eCom Unity #9 - Scaling Influencer Marketing with Maximum Efficiency

Deep-Dive | 5 Key Insights To Scale Influencer Marketing

During my time at yfood, we scaled influencer marketing to €500k spend per month in only 12 months. To hit €100m in revenue.

We moved from 90% of budget on Meta to 30% of budget on influencers with better efficiency on that channel.

Let me share the 5 key insights and learnings that allowed us to scale up influencer marketing so rapidly:

#1 The riches are in the niches

The key insight we had was that our product is relevant pretty much immediately as soon as you step outside.

That allowed us to work with a wide range of different niches:

Truck drivers, Survivals, Horse Riding, Fishing, etc.

The great thing about creators in these niches is that they are a lot more cost-effective because:

a) Not as many brands want to work with them which drives down costs.

b) They have a much more engaged audience than an average lifestyle influencer

And yes, they might not have as big of a following as a large lifestyle influencer.

But you’d be surprised how big they are.

Plus, you can still scale this by just stacking multiple audiences.

#2 Not every influencer has to be profitable

We had very strict efficiency targets for our partnerships.

But we also gave the influencer team some flexibility.

It might be that working with the “main creator” within a niche is not profitable.

But if working with the “main creator” leads to all other creators in that niche wanting to work with you, this can still be an amazing result.

So we were ok with some partnerships performing below targets, as long as the entire niche stayed within target

#3 Building out a portfolio

Let’s say you want to get into influencer marketing and have a CAC target of €30.

You run the first 20 partnerships and the CAC of those is €60.

Now you might say: “Influencer marketing is not working for us”.

This would likely be the wrong conclusion because even though the average CAC is €60, there could still be 5 partnerships that have a CAC of <€30.

So next month, you could just stop working with the 15 that didn’t perform and continue with the ones that did.

Because the great thing is that an influencer who worked once, will usually perform well for a long period of time.

Thus, influencer marketing is like building out a portfolio. You make an initial investment, divest things that are not performing, and double down on things that are working.

#4 Derisk the first partnership as much as possible

With this understanding, our primary goal became to limit our risk on the first partnership as much as possible.

You have to get creative here. In the end, there is room to negotiate with influencers.

Ideally, work with a rev share model (used to be easier back in the days than today).

Or, if they lower their costs on the first post, they can pre-agree to a higher-than-usual rate for a potential second or third post.

Because at that time you already know what performance you can expect.

#5 Prioritise depth of relationship

Once you have identified a great partner or niche. Double down to own this niche.

For example, there was one creator that was working well for us (I don’t remember his name) that had car issues.

So we offered to cover 50% of the costs to fix it (without any obligations on his side).

He was super thankful about this and shared this with his community which lead to a >200% increase in sales from his posts in the next months.

More on the reporting structure to reach and monitor this in the section below. 👇️ 

Deep-Dive | The Right Influencer Reporting Structure

Building an effective influencer portfolio strategy is one part.

To be able to execute it, the right reporting structure is as crucial. To continuously monitor and evaluate each influencer’s performance.

The challenge: You have to balance the frequency of partnerships with the efficiency of each partnership.

This reporting structure we built at yfood allowed us to maximize new customer acquisition while meeting our efficiency targets:

#1 Efficiency by Time Lag

We looked at the efficiency of our partnerships based on the number of days that had passed since we last worked with that person.

Here is a simplified example of what that looks like:

0-15 days -> CAC = €45

16-30 days -> CAC = €35

31-45 days -> CAC = €25

>45 days -> CAC = €22

With this being the case, I should wait somewhere between 30 and 45 days until I get an influencer to post about us again.

Yes, waiting more than 45 days is even more efficient. But the efficiency gained is not great enough relative to the extra time I waited.

#2 Efficiency by Partnership Count + Time Lag

What we did next was layer the partnership count onto this time lag analysis.

Partnership Count means how many times we have already worked with this person.

Now this might show me that it is fine to only wait 25-30 days between posts for the first 4 posts.

But from the 5th post onward I would need to wait around 45 days to stay within my efficiency target.

This makes sense. Initially, you are new to the creators’ community and can work with a higher frequency.

But after they have heard the creator talk about you a few times, they need a longer break.

#3 Slice & Dice by Platform & Niche

Finally we not only looked at this data across our entire portfolio.

But also specifically filtered it down based on the platform the creator is posting on (Instagram vs. YouTube vs. Twitch).

As well as the content needs they operate in.

This allowed us to uncover some significant trends in behavior across our influencer portfolio.

Which we could in turn use again to maximize new customer acquisition by finding the ideal posting frequency per creator.

Running all these analyses took us a lot of time and we sometimes couldn’t really analyze the things we wanted to.

This is why all these things, plus a lot more (like lifetime value per influencer) are all available in the Klar Influencer Reporting out of the box.

Reach out to me if this is something that might help you to maximize your influencer marketing results as well.

Brand Breakdown | Hismile

Hismile has grown to high 8-figures in annual revenue by creating a new product category: instant bleaching toothpaste. I put together and analysed their entire marketing & sales process. They are doing a really great job in many fields.

You can access the full customer journey breakdown here: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVLJkyECo=/

These are my 8 main takeaways why Hismile performs that well:

1. They show, don’t just tell

2. They use tons of hooks and are testing them on steroids

3. They show the process of how the product works and what results to expect

4. They understand the customer's reality, being surrounded by similar products

5. They are using whitelisted ads that match their UGC strategy

6. They are building trust through science

7. They are running offers constantly to “Get you to buy”

8. They push for bundles to drive up the AOV

I explain & show all these takeaways in more detail in this video:

Thank you for reading :)

I am on a mission to help eCom brands build better, more profitable businesses. If you missed any past issues, you can catch up on all of them here.

I have built one 8-figure and one 9-figure eCom brand in the past and with Klar, I work with over 700 eCom brands today.

If you have specific questions you would like me to cover next, just reply to this email.

Have a great week.

Max ✌️

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