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How to Find, and Leverage Influencers To Market Your App Ever since iOS 14.5 in April of 2021, the process of having an influencer promote your product has become increasingly important. handicapped programmatic marketing influencer marketing — — In fact, i nfluencer marketing campaigns grew a staggering 26% in 2021 and the trend appears to be continuing in 2022. Many bootstrapped startup founders & indie entrepreneurs believe that influencer marketing is out of reach for them. Often I hear founders say: “Aren’t influencers expensive?” super “What would influencers want to do with me and my product?” “I can’t get in touch with influencers even if I tried.” I’m here to tell you that influencer marketing is more accessible than you think! Why? Because I was able to partner with NFL wide receiver Donovan Peoples-Jones to market my mobile game to the iOS top 100 free games list without paying a cent. DeepPassJam.com Here’s how I did it, and how you can do it too! Note: Even though our product was a mobile game, all these tips are applicable to mobile apps and “direct-to-consumer” products too! Step 1: Identify and Make A List Start by creating a spreadsheet of your top 50 ideal influencers to work with. You should separate your list into 4 columns: “Name” “Contact” “Passion” and “Status.” Under the contact column, write down the most convenient way to contact the influencer. A warm intro is most preferred, followed by email, followed by text, followed by in-browser “contact me” page, followed by cold social media DM. Quite often, smaller creators will have their business email available publicly if you scan their social media and website site. If you cannot find an avenue to contact them, then the influencer is likely too big — leave the contact column blank. Under the passion column, rate on a scale from 1 to 5 how much passion you would have to work with them if they said “yes.” Under the status column, write down the status of reaching out. All the influencers will start with a status of “have not contacted.” Once you reach out once, change to “Contacted x1” If you follow up once, change to “Contacted x2”. If they respond, then change to “Negotiating.” If they ultimately decide to pass, or you follow up 3 times without a response change this column to “Contact lost.” This column serves as a tool to keep you organized. Client Relationship Manager Sort the list by contact method quality. From there, sort the list again by passion. You should reach out to creators in this order. Eight creators at a time. You should follow up three times without a response before you give up on reaching that creator. A few tips to think about when creating your list: Big influencers cost big bucks. Smaller influencers are often very affordable or even “free” (more on this later). Target influencers with followings under 50k on YouTube/Instagram or 500k on Tik Tok to start. Target Smaller Influencers — Some influencers have astronomical follower counts but when you look at their content, it’s not engaged with or only being engaged by bots. Ensure Your Influencer Has The Right Influence — Beware of influencers like this! Also, it’s critical that the influencer has an audience that matches of people who use your product. the demographics It doesn’t matter how many followers Oprah Winfrey has, if she promotes a First Person Shooter game (something typically younger men enjoy), the campaign could perform catastrophically poorly since Oprah’s following tends to consist of older women! Prioritize influencers you can actually get in touch with: either via warm intro or because they have their business email readily available. Golden rule: avoid their agent at all costs! Agents care about one thing only, money upfront. Have An “In” — If you’re a startup founder, you likely don’t have the budget to be shoveling out loads of cash on influencer marketing campaigns. Instead, you could try contacting someone in the influencer’s orbit first: someone in their “entourage.” If you can convince them of a quality product, they’ll likely be willing to warm intro you to the influencer at that point. — You can reach out to marketing agencies such as or as these agencies are likely to have connections to influencers. Keep in mind, these agencies will likely require a fee for their services. But they might be affordable to you. If you’re really struggling to find an “in” small Homeplate Courtside It’s important to identify which creators you’d most like to work with because your passion for their brand will come off in the pitch. Don’t discount passion — your Step 2: The Pitch It’s time to reach out and pitch influencers you’ve identified. Influencer partnerships are . That is to say your reputation matters. Influencers only work with people they trust. Here are some items that can help give you credibility when you initially reach out: relationship based A strong portfolio of past products you’ve created that have good reviews. An active community — even if it’s small — of existing & happy users. Strong concept art of the future product — the more personalized to the influencer the better. A mutual acquaintance that can speak to your talents. A strong “why” or mission to illuminate why you’re doing what you’re doing. For instance, my initial text to Donovan read: Hey Donovan! I own a game studio called AppStop.io — we make sports games starring pro athletes. Our last moible game “QB Chase” starred Chase Winovich and is rated 4.9 stars on the iOS store. I’d love to