Influencer marketing is currently enjoying exponential success across social media. However, trends don’t convince businesses to make a move. Finances do. There’s always the matter of influencer marketing profit that can tip the scale as a standalone decision-making factor within any company.
Let’s face it. Brands engage in any activity or strategy as long as projects have high chances to produce positive ROI. Best case scenario, the budget you spent should be dwarfed by the earnings it produces.
An extremely seductive statistic makes the rounds of the Internet lately: each dollar that goes into influencer marketing generates $6.50 in revenue. However, this is the tip of the iceberg. For a more in-depth look at how influencer marketing truly performs, we’ll need to dive deeper and see what lies underneath the pretty numbers.
In this post, you’ll learn everything about the financial side of the new digital marketing – from what influencers charge to the quality of their leads.
Let’s start slowly. Where does the industry stand in respect of influencer marketing?
First of all, numerous surveys have determined the state of digital marketing by interviewing marketers about their plans. What they discovered are clear signs of evolution that reduce social media ads, CPC strategies, and online banners down to traditional marketing.
The new face of digital marketing focuses on those creators on social media that produce fascinating content years on end. Their work in industries like beauty, traveling, sports, photography, journalism, and other fields of interest wins over tens of thousands of followers. What results is an online community that shares certain passions.
This new source of content that social media shaped is attracting more and more marketers. In fact, 70% of U.S. marketing agencies are set to increase their budgets for influencer campaigns at some point in the following 12 months.
Such budget restructuring is actually mirroring the latest trends in the industry. Marketers are going to invest more in order to augment the potential of influencer marketing profit.
In most cases, social media creators agree on sponsored posts under one condition: to do their own material. From coming up with the concept all the way to publishing the finished promotional post, influencers are free to design how they present the brand to their community.
This practice makes sense since creators are the only ones who know what clicks with their audiences. However, exclusive access to a niche community and original content come with a price.
Let’s see what the cost of jumpstarting influencer marketing profit looks like according to followers and social platform:
Disclaimer: These rates are just rough figures. Use these suggestions to have a starting point in your negotiations. Most likely, fees are going to differ from one account to another despite their similarities in stats. Here are the factors that add value to your collaboration:
To get the most of your influencer marketing profit, a campaign doesn’t limit to influencer fees. On the contrary, there are further costs that round up the investment:
4. ROI under the Magnifying Glass
We clarified from the head start that each dollar invested in influencer marketing returns $6.50. However, there’s more to it than that.
The top 13% of marketing teams that leveraged the influencer power are actually able to turn that dollar into $20 or more. We can only assume that these brands have been keeping an eye on organic social media practices since the beginning. Moreover, they are fiercely micro-managing their projects and turn to visual innovation to generate more brand awareness.
By contrast, the vast majority of the surveyed teams (70%) earn at least $2. While this seems to be the standard influencer marketing profit, this new digital marketing branch still delivers positive ROI.
The rest of the 17% register either neutral or negative ROI. However, the very fact that you are here, documenting the reasons why you should launch an influencer marketing campaign, certifies that you won’t fall short of expectations.
The influencer marketing profit is also conditional on the quality of the leads influencers activate.
A high number of new prospects coming from a Facebook ad might get your hopes up. However, a cold ad will encourage only a small percentage of them to venture deeper down the sales funnel.
By contrast, 51% of marketers noticed that their work with influencers attracts loyal customers. In other words, a creator might not generate the numbers that Facebook is capable of. However, quality prevails over quantity in the world of influencers, and a few leads can increase sales numbers more.
Even though creators merely mention the brand in a promotional post, their input isn’t considered cold outreach. On the contrary, followers are already certain that their favorite accounts recommend the best products only.
As a result, marketers receive the best of attention for a minimum of effort. Consequently, the industry finally found a solution to the persuasive and obtrusive practices traditional digital marketing used to rely on.
Work smarter not harder. Nowadays, companies expect marketers to be proficient in sales, PR, paid and organic social, SEO, lead generation, social platforms, etc.
Nonetheless, these skills can easily reach advanced mode overnight. All you need to do is take advantage of tools powered by teams of professionals. Here’s a rundown of the best innovations you can tap into right now from our Flaminjoy platform:
All in all, influencer marketing profit has high chances to take your marketing team by surprise. Signs are everywhere. The bulk of marketing budgets migrating towards influencers, ROI almost always on the positive side, and with lots of automatic solutions around – the financial case of influencer marketing looks promising already.
Next time Influencer Marketing makes a move, you'll be the first to know!
