How to Hire an Influencer in 2022?

The popularity of influencer marketing is growing at a tremendous pace. This type of promoting products and services has recently become the center of strategies of many companies. And it’s no wonder! With the aid of influencers and the audience they gathered around them, any business can significantly increase brand awareness, attract more customers, and, therefore, fuel the sales.

The fact that followers perceive these influential figures as close friends does not mean that it is easy to approach them.

When it comes to collaboration, they need to be hired like any other employee. To simplify a so-called recruitment process and assist you in finding the most suitable opinion leader for your brand, we have prepared a guide on how to hire an influencer. Read on to learn the right tactics to involve these social media celebrities in collaboration and make it successful.

Why should you consider hiring an influencer?

Let me just start off with numbers. Based on Mediakix data, Business Insider estimates that brands will have spent up to $15 billion on influencer marketing by 2022.

If this data is not so convincing for you, have a peek ultimate statistics prepared by the Digital Marketing Institute. One of the stats from the list is that 40% of consumers have already made a purchase based on recommendations on social media. What have you got to say to that?

Influencer marketing demonstrates staggering results. Living in the world of technologies, personal communication is still the question of the hour. We are social species, and will always choose interaction with a human being rather than a machine.

The benefits of collaboration with influencers are numerous. Let’s consider the most significant “because” to your “why”:

• You will be able to generate more high-quality leads. Bloggers have a community of devoted fans who trust their pieces of advice, and, as a result, buy goods.
• This marketing channel has the highest ROI (Return on Investment). Choosing an influencer who is relevant to your niche and has the audience that suits your brand, you will not regret a single cent spent.
• Collaborating with opinion leaders, you buy both the audience and the tailor-made engaging content to represent your brand. Influencers excel in generating creative ideas to demonstrate a product or service in a unique way.
• Influencers can drive traffic to your website and improve your SEO, provided that you ask to insert a link, of course. Even if the sale does not happen immediately, potential buyers have a chance to visit your website and familiarize themselves with the goods. This is already not bad.
• If this or that opinion leader promotes your brand, then it is worth attention. Experienced opinion leaders value their reputation, and are unlikely to advertise an unworthy product. Followers know that. Therefore, if your product appears on the influencer’s channel, his clean sheets become yours. Besides sales, your brand gets recognition and approval.

What does it mean to hire an influencer?

When you hire a plumber you know that his or her work is to fix pipes, fittings, and other apparatus to water supply. But what exactly should influencer do when hired?

We hire influencers to promote our brands or goods. Based on the type of this promotion there are different types of work for influencers:

1. One-time mention. Ex: An influencer tells the audience that he or she uses your product.
2. Content integration. Ex: Fashion influencers add the mention of brands they used to create this look.
3. Collaboration. Ex. Influencer creates design for you product.
4. Review or unboxing.
5.  Ambassadorship. Long term cooperation with influencer.

So, when you hire an influencer you shouldn’t expect him or her to spend time in your office 9 hours a day.

What should you take into account before hiring an influencer?

A majority of representatives of Generation Y and Z are tempted with the influencers’ way of life: constant pastime on social networks, parcels with free goods, lots of money, no strenuous activity. Which is why, every other user of social media pretends to be a blogger and thus leads to a rise in fake influencers. Not to be deceived, protect yourself from buying trouble, and avoid wasting marketing budget, look at these tips:

Determine the target audience

It’s clear that you need to look at how much the audience of your brand corresponds to the influencer’s audience based on different parameters. Even if his followers are active and solvent, they may not suit you in terms of demographics, for example.

Check for fake followers

Unfortunately, social media stars still buy bots and pretend they have a large following. There are also still marketers who fall for this trick for various reasons. Do not allow to be fooled.

Review the metrics

There are other necessary stats to review besides followers such as ER, reach, post frequency, follower growth, types of comments, etc. You can request all the metrics directly from an influencer and then compare them to the data got from a specially designed tool. For example, using trendHERO, you get a full report with 90+ necessary metrics included for any Instagram account. After a deep analysis of these metrics, you can understand whether he fits your brand or it is worth searching for someone else.

Study the type of content an influencer produces

First of all, in order to understand whether your product will fit in style, whether the influencer can present the way you need it. You can always negotiate and come to terms. However, opinion leaders rarely deviate from their already established and recognizable style.

Consider past or running collaborations of an influencer

Assess the success of these collaborations, how the audience reacted to the sponsored posts, the overall idea of the promotion. Also, check whether a selected opinion leader worked or continues working with your competitors.

The last but not least thing every marketer should take into account: if you managed to find a suitable opinion leader for collaboration – give him the opportunity to prove himself.

Sometimes brands prefer to prepare content on their own and ask creators to simply publish it on his channel. This is almost always a losing strategy. Allow an influencer to participate in elaborating the campaign as he knows better what type of content is perceived by his audience. Always coordinate mutual goals and approaches to promotion.

How can you find a suitable influencer to promote your brand or product?

Finding the right influential figure often seems like a daunting task. However, a lot of methods have been invented to facilitate the search process, and help you easily identify the most suitable creators for your niche. I am going to briefly describe the main search methods. If you want to find out more, read here.

Run a deep search manually

Once you’ve decided on the goals of a future campaign, start scanning a social media platform where this campaign will be launched. Look through who your competitors collaborated with, browse the selections of influencers in various media (they like to publish articles about social media celebrities), study your brand’s followers, thus, you can come across an influencer who is loyal to your products and you didn’t even know about it. That’s true that this method is time- and energy-consuming but despite everything it works. Make sure to also check their pricing for services and include it into your employee payroll tracker for more accurate calculations.

