Imperfect Marketing
Imperfect Marketing
284: How Much Should You Pay Micro-Influencers? | Influencer Marketing Guide
In this episode of Imperfect Marketing, I sit down with Dan Coughlin, an expert in digital marketing and accidental agency owner. We explore the evolving landscape of influencer marketing and how businesses can leverage it effectively.
Dan shares his journey from observing his wife's success as a micro-influencer to managing a thriving agency specializing in influencer partnerships. We discuss:
The Changing Face of Digital Marketing
- How consumers are becoming savvier to traditional advertising
- The growing importance of authenticity in marketing campaigns
- Why AI can't replace human creativity in content creation
Demystifying Influencer Marketing
- The different levels of influencers, from content creators to celebrities
- Why micro and mid-tier influencers often offer better ROI than mega-influencers
- The value of niche, engaged audiences over raw follower counts
Getting Started with Influencer Partnerships
- The "crawl, walk, run" approach for businesses new to influencer marketing
- How to calculate fair compensation for influencers (hint: it's not an exact science)
- The importance of authenticity and genuine product enthusiasm
Key Takeaways for Marketers
- Why storytelling is crucial in influencer partnerships
- The value of data-driven decision making in marketing campaigns
- How to approach marketing with a "poker player" mindset
Whether you're a small business owner curious about influencer marketing or a seasoned marketer looking to refine your strategy, this episode offers valuable insights into harnessing the power of authentic partnerships in the digital age.
Are you ready to explore how influencer marketing could transform your business? Tune in to learn how to navigate this exciting and ever-changing landscape.
Connect with Dan:
Website: gethypedmedia.com
LinkedIn:linkedin.com/in/daniellcoughlin/
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Hi, I'm Kendra Korman. If you're a coach, consultant or marketer, you know marketing is far from a perfect science, and that's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing. Join me and my guests as we explore how to grow your business with marketing tips and, of course, lessons learned along the way. Hello and welcome back to the Imperfect Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, kendra Korman, and today I am joined by Dan Coughlin, who is an expert in digital marketing. So thanks so much for joining me today. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into digital marketing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, kendra, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. So my background is a little complex. I mean, whose background isn't? But I'm what you call, like an accidental agency owner actually an accidental marketer as well.
Speaker 2:I didn't set out my career path to be marketing, but here we are. But long story short, back in like 2017, my wife started an Instagram page and she started posting like healthy baking recipes so think about like gluten-free brownies and coconut sugar cookies and things like that because that was her passion and she grew her Instagram page from scratch from to about 25,000 followers so a good size micro influencer in just under a year. So I got to experience what it's like behind the scenes to be a content creator, how hard it is to grow an audience. To maintain it. It's a full-time job. So my wife started getting a little burnt out with being an influencer. She started getting some brand deals and things like that. It started turning into more of a job than a passion and a couple brands that she was working with asked her for help with their creator partnerships. And that's how Get Hyped.
Speaker 2:Our agency was born. We started as an influencer marketing specialist agency and over the past seven years, we've blown up to now using content creators and influencers to help businesses add reoccurring revenue, how to use influencers to really monetize. So that's our specialty, among other digital marketing things. But the way I got involved was that when my wife started to get burnt out by running the agency herself after a couple of years of doing it, and so I stepped in as managing director. She's still involved. She still owns the company, but I manage the day to day. So for five years I've been doing influencer, paid media, email marketing, like a lot of different digital marketing channels that support using content creators in a business's holistic marketing strategy.
Speaker 1:Very cool. Okay, so I have to ask a personal question and you can. You don't have to answer if you don't want to.
Speaker 2:I love personal questions.
Speaker 1:So how is it working with your wife?
Speaker 2:Very challenging. I'll say that you know you have to have some kinds of lines of separation between business and when business is over it's tough to stop talking about business honestly. That's kind of why we have the roles the way we are, so we do different things within the company. I'm managing the kind of day to day and she's more of a silent partner, owner behind the scenes these days and that works out really well for us because it's not for the weak right. You got to have a strong relationship and you have to have clear lines of separation there. That's my recommendation if anyone's thinking about going into business with their partner.
