Marketers are spending a lot of money on social media influencers these days, including YouTube influencers, and they’re not showing any signs of slowing down.
In fact, the influencer marketing industry is currently worth around $8 billion, and it’s expected to become a $15 billion industry by the year 2022.
Are you interested in working with influencers as part of your marketing strategy? If so, you definitely ought to look into YouTube influencer marketing.
Read on to learn everything you need to know about this type of marketing and how to create an effective plan for your business.
Benefits of YouTube Influencer Marketing
There are lots of reasons why businesses are shelling out the big bucks on YouTube influencers. The following are some of the greatest benefits these individuals have to offer:
Build Trust
Working with an influencer is a great way to build trust in your brand. Influencers have already put in the work to establish trust within their communities. If they promote your product or services, people will have an easier time believing that your business is the real deal.
Increase Brand Awareness
Influencer marketing helps to build brand awareness as well. When you work with the right influencers, you can get information about your products or services in front of lots of people who never would have heard of your business otherwise (or at least wouldn’t have found it so quickly).
Fill in Content Gaps
When you work with influencers, they can help you to fill in gaps in your content strategy. You can share their videos and posts about your products and services on your own social media platforms to provide varied content and maintain a consistent posting scheduling.
Reach Your Target Audience
If you want to reach people who are part of a specific group, try to work with the influencers those people are already watching online. If they see that you’re connected with a person they like and admire, they’ll be ready and willing to buy what you’re selling.
Provide More Value
Influencer marketing can help you to provide more value to your existing audience, too. Influencers can talk about your products or services in their videos in a new way and share other relevant information (recipes, how-tos, reviews, etc.) that can benefit your audience long-term.
Creating an Influencer Marketing Plan
Okay, you can see why influencer marketing might be a smart business move for you. You need to come up with a marketing plan that’ll help you see long-term growth, though.
Here are some guidelines to follow that will help you see the greatest results:
Set Clear Goals
The first step is to have clear goals for your influencer marketing strategy.
What do you want to accomplish by working with a YouTube influencer? Greater sales numbers? Sign-ups for a specific service?
The clearer you are with your goals, the easier it’ll be to measure progress.
Define Your Audience
Next, figure out what kind of person (or group of people) you’re hoping to reach. Do you want to target moms, for example, or single young adults?
Once you know whom you want to reach, you can start looking for influencers who are already reaching those people.
Work on Developing Relationships
Many influencers want to establish a relationship with a brand before they’ll agree to work with them. Start reaching out to influencers early and let them know what your business is all about.
Keep in mind, too, that it’s customary in many cases to send the person your products or let them try your services for free so they can learn more about them and see if they want to represent them on their channel.
Be Willing to Relinquish Some Control
When you work with a YouTube influencer, you have to be willing to let them have a certain level of control over the way they talk about your product or service on their channel.
It’s fine to give them a list of key points to address. However, if things sound too scripted, their audience will likely be wary of buying your product or trying your service.
Remember, it’s in your business’s best interest to be flexible.
Tips for Finding the Right Influencers
The success of any YouTube influencer marketing plan rests on the shoulders of the influencers with whom you choose to work. If you want to succeed, you need to make sure you’re working with the right person or people.
The following tips will help you choose the best influencers to help you with your marketing plan:
Find Out Who’s Already Talking About You
Start by doing some keyword research to see which YouTube influencers, if any, are already talking about your products or services. See if there are influencers talking about products or services similar or complementary to yours as well.
It’s also a good idea to search for relevant hashtags. This helps you find influencers who create videos that align with your brand.
Understand YouTube Tiers
Make sure you understand the YouTube influencer tiers, too.
A nano influencer, for example, is someone who has between 1,000 and 10,000 followers. A macro influencer, on the other hand, has between 100,000 and 1 million followers.
In general, the fewer followers someone has, the less expensive they will be. They also will have less of a reach, though.
If you can’t afford a macro or elite (more than 1 million followers) influencer, don’t worry. You can still see great results working with a mid-tier influencer, and their rates tend to be much more affordable. They may have better engagement rates, too.
Work with an Agency
If you’re having a hard time finding influencers that fit with your brand, or if you simply don’t have time to do a lot of research, you may want to consider working with an influencer agency.
Sites like SocialBook.io make it easy for you to find lots of influencers who align with your business and are interested in promoting products or services like yours.
Get Started Today
Now that you know more about the benefits of YouTube influencer marketing, as well as how to create an effective plan and find the right influencers for your brand, it’s time to get busy.
Keep this information in mind as you begin formulating a plan and searching for influencers to help you carry it out. If you remember these guidelines, you’ll have a much greater chance of succeeding and seeing your business grow.
Do you want to learn more about influencer marketing or marketing in general? If so, check out some of the other marketing and branding articles on our site today.
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