Use Influencer Search Tools or Market Places

It’s significantly better to use influencer search tools to save your time and effort.

Most of such tools dispose of the huge database of bloggers from various niches. Setting up needed parameters such as age, location, category, the service selects suitable options for you to select from. In addition to discovering opinion leaders, the majority of tools also offer their check on-site, providing access to their analytics. One of such proven tools is trendHERO. It has a huge catalog of influencers as well as allows you to conduct an in-depth analysis of any Instagram account. Sign up and get checks for free.

Delegate the search to an influencer marketing agency

It is the easiest but the most expensive way.

When working with an agency, you only need to control the process and do practically nothing with your hands. Usually, agencies have influencers they collaborate with on an ongoing basis.

However, if none of them suits your requirements, they will find the one themselves. If you decide on choosing a full-service agency, it can take over the entire process of the campaign: from selecting an influencer to the end of the advertising campaign.

7 Steps of hiring an influencer

Imagine that you have already done all the preparatory work, I mean, the definition of goals, the format of the marketing campaign, and the selection of potential influencers to appeal to. Here comes the recruitment itself – quite an exciting part of the entire process.

Please note: the steps outlined below are relevant for those who are going to hire an influencer themselves without the involvement of an agency.

Step 1. Make a detailed brief of the future campaign

All details should be spelled out in this brief: from the goals of the advertising campaign to the place where your product should be located in the photo or what text you want an influencer to write. Such a detailed description will help you clarify all the details of the campaign once and for all. Marketers also pick up references to convey the idea and the concept as clearly as possible as well as demonstrate how you want to visually present it.

Keep in mind: details may change during coordination.

Here we remember that it is very important to allow the creator to make his adjustments. However, the basis of the task as well as the goals are usually unshakable and should be set long before sending out offers for cooperation. Initially, you also need to think over a list of questions that an opinion leader can ask and prepare answers to them so that you aren’t caught napping and look unprofessional.

Step 2. Get in touch and offer cooperation

Having made a list of candidates who you want to сooperate with, set about to contact them. First, turn to the most desirable influencer, but never limit yourself to one.

You should always have alternatives in case someone refuses to cooperate or in the process you realize that you will play nice together. It might be beneficial for you to master the tactics on how to write the first email or message and undoubtedly get a response. To simplify this stage, you can take advantage of these specially designed influencer email templates. In addition, provide time to delve a little deeper into the question on how to contact Instagram influencers in a right way to achieve the desired result – the agreement to collaborate.

Step 3. Hold a Q&A session

There is nothing wrong with asking a lot of questions. Your goal is a fruitful collaboration that benefits both your brand and an opinion leader. If you have already got influencer’s analytics, request to provide it again for comparison. By the way, we have compiled a list with 20 questions you need to ask an influencer before embarking on a discussion of the details. Do not thank, you’re welcome.

Step 4. Negotiate the basics of cooperation

As soon as you assured yourself that it’s a match, proceed to the negotiation of the future promo campaign. Discuss influencer’s vision of the campaign, posting frequency, type of content, deadlines, and so forth. You have already outlined all the nuances in the brief. At this stage, you need to do your best to accurately convey your expectations and hear influencer’s. If possible, arrange a face-to-face meeting to make a final decision, and start working.

Step 5. Set measurable KPIs

Everything that cannot be measured does not make sense. This is the axiom of digital marketing. You should know for certain how to assess the effectiveness of the campaign at its end. It might be the number of new followers, orders, leads, sales, website traffics, etc. Ensure that the creator is aware of the figures you are striving to get. You are going to launch the campaign not only for the sake of a beautiful picture in a popular account, aren’t you? Numbers, numbers, and again numbers!

Step 6. Agree on a price

Usually, influencers have a fixed price list for this or that service. However, it varies based on the complexity of the promotion or particular features needed exactly for your brand. It’s not the case to be greedy, but, at the same time, do your best to agree on favorable conditions for both parties. This is the reputation of your brand, and you do not want to spoil it, right?

Step 7. Sign a contract

It’s time you documented your agreement. All terms of cooperation should be made on paper even if you are on friendly terms with a blogger and are sure that he won’t let you down. Do you not know how to draw up a contract? Follow this link and familiarize yourself with the process of creating one.

An important nuance in the end: it is extremely important to establish long-term relationships with an opinion leader. This will ensure the exclusivity of cooperation and constant customer loyalty to your brand.

How much does it cost to hire an influencer?

It’s obvious that prices depend on the type of content you want to involve an influencer in. One Instagram story will cost significantly less than a sponsored YouTube video. What is more, it is necessary to take into account the type of influencer according to the number of followers: the rates of nano-influencers are evidently lower than those of macro-influencers, for example. Do not forget that there is also an opportunity to agree on barter cooperation.

On average, material compensation varies from 50$ to several thousand dollars.

To put you in the picture of current tariffs and prevent you from being stricken dumb later, read this blog post and find out how much it currently costs to hire social media influencers.

Conclusion

The hiring process of an opinion leader is not a big deal if you know exactly who you need for this or that campaign, and what results you desire to achieve. Choosing a suitable person, using the right tactics, brands can achieve a lot on social networks and create a truly recognizable brand. May a social recruitment process be a breeze, and you get pleasure from work with influencers!