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A substantial number of businesses are setting aside budget expenses for influencer campaigns. Influencer marketing allows businesses to connect with their desired audience more genuinely and authentically. It’s not in-your-face advertisements in the local newspaper or syndicated publication. It’s real people—not traditional celebrities—talking about their real experiences with your company’s product or service and giving their real opinions and recommendations.
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is a digital marketing strategy that involves partnering with “influencers,” or individuals who have loyal followings and are considered to be experts in their niche, with the intent of them endorsing and/or mentioning your business’s product or service. Essentially, influencer marketing is word-of-mouth marketing on a larger, more widespread scale.
Brands can utilize influencer marketing to target the exact audience they want to connect with. For example, if you’re a company that sells a new product for children, partnering with a parenting influencer can ensure that you get your product in front of parents. Influencer marketing is also useful for generating sales, increasing social media followings, and driving website traffic.
Why use influencer marketing on YouTube?
Some companies prefer to use short-form video platforms, such as Instagram or TikTok. Others turn to YouTube, which allows for longer, more in-depth video content. There are over 2 billion YouTube users all over the world, and 90% of these users say they’ve been introduced to new brands and products by watching YouTube videos. When you partner with YouTube content creators, you increase the amount of potential exposure for your brand.
Additionally, YouTube influencers are more than likely creating videos for a very specific niche, such as makeup and hair tutorials, cooking and mixology demos, hiking and fishing guides, tips for gamers, and more. This allows you to hone in on the exact type of subscriber—and potential new customer—you want to put your product or service in front of.
With so many influencers out there creating content, how do you know which one is best for your brand and campaign? You can use sites like Upwork to find independent professionals who are expert marketers or have a marketing agency join your team and connect you to qualified influencers. You can also search Project Catalog™ for predefined projects on YouTube influencer research.
Regardless of how you find the right influencer, there are plenty of YouTube influencer marketing opportunities out there for any brand in any industry.
5 types of YouTube influencer marketing campaigns with examples
There is no one-size-fits-all template to follow when it comes to influencer marketing. Each campaign will look different depending on factors like the brand’s business model, sales goals, target audience, and more.
Here, we’ll discuss different types of influencer campaigns and how you can use them to increase engagement and awareness of your brand.
Product placement
Product placement is one of the most recognizable forms of sponsored content. This marketing technique is a simple and effective way to highlight a product by naturally incorporating it into a photo or video. This strategy is ideal for businesses with a tangible product that the influencer can seamlessly include in their YouTube video content.
The sauce brand, Pomi, showcased its product by collaborating with food influencer The Hunger Diaries TV on a recipe-style YouTube video where the sauce was the star ingredient.
Tutorial or how-to
Many subscribers turn to their YouTube search bar when they want to learn how to do something, whether it’s building or fixing something, using a product, cooking, or doing hair or makeup. Product tutorials and how-to videos are among some of the top videos searched for on YouTube.
For example, the kitchen appliance company, GoWise USA, teamed up with influencer GiGi EatsCelebrities to show how to assemble and use the brand’s 4-in-1 meat grinder and food processor.
Guide
Subscribers want to watch YouTube videos about their interests or things they want information about. Influencers can easily integrate a brand’s product or service into a gift guide or a guide to traveling to a specific place.
Punta Gorda/Englewood Beach Visitor & Convention Bureau (VCB) did this by partnering up with established fishing YouTuber, South Florida Fishing Channel, to provide an extensive guide to fishing and eating in Punta Gorda and Englewood Beach.
Contest or giveaway
Giveaways can also increase the brand’s and influencer’s audience. To enter the contest, subscribers are prompted to complete specific tasks, such as joining a mailing subscription list or following both accounts on Instagram.
For example, tech company Zhiyun partnered with YouTuber, JSL Review—who solely posts videos reviewing various tech products—by having its product reviewed and included in a giveaway.
Unboxing
Unboxings are video content where the influencer unboxes a package they receive from a particular brand. The unboxing video reveals the package’s contents, while the influencer talks about the item(s). This strategy is often used by subscription-based brands that curate boxes filled with a variety of products.
For example, FabFitFun partnered with lifestyle influencer, CoffeeBreakWithDani to reveal its spring box of fashion, beauty, and wellness products.
