From identification to signing contracts, learning how to hire influencers to promote your brand can be a complicated process - but it doesn’t have to be that way.
With 80% of brands working with influencers and 86% experiencing positive results, it’s clear that influencer marketing can significantly boost a brand’s success. The key lies in streamlining the process and using the right strategies, whether you're working with micro-influencers on platforms like Instagram or managing a large-scale campaign on YouTube.
Hiring influencers for marketing campaigns typically involves:
In this guide, we’ll go through each step of the influencer hiring process, sharing our tips and insights to help you get the most out of your influencer marketing campaign.
Working with influencers can take your business to the next level. But why? Here are the 5 main benefits of launching an influencer marketing campaign:
The average ROI for influencer marketing in 2024 is $5.20 for every dollar spent. For high performers, this number can rise to $20 or more per dollar spent. This makes influencer marketing a cost-effective strategy compared to traditional advertising channels.
A few years ago, to define and reach your target audience, you needed more complex and refined strategies. Nowadays, you can cut through this process with influencers. As they have established relationships with specific demographics, this allows you to reach highly targeted audiences. An eMarketer report highlighted that 70% of brands say influencer marketing helps them reach their target audience more effectively.
Building trust with your audience can be challenging, especially when you want it to develop naturally rather than being forced. With influencers, as they already have established relationships with their audiences, they can lend a level of authenticity that other advertising strategies lack. This is why 92% of consumers trust recommendations from individuals over brands.
78% of marketers found that influencer marketing is an effective strategy for increasing brand awareness. With influencers, your brand can reach new audiences, significantly increasing its visibility. By leveraging the established reach and influence of individuals who align with your brand, it’s easier to introduce your products or services effectively to a broader and more engaged audience.
Influencers can drive conversions by recommending products or services in a trusted and authentic manner. Around 4 out of 10 people (39%) purchased something after seeing it recommended by an influencer.
Warby Parker is an American eyewear company known for its innovative approach to selling glasses and sunglasses. Its unique direct-to-consumer model allows customers to try frames at home before making a purchase.
Looking to increase brand awareness, Warby Parker launched its “Wearing Warby” influencer campaign. They chose 7 YouTube and Instagram micro-influencers who already had an affinity with the brand (as they posted about it before), making the campaign organic and authentic.
The results? They reached 800,000 people and increased the engagement rate to 3.4%, with 55,000 likes and 640 comments.
What are your campaign goals? What do you want to achieve by hiring influencers? Are you aiming to increase brand awareness, drive sales or promote a new product?
By identifying your goals, it’s easier to establish a budget and the type of influencer you’d like to work with. This includes defining if you want to:
For example, at first glance, it may seem that working with macro influencers is always the best choice - even if you have to stretch your budget. However, depending on your goals, this is not always the case.
Often macro influencers are a great alternative for brands looking to generate brand awareness and visibility. However, if your goal is to increase engagement, micro-influencers can be a better choice as, given their highly engaged communities, they have more engagement.
Research by Adweek revealed that smaller accounts had engagement rates that were 60% higher over time compared to larger accounts.
This is why often brands who want to increase engagement choose to work with influencers with smaller followings.
Iceland Groceries, a UK frozen food brand, was struggling with customer approval. Previously they’ve worked with popular celebrities but campaign’s results were never as expected. In an effort to build a more authentic and trustworthy brand they decided to work with 50 micro influencers. As a result they were able to increase their approval rating from 10% to 70%.
Once you have defined your goals, it is easier to identify the type of influencer you want to work with. For this, it’s best to create a shortlist using the following criteria:
To keep all your data in one place, we recommend you to create an Excel spreadsheet, dividing it by different criteria. Although, if your plan is to work with many influencers, you can save time and optimize your strategies by using tools like Influencer Hero.
With its Influencer Finder feature, you can easily find the right creators that match your brand’s criteria. You can filter from audience and influencer location, engagement rate, and followers to specific keywords and look-alikes, making the search more streamlined.
The next step is to start reaching out to influencers. This is your presentation letter to them. In some cases, they probably haven’t heard about your brand, so it's key that you write a short but engaging email that sparks their interest. A few things to keep in mind:
Direct Messages - or DMs - may seem as the tempting and more direct way to reach out to influencers. However, keep in mind that influencers often receive hundreds, if not thousands, of messages per day, making yours to easily get lost.
To sound more professional as a brand, it’s best if you reach out to them via email. This way you can write a compelling message, showing that you’re a serious brand that takes them and their work seriously as well.
If you don’t use influencer finder tools, then sometimes finding influencers emails can be challenging. However, we created these guides step by step on how to find influencer emails on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Reaching out to influencers is all about making them feel special and excited to be part of your campaign. And the best way to do this is by personalizing your emails.
On average, personalized messages achieve an impressive open rate of 29% and an outstanding click-through rate of 41%.
