The Entrepreneur Forum | Financial Freedom | Starting a Business | Motivation | Money | Success

Welcome to the only entrepreneur forum dedicated to building life-changing wealth.

Build a Fastlane business. Earn real financial freedom. Join free.

Join over 80,000 entrepreneurs who have rejected the paradigm of mediocrity and said "NO!" to underpaid jobs, ascetic frugality, and suffocating savings rituals— learn how to build a Fastlane business that pays both freedom and lifestyle affluence.

Free registration at the forum removes this block.

"Influencer" Marketing

Marketing, social media, advertising

GetShitDone

Bronze Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
77%
Dec 20, 2012
421
324
Canada
I'm in the process of launching an eCommerce company selling 1 unique product to the Fitness and Grooming niche.

Instagram seems like a great fit for marketing. Influencer marketing, more importantly.

It seems to be the hottest thing right now for Marketers.

Looks like they primarily take upfront payment to post about your product. But I've heard of other compensation methods.

I'm going to attempt a cost effective campaign where I pay fitness micro-influencers only by Affiliate Commission (50%) for every sale they get me from their posts.

Has anyone ever done Influencer Marketing? Any advice/thoughts on it as a traffic source?
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

emse7en

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
157%
Apr 9, 2018
7
11
38
Utah
I have done influencer marketing, but only as an influencer. If I’m not convinced the product will sell to my audience and they still want to work with me, then I expect payment upfront.

Otherwise I’m open to some sort of hybrid approach of cash upfront and affiliate commissions. But I do require that the brand pays something so I’m not the only one taking a risk.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

GetShitDone

Bronze Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
77%
Dec 20, 2012
421
324
Canada
I have done influencer marketing, but only as an influencer. If I’m not convinced the product will sell to my audience and they still want to work with me, then I expect payment upfront.

Otherwise I’m open to some sort of hybrid approach of cash upfront and affiliate commissions. But I do require that the brand pays something so I’m not the only one taking a risk.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks for your experienced response!

I understand where you're coming from.

Do you think one would be able to find enough Micro-Influencers under 50K followers that would accept purely Affiliate Commission only?
 

emse7en

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
157%
Apr 9, 2018
7
11
38
Utah
Thanks for your experienced response!

I understand where you're coming from.

Do you think one would be able to find enough Micro-Influencers under 50K followers that would accept purely Affiliate Commission only?

Yes, most smaller influencers don’t know their value and are eager to work with brands.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

GetShitDone

Bronze Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
77%
Dec 20, 2012
421
324
Canada
Yes, most smaller influencers don’t know their value and are eager to work with brands.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That makes a lot of sense. I can even find them on those Influencer Platforms like Influence.co

I imagine I'll have to make sure my Instagram page looks decent beforehand with enough followers.

I'm launching this company meaning I'm starting from scratch with social media, customers, etc.

PS: I know a girl with 10K followers and she charges $200 for posts! But she doesn't get many customers lol.

Also, one of my friends who owns a successful eCommerce business primarily does Influencer Marketing and he only sends them a free product and they see their compensation as the free product. He says commission only is possible too.

I'll definitely give commission-only a try, as I'm trying to not max out my marketing budget by paying hundreds of dollars upfront to multiple influencers.
 

AnAverageJoe

remember that you will die
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
292%
Feb 4, 2017
159
465
NMBSC
I tried the same approach with one of my products. Wanted to give them a piece of every sale they got me. No one was interested, everyone wanted money up front right away.
 

NanoDrake

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
171%
Feb 25, 2018
128
219
39
Malta
Then keep searching.
Everyone wants money for their "supposed" value and I can tell you right away that majority of this persons use instagram just to "live the dream baby" which means get paid for doing nothing.
these, not only will wreck your finances, but also your image, and obviously generate no sales and waste your time.

influencers under certain amount of followers and engagement aren't worth a fix amount of money, free product and commission is good enough.
I had a girl that had 20k followers that asked me 500 euro and I caught her using bots, podding with other "same level" influencers and she said that I didn't get sales because it was because of my product.

I gave the product to a woman with 800 followers and got 22 sales... not bad UH ???

Influencers are what they were called BRAND AMBASSADORS, people that had eyes on them but they MARRY your cause.
If you are looking for attention, better use ADS, if you are looking for someone that imbues your brand spirit, then find a proper "influencer" :)
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

GetShitDone

Bronze Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
77%
Dec 20, 2012
421
324
Canada
Then keep searching.
Everyone wants money for their "supposed" value and I can tell you right away that majority of this persons use instagram just to "live the dream baby" which means get paid for doing nothing.
these, not only will wreck your finances, but also your image, and obviously generate no sales and waste your time.

influencers under certain amount of followers and engagement aren't worth a fix amount of money, free product and commission is good enough.
I had a girl that had 20k followers that asked me 500 euro and I caught her using bots, podding with other "same level" influencers and she said that I didn't get sales because it was because of my product.

