Have you ever seen a YouTuber release an unboxing video marked as #sponsored? Ever seen your favourite Instagrammer post about a brand new dress with #ad amongst the tags? The chances are high that you have, and the reason is due to Influencer Marketing.

Influencer marketing can be a cost effective way of reaching a huge number of your target audience on a much smaller budget.

Let’s say you have a £10,000 budget for advertising your new video game, but you’re not sure what to do. You’re not interested in banner advertising or search advertising, as you’ve heard great things about video, but you’re not sure how to approach it. You could hire a production agency, sure, but that would likely sap half or more of your entire budget, leaving little for promotion of the video. Producing original content is great for larger budgets which can support the release with outreach, seeding, placements and promotion, but not ideal for small budgets. Because of this, your awesome new video may end up with less than 5,000 views and you have no idea if they’re even from the right audience.

This is where Influencer Marketing is a superb second option – you can split that budget into smaller chunks and hire creatives with an established audience to do the hard work for you. If you hire 4 YouTube content creators with 250,000 subscribers to play and review your game, you instantly have a potential reach of 1,000,000. Sure, you won’t have a piece of content to call your own, but your game will be seen by hundreds of thousands of your target audience being played by somebody they already trust and admire. 

It is now law that paid for content must be clearly marked as #sponsored or #ad, but the cost effectiveness and time saving influencer marketing offers is worth it. Agencies and brands often worry that hiring influencers to feature your product restricts creativity, but if anything it enhances it. Content doesn’t necessarily have to be an unboxing video – allow creators to go wild with their ideas. As part of the process, you can also instruct the influencer on what they should include – you can’t ask them to tell their audience that they like the product, but you can ask them to include the price or where it’s available.

If you’re considering giving influencer marketing a shot, then why not bite the bullet and try it? Viral Seeding have a huge list of social media influencers, and we would be happy to discuss a strategy with you. Get in touch with us today at hello@viralseeding.com