Instead of sending a generic campaign invitation, customize your email to show that you are familiar with their work and content. This personal touch can make a significant difference in capturing their interest and enthusiasm.
Influencer Hero offers automatic AI-generated personalized sentences based on the latest social media posts helping you maximize your reply rates.
This first email should be short and concise, but it’s important that you also include what you’re offering. Influencers who read it should be able to know what they’ll be gaining from this collaboration, whether it’s a free product, payment, affiliate partnership or exposure.
Here is a useful template for your first outreach email:
SUBJECT: {{ firstname|default(influencer_handle) }} – ENTER YOUR BRAND NAME Partnership
Hi {{ firstname|default(influencer_handle) }},
{{personalized_sentence}}
My name is ENTER YOUR NAME and I’m from ENTER YOUR COMPANY NAME. We are ADD ONE SENTENCE DESCRIPTION ABOUT YOUR BRAND.
We are looking for potential partnerships and we love the content on your account {{influencer_handle}}!`
It would be awesome if you could test our ENTER YOUR PRODUCT.
HIGHLIGHT YOUR USP AND YOUR PRODUCT IN ONE SENTENCE.
I’m happy to send you one ENTER YOUR PRODUCT for you to test. We also offer a 20% commission or a discount code to give out to your followers. Please get back to me if you are interested in this opportunity.
Can I send you one of the ENTER YOUR PRODUCT?
Thanks!
Best,
ENTER YOUR NAME
After your initial contact, follow up to discuss the details of the partnership. In this negotiation stage, it is key to convince them to work with you by being clear about what they have to gain from this partnership and what you’re expecting from them in exchange.
If you’re lucky they’ll accept right away. But in most cases, influencers are likely to share their rate cards or quote expensive fees, which can make you feel that the partnership won’t be possible. Here’s where negotiation matters, as you can reach an agreement that works for both parties without having to stretch your budget.
We always advise brands that when collaborating with an influencer for the first time, it’s wise to start with an affiliate or gifting arrangement rather than offering fixed payments upfront. Without prior data, you can’t be certain if the influencer will effectively drive sales or engage with your brand. Conducting an initial "test" campaign helps you evaluate their performance before committing a significant portion of your budget.
The negotiation template below will help you discuss terms with influencers while presenting the collaboration as a valuable opportunity:
SUBJECT: {{ firstname|default(influencer_handle) }} – ENTER YOUR BRAND NAME Partnership
Hi {{firstname}},
Thank you for your reply.
We completely understand that you don’t work on an affiliate basis. However, we hope you understand that the first story post is only to get a better understanding of the match towards the brand.
We work with a wide variety of different compensation packages which include fixed payments and long-term brand ambassador programs. We have been collaborating with creators for a few years now and from our experience, we know that the performance varies widely, which is why we work with an initial story post in order for us to make a fair offer.
Based on the results of this initial post we would be making you an offer that includes one or a combination of the before mentioned packages.
[IF INITIAL OFFER IS INCREASED]
Usually, we only send out the ENTER INITIAL PRODUCT OFFERED, however, because we value your work and accommodation, we'd love to offer ENTER UPDATED OFFER.
Please let me know if I can send you the ENTER UPDATED PRODUCT OFFER.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Best,
ENTER YOUR NAME
If the influencer has accepted your offer and you’re ready to start with the partnership, the next step is to create a campaign brief.
In your initial outreach, you mention your expectations and what the brand is about. However, now that they’re part of your brand with a campaign brief, you send them a more detailed explanation about your company and the campaign overall.
This includes:
This varies depending on campaigns; in some cases, less is more. If you want to provide more content creation flexibility, also let them know. This was the case with Dyson’s vacuum cleaner campaign that targeted pet owners. They collaborated with pet influencers, giving them creative freedom over the post. The only guideline was to be funny and demonstrate how pet owners cleaned after their pets.
As a result Dyson had over 1 million views, 115,000 likes and a 10% engagement rate across their campaign.
When partnering with influencers, creating a contract will help both parties to clearly outline the terms of the agreement, expectations and responsibilities. It allows you to have a backup in case things don’t go as planned.
However, it’s not necessary for all partnerships.
A contract is usually necessary for:
When it comes to other types of collaborations like gifting, affiliate programs or casual collaborations (like shoutouts or mentions), it’s not necessary to create a contract. You can just outline an agreement for expectations or any other relevant details.
Not all influencer contracts are the same as this highly depends on the campaign and the type of contract. However, as a general guideline, most influencer contracts include:
Once the campaign has launched, the next and final step is to measure and analyze whether you’re getting the desired results. This also allows you to gain insights into how to improve future campaigns (more of this below).
These are some of the main influencer marketing KPIs to track:
By using these insights, you can assess the effectiveness of your influencer partnerships.
