Considering investing in influencer marketing on YouTube? Curious about what results you can expect over time? Look no further! In this case study, we will dive deep into the numbers breaking down a YouTube influencer marketing campaign over a period of 6 months.
Here is a short breakdown of the timeline for this campaign:
Our client did not have any previous YouTube activity, and we set up a YouTube profile from scratch prior to the campaign.
The result:
In order to find YouTube micro-influencers and YouTube macro-influencers, we used Influencer Hero’s YouTube influencer search tool. Using the following filters:
Adding a couple of look-a-likes to filter based on content allowed us to assemble a YouTube influencer list of 2,250 influencers within a few minutes.
We reached out to 2,250 YouTubers and received a significant 32.7% reply rate, with 735 influencers responding. Further, we could onboard 10.7% of our initial outreach for our influencer gifting & affiliate campaign, as 240 influencers came on board. Out of these 240 influencers, 150 influencers went on to create a YouTube video, indicating a 62.5% posting rate. Unfortunately, not all influencers completed the task, as we didn’t pay the influencers a fixed fee.
Having the right tools in place is crucial to manage a campaign at this scale. Using drip campaigns for influencer outreach allowed us to send out emails with a click of a button. Automated follow-ups doubled our reply rate, and the AI-powered personalisation tool helped us manage things at scale while keeping a personal touch.
Since it was a gifting campaign, each influencer received a free product. Average COGS plus shipping per influencer amounted to about $35. This campaign resulted in an expenditure of $8,400 ($35*240). On top of this, we offered a 10% affiliate commission on all attributed sales.
When we looked into our Influencer Analytics dashboard in October, total revenue for the campaign showed $35.6K in (attributed) sales using affiliate links and discount codes, which are synched within the Influencer Hero CRM.
Given that the average attribution rate with these tools is around 60% (using affiliate links and discount codes), actual revenue achieved would be around $59.3K ($35.6K / 60%). To learn more about how to calculate affiliate sales, read our detailed article here. As we only pay the affiliate on attributed sales, the affiliate cost in this case was $3.56K ($35.6K*10%).
That gives us a Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) of 4.9X = $59,333 / $11,960 ($8,400 COGS + $3,560 affiliate cost).
However, when we looked into the same influencer campaign analytics by the end of December, the total revenue for this campaign was $109.9K (see below)!
We partly experienced an uplift in sales over time simply due to the evergreen nature of the YouTube videos, which continue to deliver impressions beyond the date the YouTube video is published.
However, most increased sales came from additional branded videos from top-performing creators within the batch.
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The table below showcases the top 10 performing influencers from our YouTube campaign at the end of October and the end of December.
Out of the 154 creators who published a video:
These statistics reflect the strong power law distribution, which is constantly explained in our content. Read more about the power law distribution within influencer marketing and the 80/20 Pareto principle in influencer marketing here.
The reason we were able to significantly increase the revenue per influencer from October to December is that we’ve locked in deals, ensuring 3-4 YouTube videos for a fixed package during the client's BFCM campaign. With these influencers, we anticipate the ROAS to exceed 10X.
To express our gratitude and formally induct our newly identified high-performing YouTube creators to our brand ambassador program, we sent each a bouquet of flowers using 1800 Flowers.
As an illustration, consider the influencer who garnered $16K with her debut video. We struck a deal for four video inclusions during the BFCM season for $10K. By the end of the year, this influencer alone generated $61.8K in total. Taking unattributed sales into account, the total revenue from this single influencer would be around $103K ($61.8K / 60%), thus yielding a 10X+ ROAS ($103K / $10K).
This perfectly reflects the consistent approach we take through which we have helped our clients achieve 200% - 300% YoY growth through influencer marketing alone.
Step 1: Identify your performing influencers. Step 2: Utilise your performing influencers to the max. ROI. Read our complete guide on how to build up your influencer program following this approach here.
One cannot ignore the long-term gains from these campaigns. The YouTube videos, once uploaded, are evergreen. They continue to accumulate views, facilitating brand recognition and conversions over time. Furthermore, these videos rank in search engine results, amplifying social proof and bringing persistent conversions.
Keen to replicate this success? Learn more about our influencer marketing agency services here or arrange a meeting with one of our Media Experts here.
Schedule a Demo with one of our media experts below.
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