Complete Guide on Influencer Onboarding

Influencer marketing has become a new norm of product marketing. If executed correctly, it offers the highest ROI than any other mode of marketing. Surprisingly, nearly 25% of marketers globally (72.5% of US marketers) currently focus on influencer marketing and believe in its potential (Hubspot data) . When looked upon from the customer side, nearly 14% of 18-to-24-year-olds and 11% of millennials have purchased at least one thing in the last six months because an influencer recommended it. These statistics are sufficient to prove that the hype about influencer marketing is real. 

Despite the hype, around 28.1% of marketers still feel it challenging to experience ROI from their influencer marketing campaigns. Thus, it is to be understood that influencer marketing will work in favour of those who know how to leverage it with the right strategy. But, before learning the ideal strategy of influencer onboarding, you must have the basic knowledge of different types of influencer campaigns to leverage in 2024. 

Types of Influencer Marketing Campaigns 

Before you start looking for ideal social media influencers, you should know the types of campaigns you can leverage. Let’s have a quick overview.

Evergreen campaigns

You can run such campaigns throughout the year. You have to identify a list of fresh, relevant influencers every month to whom you will send products to try and get featured on their stories in return. This type of campaign can be fruitful in driving sales, increasing brand values, generating UGC, etc. Usually, such campaigns are best for micro-influencers. 

Seasonal or promotional

anything in a time-sensitive context. Campaigns that focus on a specific date, season or holiday, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, come under this category. It is worth noting that the entire window from selecting influencers until influencers post content, can take a couple of weeks. Thus, it requires onboarding with the influencer at least one to three months in advance.

Long-term/bespoke

Some organizations go for customized campaigns catered to specific influencers. Besides the standard campaign process, the number of followers is the key; you may want to create campaigns for VIP influencers. 

Ideally, you will partner with influencers who leverage every possible social networking activity, such as meet-and-greets, to promote your brand to their followers. Needless to say, it comes with different compensation terms than the other two campaign types we discussed above. Now that we have understood different types of campaigns, let's understand how to onboard influencers. 

Steps to Onboard Social Media Influencers  

Identify Your Ideal Influencer

There are 50 million influencers on social media, and 1.5-5 million are on YouTube alone. However, you need to identify and collaborate with the one with an audience highly relevant to your business niche. For instance, let's take the example of the famous fashion influencer Chrissy Rutherford: 

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She is known for entertaining her 168K global audience with impressive fashion tips and mental health advice. However, if you will engage her to promote your web design service, it is likely to be unsuccessful. Though your service may grab huge attention, your campaign may hardly get satisfactory conversions considering the niche she represents. 

Instead, you should be clear about two things before starting influencer outreach: your target audience niche and your expected goals. For instance, if your goal is brand awareness, you need influencers with huge target audiences. However, if your goal is sales, an influencer with a high engagement rate will be your ideal bet. 

With that clarity in mind, you can start looking for your ideal influencer using relevant hashtags and keywords related to your industry, products, or services on your preferred social media platform. 

‍Tip: You don’t necessarily need to approach mega influencers to meet your campaign goals, especially if you have a limited budget. Instead, you can approach micro-influencers with a small audience yet promise high engagement rates, often at a lower cost. 

When the influencer agrees to partner with you, the next process is to plan for a smooth internal onboarding process. 

Make the Best Offer 

The average cost of an Instagram post from nano influencers in 2023 was $1500, while that for micro influencers was $5000. However, it's difficult to acknowledge the degree of value an influencer can bring to your brand unless you try them. On the other hand, good performers might come a little pricey. So, it all depends on how good you are at making the best offer to your ideal influencer that they can't simply refuse. It can be the market price, but it has to be close to it so that they do not feel like engaging with you for a negotiation. 

Critical driving factors of influencer pricing:

Marketing platforms: 

An influencer with a sizable following on Instagram than their other social media platforms will charge more on Instagram than on other apps. 

Type of influencers:

If the influencer has a bigger audience base (mega or macro), your brand is likely to receive more eyeballs but at a higher price. 

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Influencer relevancy: 

Influencers with niche audience from specific populations or demographics on any influencer marketing platform matching your needs will charge more for helping you leverage their focused audience base.

Campaign duration: 

If you are planning to engage in a long-term relationship, influencers might charge you less than for a one-time association. 

Influencer reputation:

This is extremely subjective. Even a nano influencer with successful past collaborations with good brands may charge a higher price than a micro influencer. 

Now, to calculate influencer marketing cost, use CPM (cost per mile). The value indicates your ideal budget to generate 1,000 views from a particular target audience. 