build you a mobile game, completely free of charge. Curious if you have 30 minutes to discuss details next week? Full disclosure, I did have a warm intro to Donovan, but if I didn’t, I don’t believe I would’ve changed much about the initial text. I would’ve only included concept art in the initial message to grab attention, make the pitch more exciting, and make the pitch more personalized. In our next meeting, I showed off a short slide deck highlighting my game studio, what I envisioned for Donovan’s game, how AppStop.io partners with philanthropies to donate money (this turned out to be critical), and concept art for how the game would look with Donovan in it. A few pro tips to keep in mind when entering the final pitch: What is your product? What makes your product the next big thing? What is your “ask” for the influencer? Keep it lean. Keep it Short — There’s a common misconception that influencers only care about money. In my experience, influencers do care about money but what they care even more about is . Content is King — (IMPORTANT): content If you can convince the influencer that your product will inspire content that will thrill their community and that your company can actually that content on the influencer’s behalf, then they’re very likely to want to do business with you — perhaps even for free. create This could be a giveaway, custom digital art, or a cool video or Tik Tok. In our case, we let Donovan know that we would create Instagram content on his behalf and that this Instagram content would perform great (more on this in step 3) You don’t always need to pay the influencer an This is especially true if your product is remarkable, your intro is particularly warm, and the marketing activation is very easy for them to implement. Do You Need to Pay? — upfront guarantee. You need to offer them such as revenue share, content creation services, or philanthropic donations. do something Smaller influencers may also be fine with accepting an upfront guarantee as small as ~$500 simply so they can develop their own portfolio of successful marketing campaigns for when larger businesses reach out. If you reach out to 100 influencers cold and even three respond, then that’s a huge success. Influencers are flooded with entrepreneurs such as yourself (now more than ever), and they can’t get to every pitch. Have Thick Skin — Have patience, and don’t take rejection personally. Every influencer you work with gives you more credibility. The first deal is the hardest. After the pitch is over, be sure to sign a licensing agreement with the influencer(s) so that you have the ability to use their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) in app and on promotional content. Even though it’s a hassle, it’s important to sign these contracts so that each party is committed to following through on their end of the deal. Chapter 3: Implementing the Influencer Marketing Campaign The first thing to note is that the influencer’s fans are not the end all be all of your app’s users. Ideally speaking, you should think of influencers as a that can increase two important stats: marketing catalyst Get your app on the top charts of various AppStores — thereby increasing “ **growth” (**i.e., users naturally finding you online) organic Provide a solid foundation of users that will naturally share the app with their friends. Often, this is called the “ K-Factor.” The right marketing strategy should always have your organic growth and K-Factor be the primary source of users. For instance, our game, Deep Pass Jam, grew 213% from users naturally finding us on the top iOS charts. That means that all the marketing we did with the influencer accounted for less than half of our final total users! But, we still needed the influencer as a catalyst to get onto the top 100 charts to reap those benefits. The next thing to keep in mind is content delivery. Sometimes the influencers will want to create the content for the marketing campaign. Often, they will want you to create the content and then they will approve the content with edits. It is very critical to express is responsible for creating content and you plan to have the influencer post it. If you don’t express this in plain language, it will not be posted, or worse; the content could be posted incorrectly — having catastrophic consequences. who what when In our case, we expressed to Donovan that AppStop.io would be creating the content. We had a trick up our sleeve. We knew semi-realistic video game content performs on social media. unbelievably well It’s jarring and fun for the viewer to see the digital version of your favorite character inside a video game. This type of content increased Kim Kardashian, Connor McGregor, and Gordon Ramsay’s social media engagement. So, we had our animators get to work. In the end, Donovan got to relax for a week while his Instagram engagement increased a tremendous 300% because of the content we created on his behalf: https://www.instagram.com/p/CZU0aFQJfI_/?embedable=true Regardless, a few tips and tricks with any content you plan to have the influencer post: Ensure there’s an easy off-ramp from the content to have consumers download your app Include a Call-To-Action — The best social media content is content that can provide value to the viewer. Make the viewer laugh, give them valuable information, and show them something emotional. It’s important to study other apps’ high-performing content to see what worked for them and copy that format! Provide Value — Influencers often have strong ties to other