such a well-known figure, it makes sense that she partnered with a large brand such as IPSY. In her video, Avani shows viewers what she received in her latest shipment from the makeup subscription service.
This post is a great example of a giveaway hosted through a brand-influencer partnership. As seen in the caption, Avani is advertising a free, yearlong subscription to IPSY, and she lays out the requirements to enter.
Time To Start Partnering
So, there you have it: our best guide to influencer marketing as it pertains to subscription businesses.
Now you know why it’s so important to collaborate with social media influencers and how you can get started on designing a social media campaign through an influencer partnership.
We hope that these tips and examples will inspire you to get a jumpstart on your social media campaign, and we’d love to hear all about whatever you end up creating! So, if you find this info helpful and you decide to work with an influencer, come back and tell us all about it — we’d love to hear how it goes!
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