Building an influencer or creator program at scale can be exceedingly difficult. At one point or another, most brands have tried to work with influencers manually. After discovering, recruiting, negotiating, and managing a few creators, everyone comes to the same conclusion:
Managing creators manually, in a one-off manner, is not scalable. It can be successful, but you will never achieve a volume of more than 50 creators per creator manager. For this article, we are recommending best-practices to build creator programs of more than 50 creators. These strategies can scale to ~10,000 creators
The End of One-Off Negotiations:
Breaking the scale barrier with creators requires focus and discipline. The first thing we need to do is resist the impulse to negotiate +50 unique deals with every influencer. Yes, many influencers have their own requirements and rate cards. We should absolutely partner with them. But we will not partner with hundreds of them.
Disclaimer: We are not advocating to never negotiate with creators. This is for a SCALE program, for campaigns that need a personal touch and require less creators, we can negotiate as much as needed.
Program Structure
Creators still obviously need to be compensated. Here are the incentives you can offer to build a scalable, automated program.
Welcome Gift. Many creators require product to get started. Automatically send welcome gifts to creators with LoudCrowd.
Content Rewards. For creators that reach deliverables and milestones, automatically send them additional product or cash.
Commissions. Offer commissions to creators that sell.
Challenges / campaigns. Similar to content rewards, automate the process of sending product or cash for specific content deliverables.
Discounts on product. For members in the program, offer them exclusive discounts so they have the product they need for content.
Creator Persona
To begin automating and scaling a program, you first need to understand what types of creators you want to target. Programs can target a range of creators, but that range is finite.
For instance, if you think your core creator is going to be a "micro-influencer" because they require less cash payment and they are excited about product seeding, you can build a program around that. But have a range in mind. A nano-influencer with 1.5k followers might be excited about a product discount and an opportunity to earn commissions. A micro-influencer with 80k followers will not.
Build an incentive structure / offer that you think will get your target creators excited, and then build a program around that.
Landing Page / Application
To scale the invite and collaboration process, we recommend building a landing page to communicate the details of the program. This way, potential creators can get more information before they receive access to the program. Landing pages should include:
Link to the application
Incentives of the program
Requirements / deliverables of the program
FAQs
Recruiting
Once you've built a program, you are ready to invite creators. Go back to our target creator persona and identify their qualities. For example, we could be looking for:
Creators from the US
10k-50k followers
Outdoor enthusiasts
Travel content
Targeting these individuals can be done in several ways.
1) Social CRM. You should always begin with targeting creators from your Social CRM. These creators have already engaged with the brand, and are much more likely to accept.
2) Networks. Influencer and affiliate platforms have robust networks that allow for creator searches. Don't have one? No problem. There are many free tools available with networks. Our personal favorites are Shopify Collabs and Euka.
3) LoudCrowd services. LoudCrowd subscribes to nearly every influencer network in the world, and we've got access to over 100 million creators. We use AI and humans to curate amazing lists of creators to target. Talk to your client strategist if you have not signed up for Discovery Services (starting at $250 / month).
4) Creator ads. Brands that want to radically scale creators can also run ads to their program landing page. While this is a more expensive way to recruit (typically we target $5-20 / creator), it can be effective for brands with smaller audiences.
5) Manual. As social natives and influencer managers, we should always be recruiting prospective members for programs. Don't be afraid to check out target brands and reach out directly.
Once we've identified the targets, we recommend either sending them an email or DM template. Making these templates feel as personal as possible will really improve conversion rates, and is typically worth the 10 seconds per invite if you can spare it. We typically see about a 10% acceptance rate for programs that are looking for net new influencers.
Sample Template:
Once the invites are sent out, it's the creator manager's responsibility to make sure we're following up on creators with questions and directing as many as possible to the landing page. Using this strategy, brands can typically recruit 50 to 2000 creators within a given year. For brands that want to target more, we recommend leveraging your customer base OR using highly automated messaging tools.
Once creators have signed up for the program and are active, we recommend employing these strategies to make sure your creators are still engaging at scale.
For questions, reach out to [email protected]