influencers with followings. Make it easy for them to engage and re-share the content by having the art be high-quality, tying the product to a larger mission (possibly a philanthropic partnership), and highlighting ownership of the original influencer. Create a Network Effect — Balance the Influencer’s Presence —While having the influencer star in promotional content and in-app can help drive traffic from fans who know the influencer, it can also be off-putting to those who aren’t familiar with the influencer. That’s why it’s important for the influencer to have a “muted” presence. They shouldn’t be plastered on the front page of every piece of content, but they should be visible in of the content. some In addition to posting content, it’s important to know the data behind what you’re posting. Have a plan on exactly how many downloads you hope to gain from the influencer’s promotion. Stats matter because they can help advise content strategy. Here are some of the most important statistics every startup founder should know about the AppStore: Of course, these numbers can vary from day to day. According to Tech Crunch, it requires roughly 8,000 downloads in a 24-hour period to get on the U.S. top 100 iOS free games list. 26,000 downloads to get into the top 10. Business apps are double those numbers. 16,000 for the top 100 and 52,000 for the top 10 of any business category. Know what your genre’s average conversion rate is. If your app’s conversion rate is below average that means that you are missing out on important organic growth and need to improve your AppStore’s promotional content. Certain app genres have different AppStore conversion rates. Sometimes this process is called “AppStore Optimization” or “ASO.” The most important promotional content is the photo previews of your app. Ensure these are very high quality prior to launching an influencer campaign. In conclusion, influencer marketing can be a powerful tool for bootstrapped startups looking to scale their apps. By partnering with influential individuals within their target market, startups can tap into their existing audience and gain valuable exposure for their apps. This can help drive downloads and increase user engagement, ultimately helping the startup to grow and succeed. To get started with influencer marketing, startups should identify potential influencers within their target market, offer them incentives to promote their app, and track the results to see if the strategy is effective. By implementing influencer marketing as part of their growth strategy, bootstrapped startups can take their app to new heights.

How A Solopreneur Used Influencer Marketing to Reach the iOS Top 100 List

Cómo un solopreneur usó el marketing de influencers para llegar a la lista de los 100 principales de iOS

Comment un solopreneur a utilisé le marketing d'influence pour atteindre la liste des 100 meilleurs iOS

कैसे एक सोलोप्रेन्योर ने इन्फ्लुएंसर मार्केटिंग का उपयोग करके iOS शीर्ष 100 सूची तक पहुँचाया

個人事業主がインフルエンサー マーケティングを使用して iOS のトップ 100 リストに到達した方法

Como um empreendedor solo usou o marketing de influenciadores para alcançar a lista dos 100 melhores do iOS

Cách một Solopreneur sử dụng Tiếp thị người ảnh hưởng để lọt vào Danh sách 100 iOS hàng đầu

Solopreneur 如何利用影响者营销进入 iOS 前 100 名

Nowadays, there are many ways to give your SEM (Search Engine Marketing) efforts a boost, and many of the latest go way beyond simply using keywords to your advantage. One of the most effective comes from your thumb. Well, maybe not your actual thumb, but from the hundreds, perhaps thousands of influencers you scroll through on a daily basis on such platforms as Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and even Snapchat. social media Think about what it means to read a post by an influencer. It goes way beyond getting their opinion on a certain photo they’ve taken or a product they seem to be promoting. Click on their profile and you enter an entire universe of their making, subject to and defined by their rules and their perspectives, and supported by the thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of . followers People who tune in to their every move and every decision. People whose shopping habits, browsing patterns and everyday decisions are impacted by those they follow. That’s why they’re known as and not merely the old-school term “influencers” “celebrities.” There are influencers in virtually every lifestyle category nowadays. Top categories include: , including shopping hauls and how-to videos Fashion & Beauty , which gives rise to exotic selfies all over the world Travel & Lifestyle , which allows people to follow their favourite celebrities like never before Celebrity & Entertainment Sports, giving professional athletes a chance to expand their reach to the global scale , giving rise to entire “play-through” videos which reach into the dozens of hours in length, . Gaming esports is making waves across the internet , covering everything from exercise videos to alternative well-being content Health & Fitness , a category that’s particularly appealing to young mothers and fathers Family, Home & Parenting , which is proving highly-successful amongst today’s burgeoning fintech industry Business & Tech Why are influencers so valuable? These influencers are seen as authorities in their fields simply because they’ve managed to appeal to such a wide range of people, garnering their trust and dedication by means of acquiring their following. Watching an influencer go about his or her daily routines, sharing personal