Influencer marketing is an increasingly popular marketing tactic, yet many brands hesitate to use it due to budget restrictions. When combined with appropriate tactics such as social media influencers or user-generated content (UGC), however, influencer marketing can provide substantial results even on a limited budget.
Set clear expectations with your influencers before beginning, such as campaign timeline and deliverable requirements. Discuss payment structure and terms–be it one-off fee, product-only arrangement or performance-based compensation.
1. Team Up With Other Brands
With limited funds at your disposal, it is wise to be prudent when allocating it. Instead of making snap decisions and targeting big influencers immediately, take time to look at your overall marketing goals first – such as increasing sales or improving customer retention – then decide how best to approach influencers with packages for them.
Find influencers that match these objectives and are open to working with brands of all sizes – this might include employees, brand ambassadors, niche community members or existing customers who love your products – who you can then utilize their content in different campaigns; perhaps by asking them to write blog posts or social media posts about how well your product has worked for them.
Create a giveaway campaign through influencer marketing where they promote your product to their followers and give them the chance to win it, engaging your target audience while still remaining cost effective. This strategy can help generate significant interest while still remaining affordable.
Whenever partnering with creators, it’s essential that both parties clearly establish their project scope and expectations beforehand. This includes setting deadlines for content submissions, delivery dates and payment terms as well as which metrics you will use to measure success during and post campaign – this ensures everyone involved stays on the same page and can quickly make adjustments if necessary.
Influencers will require access to your products in order to create content. For instance, if you sell multicolored mascara and an influencer wants to demonstrate how it applies on different eye colors, each shade must be sent separately – this can become quite expensive with multiple high-value items!
One way of approaching this problem is collaborating with other brands that sell complementary products, and joining forces on projects together. For instance, skincare brands could collaborate with indie makeup lines to produce tutorial videos or blog posts about using both lines together. Influencers usually welcome working with multiple brands simultaneously because their audiences overlap significantly.
2. Offer a Specialty Product
Influencer marketing may seem costly, but you can use influencer marketing on a smaller budget by selecting an influencer with whom you have an alliance and offering them incentives tailored specifically to your business – such as offering them discounts or even creating something exclusive that they can use with your brand.
Influencer marketing gives businesses an exceptional way to reach a highly targeted and engaged consumer group. When setting out an influencer marketing campaign, begin by setting your goal and working backwards from there to identify metrics which will indicate whether or not your campaign was a success.
If your budget is tight, target micro-influencers with niche followings that correspond well with your product or service. For instance, if you sell gardening kits for flowers, partnering with an influencer who shares an enthusiasm for growing plants might be ideal.
Once you’ve selected influencers to partner with, create a media kit showcasing all that your brand offers them and containing photos of products. This is an effective way of introducing yourself and building their trust as advocates of your brand.
Product seeding is one of the least-expensive ways to introduce new customers to your products, but planning ahead is essential. Determine how many products will be sent out to creators, estimate pricing per item, then multiply this figure by their numbers plus shipping costs – then send out.
Offering free trials can increase the number of people willing to endorse and promote your product. This strategy can especially benefit new customers who might otherwise hesitate to purchase full-sized versions immediately.
Conversion tracking can also help increase ROI, providing insight into which influencers and campaigns are driving the most revenue for your business.
3. Ask for a Discount
Influencer marketing may have taken social media and business by storm, yet it remains relatively new. Due to this newness, most influencers associate influencer marketing with having deep pockets; however, with some creativity and smart strategies influencers can still deliver substantial results without breaking the bank.
As part of your initial step in setting up a campaign, the first thing to consider when setting a budget is your spending limit. There are numerous variables to keep in mind here including number of influencers you will work with, their fee rates and shipping costs. Once your budget has been decided upon it will become much simpler to choose appropriate creators for your campaign.
Another way to reduce expenses is by selecting only key influencers for your campaign, thereby eliminating unnecessary expenditure on posts that won’t likely be effective. Instead, focus on micro influencers with smaller followings who may be willing to work for products instead of money.
If your budget allows, it would also be wise to set aside a portion of it to boost influencer posts shared by them and your target audience. By doing this, boosting posts increases their chance of seeing and purchasing your product or service.
Based on your goals, it’s also vitally important to monitor and measure the success of your campaign. Doing this allows you to determine which creators and types of content make an impactful statement about who their creators and content really are – information which you can then use for future improvements on future campaigns.
Incfile’s Influencer Income and Expense Tracker makes budgeting simple; keeping your numbers organized. Swara Ahluwalia, a freelance content writer who has written for various lifestyle brands. When she’s not writing, Swara enjoys running marathons and spending time with her two daughters. Follow her on Twitter!
4. Negotiate
Step one in creating long-term relationships with influencers is negotiating rates, which may seem intimidating at first but is actually quite simple when equipped with the appropriate tools and strategies.
Create a template that clearly outlines who your brand is, what product/service is being sold and the results that they should expect from you. This will help set expectations and reduce confusion for both parties while making your pitch look more professional and credible.
Be honest when negotiating with influencers; don’t hide behind budget constraints as this won’t prevent you from offering them some perks that add value to the campaign. Influencers will appreciate being open about their finances, which increases their likelihood of working with you again in future projects.
Brands who prefer performance-based pricing often use performance-based fees as this allows them to analyse post-campaign data more thoroughly, paying creators according to conversions generated. It’s an especially great solution when working on tight budgets as performance-based fees offer greater flexibility while enabling you to scale and measure campaigns more easily than traditional flat fees.
Influencers often ask for significantly less than they’re worth. While it might be tempting to pursue this opportunity immediately, remember that doing so won’t build strong relationships. Instead, offer additional perks or products they can promote on social channels for extra compensation than they asked for.
If you’re not able to meet an influencer’s rate, leverage their reach or likeness through social competitions or sweepstakes that give them the opportunity to win one of your products, driving traffic back to their followers as well as your website and brand.