What is influencer Marketing?
It’s all about getting your brand’s message out to a larger market by inspiring key influencers to get the word out for you. Basically it’s the modern day word of mouth.
Bloggers, Vloggers and social media influencers have huge volumes of loyal and engaged followers and an endorsement from them will promote your brand message to your target audience in a much more organic and natural way than traditional methods ever could.
What is an influencer?
At Press Loft, we classify a social influencer as someone with 2000+ genuine followers on at least one social channel: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube or Twitter.
We verify each new influencer registration in our system to ensure they are relevant for brand collaborations.
I’m new to this, where should I start?
The first step would be to determine your objectives; you need to identify your audience and budget (how much you are willing to pay to start collaborating with influencers) or you need to get prepare to run a giveaway/gift item to influencer and determine what you are going to give.
The second step would be to select the media channels that are the most beneficial to you and your business.
Then, you will need to brainstorm what would attract influencers (choose a bestseller product to have reviewed, organise a workshop with influencers, sponsored post…). Once you have defined all of those criteria, send a collaboration to Press Loft’s influencers network.
How much does it cost to send a collaboration alert on Press Loft?
This month, we are offering you a FREE collaboration alert! Start here
Think about objectives - what do you want to achieve?
If you’re new to working with influencers, a great way to dip your toe in the water is by sending a collaboration alert on Press Loft and offer to gift product(s) in return for a shoutout on social channels and/or a blog. Influencers who are interested in collaborating with you will send you a pitch, and you can simply select the entries you wish to work with.
Obviously, the more enticing the collab alert, the better the quality of applications you’ll receive, so if you’re after a large reach you might want to offer something over £50 retail value.
Click ‘Add Alert’ to get started
How should I entice influencers?
To achieve best results offer influencers a little something in return for promoting your product. For example…
Gift a Product
Give an influencer a product which they can style and share photos of, or maybe post as a product review.
Prize Giveaway
Provide a product for them to run as a competition giveaway to their own followers on a blog or social media. Get creative with the competition terms.. perhaps people have to re-post an image on instagram to enter, or share a photo with a special hashtag and tags.
Sponsored Post
This could be anything from paying for a shoutout on social media to a full blog post written about your store. Sponsored posts will attract much larger influencers and will therefore result in a greater and content quality. See here for some creative sponsored post ideas.
We recommend being creative with your approach and offering influencers a little something in return for promoting your product.
Be it a gifted product which they can share photos of or prost a review on, or a prize giveaway for their own followers, a sponsored post or an affiliate link revenue stream, the creativity of each campaign has no limits!
Would you like some help brainstorming ideas for your first collaboration alert? Get in touch we’d gladly help.
What kind of campaigns are possible with influencer marketing?
Once you start working with your chosen influencer, you can brainstorm ideas or, if you know what you’d like to do, then, present directly to the influencer. Campaigns could range from:
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Competition giveaways
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Product review
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Poll the influencer’s audience to help choose a design or new product
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Encourage sharing through lifestyle moments
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Promote a charitable or social cause with an incentive
What are some different ideas for sponsored posts?
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Product review (you ship the product to the influencer, and they will speak about that product on a blog post, IG, Facebook and mention your brand. Choosing the right social media channel is crucial as this will directly impact the results of your collaboration.)
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Store tour (have the influencer visit your shop/factory and share photos of their experience)
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Workshop (you create an event and invite influencers to be part of it and share experience on their social media channels)
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Giveaway competition (blog or social media)
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Photo share (you ship the product to the influencer and they use your product in a social media channel endorsement
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Contribute a blog post of your own (eg you could write a story on a particular trend in the market relevant to your category)
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Gift a product and ask them to style, photograph and share
The most successful sponsored posts are often those which don’t come across salesy and suit the influencers regular post style. Why not ask the influencer if they have any creative ideas of their own for promoting your product that fits in with their own style?
How much should I pay an influencer for a sponsored post?
Typically, sponsored social media, blog or youtube posts can start anywhere from 50 each (€, £, $), up to 1000 (€, £, $).
It’s a tricky one to define, as each campaign and influencer are very different, and average followings can vary dramatically per country (for example top blogs in Australia average 50k unique visitors per month, whereas in Malaysia unique visitors are over 150k).