stories and—from a more advertising-aligned angle—divulging their experiences using certain products gives followers a vicarious sense of participation and, as a result, belonging. Say a certain tech influencer shows off his latest model drone, one out of thousands of new drones introduced that year. Any one of his followers who were on the fence about which drone to buy could feel more compelled to choose the drone chosen their favourite influencer, simply because they feel their choice has been validated. Hence the rise of influencer marketing. is doing more than just catching on—it’s eclipsing traditional advertising, as audiences now consider influencers to be a more authentic means of brand promotion than the brands themselves. Influencer-led marketing As a matter of fact, estimates that by 2022, influencer marketing will reach $10 billion—up from a measly $2 billion in 2017. Influencers by and large have tremendous power to improve brand awareness, generate leads and drum up interest in just about any topic with almost instantaneous results. Business Insider Intelligence How does influencer marketing work? Now that you know more about why influencer marketing exists, let’s take a look at how leveraging the reach of influencers may help , and more specifically, your SEO efforts. your SEM strategy Influencers provide to enhancing the efficacy of your search optimization campaign: two-pronged approach these links to your website from hot, authoritative influencer content is an extremely effective way to boost site traffic. Over time, it also helps to build a stronger arsenal of relative content as well as a solid SEO backlink profile. Providing backlinks: Google rankings will pick up on the increased traffic to your site that results from a successful influencer marketing campaign, ultimately increasing your search rankings. Traffic itself: The key to harnessing the power of influencers to drive traffic to your business is first to choose the right level of influencer, then to create a campaign that looks and feels as organic as possible. It’s easy enough for anybody with access to a smartphone or computer to create content and call him or herself an influencer, but the quality of the content in which your campaign will be featured is of the utmost importance so you need to be litigious in choosing who to work with. There are generally of influencer: three levels , which includes major celebrities with the most social pull and which, as a result, would be the most difficult to acquire. A-list , which includes specialists in a certain field, such as food bloggers or beauty experts. While those on the B-list are generally easier to contact, they tend to be very selective about which brands they feature, which could actually work in your favour because it implies integrity. B-list And then there’s the , which comprises local experts in fields such as food, gaming, wellness, etc. who leverage their distinctive, outgoing personality to create instructional videos on anything from makeup tutorials to how to take proper photos with a smartphone. C-list While the C-list is loaded with many golden opportunities, it also can be loaded with opportunists who are willing to do anything for free products, so be careful in choosing to ensure a proper return on your investment. Getting your influencer campaign up and running First you need to choose an influencer! There are many ways to choose an influencer, ranging from basic keyword research that combines optimised keywords with such terms as blogger, YouTuber, Instagrammer or Influencer, to the fine art of which essentially requires you to translate key search terms into popular hashtags, then sort through the results that will include which influencers are using these hashtags, and in what way, frequency, etc. “hashtagging,” You can also employ an influencer platform such as , , , and . These massive databases list influencers as well as their various niches and within the scope of numerous SEO metrics, making it easy to gauge the potential collaboration value for your project. Revfluence Primal Traackr Onalytica Buzzoole Once you’ve chosen a proper influencer, it’s all about establishing a solid influencer marketing programme. As most platforms nowadays require sponsored content to be marked as such, this can have a diminishing effect on the credibility of your campaign by making potential clickers see it as little more than a regular advert. So they key is to create that give the influencer a chance to broadcast that’s made them so famous. Introduce the product or service you’re pushing to the influencer and allow them to take their own individual angle and relate your brand to their own relevant interests which will, therefore, be more relevant to their target audiences. Not only will this (in many cases) be a way to outmanoeuvre the sponsorship disclaimer, it’ll also be evergreen content you’ll be able to use in the future to continue building your backlink profile. content-driven initiatives core elements of your brand in the visual style the more work you put into getting your chosen influencer to really relate to your product or service, the better it will sound overall to the audiences. Rather than hear the influencer say, you’d rather see him or her say, The latter not only sounds better and more organic, it builds a case for your brand overall, not just the product or service on which the influencer marketing campaign focuses. Put it this way: “You should get this product!” “I really like this product for the following reasons…” Overall, influencers to boost your SEO efforts carries a great deal of powerful potential. It’s just important to do your homework when it comes to choosing the social vehicle and influencer, because when it comes down to it, you’re more or less nominating them to represent your brand to the entire world. But done right, the best partnerships can result in many years of strong content and growing brand engagement. leveraging social media Images: theshelf.com

