First off, I want to make something very clear to anyone reading this. Marketing is not one size fits all. Not all businesses are the same and not all products are the same. If you’re selling something with a $20 price tag, you’re in a different boat than someone selling products starting at $200. Likewise, there are always going to be unique cases where what I believe to be true, may not apply to your business or may not align with what you believe to be true. For the sake of this explanation, I will be speaking generally on what I have seen after booking countless influencer posts and working with brands that rely on influencers as their primary source of new customers.

So, Is Influencer Marketing Profitable?

Let’s say you have a new bath bomb product that all of your customers love. You reach out to 100 influencers about doing a paid post and 15 of them reply. You set up deals with all 15 influencers to pay them $250 each in exchange for a post on their Instagram feed and story with a link in their bio.

At this point, you’ve spent $3,750 on influencer collabs + the price of the product you’re going to send them. Let’s call it an even $4k.

Now, this is the hard part where most people give up on influencer marketing altogether. In order for your $4k investment to be profitable, you need to make it past these hurdles without a problem:

Influencers must post at the scheduled time.

All of the influencers need to use the right links and CTA in the captions.

The content needs to communicate the value add linked to YOUR brand (there are a lot of bath bombs out there).

Your site and shopping cart need to be optimized for conversions.

The influencers must have communicated their AUTHENTIC engagement and reach and not be boosting all of their posts.

You need to be able to recoup lost investment if an influencer decides to skip town on you.

You need to retain the rights to the assets for use later on.

Now, you can see that there are a lot of moving parts. Some of them are within your control. Others are left up to the influencer gods to ensure people follow directions. I can tell you with 100% confidence after working with hundreds of influencers and booking over 1000 placements on behalf of my clients and driving over a billion influencer impressions, something almost always comes up that can divert the trajectory of the campaign.

But, let’s say you already have a systemized influencer program in place that set you up to maximize the value you get from influencers as well as protect your investment if an influencer doesn’t deliver what you paid for.

All 15 posts go up on time and exactly according to the plan.

Since your total expense for this campaign is $4k, you are aiming for $4k in sales to break even.

If all of the influencers combined drive 8,000 clicks ($0.50 CPC) and your conversion rate is 3% with an AOV of $35, you will have generated $8,400 in sales. This should put you well above the threshold of being profitable after considering COGS.

But, it’s not always this easy. A lot of times, you won’t even come close to getting this type of return unless you have a foundation of systems and processes to build your deals on.

You Need a REAL Influencer Program

You see, most of the time influencers don’t post according to the schedule, their captions couldn’t sell fire to a caveman, they get your brand’s Instagram handle wrong or bury it at the bottom of the post, they lie about their reach & audience demographics, or their content just sucks.

If that’s the case and you’re expecting to shoot from the hip with your influencer collaborations, you’re not going to be happy when instead of 8,000 clicks you get 4,000 and instead of 3% conversion rate you get 1.5% since the audience is cold and 5 of the influencers are using engagement groups that fooled you into thinking they’re a lot more popular than they really are. I’ll do the math for you, that would equal $2,100 in sales from $4k in spend. Not good.

Influencer Marketing without a plan in place

So you might be thinking you know the answer now. “To hell with influencer marketing. I’ll just keep running FB ads and hoping that a magic wizard comes along and turns my Shopify store into a real brand.”

But, we both know that isn’t going to happen. You’re a problem solver and you know that if all of these brands can reach multi 9 figure exits built on the backs of influencers, you can too!

You’re right! And it’s not as difficult as you think.

When you start working with influencers, you need to have an Influencer program in place. This is a foundation on which you will launch your brand’s values into the world using the voices of other people. You will build trust and establish your brand as one people can love and relate to.

An influencer program is like an air filter is to a race car. If you don’t have one, you will suck in a lot of garbage that bogs everything down and eventually ruin your engine. If you have a dirty one, you’re going to be performing at average levels and constantly dancing on the line of losing money and making dismal returns. Don’t worry, I’ve been there and it’s not impossible to fix.

The goal is to have a clean and optimal filter that bolts on to your existing operation. It will protect you from harmful debris, makes things run faster and easier, and maximizes performance.

A Good Influencer Program Includes:

Influencer brand strategies that outline why influencers should work with you.

Leverage points for negotiating with influencers.

A brand story that aligns with your overall customer facing message.

Influencer contracts with key sections to maximize what you walk away with after the post.

Influencer briefs so influencers know how and what they should be posting.

A large pool of influencers that can be drawn from and cycled through.

A way to automate influencer outreach and management.

You can find these things on the internet spread across various blogs and websites. But it’s hard to find them and very time-consuming. You will have to read through a lot of fluffy articles that take too long to get to the point and give half baked answers. This isn’t a great option if you’re already allocating a budget to influencers as you can quickly lose thousands of dollars just like in the example above.

Influencer marketing is HOT right now. Everyone wants to do it and few are doing it well. But, the ones who sit down and create a plan for their influencer program, will find that it’s not as hard as it sounds.

I’m a marketer, a strategist, and a visionary.

I help brands maximize the value from working with influencers by building successful influencer programs.

I’d love to help do the same for your brand.

Next Steps

Click here to see how I can do this for your brand in 14 days.

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