Instagram influencer programs are a beast to manage. That’s why we’re sharing our cheat sheet with you to simplify the set-up process! This includes our method + completely free messaging templates.
We’ve had great success with these in the past. For example, we established a tiered influencer program that garnered tremendous brand awareness and increased online sales, and also provided excellent UGC to share across social for an all-natural pest control brand.
We were able to increase their monthly reach tenfold with an influencer budget of only $1K/month.
This resulted in a team of 25 influencers, a 900K reach, and an increased social engagement rate from .8% to 4.63% over 4 months.
Now, those numbers really speak to the power of influencers. And, it also resulted in their highest monthly sales to-date!
Now, let’s make that happen for your brand…
Let’s first define the difference between macro and micro influencer –
Macro-influencers = more than 10K followers
Micro-influencers = 5K-10K followers
Of course, this is just how our team defines it. Your own interpretation may vary! And, engagement rates play an equally important role in deciding who is or isn’t fit for your influencer program.
Next, you’ll have to decide what goods, services, or money will be exchanged through your influencer program.
If you’re working with macro-influencers, it’s common to exchange free products as well as money for a series of branded posts or Stories.
If you’re working with micro-influencers, you may exchange free product for a series of branded posts or Stories.
You may offer both of these types of influencers a greater slice of the pie by including them in an affiliate program where they make a cut of each sale whenever users purchase product associated with their affiliate link or a custom discount code.
We don’t recommend finding influencers and outright proposing a collaboration (sliding into the DMs when your lead is as cold as ice).
We do recommend engaging with influencers for 1-2 weeks through periodic “nudges” – following, liking, commenting, and DMing their account to develop a history with the user.
Remember that you represent one of many brands out there. And, one-off DMs often gather dust as they sit in the requested messages section of a user’s DMs never to be opened (probably ever).
Set yourself apart from the crowd. Actively listen and learn about your contacts before sending offers.
To get these conversations going, you’re going to need to build out a list of contacts that align with your brand.
1. Build a List
How big of a list are we talking about?? That’ll depend on your brand.
Most recently, we worked with a brand that wanted to share their product (for free) with 40 micro-influencers. So, we got to work building a list.
The total number of influencers included on a list that we recently built (goal: build affiliate program) was about 200. 20% of the influencers we connected with said yes to the free product.
Try applying this equation to the brand you’re working with –
Your Goal / 0.20 = the Number of Influencers on Your List
Or, start with a list of 100 users as a jumping off point.
So, how do you connect with the right people?
2. Three methods for growing your list
- Software
- Suggested
- Instagram re-share accounts
Software
You don’t need software to run an influencer campaign, but it sure does make the process easier!
Suggested
You don’t need software to run an influencer campaign, but it sure does make the process easier!
- Browse hashtags and the explore page to find your starting place: a user in your demographic with beautiful content that’s well engaged with
- Go through their “suggested” tab on Instagram
- Vet accounts. Do they share objectively good content? Are they in your desired demographic? Are they not spammy (collabs with every brand that comes along)? Do they have good engagement rates?
- Keep track of influencers on a Google spreadsheet – here’s an example of all of the information we keep track of:
![instagram line break shortcut [⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀]](https://i0.wp.com/umaimarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/ezgif-2-78741ef5c07a.gif?fit=768%2C1462&ssl=1)