How to Leverage Influencers to Support your SEO Efforts

I’ve organized and executed thousands of influencer marketing campaigns for brands like and my own small businesses, ( , , ) and from experience, I know that the success of each one depends almost exclusively on the quality of influencers that you work with. Depop @pinlord @potteryforall @macramemakers If you want to get the best return for your dollar, it’s essential that you know how to, first, measure if an influencer is valuable, and second, search for the most valuable ones efficiently. Your time and money are limited and you don’t want to spend either of them on social media influencers that aren’t likely to give you great results. How to know if an influencer is valuable: When it comes to influencer marketing, value is determined by the number of followers/traffic/sales an influencer can drive to another user (or website) when on their Instagram profile. The higher the number of followers/traffic/sales they drive, the higher their value. promoting something The most effective and simple way can measure a particular influencer’s potential value is through measuring their organic engagement rate. anyone There are more effective ways to measure an influencer’s value but they require A LOT of data (and know-how), which isn’t accessible to most people. Although it’s not perfect, engagement rates will give you a relatively accurate measure of potential value and it will be more than enough for most of us. To measure organic engagement rates, divide the average number of “likes” the influencer gets in posts 4 to 10, then divide that number by their total number of followers and multiply that by 100. From that, you’ll get a percentage rate. That is the influencer’s engagement rate. You measure posts 4–10 because posts 1–3 are still getting likes, so they will not be the most accurate way to calculate their engagement. You don’t measure after post number 10 because that is likely to be historic engagement, and you want to measure the engagement an influencer is getting NOW, not in the past. The higher the engagement rate, the higher the potential someone has to drive the largest amount of followers/traffic/sales (relative to that account’s total number of followers), and the higher their value is. These numbers tend to change over time but for now, any influencer who has over 10K followers and an engagement rate of 10% or more, is in the top 1% of the most valuable influencers on Instagram. Side note: Of course, people can fake engagement by buying likes and comments, but in most cases, you’ll be able to identify fake engagement by looking at someone’s content and the type of comments they get. If they seem sketchy, they probably are. There are so many great, real influencers out there that there’s no need to spend your money on someone that you’re afraid might scam you. How to search for and find the most valuable influencers on Instagram: Since there is no way to search for engagement directly through the app, you’re going to have to focus on the places where Instagram tends to surface the highest density of high-engagement influencers. 1. Start the search on your Explorer Page: A great place to start your search is the Explorer Page on your Instagram. Why? Instagram makes money by selling your eyes to advertisers. The longer you’re staring at the Instagram screen, the more money they make. Because of that, they want to increase the likelihood that you’ll see content that keeps you on the screen for longer whenever you’re using the app (that’s what the Instagram algorithm does). The content that tends to keep people’s attention for longer are the posts that are engaged with more often than average posts. A post that gets a larger amount of likes, comments, shares, views, etc, relative to the total number of followers that account has, is more likely to be getting people’s attention in comparison to a post that’s getting a smaller number of likes, comments, shares, views, etc, relative to that account’s the total number of followers. The place Instagram uses to show you highly-engaged posts that are relevant to you (and that you don’t know about) is through the Explorer Page. That’s because it’s one of the few screens on the app that the user (you) cannot directly curate. So if you want to discover highly engaged influencers that relate to you, the Explorer Page is your best first bet. To find influencers here, scroll through the posts you see on the Explorer Page, tap on the ones that appear to be from people (not brands), quickly check the bio and content to make sure they speak your language and are in your country. If they are, tap through the posts 4–10, write down their average number of likes and divide that number by their total number of followers. to show you how I keep track of them. Here’s a spreadsheet As an example, I gift for my enamel pin page, @pinlord. I’m looking for stylish US-based content creators between the age of 16–25 who have a youtube channel. By searching on my explorer page, I quickly found , who fits all of my requirements