Influencer Marketing For Startups: Complete Guide

When your startup is ready to present itself to the world, it’s important that you have an effective and cost-efficient marketing plan in place. Your marketing should match your brand, voice, and the delivery should speak directly to your audience. Influencer marketing, when done correctly, accomplishes all of these things with a few additional benefits that stretch beyond the reach of other marketing methods.

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No matter what phase your startup is in, influencer marketing is a surefire way to generate buzz around your brand, product, or service.

Don’t just take it from us, Grand View Research found that the influencer marketing platform industry is projected to grow from the $14.3 billion market size that it is today to $143 billion by 2030. Influencer Marketing Hub also found that the influencer industry expenditure is projected to reach $16.4 billion in their industry benchmark report.

Why Your Startup Needs Influencer Marketing

Datareportal found in their July 2022 July Global Statshot Report:

• More than half of the world now uses social media (59%).

• 4.70 billion people around the world now use social media, and 227 million new users have come online within the last 12 months.

• The average daily time spent using social media is 2h 29m.

Social media is quite literally taking over the world, and more importantly, it’s where most people are spending their time and attention. As social media has grown, so has the total following of particular individuals who create content for social media (a.k.a. influencers).

Influencers are individuals who have ‘influence’ over others. Social media has allowed a group of people to ammas large followings of people interested in the content they share on social media. The content shared ultimately enables others to build some sort of relatability or likeness with the influencer. The content shared by influencers might entail personal life experiences, entertaining videos, and other interesting things that users find enjoyment in watching.

As a startup, it’s important that you spend your marketing dollars in places where you’re likely to get the most positive exposure and highest ROI.

Influencer Marketing Hub found that for every $1 spent on influencer marketing, brands earn $5.78 back. To take things one step further, conversion rates for influencer marketing remain stable, ranging from 1-4%. If an influencer with 1 million followers promotes your startup, you might see 10 to 40 thousand conversions.

Influencer Marketing Campaigns for Startups

Just because you get an influencer to promote your startup, doesn’t mean you should expect a 1-4% conversion rate. Ultimately, the influencers you choose to work with will determine how effective your campaign is. Not all influencers are equal in value to your startup either. It takes the experience and knowledge of a seasoned influencer marketing professional to determine if an influencer is even capable of delivering an effective promotion or deliverable.

Choosing to work with the wrong influencers can negatively impact your startup.

Your startup is still a startup, and your reputation can make or break your growth. It’s of paramount importance that you carefully select the influencers you decide to reach out to for your campaign. Equally important is how to carry out the campaign.

Do you know how to draft up the contractual agreements and deliverables with influencers, how payment should be handled, or how to navigate contacting and negotiating with their management?

These are all important areas of focus in an influencer marketing campaign for your startup. While we’ve seen many startups attempt to create and execute an influencer marketing campaign on their own, we can’t stress enough the importance of first speaking with an influencer marketing agency. This will allow your startup to be better educated and equipped to have an effective campaign.

The Benefits of Influencer Marketing for Startups

Influencers offer 10 unique benefits to your startup including:

1. Increasing brand awareness.

2. Speaking directly to your target audience.

3. Reaching users on multiple social media platforms.

4. Providing your startup with user-generated content (UGC).

5. Establish instant trust in your startup.

6. Establish instant authority in your industry.

7. Higher conversion rates.

8. More website traffic.

9. Positive social signals improve your search engine optimization.

10. More meaningful impressions of your startup brand.

Influencer Marketing for Startups: Conclusion

Influencer marketing is a fantastic way to promote your startup. It’s important to find qualified influencers whose audience and brand pair effectively with your startup. It’s best to work with an experienced influencer marketing agency in order to both protect your startup and ensure you have a successful campaign.