How influencer marketing can benefit startups — and what they should do to get started

by Jess Ryan
August 31, 2016

When thinking about marketing their business, many startups turn to inbound marketing tactics or build up powerful sales teams. But some companies are starting to adopt a newer form of marketing that’s less expensive, better-trusted and creates evergreen content for their brand — and one of the industry leaders calls Colorado home.

Boulder’s TapInfluence is a powerhouse in the influencer marketing industry, which leverages influential individuals on social media or other channels in order to share a brand’s message.

We spoke with TapInfluence’s Director of Influencer Development, Julianna Vorhaus, about how influencer marketing works and asked her to share some tips for startups to get an influencer marketing program off the ground.

 

 

What is influencer marketing? How does it work?

Influencers are individuals, usually with sizable reach, who provide expertise, entertainment, inspiration or some other form of value to their audience and thus have a loyal and engaged following.

At a high level, influencer marketing (IM) is when brands connect with these individuals to create content, share their message and talk about their product or service with the influencers’ trusted audience. In this way, influencers provide the context and authenticity brands need to engender ROI-positive brand preference and purchase intent.

It's not a totally new concept — consumers have long looked to experts for guidance or inspiration — the platforms and way this information is shared has simply shifted to blogs and social media in recent years.

What are the benefits of using influencer marketing tactics vs. traditional ones?

In many instances, influencer content is less expensive to source and create than content from other sources. Influencers are also better-trusted than brands: 32 percent of online consumers say they trust a stranger more than a brand. Influencer content serves multiple purposes and can be re-used (with an influencer’s permission and proper attribution) for newsletters, on a brand's social channels or company blog.

I’ve even seen brands learn new uses for their products via influencers and their communities. Influencers have their own built-in distribution channel, in the form of a trusted audience that the brand is able to tap into — so not only is an influencer creating great content for a brand, but the brand doesn’t need to worry about how it will be shared. The influencer takes care of that!

What are some of the challenges brands face when getting started with influencer marketing?

Many brands don't have an influencer marketing budget line item, so they don’t know where to get the budget from (Hint: it should be a material percent of your social media budget or baked into your PR spend). Another is finding the right influencers to partner with — many brands confuse their target audience with their influencer needs.

What do companies have to be careful about when running an influencer marketing program?

Marketers need to make sure the influencers they choose to work with align with their brand values and aren’t sharing content that could be considered inappropriate or risque.

As with all marketing efforts, it is so important to follow the proper guidelines for disclosure and compliance. In the case of IM, that means the influencer needs to clearly and conspicuously disclose their relationship with the brand and the fact that they are being paid for the content they are sharing. We just wrote an ebook with all of these disclosure rules (a.k.a. FTC Guidelines) in one place because they’re hard to track and understand.

 

What are some best practices for companies that are "bootstrapping" their influencer marketing?

Look into free — or mostly free — options, such as advocacy programs and compensating influencers in product or experience.

Brand ambassadorships are another great idea as they can work with a brand on an on-going basis and provide sustained support and content over time.

In general, blogs are the best bet if you are just getting started and on a budget. They are cost effective, the content is evergreen and you can get more mileage for your investment when that post appears in searches in months and years to come.

How does TapInfluence help take companies to the next level (beyond bootstrapping)?

Tap provides marketers with automation for finding, enrolling, paying and tracking influencers on a broad scale. These efficiencies cut down on the management of the influencer marketing process like automated work flow, including assignment and editorial calendar creation.

We also provide customers with data like Cost Per Engagement (CPE) so they can evaluate the effectiveness of potential spend.

Our marketplace provides major efficiencies. Because it is opt-in, brands know our influencers want to do this professionally and engage with your brand. Plus, you know the contact information for influencers is correct and they have already shared important information in their media kits — like rates and reach — which eliminates the back-and-forth when agreeing to a campaign. We also offer our customers robust analytics so they can see, at the most granular level, how their programs are performing.

Can you share a real-life example so people can see how it works?

While we generally don’t disclose our customers by name, I can tell you generally about a well-known clothing company we recently starting working with. The company is brand new to influencer marketing, so they wanted to start small and add it to their social media strategy.

They collaborated with one high-quality YouTube creator on a “Get Ready” video that seamlessly incorporated their clothing. The post was authentic and resonated with her audience, garnering over 7,000 engagements on the video and social shares. That surpassed any level of engagement they’ve had before and their effective CPE yielded a highly desirable ROI for the brand team.

The customer was so pleased with the results from this influencer marketing beta test that they have another program, with 30 influencers, in the works to support the new fall season.

Here at Tap, we also practice what we preach and utilize our influencers on a regular basis for content creation. Whether they’re writing guest blog posts, co-hosting webinars or taking over our Instagram account every weekend, we love leveraging our influencers on a regular basis!

 

Photos via TapInfluence. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

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