and has an engagement rate of over 18% (that’s GREAT!). @nicaphan Instagram wants you to discover great content that keeps you on the platform for longer. They measure great content by the engagement posts get, so the higher the engagement on a post, the more likely it is to show on other people’s explorer page. Most of the other posts of faces and people you see on the Explorer Page screenshot above are also influencers with over 15% engagement. : 2. Look through the “Suggestions for You” drop-down menu of the highly-engaged accounts you’ve found Once you find a highly-engaged account on the Explorer Page, tap on the down arrow that’s next to the “Follow” in the account’s bio and you’ll see a large list of similar accounts. Look through those and pick the ones that have high-engagement and are relevant to you. More likely than not, you’ll find a high-density of great accounts here. In my case, I searched through the “Suggestions for You” accounts from (the first account I found) and discovered over 4 other influencers ( , , , ) who have great engagement and fit all my requirements. @nicaphan @pameluft @behwah @ashleesummer @ssuunniittaa Through the “Suggestions for You” drop-down menu, Instagram usually shows you accounts that have similar characteristics. If you’ve found a highly-engaged account, it’s likely to show you other highly-engaged accounts. Since searching on Instagram can be a BIG time drain, this feature is likely to save you a ton of time and energy. 3. Search category-relevant hashtags: Another way to find influencers is through category-relevant hashtags. Before we get started here, I want to be clear: because tend to not use hashtags (because they are perceived as “spammy”). That being said, it’s still the third best option after searching through your Explorer Page and Suggested accounts since there are very few discovery features on Instagram that are meant to help people find highly engaged influencers (as it’s not what most people use Instagram for). hashtags aren’t as effective to find highly-engaged influencers most of the people who have great organic engagement To do this, go to the Search bar on your Explorer Page and tap on the “Tags” tab. Here, type in the hashtag term you want to search for, scroll through the posts that appear under that term, tap on the ones that appear to be from people who might be relevant to you, quickly check the bio and content to make sure they are relevant to you, and if they are, measure their engagement. , since I’m searching for stylish US-based content creators between the age of 16–25, I searched for the “#youtuber” tag and quickly found , who fits all of my requirements and has an engagement rate of over 11%. In my case @isampatterson . Whenever you find a great influencer through the hashtag search, make sure to also look through their “Suggestions for You” drop-down menu. 4. Use third-party influencer search platforms & tools: Like searching through hashtags, I’d also recommend you proceed with caution when searching for highly-engaged influencers on third-party influencer search platforms. This is because, in most cases, these platforms populate their search results with influencers that were found through hashtags (because that’s easier to on Instagram). Another reason you should be cautious is that the influencers who apply to be featured on them tend to have low engagement and low value. Think about it, if you were a highly valued influencer, you would have a lot of inbound work requests and wouldn’t need to spend time and energy searching for partnership opportunities on an influencer platform. crawl for It’s not that you won’t find influencers, but you won’t find valuable ones. It’ll also cost you money to search with these tools when you could just do it for free yourself on Instagram. the most If you’re still set on using third-party tools after reading that, here are some of the best influencer search tools: , , , , , and a bunch others are all well-established companies that make it easy for you to do campaigns at scale, but unless you’re a brand marketer with a big budget (and you don’t care too much about getting a high ROI), they likely won't be the most effective way to get the highest ROI for your $$. Traackr Tap Influence Pixlee Revfluence Fohr Apart from those, I honestly haven’t been able to find any influencer search tool that can give you great engagement data and is accessible (cost effective and easy to use) to small businesses owners. If you know of any, please email me (eduardomorales.ny@gmail.com) because I want to hear about them! Anyway, it doesn’t matter if there aren’t any excellent tools out there to solve this problem…if you focus on measuring engagement (only work with people with 10K+ followers and 10% organic engagement or more) and use the strategies I explained to find the right influencers on Instagram, you can do everything yourself! Thanks so much for taking the time to read this! If you enjoyed it, please give it a bunch of claps and ❤ It’ll help more people see this story and learn about how they find influencers as well :) read my other articles

How To Search for and Find The Most Valuable Influencers on Instagram

