The Ultimate YouTube Influencer Marketing Guide 2022

Influencer marketing has been recognized as the most effective approach to advertising in the modern tech era. There are influencers on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, but a special place among them is taken by YouTube influencers. This popular social media platform with a focus on video content has made thousands of people popular and recognized. Now they boast huge fan bases and a great impact on their decision making, so this influencer marketing approach is in high demand nowadays. How does it work and where to find the right influencer?

This YouTube influencer marketing guide will give answers to the most frequently asked questions on this topic.

What is a YouTube influencer?

A YouTube influencer is a person who creates unique content and has attracted a large subscriber number to the channel. This person specializes in a particular niche or several of them and viewers consider the content created interesting and useful.

What makes a content creator on a YouTube influencer? Naturally, it is a massive following, power to set trends, and impact on the audience. When a person achieves these goals, he can be invited to collaborate with brands and become an ambassador for some of them.

Why are companies ready to hire YouTube influencers? 67% of millennials prefer YouTube as the major source of online consumption. Furthermore, this platform is visited by over 1.5 billion people every month, so it is easier to access the audience with the help of influencers and make it more targeted. Another convincing fact is that 90% of millennials make purchase decisions based on online reviews, so the level of trust in influencers is very high. It means that their advice can encourage subscribers to make different steps including purchases.

How does YouTube influencer marketing work?

YouTube is considered a perfect spot for influencer marketing due to its popularity and long online presence. It features a formal advertising setup for any brand to build a marketing strategy in a seamless manner. It works like a huge television with billions of channels. A user can choose a channel to his taste and enjoy videos without limits there. However, watching any video for free viewers also should see ads from a variety of brands, and this is the way how traditional advertising works on YouTube.

Influencer marketing is a bit different. Brands turn to some channel holders to promote their products, services, or awareness. It means they deal directly with a person or his manager and pay money to him. The most popular way of influencer marketing on YouTube is unboxing when users want to find out what is hidden inside a beautiful box, but influencers can shoot other videos to promote brands too. The most popular ways to work with YouTube influencers are:

• Integration: a brief talk about a brand or product;
• Mentioning: a product or brand is mentioned in the video but without the urge to buy it;
• Exclusive videos: a separate video will be shot for a brand or product by an influencer;
• Insert: a short video developed by the brand or advertiser is inserted into another piece;
• Native format: indirect advertising that looks like a natural blogger’s behavior.

Why use YouTube influencers to promote your brand?

There are several reasons to try marketing on YouTube and cooperate with influencers, first of all.

• Building or expanding the reputation of the brand;
• Forming a loyal attitude of the audience to the brand;
• Generating leads: it features a 5 time higher conversion rate than other platforms;
• Promoting products in an unconventional way;
• Generating content that can access your target audience;
• Increasing impressions;
• Making messages more effective and flexible;
• A variety of niches and influencers to deal with.

General conversion rates from influencer marketing are almost 5 times higher than from traditional YouTube ads. Impressive, right?

Types of YouTube influencer marketing campaigns

Like in any other type of marketing, there are several types of influencer marketing campaigns distinguished on YouTube. The choice of each YouTube marketing campaign type depends on several factors including the stage of the conversion and the final goal to be achieved. Let’s look at the most popular ones and find out their peculiarities.

Introductory campaign

The main goal of this campaign is to introduce a new product or brand to the public. The main peculiarity is the fact that the audience will see a product or brand for the first time. The most effective way to do that is to offer a product review made by an influencer.

Maintenance campaign

The main purpose of the following campaign type is to make a product stick in people’s memory for a longer period of time. It is a great way to maintain brand awareness and increase sales.

Influencers try to focus on the way every product solves the problem, and they often prefer to shoot educational videos with an emphasis on product benefits.

Hashtag campaign

Despite being not a number one platform for Hashtag promotion, some brands choose YouTube for this campaign type to generate more traffic to some videos or websites. The main focus is made on custom hashtags in such campaigns.

Contest campaign

It is not a secret people like contests, and YouTube is a good platform to organize them too. No wonder this way of brand promotion is popular here too.

Branding campaign

This type of campaign usually includes a video about a specific brand or product. It is known as an ad spot and not all influencers agree to run such campaigns since their commercial nature may discourage viewers. But this type of campaign exists and can be ordered too.

How to find the right influencer

There are several things to consider when you want to find out which Youtuber should you collab with.