Speaker 1:Yes, my husband has been helping me out lately in my business and so just happens to be very top of mind. So I'm like how's that going? He doesn't always like working for me, so I get that.
Speaker 2:It strengthens the relationship and it challenges the relationship. I mean I have, I have two young kids as well. Or I say we should, we have two young kids as well, and you know we call the business our third child all the time, you know.
Speaker 1:So yeah, very cool. Thank you for sharing that. Ok, so let's get back on a digital marketing. What are, what are things that you're seeing right now? What? What's trending? What's happening?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the thing that's at the top of my mind from day to day is just that the digital consumer is just becoming more savvy to advertising. Right, and this falls under, you know, traditional digital ads, where you talk about Google, facebook, whatever, and then if you use content creators and you amplify their content and turn their content into ads as well, it's just not as simple as it used to be of, oh, let me just find an influencer and have them talk about my products, or let me just throw some ads up and I'll get three X ROI or greater pretty easily, like. It's becoming more challenging, right. So what that means, as as marketers, is is we have to be more creative, and I think we have to think of new ideas and really go more.
Speaker 2:This is kind of an overused word these days in digital marketing, but authenticity, right, we need to. You just can't slap an ad together and expect it to do well when it seems like it's not coming from the heart, right. Which is why I really love influencer marketing and the whole creator economy, because when, when, done right creators, when they love a product or a service, it is authentic, it is coming from the heart, and then the audiences respond to that accordingly. So that's what I really love about the trend that we're going down is, in the social media world, which I live in, especially when platforms like TikTok, consumers are savvier than ever. They can smell an advertisement from a mile away and you'll get called out on it if it's poor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and I think again, I think that that talking about doing things new, doing them different, being authentic I'm a big fan of AI, and I think that that's where AI falls short, right, so that's what's going to keep us in our jobs for a while longer is that it can't come up with that new and authentic thing, right, unless you give it to it. It can help you speed up the content creation process, but it's not going to create it for you, and I think that that's just just really interesting with what's going on right now.
Speaker 2:I couldn't agree more. I tell everyone AI is a tool. I'm kind of getting tired myself of the discussion of like is AI good or bad? Do you use AI or do you don't use AI? It's like it's not a black and white thing. Right, it's a tool that you can use to do things easier and more efficient and better. Right. But if you don't use the tool correctly, the output is going to be poor.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly. So you're talking a lot about influencer marketing and how if it's authentically done and well done and embedded into brands. So I was the Jeep advertising manager a long time ago and we were, we had influencer marketing and we sponsored Tony Hawk and Sean White and you know a little bit different than what it is today and I know you think even back then Doritos was doing like a build your own Super Bowl commercial or something like that. But there's a difference between that and what you're talking about. I mean, your wife had twenty five000 followers and she was determined to be an influencer in the space that she was in. It's not all like million plus followers, right? So talk to me a little bit about what are people not understanding correctly when it comes to influencer marketing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. Like any game, there's levels to it, and you know Tony Hawk and things like that, sean White they're on the celebrity level. Right, arguably they're not even influencers on the social media side, yet they are, but they're the historic celebrities they influence across all media. Right, we're focusing is more on the I would say the bottom of that pyramid. Right, we're focusing on more on the I would say the bottom of that pyramid. Right, we're focusing on the level one.
Speaker 2:The foundation is what we just call basic content creators, and they're they're making things like UGC or user generated content. And I'm saying that they're they're at the bottom of the pyramid because they have the least amount of followers. Right, they don't have to have any followers at all to do good content and, um, there's a lot of them out there. Right, there's millions of, I think. I heard a stat the other day that it was like the number one aspiration of a kid coming out of college these days is to be a content creator, right Over any other profession YouTube star, I think, is one that I heard not too long ago.
