You’ve been given a difficult task. As an influencer marketing team, management has asked you to increase your performance while maintaining or decreasing your budget. They’ve asked you for the magical ability to do more with less and it feels like you’re stuck with an impossible task. To draw inspiration from the ever-wise Winnie the Pooh, “People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.” This blog is going to help you achieve the impossible with nothing but some smart thinking and showcase the best ways to maximize your influencer marketing budget.

 

The Birth of Influencer Budgets

The responsibilities and budgets of influencer marketing have been traded between different business units since the early 2000s. Like many cooks in the kitchen, public relations, social media, marketing, research and development (R&D), and other teams have all had their fair share of ladles in the influencer budget soup. Now, specific influencer teams often own their budgets, but the benefits of a strong influencer program and budget to back it up can be felt across the organization.

Marketing Benefits
    • Customer acquisition and testimonials
    • Content creation at scale for product marketing
    • Repurposed content on marketing and social channels
R&D Benefits
    • Product research via surveys and focus groups
    • New product ideation and concept testing
Shopper Marketing Benefits
    • Drive traffic to in-store purchases
    • Promote brand and retailers

 

Securing Your Budget 

For most marketers, this is the largest challenge you’ll face in accomplishing your program’s goals. Whether it’s economic restraints, executive buy-in, or overall budget tightening, marketers know the fight for more money is never-ending. However,  if you can make the most of the dollars you’re given, you have a better chance of securing more budget in the future That said, accomplishing really big goals with a really little budget is near impossible. So, if you need help securing the budget you want, try utilizing our resource for building an effective performance report to  show your boss why more money should go your way.

 

How to Maximize Your Budget

 

Create a Comprehensive Activation Plan

If you’re asking a lot from your influencer budget, the least you can do is get specific. Go through your strategic calendar and map out your planned activations and campaigns as a way to work backward. By taking this step, you can get a sense of which campaigns will take priority in your budget and what may need to be cut out. Here’s an example of a timeline in our 2022 Influencer Marketing Planning guide.

 

Best Budget Allocation

Proper budget allocation will extend your dollar as far as it can go. We know budgets may vary depending on the size of your organization, your experience with influencer marketing and other contributing factors. Whether you’re working with a few thousand dollars or tracking towards one million, we’ve put together some sample budgets to help you allocate spend toward your influencer initiatives to build a wholistic program. 

 

$10,000-$50,000 Budgets
  • Use 50% of budget for an ambassador program or campaigns to create high-quality content distributed to the influencers’ audience. These channels include TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, blogs, etc. 
  • Use 25% of budget for paid media to distribute the highest performing content to target audiences through paid efforts. These channels include Instagram and Facebook via Ads Manager. 
  • Use 25% of budget for ratings and reviews to leverage influencers and advocates to create product reviews in exchange for product or nominal compensation. These channels include brand.com and e-commerce sites.


$100,000-$500,000 Budgets
  • Use 20% of budget for a dedicated ambassador program to create high-quality content distributed to the influencers’ audience. These channels include TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, blogs, etc. 
  • Use 20% of budget for campaign plus-ups – i.e., save your budget for marketing campaigns, additional influencers, and content. 
  • Use 25% of budget for paid media to distribute the highest performing content to target audience through paid efforts. These channels include Instagram and Facebook via Ads Manager. 
  • Use 15% of budget for ratings and reviews to leverage influencers and advocates to create product reviews in exchange for product or nominal compensation. These channels include brand.com and e-commerce sites. 
  • Use 20% of budget used for platform fees to receive data-backed insights and measurements via a platform such as Mavrck. 


$1,000,000+ Budgets
  • Use 20% of budget for a dedicated ambassador program to create high-quality content distributed to the influencers’ audience. These channels include TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, blogs, etc. 
  • Use 10% of budget for campaign plus-ups or events – i.e., save your budget for marketing campaigns, additional influencers, and opportunities. 
  • Use 10% of budget for brand lift to understand the impact of influencer marketing on the brand. 
  • Use 25% of budget for paid media to distribute highest-performing content to target audience through paid efforts. These channels include Instagram and Facebook via Ads Manager. 
  • Use 15% of budget for ratings and reviews to leverage influencers and advocates to create product reviews in exchange for product or nominal compensation. These channels include brand.com and e-commerce sites. 
  • Use 20% of budget for platform fees + expertise/services to work with experts and data-backed insights/measurement with a company like Mavrck. 


