Knowing what you need to look for when working with influencer marketing is key to getting the results you want.
In the early days we only had follower numbers to rely on, then it became engagements and engagement rate (the amount of interactions – likes and comments – a post gets compared to the amount of people following the profile).
But now the influencer space has matured a lot, and the data points are basically almost countless.
So, what should you look for? And what is most important? That you will get a very good idea of, after reading this.
Please note, that the relevance of data points can vary according to what your KPI’s for a particular campaign or strategy are. And what your budget actually covers.
I.e. should it only cover targeting people in one particular country? Does it only cover getting people to visit a particular physical location?
All that impacts the way you should prioritize looking at data and what you have to compromise on.
How active should an influencer ideally be?
Let’s focus on Instagram since it is the most popular one for most businesses that do influencer marketing historically.
To start off we have seen a shift towards people becoming more active on Instagram Stories.
But it is important that the influencer posts in the feed as well? The short answer is yes. It impacts a profile’s reach, if an influencer is not active “enough”.
So, what to look for?
1) Macro/mega influencer activity
When a profile has reached a certain amount of followers, it is oftentimes a major part of the influencers income. This requires them to be extra active on their social profiles to stay relevant. And it leaves them with more time to actually create and post content. So a golden number to go for, is a minimum of 10 content pieces per month on average in their feed.
2) Micro influencer activity
Micro-influencers oftentimes use their social media as a hobby. This leaves less time for them to create and post content. So for micro influencers other rules apply. And this is where we prefer for them to post a minimum of 3 content pieces in their feed per month. But of course, the more the better. This serves as a lower threshold and what we recommend to ensure that the account is actually active.
3) IG story activity
Ideally they should always be active on stories, with at least 2-3 live stories at a time.
4) What about TikTok and Youtube?
You want your influencer to post at least 6 times per month on TikTok. You want your YouTube influencers to post at least 3 videos per month.
But the more the better. This goes for both small and large profiles.
Impressions. And the reason impressions are what you want to measure, and not reach.
Impression efficiency rate is your go-to metric. We have moved on from looking at an influencer’s follower amount to looking at how many people they actually reach. But we do not look at reach (primarily), we look at impressions.
Specifically, impression efficiency rate which is the percentage of avg. impressions you get on your feed content. So, what is a good impression efficiency rate?
5) Impression efficiency for posts
For posts, 50% is where you want to be. This is what should be considered an acceptable efficiency rate. This does not mean that you should not work with influencers who have a lower impression efficiency rate, this just means that you should be very focused on what you are paying – and what you are paying for. Is it mainly the content that is important to you? Or is it the ability to target a narrow niche? Or is the influencer okay with you paying for the impressions the content is actually generating? Or the target audience impressions? More on that later.
6) Impression efficiency for stories
Stories naturally have a lower view rate, since they are only visible for a limited time. We see that 15% impression efficiency on stories is an attainable and good rate, which tells us that the influencer stays active and relevant, and their stories are “worth watching”.
But the higher the number the better, obviously. If you are looking for an influencer to drive sales, you want their impression efficiency rate on stories to be at least 20%. Why? Because a high view number on stories tells us that their stories are of extremely high quality to their audience. They probably speak to the camera, they provide great entertainment or inspiration, that leads to a higher trust level with the influencer which results in them being better at telling stories and captivating attention, leading to more and better conversions.
8) Spotting fake followers
Having the necessary data while looking at influencers, you also get access to audience demographics. Oftentimes, your marketing budget needs to cover a specific geography. I.e. a specific country. This increases the need to find influencers that cover that particular region. To reduce your workload and avoid activating more influencers than needed, opt for those with a significant number of followers in a specific country.
Depending on which country you are targeting, we recommend that influencer have a minimum of
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50% of their followers based in one country.
For some countries, it is easier to find i.e. influencers with a minimum of 80/90% in one particular country, but this is more typical for accounts speaking/writing in a non-English, native language.
9) Engagement rates and spotting fake engagement
Engagement rates can vary a lot, so you should not base your primary scouting terms on this and also look at audience demography and impression efficiency.
When you are scouting influencers and assessing their profiles, we recommend a lower threshold of the following:
Instagram influencers with
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less than 10.000 followers: Minimum 3% engagement rate
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between 10.000 and 100.000 followers: Minimum 2% engagement rate
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more than 100.000 followers: Minimum 1% engagement rate
TikTok influencers with
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less than 10.000 followers: Minimum 5% engagement rate
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between 10.000 and 100.000 followers: Minimum 3% engagement rate
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more than 100.000 followers: Minimum 1% engagement rate
Spotting fake engagement
#1 This first graph shows us a natural engagement development. Some content performs well, some content performs poorly and most content will be somewhere near the middle. That is normal distribution of engagements.
In order to spot fake engagement, you need to look for abnormalities. This could be an unusual development in engagements i.e. a big jump or maybe too few variations. Please see the examples below.
#2 Here we see an influencer who either stopped buying engagements or who used to delete all images that did not get over 200 likes. Or a combination of both.
#3 In this next example we see that no posts have below 1.4k engagements. This is a clear sign that the influencer buys approx 1.4k engagements on all posts and the rest is probably organic engagement. This was a travel influencer with 100k followers.
10) How to search for influencers with an older audience
Finding influencers with an older audience can be hard! But using Woomio’s discover tool it becomes way easier. The easy hack to this is: add 10-15% in the field of the 34-44 age group.
11) What is a good CPM in influencer marketing?
Historically we see that a good CPM is 300 DKK. Some businesses can get CPM’s of under 100DKK, but it is very seldom and requires a certain brand and product.
However, when you are working with influencers with below 10.000 followers on Instagram these are the benchmarks you could use:
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IG Reels: aim for a CPM below €53
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IG Posts: €74
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IG Stories: €67
Overall, it is difficult to say what is a good CPM for YOUR business. You need to start somewhere and move your way towards improvement.
Competing with yourself and your own metrics is a more realistic way of approaching your CPM.