Speaker 2:Right, youtube, tiktok and they're even realizing that they can make money doing it Right and easily, doing the things they love, which is hanging out on their phone trying out products and things like that, even doing things like affiliate marketing. So that's the entry level for a lot of businesses that we work with, when they haven't used creators before and they come in and they make some UGC and things like that, and then when they get a little established and more used to using UGC in their digital channels, then they'll move up to nano and micro influencers. And the reason we start calling them influencers is because they've amassed a following, right, that's, the difference between an influencer and just a content creator is they have an audience, and gathering an audience and keeping an audience is not easy, right? Not everyone can do it, so there's less of those folks the higher you go up that pyramid. So we deal primarily in the nano, micro and then the next level up, called mid tier content creators, because those tend to be the most affordable for a lot of small and medium sized businesses that are our, our clientele.
Speaker 2:Mid tier taps out around depending on who you ask 300,000 or half a million followers or subscribers, and that's really where the sweet spot is.
Speaker 2:Like, we work with a bunch of brands through partnerships with larger agencies, and these are brands that you have in your you know the CPG brands that you have in your kitchen right now, in the cabinet, brands that you go out and stop by and buy coffee from every morning, right, I can't name drop on here, but you get the idea and they're working with mid-tier influencers.
Speaker 2:They're even going down and working with micro influencers as well, because I think the industry recognizes the value between micro and mid-tier over, say, compared to those celebrity influencers that have millions of followers. Right, and the difference is that authenticity word that we're going to go back we went talked about earlier right, is that mid tier and micro influencers. They have still, like, a very niche following. It hasn't been watered down yet by their large size of millions of followers and they keep their content more niche, more specific, not as general. So they tend to have higher engagement rates, better loyalty with their following and they're not as expensive as those big folks either, right, some of the. I mean you can get a hundred thousand dollars a post for some of those bigger influencers, over a million followers. Like, who has the budget for that when you're a medium-sized business, right. So even the big businesses, or even the Fortune 500 companies, they're getting savvy about their budgets as well, and everyone's playing in the micro to mid tier space is what we're seeing.
Speaker 1:Well, and with a more narrow and focused content, you get a more narrow and focused audience that's there for the content that they're producing and if that is your sweet spot for a brand, that's actually a better place to be, because it's, you know, dollar per result or return on investment, or whatever you want to call it. Return on ad spend is going to be significantly higher, I would think, because while they have someone has a million followers, they're not all that. I mean, that's like putting an ad on the news, right Right, right, don't know exactly who those are going to be.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, everybody has tools that show audience demographics, right. We can see what the mix is and the mix just gets more and more general the bigger the creator you get. Now it's not like there's anything against large creators, like they still work, right. Even though we tend in the industry to say that followers is a vanity metric and you shouldn't focus on followers, it still holds clout, right. Like somebody has 10 million subscribers on YouTube, makes a video, lots of people are going to watch it. It gets tremendous reach. People love those creators, you know. But they also know that those creators are getting sponsored, for the consumer is not stupid. Like they know that they're getting paid tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars for those sponsorships. So there's brand awareness. That works and things like that at those larger levels. But if you really want to drive like very rapid, you know interest and affinity and things like that, micro and mid tiers is the better approach in my opinion.
Speaker 1:If someone, if a small to mid-sized business, is looking to get started in influencer marketing, what do you recommend?
Speaker 2:Crawl, walk run. This is a great question because so many times I see like I got $10,000. What's the biggest influencer I can work with? And I'm like, pump the brakes right. Like you've never worked with creators before. Don't blow all of your budget on one person, because nobody has a crystal ball and it's impossibly. Even if you do all the best research and you look up the creator's demographics and you think they're a perfect brand fit, what if that one or two posts from that creator tanks for whatever reason?
Speaker 2:There's a lot of variables in the whole influencer marketing creator economy that are uncontrollable. You know, like, what's going on in politics, what's going on with trends, what time of year is it right? Like there's things that we can't control. So I always recommend crawl, walk run. If you've never worked with any kind of content creators before, start with some UGC right. I see a lot of brands that are, you know, running paid media campaigns and they haven't even utilized UGC, even though UGC has been around for years now and it almost seems commonplace to us. Yeah, yeah, exactly Right Decades.
Speaker 2:Arguably there's arguably, has always been UGC, even before social media, right, it's just this new term that came up, and but still they're, you know, maybe they're using like high production content or something like that, and it's like get some social proof into your ads, first by using some UGC and, you know, get some native content into the channels that you're using and then, okay, see how that improves your results.