Repurposing Content

Producing new content takes a lot of time and money, and waiting for new content can be a massive bottleneck for marketing teams looking to increase ROI. The savvy marketer employs a more cost-effective, faster, and equally effective strategy to boost their return: repurposing influencer-generated- content. If your IGCt is relevant and aligns with your brand messaging, you’re getting more bang for your buck by repurposing it across more channels. To ensure you’re getting repurposable content from your creator partners, set them and your brand up for success from the beginning with these tips.

Make a Content Plan for Redistribution

If your creators are providing amazing TikTok content, repurpose it on Instagram Reels or an Idea Pin on Pinterest. Every redistribution is an opportunity to grow your brand’s influence and a dollar you don’t have to spend.

Utilize Your Ambassador Program

An ambassador program is a brand’s secret weapon for when content production with contracted creators may be slow or your brand needs a boost for the day. Ambassador programs typically provide high volumes of content for lower than average costs to stretch your budget.

Promote Your Ratings and Reviews

When partnering with creators for ratings or reviews, try offering an incremental incentive to those willing to submit a review in addition to the content they’re creating. They already have the product in hand for content creation, so why not ask for a review?

 

For more information download our Top 6 Ways to Repurpose Content for Maximum Value resource!

 

Avoid Budget Blunders

 

Working With the Wrong Influencers

Alignment on brand and influencer personas is a key step in the discovery process for a reason. If the creator doesn’t match your brand’s voice, tone, and values, it’s likely that the content they create won’t either and as such will miss your target audience.

Costly or Hidden Fees

Depending on your contract with a given creator, there are some hidden fees that may be an unwelcome surprise on your limited budget. In your influencer communication, watch out for fees around allowing listing, content syndication, and draft reviews.

Sending Products to Influencers Who Don’t Want It

A blunder all too familiar for marketing managers, this is pretty self-explanatory. Avoid sending product until you have confirmed creators who are ready to receive it. Gone are the days of mass-mailing products to creators who did not agree to receive it (and it’s more environmentally friendly to avoid this!).


Consider a Technology Partner

The cliche phrase “spend money to make money” can be actually be adapted to “spend money to save money” in this context. While it may seem counterintuitive, partnering with a technology partner like Mavrck can save costs, time, and effort to maximize the capacity of your influencer team and minimize the overall impact on your budget in the following ways:

Automate To Save Time

The Mavrck platform automates the key stages of an influencer program workflow (Discover, Activate, Communicate, Incentivize, and Measure) to save you time to focus on strategy and higher-level decision making.

Benchmark Resources

While providing industry context, benchmark resources from Mavrck also provide marketers with guideposts to ensure they’re not overpaying influencers and a comparison to how your programs are performing against your competition.

Reporting

Comprehensive real-time reporting allows you to identify your top-performing creators and establish long-term relationships for continued high performance and time saved in the discovery phase. Understanding your top-performing content will improve future content ideation and can be provided as an example as you scale your activations with more creators.


Measure the Effectiveness of Your Budget

An effective budget has two driving components: increase return and reduce investment. To ensure you are getting the most out of your budget, you want each component’s themes to be central to your strategy. These are a few ways that brands increase their return and reduce their investment by partnering with Mavrck:

Increase Return:

Sales and Brand Lift

  • Measure the online conversions, mobile installs, or offline sales lift that results from an influencer’s audience engagement with their social content.
  • Measures increase in recall, intent, favorability or other brand metrics.

 

Channel Lift

            • Increase conversion rates on owned e-commerce sites, third-party retailers, or other digital experiences 30-50% when influencer images, videos, ratings, and reviews are repurposed or syndicated

 

Reduce Investment:

Time and Content Savings

      • Scale your influencer operation by an order of magnitude (10x) or more without requiring the need to increase team capacity
      • Make more efficient use of incentives compared to other influencer agencies or platforms and produce quality content more efficiently than an in-house or agency team

 

Media Efficiency

        • Generate impressions, engagements, and clicks for 50-70% less the rate than the average paid social media CPM, CPE, or CPC benchmarks
        • Generate content assets (images, videos) in a more cost-effective way than your agency or in-house teams

 

Budgets come in a wide variety of sizes and all adhere to specific brand goals. Whatever your goals may be, Mavrck is here to help. Making the most of your budget doesn’t have to be magic; like anything, it’s a skill that comes with experience and practice (which we have in abundance). As you hit the goals you’ve set, you’ll hopefully see your budget increase to open the door for even bigger objectives. Feel free to reach out to Mavrck as we’d love to play a small part in the magic you make out of our budget.