1. Subscribers and viewers. Not only the number matters but also how many unique users there are and lots of other details. It is important to analyze the metrics of the influencer’s account to have a clear understanding of how many impressions it had and what its traffic sources were during some period of time. Naturally, demographics and its location matter too. It is necessary to understand where the majority of viewers are located, who are they by gender, what age dominates, etc.
2. Niche. One of the most important features of a good influencer is the correspondence with the niche of the brand. If a Youtuber focuses on fashion, popular brands can turn to such a person, but it can be the wrong choice if a brand promotes a healthy lifestyle, for example.
3. Style. Every content added to the platform has its style and characteristics. Therefore, companies should pay attention to the subject of videos, their duration, frequency of posting, communication style and speech, tone of voice, and many other things. All this should match the brand!
4. Budget. It goes without saying that micro-influencers charge less money, but the audience they can access is smaller too. Macro-influencers can expose a brand to a bigger number of people, but not all brands can afford their services. Therefore, it is important to understand how much money a company can spend on influencer marketing, and then start the search for an advertiser.

How to get YouTube influencers to promote your brand

Using YouTube for marketing is a good idea that may help many brands to achieve success, but what to start with? There are several steps to complete if you plan to get assistance from influencers.

1. Set clear goals. It is important to understand what you are hiring influencers for and what purposes you plan to achieve through this collaboration. The majority of such campaigns usually include the following goals: expanding brand awareness, generating leads, increasing sales, building a loyal community of customers, etc.
2. Start the search for suitable influencers. It is one of the most important stages of the campaign, since the key to its success is an influencer, of course. The advice on how to find a good influencer is given above, but you should also remember that doing it yourself may be difficult. Sometimes it is better to turn to influencer marketing agencies with a wide selection of influencers in different niches and their contacts. Such agencies often help to develop campaigns too.
3. Make up a campaign plan. It is important to clarify what kind of content you want to get cooperating with influencers. Naturally, you should share the main goals of the campaign and the ways how to achieve them. Experts advise setting clear time frames and goals for every stage to make necessary changes if not everything works well.
4. Monitor the workflow and measure campaign metrics. You should understand how effective your campaign is. Therefore, check the reach, engagement rate, interactions, and other data to see if your predictions about it were right or you may need to change anything on the way to final goals.

How to measure the success of campaigns

How do you know if your campaign is successful? Undoubtedly, the best way to find out that is to measure its ROI and other metrics. There are several ways to do that:

1. Traffic. The identification of this metric depends on the goals set for the campaign, first of all. But usually, it is enough to check the click-through rate and traffic to see if this collaboration has brought about some benefits.
2. CPC. Cost-per-click is a perfect indicator of consumers’ behavior and engagement. It helps to understand how both an influencer and his/her audience have performed during the campaign.
3. CTR. Clickability is another metric that allows counting the number of people who clicked on the ad provided by an influencer.
4. Subscriptions and registrations. The growth in the number of signups is also important data for brands. It allows seeing the difference between their number before the campaign and during it.
5. Engagements. Tracking everything including clicks, likes, shares, reactions, comments, brand mentions will clarify the significance of the influencer’s impact on the audience.
6. Impressions and reach. It is important to understand how many people have seen influencer ads and what it has inspired them for.
7. Making a survey. You may ask your target audience about their impressions to see if the campaign was successful.
8. Create a tracked link or add a promo code. You will have a clear understanding of how many people have been convinced to take action by the ad.

There is also one universal formula that allows calculating the influencer marketing campaign ROI:

ROI= (Profit/Cost of influencer marketing) x 100

When it comes to profit, it will depend on the goals of the campaign and can be not only finances but also reach, engagement, impressions, etc.

Tips for successful YouTube influencer marketing

1. How can you make any attempt to use YouTube influencer marketing more effective? There are several points to remember:
2. Be careful with the choice of an influencer: a good deal of your success depends on this decision.
3. Set clear and achievable goals.
4. Plan your budget carefully.
5. Prefer to cooperate with micro-influencers who have a better-engaged audience in a narrow niche.
6. Measure and analyze the campaign’s success to make necessary corrections.
7. Engage with influencer’s followers and build trustworthy relationships with them.
8. Remember that high-quality work should be paid for respectively.
9. Avoid micro-management of your influencer since you work with a professional and he/she knows better what the audience wants.

F.A.Qs

Is YouTube influencer marketing worth ordering?

Yes, it is. This type of advertising is suitable for companies that want to expand brand awareness, increase sales, and attract new customers in the niche it works.

What makes YouTube IMC different?

Unlike Instagram or TikTok, the main peculiarity of YouTube marketing is video content and ads included in it. These are lengthy videos that allow inserting ads inside as well as being devoted to the company or product fully.

What types of IMC work the best?

The most popular types of influencer marketing on YouTube are how-to videos, product reviews, ad spots, giveaways, and others.

What is the hierarchy of YouTube influencers?

YouTube influencers are divided into three main categories. Micro-influencers with the subscriber number between 10K and 50k. Mid-tier has an audience between 50k and 500k. Channels with over 500k subscribers are owned by macro-influencers.

Conclusion

Influencer marketing beats all the records in the success of modern advertising campaigns and strategies, so it will be a great mistake not to use YouTube to your benefit as well. Here you could find out what YouTube influencer marketing is and why collaboration with influencers can do a big favor for a brand!