Speaker 2:And then, okay, now we're going to walk, now we're going to work with some nano and micro influencers, and work with a lot of them is what I always recommend.
Speaker 2:Right, Get 10 at once to make one post for you and then run all that content in your ads, or see how those posts perform with audiences, because influencer marketing is all about looking at the data, like any channel. Right, like you're going to have 10 influencers post, you're going to have a number one influencer and you're going to have a number 10 influencer. As far as performance, and that organic performance of them posting to the channels is probably going to be different than the paid performance of you running their content in the ads. So you have to look at both separately and then say, okay, what worked, what didn't, why Draw key insights out of it, and then pivot your approach and why? Draw key insights out of it? And then pivot your approach and then you can slowly build yourself up to working with bigger and bigger creators with the confidence that when you're spending the money on those bigger creators, you know what's going to work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that experimenting right. Start small and work your way up, because then again you'll know better what to ask for and what we're really truly looking for when it comes to that, which I think is there's a lot to say for that level of experience. Right that you get along the way. So how much is the average influencer getting paid?
Speaker 2:Really good question. I get this quite a bit, but it's been a little while since anyone asked me. It's the wild west out there. I'll just say it's crazy. There is no standard for how much to pay creators. We have a calculator on our website, a free one that you can use, but it's just a ballpark. It's just an average. There's just the challenges. There's so many variables that go into what makes a quality creator, and also the little bit of beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right Like a creator's value to one brand is not the same as a creator's value to another brand. So what I generally say, though, to help out folks, is about a 10 cent cost per view. So I'm using views because I'm talking about video content, specifically because video is the hot thing right now will probably be the hot thing for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 1:For like 10 years now, it's like the newest trend in marketing video? It's not now.
Speaker 2:Right and short form, specifically Right. A lot of folks that listen in are probably familiar with the whole TikTok getting banned in the US. Not back and forth, right, I can't keep track of it. It's just crazy. I've been hearing that question since Trump's first term about is TikTok going to get banned? And I'm like I don't know, hasn't been banned yet, we'll see.
Speaker 2:So in the meantime, we just keep using it, we keep running campaigns on it, but whether you're talking about Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts or TikTok videos, a 10 cent cost per view. So what you do is you look at the creator's profile, you look at their last 10 videos or so and you can average up what their views are on their videos and use multiply by 10 cents. So, for example, they got 25,000 views per video on average for the last 10 videos. You could expect twenty five hundred dollars per post as a ballpark. Now, does that mean you can't find a creator with those stats that'll ask for five hundred dollars? No, they're out there. Can you find one that'll ask for ten thousand dollars? Yeah, they're out there too. So you need to know what you're going after as a brand or as a marketer, because you're going to get a wide range of responses from creators.
Speaker 1:So you're going to need to think about what it's going to be worth to you in the end, right, 100%? You might have a higher end creator that fits your brand a little bit better than somebody else, and they may want to charge more than the views you're going to get, but then being able to use that content has value, right? So there's a lot of different things to factor in, and I like that you take a lot of that into consideration. So it is the Wild West, though, which is really interesting to see.
Speaker 2:Especially. I'll add that the smaller the creator generally, the tougher you're going to have with getting to the end result you want managing that creator. And it's just because smaller creators are less experienced for the most part. Now, of course, there's always exceptions. I always get the micro creator that comes back and says no, we were great. You know like you guys are great.
Speaker 2:There are a lot of good micro creators out there, but in general, I'm going to think you know you're overgeneralizing here. The higher you go up that pyramid of creator size, the more experienced they are with brand partnerships and the easier they are to work with, the less you have to guide them and train them. So that is one negative to working with smaller creators. Like you see a million articles and blog posts out there in influencer marketing subject. These days it's saying micro influencers this is a new thing Micro, micro, micro. Right. It's like, yeah, they're cheap and they get the job done, but they're harder to work with and you better make sure that you know how to guide them properly or else you're going to be tearing your hair out working with a bunch of micro influencers because they're just not as savvy and experienced as mid-tier and above.
