Sometimes I wonder how many times I can roll my eyes before they combust.

You would NOT believe some of the posts I’ve seen from companies trying to hire influencers.

Some of them must be satire, right??

(I say this as someone who’s hired influencers for a company before, and am currently an influencer.)

Get ready, today’s email is spicy.

Get clear on your goals

I’ll literally ask a company what their campaign goals are and they’ll say “we just want more people to know about our product.”

Okay, but are you ultimately aiming for brand awareness (views, reach, impressions)?

Or conversions (signups, paid users)?

Especially if you’re a small startup…can you really afford to drop hundreds of dollars on a video?

There are better marketing channels out there:

• Affiliate (more on this below)

• UGC (usually for ads) - but this costs $200-300 per video (mid-range). I also recommend getting the creator to film a few hooks to test

• Directories

• Make the videos yourself (I did this and grew my previous company’s account to 50k+, we used some videos for ads after hook testing and made thousands)

If you really want influencers but have limited budget, try nano-influencers or get beginner creators to build accounts from scratch (cheaper because no pre-existing audience).

But in my experience, the company I used to work for had better ROI when we hired UGC creators to make video ads for us than when we sponsored influencers. It’ll depend on the price point of what you’re selling and the niche, though.

On affiliate (and how to stop looking like a fool)

I see many people try to combine affiliate and influencer marketing. It can be great when done well (good flat rate + bonus when achieving specific number of views), but too often I see this as an excuse to lowball.

Example: “I’ll pay $50 for your video and if you get 100k views I’ll give you a $25 bonus. 200k views is $50 bonus.”

Once a company emailed me and their product was interesting. Then they offered me the $50 with bonuses thing and I ghosted them lol…because what.

Even my audience was baffled, they were like “$50?? Wow” and of course I blacked out the company’s name in the email because they’re not getting free promo from me even if it’s bad press 😂 

The wild thing is, I’ve seen even lower than $50.

Anyway, if you want to run a successful affiliate program, I’d suggest helping your affiliates reach that magic moment faster.

Partner long term

If you don’t have the budget to sponsor a bunch of influencers in the niche (so people are like “wow everyone’s talking about this product”), it’s better to have 1 influencer mention your product multiple times.

I noticed after posting on IG Reels and Stories, people will reach out and ask “what’s that app you recommended again? You said it does XYZ.”

But that only happens when I post about the app multiple times.

Related: you can pay for multiple things:

• Link in bio

• Exclusivity (no competitor promotion)

• Usage rights (for ads) for 30 60, or 90 days

• Whitelisting (putting adspend behind the influencer’s account and not your company’s account, so it’s more “authentic”)

• Instagram story post

• DM automation

• Giveaways

• Multiple video hooks

• Revisions (some influencers charge extra if you want to change the video/post)

Low views doesn’t mean it’s a failed campaign

Nowadays search engines are pushing TikTok/Instagram posts more (especially for travel brands - I search on TT/IG instead of Google).

I noticed some videos I watch promoting products don’t have a ton of views or likes.

But I still see them because I’m searching for them (higher buying intent).

So don’t think your campaign is a failure just because it didn’t get views - as long as the influencer doesn’t delete the post, people can come across your product at the right time.

How much influencers (including me) charge

So I’m on this influencer shit-talking membership site called FYPM (F*** You Pay Me).

Here are some of the rates I’ve seen in the tech/B2C SaaS niche (including rates I charge).

Subscribe to Premium to read the rest.