Should you pay?

Yes you should. The benefit of a paid relationship to a business owner is a professional and clear contractual arrangement with no grey areas or misunderstandings.

What's the value though?

An influencer has curated and nurtured their audience - you know how hard it is to grow an audience online, and an influencer has achieved that. The value is no different to paying for an ad in a newspaper - the aim is to reach their readership and it has a monetary value.

If you are paying to work with influencers, definitely ask for demographics and past promotion results.

But if you do not have budget for influencer marketing you still have some options.

You can approach an influencer and ask if they are keen to do a contra agreement, review or giveaway.

A giveaway is a benefit to the Influencer because it helps an influencer grow their audience, plus it has a tangible result for you - you can judge the success of an Influencer campaign through the number of entries into the giveaway AND the giveaway can be hosted by you, on your website or on your mailing list (to capture email addresses directly, or data on your Facebook pixel for retargeting).

Offering an Influencer discount codes is another way to benefit the Influencer - it gives them a juicy offer for their followers, and can provide them with stats for their media kit.

Both of these options work best when approaching what we call a "micro influencer" - someone will less than 20k following . They are much more likely to accept an unpaid giveaway or promotion in exchange for discount codes, giveaways to their audience. And are considered authentic in a cynical marketplace in comparison to someone who frequently works with brands in a paid capacity.

Overview

- Don't be lazy and just send product out and expect results

- Don’t scattergun and saturate the market - it seems inauthentic. Be selective when choosing influencers and try not to overlap too much within the same market.

- Approach the conversation for unpaid work graciously

- Try to add value to the influencer especially if you aren’t paying them

- Make it measurable - giveaways, discount or free shipping codes create measures of success

- Contact Influencers