Speaker 1:Time is money too, right. So there's value there as to what you're paying and what you're getting, to 100%, yeah. So lots of things to think about headed down the influencer pathway. If there was, say, one reason somebody should start considering investigating influencer partnerships, what would you say?
Speaker 2:that is the number one reason is if someone needs the ability to tell a story about their product or service. We often work with a lot of products where taking a picture of it or putting a bunch of copy on a website just really doesn't sell the emotion of how that product or service is going to benefit the audience. And you know what? I'll get on a call with founders and I'll get on a call with you know, doctors and all these other folks that are so passionate about their products. And I'm like, great, like you sold me on it, but we have to sell the audience now. Like that, that speech you just gave me about how it this is so transformational and whatever. And like, yeah, you sold me, I'm in, let's go, but we have to get that into your marketing right, we have to get that into your content.
Speaker 2:And I think that's what creators do so well is they use the products and when they, when they love them, it comes off as a really good storytelling message. And I put emphasis on the when, because I think that's another really important part of working with creators is there's a lot of folks out there that think that, oh, I'm just to send product to people and get them to post about it. And it's like, no, you only want those creators that are excited about their product. Like if we, even when we have a contract with a creator and that creator could have five, 10, $30,000 on the line for that post, we're like do you love it? All right, are you getting good results from it?
Speaker 2:And if there's any sense of that that they don't absolutely love the product, we're like, no, I'm going to keep it. It's good, we're going to cancel the contract. We'll go on to somebody else and they're good with that. Because creators sometimes feel like, oh, this brand really wants me to do this and there's money on the line, like I got to make it work and that's. You absolutely don't want that. Right, you lose all the. Yeah, I'd say everyone has a used car salesman kind of sixth sense and they can tell when they're being sold to and it's not real.
Speaker 1:I like that so there can be again working with an agency that deals with influencers. There's a lot of value there. Right, getting that out on that contract if they don't love it, it's huge, I mean, because that could do a lot of damage to your brand if they feel that there's fake advertising and promotion out there. Right Again, going back to that authenticity piece, and I don't know any brand that doesn't need storytelling. So I think that pretty much says everybody needs influencer marketing. So when you're thinking about it, definitely check out the links in the show notes and get connected, check out the free calculator and learn more about influencer marketing. This has been an awesome conversation about influencer marketing. Thank you so much for sharing all of your great insights and tips about it along the way here. Before I let you go, I do have to ask you the question that I ask everybody, and that is this show's called Imperfect Marketing, because marketing is definitely not a perfect science. What has been your biggest marketing lesson learned along the way, that's a great question.
Speaker 2:Before I became an accidental marketer, I was an electrical engineer, so totally different and very analytical, very math science focused, and there was always a right or wrong answer.
Speaker 2:I think the toughest lesson that I've had to learn coming into marketing is that and one of my mentors in marketing taught me this is marketing is kind of like a hand of poker right, where, even if you're the best poker player in the world, you're at the poker world series, you go in with the best skills and experience that you possibly can, the best strategy to every single hand, but you can't expect to win every single time and you have to be able to pivot as you go.
Speaker 2:So I've used my engineering background and combined it with marketing experience now to say I'm very data driven. Combine it with marketing experience now to say, like, I'm very data driven. So that's why, you know, in our discussion I talked about crawl, walk, run and you know, start small, see what results you get and build from there. Because whether it's influencer or any other channel, even with all of our experience, you're not going to knock it out of the park every single time. So you have to look at what is the data, or if you go wrong, where do we go wrong, so you can make corrections and go.
Speaker 1:And if you went right, how can we do that again?
Speaker 2:Exactly Right Think positive. I love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, gotta have the positivity.
Speaker 2:Well, my husband is also an engineer, so he's mechanical.
Speaker 1:So he's a little bit of an accidental marketer himself. So thank you again so much for sharing all of this great information, and we really do appreciate it. Again, check out his agency down in the show notes or the description wherever you're listening or watching, and be sure to check out how you can get more involved with influencer marketing. Thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. In the meantime, if you learned something today, it would really help us out if you would rate or subscribe. Thanks and have a great day.
