Is paying a Social Media Influencer really worthwhile for your SME?

In the last couple of years businesses have found an alternative, potentially more successful means of promoting their products to their target audience. You have more than likely heard of or even used a social media influencer to promote your brand, which has in return has created a new breed of millionaires.

Vloggers, Instagrammers and social media icons such as ‘Zoella’ are making at least £50,000 a month through her successful YouTube channel that boasts over 10 million subscribers. Zoella’s boyfriend, brother and best friends have also found fame with well over 1 million subscribers.

Perhaps a more recent trend ‘pet blogging’, has seen social media accounts with over 1 million followers and has allowed their owners to afford to quit their full time jobs and dedicate their life to their pets.

 

How does it work?

Apparently, it’s quite simple. You contact the influencer via their PR email to organise the type of post that you would like, this could be an image with a promotional paragraph underneath or a video reviewing one of your products. Usually, it would also include your website or details of where the user can buy your product. Following this they would then arrange a price, which historically has been anything up to £100,000.

It sounds almost like the perfect job, but Essena O’Neil didn’t think so when she decided to quit social media and lift the lid on the what it was like to be an influencer. She revealed to all of her followers that her posts were not natural, she actually spent hours to get the perfect post that in return earned her thousands and promoted the business. She admitted that her job eventually made her depressed, which has since led to numerous social influencers coming forward and declaring that it is true.

So, is it really worth it?

Reading that information, you might think the answer is no. The point that Essena and the other influencers were trying to make was their job was giving young girls an unrealistic outlook on life, as they aspire to be as ‘perfect’ as the girls on social media. When in reality, their lives are far from it.

However, from the perspective of an SME it might be worth a small investment.

Speaking to the owner of a hair nutrition company on his experience, he said that using social influencer gave him a push in the right direction when he was first starting out. He said:

” When I first launched my product it was really hard to reach my target market by depending on traditional marketing techniques and my own organic posts via social media. Not having much luck, I decided to do some research into social media influencers that would be willing to post for me. I already knew that I had no chance with the more popular influencers and looked out for influencers that were gaining popularity.

First I tried somebody in the public eye with a modest 1 million Instagram followers and to my surprise she wanted a whopping £8,000 for just one post. Following this experience, I realigned my expectations and decided to look for influencers with up to 20,000 followers. When getting in contact with them, many were willing to post for free in return for the free products although I have paid 5-6 of them as much as £70 per post.

In the first instance I didn’t see much of an impact, even with a few of those that I had paid. Eventually my products began to gain popularity, with one post leading to 200 views on my website and made me £240 in one night.

For me, using social media influencers has made a difference to my small business, as I now have people sending me posts with positive reviews of my product that I can use to promote my products.”

For this business it seems as if it was worth it, but if you are contemplating using a social influencer here is a checklist:

1. Do you have the right product?

Having the right product is pretty much essential. Using a social media influencer wouldn’t be much use to accountants like us or many other services, it usually will need to be something physical. Your target audience also needs to be frequent users of the platform that you are advertising through, which is why it worked so well for the hair nutrition product.

2.  Allocate a budget

As you would with pay per click, stick to a realistic budget. As an SME it might be a good exercise to reallocate part of your marketing budget spent on activities that haven’t been so successful as of late.

3.  Identify the right influencers

Once your budget you will be able to identify the right influencer for your business. Unfortunately, the most popular influencers tend to be the most expensive. Start small, but think about your target audience what they are interested in and who are they likely to be following? E.G if you own a haircare range you would want an influencer who posts predominantly about fashion and beauty.

 4.   Get their attention 

This relates to the third point. Social influencers all sorts of enquiries making it hard to stand out. A product or cause that the influencer feels passionate about is more likely to get their attention, so make sure you do your research on them and you should have more success.

5.  Measure return on investment 

You may have the budget to throw quite a bit of money at paying social influencers, but if you are getting no return then it will be a pointless exercise. Measure factors such as website views, social media followers, likes and most importantly sales to really identify whether this is a worthwhile marketing technique.

A final note, social influencing is a marketing is a marketing trend that hundreds of organisations have been using for a while now. As we mentioned earlier, many influencers have already exposed the reality of the industry to their viewers. It is only a matter of time before consumers wise up to it and become disinterested.