Gen Z is coming. The post-millennial cohort, who range in age from 7 to 21, are starting to become their own consumers. Gen Zers have been called “digital natives” — they grew up with the iPhone (first released in 2007), and are more likely to watch YouTube than TV. Unlike prior generations who idolized TV or movie stars, Gen Zers fawn over “digital influencers” — normal teens who rose to fame through Vine, Snapchat, YouTube, or Musical.ly. Marketers have noticed the unusual pull that digital influencers have over their followers, and many brands have jumped on the opportunity to get product endorsements. In the 1990s, Tyra Banks was the face of makeup brand CoverGirl. Now, it’s , a social media star with 1.1M Youtube subscribers. James Charles In this piece, we hope to shed light on why influencers matter, how companies are using them, and the future of the space — which we believe will continue to expand as Gen Zers stake their claim in the global economy. What is an influencer, and why do they matter? Digital influencers are online “tastemakers” with large and often rabid fan bases. Many influencers rose to fame through social networks like YouTube or Instagram, and still use these platforms to publish media and interact with fans. 2016 report found that 13 to 24-year olds watch 11.3 hours of online video a week, on average, and YouTube stars represent eight of the top 10 to U.S. teens. 67% of respondents said they without YouTube. Defy Media’s Constant Content most known personalities Defy’s couldn’t live Since many influencers are typical tweens or teens who rose to fame on social media, they are seen as authentic, relatable, and accessible. 73% of Gen Zers “feel close” to YouTubers (compared to only 45% for TV/movie stars), and 40% say their favorite YouTuber than their real-life friends — a frightening but powerful statistic. understands them better This sense of closeness gives influencers significant marketing power. Readers of 2 minutes and 8 seconds on influencer content, compared to only 9 seconds on traditional ad content. Gen Zers are 1.3x more likely to purchase a product recommended by an influencer than by a traditional TV or movie celebrity. In an era of increasingly effective ad-blockers, native influencer content is even more attractive to marketers. spend an average Defy Media’s 2016 survey of Gen Zers found that teens are much more likely to follow on social media and make purchases recommended by YouTubers than traditional celebrities. This was particularly true for the 13–17 year-old age group. Thus far, influencer marketing spend has paid off. A 2016 Nielsen study showed an for influencer marketing over traditional display ads, with a Tomoson survey revealing that of marketers feel they acquire “better quality” customers through influencer marketing. 11x ROI more than half Already, of marketers have an influencer budget, and these marketers expect to their spend per influencer program in 2017. This year, influencer spend on Instagram alone is predicted to — by 2020, annual influencer marketing spend is expected to reach up to . 73% double surpass $1B $10B Brands see even bigger benefits when their influencer partners cross into mainstream fame. Justin Bieber (who got his start on YouTube) is perhaps the most famous example, but others include Vine star Shawn Mendes (two albums at #1 on U.S. Billboard 200) and YouTuber Colleen Ballinger (starred in Netflix show , and published a #1 NYT best-seller). Haters Back Off Realizing this potential, traditional talent agencies have also migrated towards the influencer space. CAA established a “Digital Talent and Packaging” division that represents YouTube stars like Jenna Marbles and Logan Paul, WME/IMG has signed more than 50 clients in the category, and UTA created a publishing platform for influencers with Simon & Schuster. What are companies doing with influencers? Influencer marketing started as sponsored posts or videos on social media — an influencer (let’s call her Carly) would post a photo of herself on Instagram wearing a t-shirt from Brand X, with the requisite #ad (thanks, FTC). Her followers would see a link to Brand X’s account, and Carly might even provide a discount code so they could get free shipping or 20% off. Fashion and interior design blogger/YouTuber Aimee Song (@songofstyle on Instagram) recently partnered with APM Monaco to promote a necklace. Song’s ad was broadcast to her 4.6M followers on Instagram. Many influencer marketing campaigns still look like this, but some brands have started to be more creative, experimenting with original video series, social media “takeovers,” curated products, and full ad campaigns. A few examples of unique campaigns that have caught our attention recently: worked with AwesomenessTV, a millennial media company, to create a branded video series about lovestruck teens on Royal Caribbean cruises. The show, called “ ,” just wrapped up its fifth (!) season and boasts 75M views. Royal Caribbean Royal Crush and partnered with fitness and beauty blogger Hannah Bronfman to take over each company’s Snapchat account and review Clinique products sold at Sephora. Clinique Sephora worked with YouTuber Tati Westbrook to launch a new product line in their Love of Color brand, including Westbrook’s name on the packaging. The brand ranked in the top 15 makeup brands for 2015 by sales, and Birchbox has since worked with other YouTubers. Birchbox As mentioned previously, chose YouTuber James Charles as the company’s first male spokesmodel. Charles’s “Lash Equality” video for CoverGirl is the third-most viewed in the brand’s history, with more than 7M hits. CoverGirl We can’t recommend that you watch this in good conscience, but the teens seem to love it. Funding and Exits CBInsights projects that the number of influencer marketing venture deals will hit an all-time high in 2017, though total dollars invested are