What influencer incentives drive the highest action?
Not all influencers are created equal, and they don’t all respond to the same incentive rewards. For example, macro-influencers generally require monetary incentives in the range of tens of millions of dollars, requiring upwards of 230k for a single branded post. But what about your existing customers with influence, everyday consumers who already love your brand’s value in their life?
Micro-influencers are not incentivized by huge sums of money. They already love your products, and they’re already talking about your brand on social, which means they’re motivated by brand value instead of cash.
An effective influencer marketing platform uses incentives that reward customers’ natural inclination to engage on social media networks; it activates relevant customers with high social influence to create branded content in exchange for a branded incentive. Not only does this serve as the most organic and authentic form of brand advertising possible, but it also has a double benefit of making a brand’s influential customers feel important and connected to the brand, increasing their lifetime value.
Mavrck’s data studies have proven that the most successful micro-influencer marketing programs are ones operating on a “surprise and delight” model, providing appealing brand-related offers to customers that seem attainable and easily acquired, like a gift card of small value in exchange for a co-developed brand post on Facebook. There are a number of ways that you can incentivize your influencers to create and share branded content for you, but here are some examples of standard non-monetary incentives that Mavrck tracked in a data study on micro-influencer activation:
- Instant win small value of credit ($1-2)
- Sweepstakes for VIP Experience (meet the celebrity, founder, etc)
- Early access to content
- Sweepstakes for a low value gift card ($25)
- Sweepstakes for a high value gift card ($100)
- Sweepstakes to win a featured product
- Unlock a coupon (BOGO, 50% off)
We looked at influential millennial women in the U.S. between the ages of 25 and 45 on average and analyzed which reward-based incentives drove the most social results amongst this demographic. Since most micro-influencers are everyday customers with no celebrity status, they responded the most to offers that seemed “realistic” to their status, such as instant wins, low value sweepstakes and coupon offers. In contrast, a high value sweepstakes seems unlikely and connotes a long wait time and entry process, and therefore did not attract them as much.
In the infographic below, we broke down six standard incentive categories that were used in the study, and compared them to see which incentive performs the best when it comes to micro-influencer activation:
