13 Influencer Marketing Questions and Answers

Influencer marketing has quickly grown in popularity during the last decade. In fact, according to Google Trends, it’s more popular than print marketing now and as popular as video marketing.

Its popularity has soared so much that according to a survey, nearly 93% of marketers use it now. One of the major reasons being that the content produced by influencers is perceived to be more authentic than that created by brands.

Why?

Because influencers are viewed as third-parties with no vested interest in promoting the brand.

This is the reason why 63% of consumers trust what influencers have to say about brands more than what brands say about themselves. However, that’s not to say that influencer marketing hasn’t faced any criticism.

The Lord & Taylor and Ciroc Vodka influencer marketing campaigns are prime examples of cases when influencer marketing backfired. However, its growth continues unabated, and influencer marketing is expected to become a $22.3 billion industry by 2024.

If you haven’t jumped onto the influencer marketing bandwagon yet due to some doubts, don’t worry. We’ve put together a list of the most pressing influencer marketing questions to help you understand it better.

Pro Tip: Start small and partner with multiple micro- or nano-influencers before investing a huge budget in influencer marketing.

Common Influencer Marketing Questions and Their Answers

Here are the most important influencer marketing questions and their answers.

Question 1. What is Influencer Marketing?

One of the first influencer marketing questions asked by people is “What is influencer marketing?”

In simple words, influencer marketing is a digital marketing method used to promote your brand or products by partnering with powerful social media personalities or bloggers. You can leverage the influence that these personalities have over their followers to reach your social media marketing goals.

You can partner with brand influencers to grow your brand awareness, increase engagement, improve your lead generation, or even drive sales. Through it, you can change consumers’ perceptions of your brand on social media platforms as well.

Question 2. Who is an Influencer?

Brand influencers are people who have developed a community of followers that consider them experts in a certain area and therefore consider them as a trusted source.

Their followers value the opinions of these influencers when it comes to discovering new products and are often inspired by their lifestyles.

Influencers historically have been celebrities like athletes, actors, or TV personalities. But with the rise of social media, talented content creators built communities around their blogs, YouTube channels, or Instagram accounts and engage with them regularly.

These social media personalities or bloggers post high-quality content and have highly-engaged follower bases. They are viewed as authorities in their niches, and thus, their followers tend to trust their recommendations.

Influencers come in all sizes and can be classified into four different categories:

Nano-Influencers: These are influencers who have between 1K and 10K followers on social media. They tend to have high engagement rates and connect with their followers on a more personal level too. In fact, the average engagement rate of nano-influencers on Instagram is 10.1%.

Micro-Influencers: Micro-influencers are slightly bigger influencers than nano-influencers and have between 10K and 100K followers on social media. These influencers, too, tend to have high engagement rates and are able to connect with their audiences on a more personal level as their audience size is more manageable. Micro-influencers on Instagram have an average engagement rate of 7.6%.

Macro-Influencers: Macro-influencers are those influencers who have a follower base that ranges between 100K and 1 million on social media. Their engagement rates are significantly lower than those of nano- and micro-influencers, and they also may find it difficult to connect with their audiences on a personal level due to their larger followings. The average engagement rate of macro-influencers is about 5.3% on Instagram.

Celebrities: These are those influencers who have over a million followers on social media. They are so-called because many of them are traditional celebrities as well. They find it difficult to connect with their audiences on a personal level due to the vast followings that they have. Additionally, their engagement rates are very low as compared to the other influencers. The average engagement rate of a celebrity on Instagram is just 0.04%.

Question 3. Why Should You Do Influencer Marketing?

One of the biggest reasons for doing influencer marketing is that it’s drastically different from traditional methods of marketing. The major difference is that the brand isn’t tooting its own horn. Instead, a third-party is promoting it, and that doesn’t come across as being outrightly promotional.

Hence, influencer marketing is word-of-mouth marketing at scale in the digital world.

Additionally, influencer marketing is great if you want to reach younger audiences.

The younger generation does not watch TV or read print magazines anymore. They use social media and spend most of their time on their mobile phones.

Influencer marketing allows you to make your brand a part of the conversations that are happening online. It’s also more authentic and effective than ads.

What’s more?

The followers of influencers trust them and their recommendations. This makes them very likely to start trusting your brand. Many of them might become your leads, and some of them may even end up purchasing from you. This is perhaps the reason why 84% of marketers in the previously-cited SocialPubli study say that influencer marketing is effective or very effective.

Last but not least: content is king. You are for sure well-aware that you need a ton of fresh content. Content on your website, blog, and social channels. You can either produce it yourself (which often results in rather static product pictures), or you can leverage people who are content creators themselves: influencers. When done correctly, influencer marketing can scale up your content marketing activities and results in a constant flow of fresh, social media and mobile-optimized content for all your channels.

Question 4. How is an Influencer Different From a Brand Ambassador?

Although influencers and brand ambassadors both partner with your brand to promote it, brand ambassador partnerships tend to be longer. Influencer marketing campaigns can be short-term ones and may be one-off campaigns too.

However, brand ambassadors are more integrated into the brand’s marketing strategy, and they might even become the face of the brand.

As a result, the way they are compensated varies, as well.

While influencers may be paid a fixed fee for a particular campaign, brand ambassadors might get paid on a retainer basis. Many brands pay brand ambassadors a specific commission for every sale that they drive as well.

For instance, Pura Vida has a brand ambassador program where the brand ambassadors are given a 10% commission for every sale that they drive.

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Question 5. Do You Need a Big Budget for Influencer Marketing?

One of the most common questions asked by small businesses is - do we need a big budget to do influencer marketing?

It’s a common misperception that influencer marketing requires a big budget.

The truth is that businesses of all sizes can execute successful influencer marketing campaigns based on their marketing budgets. This is because influencers charge fees based on the number of followers that they have.

So, how much do influencers charge?

Typically, influencers charge 1 to 2.5 cents for every follower that they have. This is the reason why partnering with macro-influencers and celebrities is expensive, and only large businesses can afford it.

However, nano- and micro-influencers have fewer followers. As a result, their fees are often only a few hundred dollars. This makes influencer marketing accessible for small businesses and startups that don’t have huge marketing budgets.

Additionally, if your products are attractive, smaller influencers might accept them as a part of their payment.

Once you have worked with an influencer, they are open to discuss affiliate-based compensations as well. Affiliate-based compensation has proven to work well in longer term relationships.

Question 6. Can a Local Business Use Influencer Marketing?

One of the biggest advantages of influencer marketing is that all sorts of businesses can use it, including local businesses, which are often small businesses.

Did you know that 90% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses?

How can that help you?

You can find influencers who are based in your location and have a significant influence on the local crowd.

These are local influencers, and typically, their audiences will be predominantly local as well. When they write something good about your local business, it’ll prompt your target audience to check out your business.

As their followers live near your business, they’ll be more likely to check out your business.

For example, Arbor Day Farm partnered with family bloggers from Omaha, Kansas City, and Des Moines to promote their property in Nebraska City. For instance, @ohmyomaha posted a sponsored Instagram post to increase brand awareness about Arbor Day Farm.

Question 7. How Can You Find Influencers?

One of the most important parts of an influencer marketing strategy is finding a good influencer. This is because you can’t achieve good results without partnering with a genuine influencer.

However, finding them can be a challenge as many social influencers out there purchase fake social media followers and likes.

So, what can you do?

To find the right influencer for your brand, you can use our influencer marketing platform, Fourstarzz Media. Our tool has a database of over 750K influencers, and you can filter them based on their location, niche, reach, engagement rate, etc.

Additionally, you can use our influencer marketing platform’s advanced search feature that lets you look for influencers based on their handles, names, keywords, hashtags, and more. You can also narrow down your search based on audience interests so that you can find influencers who can best reach your target audience.

Alternatively, you can look for influencers manually. For this, you need to search for keywords related to your industry on social media platforms. This will bring up a list of posts that contain those keywords. You can check out the accounts that are creating these posts. Some of them may be influencers in your niche. Lastly, you can also use social listening to find relevant influencers too.

Question 8. What Factors Should You Look at When Choosing Influencers?

Before choosing a social media influencer for your campaign, you need to look at various factors to determine if they are the right influencer for your brand including:

Engagement Rate: This is one of the most important metrics that you need to look at when selecting an influencer. If the social media influencer has a huge number of followers but has an extremely low engagement rate, it may not be very helpful for your brand.

If their followers don’t engage with their posts, your brand may go unnoticed. That’s why it’s essential to identify social influencers who have a good engagement rate.

Reach: The influencer’s reach shows you the number of unique people you can potentially reach. This is essentially the number of followers that the social media influencer has. The higher the number, the better it is for your brand.

Quality of Engagement: While the average social media engagement rate of the influencer matters, you must also check the quality of the engagement that they’re getting.

For this, you should check the comments on their social posts. Check if they are of any value and are able to drive conversations. There may be many influencers who have loads of comments on their social posts, but those comments may be frivolous and may not help promote your brand.

Influencer Values: Remember, when you partner with an influencer, they’re seen as an extension of your brand. Thus, it’s essential that their values match those of your brand. Additionally, if they share the same values, they’ll feel passionate about the work you’re doing and will be motivated to work with you to grow your brand.

Target Audience Demographics: One of the most important factors that you need to consider when finding influencers is their target audience. It’s essential that the target audience of the social influencer matches your target market. If it doesn’t, then your campaign may not drive the results you want.