5 best practices for leveraging YouTube influencer marketing
As you determine your influencer outreach strategy, you should be very clear in your campaign objectives. YouTube creators and influencers are constantly receiving pitches from companies, so you need to find a way to make sure yours stands out and grabs their attention.
As important as it is to write a clear, concise pitch, determining who you pitch to is just as important. Finding the right influencer will affect the campaign’s effectiveness. Here are a few best practices to follow when doing YouTube influencer marketing.
Pick the influencer carefully
Don’t choose an influencer just because they have a large number of followers. Micro-influencers can be just as or more effective for brand exposure. They’re niche in their content, have targeted demographics, have better engagement rates, and have loyal followers that trust their opinions.
The influencer should also resonate well with your brand so that their followers fit your target audience. For example, clothing brands should work with fashion influencers, food and drink companies with food influencers, sports companies with fitness influencers, and so forth.
Brands and influencers should also match their ideology. For instance, a company that sells all-natural, cruelty-free products should look for influencers who have those same ethics. Influencer marketing works best when both parties share the same outlook about the campaign mission.
Collaborate effectively
You can decide whether it makes more sense for you to work with smaller or larger influencers, depending on your particular campaign and/or your brand strategy. If you’re looking for more localized engagement, micro-and nano-influencers are the ideal options. These are influencers with a lesser amount of followers yet are still just as loyal—meaning they’re typically flexible and willing to collaborate with brands to give them the coverage and exposure they’re looking for. Together, you can strategize an effective campaign that will benefit both of you. However, if your goal is to reach people all over the world in various markets, macro-influencers might provide a wider reach.
Many influencers will have their ideas, as well. Give the influencers the creative freedom to do what feels natural and authentic to their brand. After all, they know their audience best. Let the influencer work their magic to create the content they know will take your vision and make it shine.
Plan your marketing budget accordingly
Creating quality content takes time, and influencers’ time and creative insight cost money. While negotiation is a possibility, allocate a decent amount for influencer marketing when planning your marketing budget.
Influencer campaign costs vary based on factors like audience size and reach experience, and the campaign focus. Some influencers will give you their media kit with set rates, while others will customize their rates based on your budget and content needs. Some creators work on monthly retainers, while others prefer one-time partnerships.
It’s hard to give an estimate on what these partnerships may cost since there’s no real standardization in how influencers charge, and everyone has their pay structure, but be prepared to spend—at the absolute least—a couple of hundred dollars per video.
Note that influencers are more likely to respond to your pitch if you state it’s a paid opportunity, so include that in your subject line or first few sentences, such as, “Paid collaboration opportunity available with [company name]!”
Make contact with the influencer’s subscribers
Although the content is published to the creator’s YouTube account, you need to engage with the audience as they leave comments, ask questions, or like the video. If a subscriber asks a question or brings up a concern, your brand should be the one to answer.
Another example would be if someone who has tried the product or service responds, “I tried this [service] last week!” Your brand should reply with, “Hi [name]! What did you think?” This begins a conversation, and others may jump in as well.
By engaging with the influencer’s audience, you can show you care about your business and customer service standards.
Measure your success
Giving an influencer a personalized link or code to share with their following is one of the easiest ways to track clicks and conversions from the influencer’s content. Additionally, YouTube Studio provides insights for each video and the YouTube channel. These insights include views, average watch time, reach and engagement, audience metrics, and link click-through count. Google Analytics also provides various metrics that are valuable to an influencer marketing campaign.
Remember that these analytics are only available to the influencer, so make sure to include something in your terms and agreement that requires screenshots of analytics after a certain amount of time following the post.
Metrics help you understand which campaigns work and which don’t. With this knowledge, you can continue to connect with influencers to leverage your business efficiently. The beauty of influencer marketing is that it’s always evolving. By using it in your marketing strategy, it allows you to evolve along with it.
Influencer marketing is king
Old-school marketing strategies won’t leverage your company the same way that influencer marketing can. Working with independent YouTube marketing experts found on Upwork can truly make a difference when it comes to brand awareness.
By connecting with influencers authentically, you can also connect with their audiences authentically—making them even more inclined to continue following your brand, purchase your products, or use your services even after the influencer’s initial promotion.