We have put together a short guide below and think that you should be prepared to pay the following:
|
FOLLOWERS PER ACCOUNT |
RATE PER POST (£) |
|
3-20K |
£50-£100 |
|
20-100K |
£100-£300 |
|
100-250K |
£300-£400 |
|
200-500K |
£400-£700 |
|
500K+ |
£700+ |
If you’re still unsure, you could keep the sponsored amount blank on your alert and ask influencers to pitch to you with their preferred rate for the particular collaboration.
Can I include international influencers?
Yes! When you are sending a collaboration on Press Loft, you can select one country or choose to send that internationally. If you choose to send that internationally, your collaboration alert will be send to our entire influencer network.
What do the statistics on the influencer profile mean?
Domain Authority:
A ranking between 1 and 100 created by Moz (relevant for bloggers only)
You can find all the information about their ranking here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority
How do I accept a collaboration with an influencer?
Once some influencers have applied, you will see them listed in your collaboration area. You can either accept or decline an influencer application, or start a conversation with them first via the Messages area. Once you have agreed on the terms of the collaboration, send the offer to the influencer. They will Accept the offer via our site and you’re ready to start collaborating! Use our messages area to chat further and get the collab underway.
How do I politely decline an offer?
Don’t worry, influencers understand they won’t be accepted for every opportunity. Simply click Decline on the offer and you’re welcome to also send them a message explaining why they weren’t the right fit on this instance, if you wish to.
How do I negotiate with an influencer?
Once you’ve received some applications from Influencers, use our messaging tool to chat with them if you want to negotiate special terms.
Perhaps you want two instagram posts because their engagement levels are low? Or perhaps you would like to offer a higher sponsored post rate if they do a bit more work for you?
Once you’ve both come to an agreement, update the Terms by going then resend your offer to the influencer.
How do I pay an Influencer?
If payment has been agreed as part of your collaboration, this will have to be made outside of Press Loft. We are not responsible for the payment to influencers and don’t provide the platform for payment.
Most of our clients ask for an invoice to be generated by the influencer, and payment is often made once the collaboration has been completed, but these details are for yourself and the influencer to determine.
Who has creative control of the content?
Influencer marketing is very much an open dialogue between brands and influencers. Brands will sacrifice their tone of voice to that of the influencer, and in turn the influencer will communicate your brand/product positively and with authenticity .
It’s got a lot to do with trust, but with direction (particularly relating to what you want to achieve) you will establish a good working relationship. Whilst you entrust an influencer to create the content you can certainly get creative with the campaigns.
Do influencers have to disclose paid posts?
It depends where you are based but in a lot of countries, bloggers and social influencers are required by law to disclose a sponsored post. You can simply ask the influencer to add the mention #ad or #collab to their social post, or add a small disclosure at the bottom of blog posts, to make it very clear and to stay out of trouble.
For the UK, please consult ASA to fully understand the online advertising rules.
For the US, please consult FTC to fully understand the requirements.
For AU, please consult ANNA to fully understand the advertising regulations.
Check out our blog post here for more info on disclosure.
How do I track my results?
We recommend measuring your results at least a few weeks after the post goes live to get a more accurate indication of volumes.
Blog posts:
Ask the blogger to provide you with stats on the number of post views.
YouTube posts:
You will be able to see the number of views directly underneath the video on YouTube.
Also take note of the number of comments, likes and dislikes.
Social Media posts:
Most social media stats will be viewable without needing to contact the influencer including number of likes and comments.
Contact the influencer for additional info about the total reach per instagram or facebook post.
Also monitor your own followings, if the influencer has tagged you in their posts you should experience a nice increase in followers yourself.
How do I measure the results?
That’s a tough one to define as your goals will be different for each collaboration you send. Are you looking to increase your brand awareness? Are you looking to increase your sales? Good indicators would be:
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Engagement: Number of likes, comments, shares, number of followers you have gained…)
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Direct traffic: Check your site traffic to observe the traffic from the influencer’s post
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Sales conversions: Look at pick of sales and
I didn’t have many influencers reply to my alert, where did I go wrong?
That’s a shame! In that case, the first thing we would recommend is reviewing your collaboration term. Did you price your collaboration properly? Did you choose the right social channels? Maybe the offer is not attractive enough? Make sure you review your offer and adjust if necessary.
See our pricing table above for more info on sponsored posts.