Voice: When you partner with an influencer, it’s essential to check their voice. Their voice must be similar to that of your brand as the influencers are viewed as an extension of your brand. The influencer’s voice is a reflection of their personality, so it’s crucial to check it.

Question 9. What Are Some Red Flags You Should Beware Of?

When you’re identifying social influencers for your influencer campaigns, you need to be aware of some red flags that should be able to turn you away from certain influencers.

Some of the red flags that you need to consider are:

Fake Followers: Fake followers can waste your marketing budget, and wreck your successful influencer campaign dreams.

This is because they’ll not bring in any engagement, growth in brand awareness, or sales. It’s a pretty big problem considering the fact that major brands like Febreze and Baby Einstein have fallen for it.

You must thoroughly scan through every social media influencer’s profile to find out the influencer engagement rates. Exceptionally low influencer engagement rates could mean that they possibly have some fake followers.

But that, in itself, isn’t conclusive enough.

So, what can you do?

You can leverage Fourstarzz Media’s fake follower score option to check the credibility of an influencer’s followers. These tools can show you the daily follower growth of influencers. If you observe any unnecessary spikes in this growth, it may be indicative of fake followers being purchased.

Posting Frequency: When looking for an influencer, it’s essential to check how frequently they post. It doesn’t matter if influencers have a good reach and used to post social media content regularly in the past.

If their posting frequency is erratic now, or if they stopped posting social media content altogether sometime back, it’s likely that their followers may have lost interest in them. That’s why you must check if the social media influencer consistently posts good content on social media channels.

Poor Quality of Content: Yet another red flag that you should know is poor quality content. If the social influencer produces poor quality content, it may affect your brand reputation.

As mentioned before, influencers are viewed as extensions of your brand, and poor quality content created by them reflects badly on your brand as well. Hence, you should go through the influencer’s content thoroughly to figure out if it’s up to the mark.

Question 10. How Can You Reach Out to Influencers?

One of the other common questions asked is - How can you reach out to influencers?

Once you’ve found influencers you want to partner with, you need to engage with them. Comment on their posts, share interesting content with them, or even commend their achievements.

However, refrain from bringing up the idea of collaboration before building a relationship. You don’t want the influencers to feel that you’re reaching out to them just to get to your target audience.

Once you’ve built a rapport with them, you can send them an email with a proposal for collaboration.

Here’s a template that you can use to reach out to influencers.

However, for this, you need to find the email addresses of the influencers. For this, you can use Fourstarzz Media. Through it, you can directly contact the influencers by clicking on the “Contact” button.

Question 11. Which KPIs Should You Track for Your Campaign?

After launching your influencer campaign, you should track its progress regularly. This will give you an idea of where you stand.

For this, you should track various influencer marketing KPIs based on your campaign goals.

Here are some of the most important KPIs that you should be monitoring:

• Content Generation KPIs: These include metrics like the number of user-generated posts. You can use this user-generated content to grow your brand.
• Engagement KPIs: Engagement KPIs include website traffic, engagement rate, cost-per-click (CPC), and click-through rate (CTR).
• Awareness KPIs: These are reach, brand awareness, and audience growth.
• Sales KPIs: Sales KPIs include lead generation, revenue generated, and the number of sales.
• Affiliate Marketing KPIs: These KPIs are tracked if you’ve partnered with influencers on an affiliate basis and the prime KPI for this is the cost per acquisition (CPA).

Question 12. What Guidelines Do You Need to Follow When You Launch an Influencer Marketing Campaign?

If you’re doing influencer marketing in the United States, you need to follow the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations.

Additionally, Instagram and YouTube have their own guidelines for influencer marketing too such as tagging the post as a sponsored post.

Question 13. Can Influencer Marketing Help With Your SEO?

This is one of the most common questions among marketers for influencer marketing and the short answer to it is - definitely.

However, you need to involve your website in your influencer campaign for this. When the influencers post content on social media channels with links to your website, they will drive traffic to your website.

This traffic will be highly-targeted, and that means that visitors will be more likely to stick around on your website for longer. As a result, metrics like time on site may increase, and this can impact your SEO positively.

What’s more?

When blogger influencers post content related to your brand on their blogs, they can link back to your website. This can help you get high-quality backlinks for your website, which, in turn, can improve your SEO.

Ready to Get Started with Influencer Marketing?

Launching an influencer marketing campaign can seem like a daunting task when you don’t know the nitty-gritty of this online marketing method.

However, we hope that after going through this list of frequently asked questions about influencer marketing, you’ll be more confident about executing influencer marketing campaigns.

If you have any other influencer marketing questions, let us know in the comments box below. To find reliable influencers for your campaign, subscribe to our influencer marketing platform, Fourstarzz Media, now for $59/month. Cancel anytime.

This post originally published at https://www.fourstarzz.com/.