In relatively new industries such as social media and influencer marketing, the subject of brand value, budgets, payments, and pricing can be ambiguous. Different creators, agencies, and even brands value their campaigns differently making it difficult to set a ‘standard’ in this industry. But how much should brands pay to hire an influencer, and how can this be calculated appropriately?
Let’s talk about history first. Did you know that Jesse Owens, the Afro-American athlete who won the gold medal at the 1936 Nazi Germany Olympics Games, is considered the first influencer? The well-known German sports company Adidas convinced the athlete to compete in their sports shoes. He accepted, ran, and won. Imagine the brand value that this partnership brought to the brand internationally.
Now, let’s look at a more recent example. Do you remember the popular selfie photo of Ellen DeGeneres with various famous actors during the Oscars in 2014? That photo was published in hundreds of publications and was shared thousands of times on social networks. What would you say if I tell you that that photo was part of a Samsung advertising campaign for its new phones and screens? Now you start to see the power of influencers on the brand.
Let’s bring it down to earth
Everything discussed previously is related to well-known brands and the world of actors, elite athletes, and celebrities. Their sponsorships are influential for brand image, but the stars, as their name suggests, are far from our consumers. The idea of George Clooney’s elegance while drinking coffee is significant for the brand, its advertisements can be original and remain stored in the viewer’s retina, but it doesn’t bring the product any closer to the customer.
In the last decade, a new negative phenomenon has appeared in advertising: Ad Blindness (also known as Banner blindness). It is a phenomenon in web usability where visitors to web users consciously or unconsciously ignore ad-like information, which can also be called banner noise. About 44% of the money spent on ads is wasted on ads that remain unviewed by website/social media visitors.
What’s the solution?
What is the solution to bring our products to customers in an attractive way? Influencers are not your friends, nor do you know them in person. They’re journalists, actresses, and famous people, but you follow them and identify yourself with their publications. They are passionate about different topics, who choose to share their particular vision of what they are passionate about on social networks. This very fact makes them experts capable of setting trends and generating changes in consumer habits.
However, if we sell athletic products, it is not worth hiring foodie influencers for our social media campaigns as their target audience differs from ours. An influencer is not a person who has a lot of followers on Instagram. Companies that hired influencers for their number of followers and not for their content quality have led to negative results in their image and wasted money. And how do we analyze its effectiveness?
To talk about effectiveness firstly, we need to speak about the Return On Advertising Spend. It is based on the Return Of Investment principle but shows the actual profit achieved per advertising expense in dollars. In many ways, ROAS is very similar to another essential marketing metric, return on investment (ROI), but It is usually used to evaluate your marketing’s overall effectiveness. ROAS, on the other hand, is typically used to evaluate the effectiveness of a specific campaign, ad group, ad, or even keyword.
The Bottom Line
To make an effective social media campaign, we need a channel, a list of trusted influencers, and a way to measure our results. Now, let me tell you about Creator.co, a platform where you can organize your campaigns, contact influencers in your niche, and measure your results. Collaborations made easy and efficient. Use this platform to discover creators and partner with them in minutes. Grow your Brand authentically with Creator.co!