I gave the product to a woman with 800 followers and got 22 sales... not bad UH ???

Influencers are what they were called BRAND AMBASSADORS, people that had eyes on them but they MARRY your cause.
If you are looking for attention, better use ADS, if you are looking for someone that imbues your brand spirit, then find a proper "influencer" :)

Very well said Nano.

Wow. 20K followers (0 sales) VS 800 followers (22 sales). The engagement even and niche/brand-alignment with that 800-follower girl must of been HUGE for you. I hope you find these types of micro-influencers all the time in that case as that's incredible.

We must be careful to watch out for fake bots and poor engagement.

ONE TOOL I found very helpful is Phlanx's engagement calculator. It literally calculates the engagement % of each influencer's average post. For example, Kylie Jenner has 107M+ followers and below are her metrics.

Average Interactions per post
763,315 Likes
21,893 Comments

With a 2.85% Engagement Rate per post.

Instagram Engagement Calculator | Phlanx


---

I've found 3 tools I'm going to use to do this "Affiliate Influencer" thing.

1) HYPRBRANDS or Klear - Powerful Influencer Search Engine to find targeted micro-influencers in my niche

2) Phlanx - Free Engagement Calculator to assess the engagement factor of their posts

3) Refersion - Affilaite marketing tool for both Affiliates and Brands to manage, track, etc affiliates and their sales.

*I am still going to find some sort of tool that allows you to assess if an influencer has fake bots, as fake bots still "engage" with their accounts.

Nonetheless, this is a good arsenal and I will use a powerful template message to reel them in.

At the end of the day, it is a targeted numbers game to get micro-influencers in your niche to agree to a commission-based payment structure.

I'm sure with enough effort and time, I can create a "Affiliate Influencer" army of people on Instagram and beyond.
 

LittleWolfie

Silver Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
56%
Jun 28, 2018
951
531
Holbeach Hurn
I tried the same approach with one of my products. Wanted to give them a piece of every sale they got me. No one was interested, everyone wanted money up front right away.

They've built value already though, with their following. Try telling a magazine you want an advert and will give them.a cut of your sales. Would you give your product away for free?
 

sdbrownlie

Building Links for SEO Peeps
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
152%
Oct 26, 2017
42
64
Royal Leamington Spa
I'm going to attempt a cost effective campaign where I pay fitness micro-influencers only by Affiliate Commission (50%) for every sale they get me from their posts.

I'd love to hear more if you make this work but my honest prediction is that this is going to mostly be 'not fun' for you trying to get agreed.

A hybrid deal like this can work with big brands and mega influencers - they almost become a full on brand ambassador as part of it and their commission is on top of some kind of generous retainer. And they'll go all Phil Hellmuth for you and drop your brand on ESPN while commentating and so on...

You can definitely just give away free product to influencers who review products in your space though. Some will just 'permanently borrow' it etc... but a good few will end up reviewing it because it's content their audience wants and they didn't pay for it... some might not be great reviews if your product doesn't have the chops etc.

It's worth having some budget in mind though as it'll let you target the influencers who're a little bit bigger but haven't figured out their worth yet. I wrote a post a while back about picking the right influencers:

Three Types of Influencer And Why Everyone Is Targeting The Wrong Two

You'll have some joy with micro influencers etc but there's definitely a 'middle tier' where they are underpriced massively vs the conversions/reach but you do have to give a little more than the really small folks who are just getting their influencer game going.
 

Xeon

All Cars Kneel Before Pagani.
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
191%
Sep 3, 2017
2,427
4,628
Singapore
In addition to using social audit tools to verify the followers of an influencer, a good on-the-ground approach is to look at their comments vs likes ratio, and more importantly, what comments they're getting on their post.

If a post has 893 likes and 57 comments and all those comments are like "good!!!", ":):):):):)", "Love this" and "awesome shot", it's very likely questionable. True comments are usually a mix of sentences that sound genuine and has lots of mentions.
 

Cobainik

New Contributor
Read Rat-Race Escape!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
33%
Jan 26, 2022
3
1
When an opinion leader talks about your product, he tells stories and raises issues that are relevant specifically to his audience of readers.
 

Post New Topic

Please SEARCH before posting.
Please select the BEST category.

Post new topic

Guest post submissions offered HERE.

New Topics

Fastlane Insiders

View the forum AD FREE.
Private, unindexed content
Detailed process/execution threads
Ideas needing execution, more!

Join Fastlane Insiders.

Top