Top brands give literally $MILLIONS to celebrities to appear in their ads and content. Why?

It's about trust.

It's about influence.

It's about personality.

This year's Super Bowl Ads featured more celebrities than ever for these very reasons!

If a celebrity recommends a product, their fans will listen, because they put their trust in that celebrity.

While we might not all be able to afford an appearance from Zendaya in our next ad, we can certainly adopt the same approach - using influencers.

What exactly is an 'influencer'?

An influencer is someone who has created some sort of following by publishing regular, engaging content, such as social media posts on a certain topic.

Think of them as mini-celebrities.

There are 5 levels of influencers:

1. Nano Influencers: 1,000 - 3,000 followers

2. Micro Influencers: 3,000 - 25,000 followers

3. Mid-tier Influencers: 25,000 - 250,000

4. Macro Influencers: 250,000 - 1 million followers

5. Super Influencers: More than 1 million followers (these generally are actual celebrities!)

cardiff.mum recently moved from mid-tier to macro after her '5 meals for £25' collaboration with Aldi. Driving trust and traffic into Aldi stores during these tough times for many financially.

Davina McCall - a Super Influencer - represented HelloFresh in a series of workshops that put the ease of cooking HelloFresh meals to the test.

You might be thinking 'why wouldn't I just aim for the Super Influencers?! Surely they're going to elevate my brand the most? Not necessarily! Here's why:

💰Consider the cost:

The difference between a Nano influnecer and a Super influencer in terms of cost is huge. Nano infuencers might post something for your brand simply for the cost of a free product!

😓Effort of collaboration:

You'll be speaking directly through DMs with smaller influencers, building a relationship which can take time. What can also take time is going through agents or representatives to work with a larger influencer. Consider how you'll be able to invest your time here.

👀Engagement:

Smaller influencers have a smaller audience, but generally that audience is much more engaged with the influencers content - often liking, commenting and sharing theirselves. That engagement drops as the influencer's audience grows, but the actual potential number of eyes on your brand could be massive.

⌚Length/frequency of use:

You may be able to work with a smaller influencer long term - working together to produce multiple posts, which can be publicised by yourself with potentially no time limit. Larger influencers will likely post less, maybe even only once, and there's often a 6-12 month period you can use the content within. Again, the trade off is that the larger influencer has more followers, even if they only post once.

🧑‍🦰Audience relevance:

Think about the kind of people that follow the influencer. Your brand needs to fit with their audience.

Consider what's best for your brand, your budget, your time (you WILL need to invest time!) and your objectives.

Remember that working with influencers is often much more relationship-building than transactional!

Reach out to them by finding their details either on their social media profiles or websites - you'll usually speak to them through DMs within a social media platform such as Instagram, or they'll provide an email address for you to contact.

We cover how many influencers are now becoming 'creators' and how you can start to automate influencer (and creator) collaboration in this post ➡️