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One of the most important aspects of influencer collaborations is to actually understand whether they worked or not, and in both cases why? This helps you identify roadblocks and see in what ways you can improve.
For some brands this is working with more niche influencers, for others making paid campaigns, etc.
But how can you gain these insights? Through KPIs. These are the key metrics to evaluate how a campaign is going:
Engagement Metrics: Track likes, comments, shares, and overall interaction with the influencer’s content. High engagement indicates that the content resonated with the audience.
Reach and Impressions: Measure the total number of people who saw the influencer’s content and how many times it was viewed. This helps assess the visibility and awareness generated.
Follower Growth: Monitor the increase in followers on your brand’s social media platforms during and after the campaign. A significant uptick suggests that the influencer successfully attracted new potential customers.
Referral Traffic: Use UTM parameters or trackable links to identify how much traffic was driven to your website from the influencer’s posts.
Time on Site and Bounce Rate: Analyze how long visitors from the influencer’s content stay on your site and how many pages they view. Higher engagement on your site indicates more qualified traffic.
New vs. Returning Visitors: Determine whether the influencer is attracting new visitors to your site or re-engaging previous ones.
Sales and Revenue: Use unique discount codes or affiliate links to directly attribute sales and revenue to the influencer’s efforts. Compare these figures against your overall sales to evaluate the campaign's effectiveness.
Lead Generation: Track the number of leads generated through sign-ups, downloads, or inquiries resulting from the influencer’s content.
Conversion Rate: Calculate the percentage of the influencer’s audience that completed a desired action (e.g., making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter) to assess the effectiveness of the collaboration.
Social Listening: Monitor mentions of your brand across social media platforms during the campaign. Pay attention to the tone and sentiment of these mentions to gauge public perception.
Customer Feedback: Collect feedback from customers to understand their views on the influencer partnership and whether it influenced their decision to engage with your brand.
Quality of Content: Review the content created by the influencer for quality, alignment with your brand, and adherence to your messaging guidelines.
Audience Resonance: Analyze how well the content resonates with both the influencer’s and your brand’s audience, looking at comments and direct feedback.
Cost vs. Revenue: Compare the cost of the influencer partnership against the revenue generated directly from the campaign. This will help you understand the financial return on your investment.
Keep in mind influencer marketing ROI is not always about cash flow generated by codes or affiliate links but also by performance indicators (engagement, sales, brand awareness, etc)
Long-Term Value: Consider the long-term benefits, such as increased brand awareness, new followers, or improved brand sentiment, which might not immediately translate into sales but build value over time.
After you’ve gathered these insights, it’s easier to identify what worked by analyzing the aspects of the collaboration, what was more successful and why. You can also identify any areas of improvement, such as better influencer selection, content creation or timing.
From finding influencers to evaluating campaign results, all of this can be done manually. However, it can also be energy and time consuming. This is why using influencer marketing platforms can be the perfect way to streamline your influencer campaign efforts. These are 3 of the most popular tools to hire influencers and manage campaigns:
Influencer Hero is an all-in-one influencer marketing platform tailored for D2C e-commerce brands. Its key strength lies in its comprehensive suite of tools that streamline the entire influencer marketing process, from influencer discovery to campaign execution and performance tracking.
What sets Influencer Hero apart is its powerful automation features for outreach and communication, making it easy to manage large-scale campaigns efficiently. Additionally, its real-time analytics and customizable reports provide deep insights, allowing brands to optimize their strategies and maximize ROI.
Interested in learning more about how Influencer Hero can help your brand? Book a free demo!
GRIN is an influencer marketing platform known for its deep integration with e-commerce tools, making it particularly well-suited for online retailers.
GRIN excels in influencer relationship management (IRM), offering tools for nurturing long-term partnerships with influencers. Its standout feature is the ability to connect directly with e-commerce platforms like Shopify, allowing brands to seamlessly track conversions, sales, and ROI from influencer campaigns. GRIN’s focus on authenticity and real relationships helps brands create genuine, impactful collaborations.
Compare tools: Influencer Hero vs GRIN
Upfluence is an influencer marketing platform that helps brands identify, connect with, and manage influencers across various social media platforms. It offers an advanced influencer search and recruitment capabilities, offering a comprehensive database of influencers that brands can filter based on detailed criteria such as audience demographics, engagement rates, and content niches.
Compare tools: Influencer Hero vs Upfluence
Hiring influencers to promote your brand is a powerful strategy that can drive significant results when done correctly. By carefully defining your campaign objectives, selecting the right influencers, and managing the collaboration effectively, you can build authentic connections with your target audience and achieve your marketing goals.
Keep in mind that successful influencer marketing is not just about finding popular figures; it's about creating genuine partnerships that resonate with your audience and reflect your brand's values. As you implement the steps outlined in this guide, you'll be well on your way to leveraging the full potential of influencer marketing to elevate your brand and drive meaningful engagement.
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