CPM = Cost of collaboration / Reach of influencer * 1000

With a fixed CPM in mind, you can calculate your budget for an influencer partnership as shown below: 

Reach of influencer / 1000 * CPM = Cost of collaboration

Internal Influencer onboarding 

When an influencer agrees to collaborate with your brand, the next step is to plan and organize their information for a smooth internal onboarding. In this regard, you can use an ideal Influencer Relationship Management (IRM) system. Keeping comprehensive details about each influencer will help you access all necessary data from one centralized location when needed. Once you learn this art of internal onboarding, your influencer campaigns will go smoothly, and you will build a solid reputation for your brand in the influencer market.

Structuring Your Creator List 

According to statistics, a well-structured influencer data management system can help you improve your campaign engagement rates and ROI. For instance, if your marketing campaigns involve targeted influencer strategies, you are likely to experience up to a 6.5 times increase in ROI. 

To better track the campaign performance of different influencers, it's advisable to assign unique promo codes or tags to each influencer. It becomes extremely important when you are dealing with influencers from different platforms, such as Instagram and YouTube. 

Here is a list of details you need to better organize the social media influencer database: 

• Recent contact information: keep the most recent contact information to make swift communication for any unplanned last-minute campaign promotions 
• Influencer profile details: this includes details such as influencer handle/name, profile niche, gender, demographic information, etc. 

This organized information can help you make a well-targeted campaign. For instance, if you need influencers in beachwear campaigns, you can sort the list by demographic filter to quickly identify influencers who have access to a beach.

Now that you have all the necessary information about your ideal influencers, it's time for external onboarding, where you need to equip them with the resources to execute their campaign deliverables. Your influencer signs a contract to abide by the terms and conditions made on mutual agreement before proceeding further. 

External Influencer onboarding 

External onboarding is all about providing influencers with the following information to help them execute your campaigns with ease. 

Posting Timeline

Let your influencer have complete clarity of when and how you want them to run your promotions. In this regard, they need a concrete timeline to make the deliverables. For instance, if you need to run promotions for your Christmas offer, the creator should receive and try the product by November to create hype. 

Also, discuss with your influencer and decide the ideal time to publish the content to fetch maximum views. For instance, many food promotions are released one day before the weekend starts to get restaurants the maximum weekend sales. In case you are planning for multiple promotions with different creators, schedule for when they should post, maintaining a sufficient timeline gap for creating a prolonged buzz.

Posting tasks

A definite deadline simply helps the influencer to keep your influencer organized. Create a framework for posting content for your creators in line with the posting timeline. This is important when you are engaging one creator to run promotional content for you on different social media channels. 

Content rights document

The content rights document becomes imperative when you might need your influencer’s content for repurposing in different scenarios. In this regard, the influencer has to sign the creator rights document that gives you legal permission to repurpose the produced content.

Affiliate link or discount code

Affiliate links are important to ensure your influencers get credit for their work. However, it is standard procedure to offer each influencer a unique identifier so that you can easily track their success. 

Find the Right Influencer Using Phyllo 

‍Phyllo’s influencer marketing solution makes it easy to find influencers across many marketing channels. With Phyllo, you can leverage any influencer marketing, such as YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, and TikTok, with an API gateway to access influencer data easily.

As Phyllo's API seamlessly collect influencer data without raising any warnings, your team find it easy to shortlist creators based on the target audience, engagement rate, and other related factors.

Here are some API solutions that Phyllo offers you to aid your influencer search.

Identity API

The Identity API can verify the identity of the influencer, including name and contact details. You can also verify subscriber or follower growth trends and original views in real-time.

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The API allows you to access audience demographic as well, which helps you shortlist successful influencers representing your target audience.

Engagement API 

Phyllo’s Engagement API has been designed to optimize your campaigns by understanding the key metrics, such as engagement rate. It's just like Google Analytics but for your campaigns. It allows you to sort campaigns by engagement rate and ROI. As a result, you can quickly identify campaigns that need further optimization to yield better results. 

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Income API 

Phyllo's income API will help you analyze an influencer's income level with ease. The API analyzes creator data and their income streams across different platforms to give you a nearly accurate figure. It helps make a good deal upfront and identify potential social influencers under your budget.

Conclusion 

Influencer marketing can be successful when you tap into the psychological aspects of your potential customers that drive their purchasing decisions. To leverage this, partner with influencers who have been doing the same with an audience matching your buyers' persona.

Additionally, plan a smooth onboarding to help influencers understand and meet your campaign objectives with sufficient time for creative preparation. Creating campaigns tailored to both the influencers and customers increases the likelihood of success. All you have to do is thoughtfully promote your brand with the right influencers on their preferred platforms to gain maximum visibility from consumers actively looking for solutions like yours.