expected to decline from 2016 levels. Companies in the influencer marketing space have started to attract significant venture funding across the following verticals: companies create content featuring influencers, typically branded video series. Major players and each raised venture funding before being acquired. and are early stage — both raised a seed round this year. Content production AwesomenessTV Maker Studios Collab Brat Studios companies provide metrics to help marketers evaluate the reach of an influencer, which may include audience demographics and related brands. , , and have all raised $10M+ to pursue this mission. Social activity scoring Klout Tubular Labs Talkwalker help brands find influencers and manage campaigns. is a public company, and and have raised 20M+. Emerging players who have raised early funding include and Marketplaces and management systems IZEA TapInfluence Thuzio NeoReach, Revfluence, Surkus, Mavrck. companies help influencers interact with fans in a scalable way. Though influencers need to appear accessible, many are overwhelmed by the sheer number of messages they receive on , and . and are both in this space. Follower interaction Facebook, Instagram Twitter Shimmur Veri companies facilitate the development of products by influencers on behalf of brands. There are no huge players here, though recently announced a platform that allows approved influencers to build product recommendation pages. and are early-stage startups in this space. Product curation and creation Amazon Quarterly, Stilnest, Influenster Larger tech and media companies have moved into the influencer space through acquisitions. purchased production company for $675M, while acquired for $117M, and picked up social scoring startup for $200M. and also each acquired an influencer marketplace ( and , respectively). Most of the other exits in the space have been consolidations between smaller existing players, with undisclosed acquisition sizes. Disney Maker Studios DreamWorks AwesomenessTV Lithium Klout Twitter Google Niche FameBit The space saw its first public company in influencer marketing platform , which started trading in 2011 through a reverse merger. The stock has struggled — pre-Facebook’s IPO, it was trading at $64/share, but it now trades <$2/share with revenue exceeding market cap due to competition concerns. IZEA Google and Microsoft also both recently in the influencer space. Google’s patent focuses on finding “trendsetters” that help content go viral, while Microsoft wants to score experts based on their contributions. published patents What are the challenges? Despite all of the buzz around influencer marketing, there are some challenges to running a successful campaign, including: . With so many social media users ( alone), it can be tough for brands to figure out which influencers are the right fit ( say they struggle with this). Negotiating terms presents another challenge, as many influencers are teens or young adults with little business experience. Finding and negotiating with influencers 700M+ MAUs on Instagram 68% of marketers . After finding the right influencer, brands need to craft the messaging and marketing collateral, get it approved, and supervise the influencer to ensure compliance. spend 25+ hours on each influencer program, and 69% work with 10+ influencers per program — making this a daunting task. Managing influencers 50% of in-house managers Since influencer marketing is relatively new, there are unanswered questions around how to measure results — number of views? Number of comments? Purchases made with an influencer’s discount code? ranked determining ROI as the biggest challenge in running an influencer marketing campaign. Measuring ROI. 78% of U.S.-based B2C companies In August, the FTC sent out to Instagrammers who needed reminders to “clearly and conspicuously” disclose endorsements. However, only 55% know what the most recent disclosure guidelines are, and only say that brands always ask them to follow FTC regulations. Complying with FTC regulations. 90 letters of marketers 52% of influencers say their audience comes to them because they are honest and open — being accessible is key. However, it’s impossible to sort through the thousands of social media messages they receive daily. try to get noticed by influencers every day, and 32% would pay $50+ to get noticed digitally. Communicating with fans. 71% of influencers 34% of teen “fangirls” A Shimmur market research survey of 1,400 13–19 year-old “fangirls” found that 83% would pay $1 or more to get noticed by an influencer in an app, while 32% would pay more than $50. Conclusions We believe influencer marketing is an underappreciated opportunity to reach today’s teens on the platforms where they are spending their time. In ten years, we think that most teen and young adult stars will have gotten their start online, and brands can benefit from leveraging the unique relationships these influencers have with their followers. We’re particularly excited about companies that can tackle influencer ROI analysis and compliance for brands, as well as any networks or tools that allow influencers to more scalably interact with fans. We will also be closely following developments in the micro-influencer (10k-1M followers) space — these influencers typically have even closer relationships with their fans and can provide extremely cost-effective marketing. If you have any thoughts on the space or are working on something exciting, please reach out.

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