Guide

Youtube Influencer Marketing Guide

July 18, 2022

Why YouTube Influencer Marketing?

If you are wondering if your brand should plan a partnership on YouTube, you have come to the right place! In this article, we will discuss the benefits of Influencer Marketing, specifically the ones of YouTube Influencer Marketing. Then we will share a few tips, tricks, and best practices to plan the best YouTube Influencer Campaigns! And finally, we will share the most popular and successful YouTube Influencer collabs that have been posted. Are you ready to dive in? You are in for a treat!

The benefits of Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing has been booming for some time now, but why exactly should you add influence to your marketing strategy? Let's do a quick overview of the benefits, starting with the awareness and reach it can bring you.

Boost your visibility and engagement. When working with influencers, your brand is expanding its network, thus its audience. When appearing on a new influencer feed, you are boosting your reach and awareness stage as their whole community has access to your collab. Thus by partnering with various influencers, you are multiplying the number of impressions by reaching new niche communities. But how exactly does it impact your engagement? With paid ads, the app is pushing your content to new users. However, paid ads are less likely to invite people to comment and engage with the post as it is commercial content. However, when partnering with content creators, your content reaches a community that knows the influencer and follows them for their content. Thus they are more likely to engage with your post and discuss the collab. This makes a massive difference for your brand as it influences the impact of your partnership.

It adds value to your content. As said previously, there is a considerable difference between paid ads and influencer campaigns. With paid ads, your brand is pushing its original content, so there is nothing new or impactful that will catch the eye of your audience. Working with an influencer is about joining their values with your brand and combining your image. Thus they are adding value to your content by associating your creator style with theirs.

Planning a collab means creating unique content by combining your brand image with the influencer's creativity. And that will grab their community's attention and even raise their curiosity about your brand. This little something takes your brand to another level, makes it unique, and differentiates it from your competitors.

Build new relationships. Onto the social aspect of influencer marketing! Creating campaigns with talented influencers is nice, but influencer marketing goes beyond that. It is about building solid and authentic long-term relationships with content creators and creating unique and memorable experiences they will never forget. Influencers don’t work for your brand because they need to, but because they actually like your products and enjoy working with you, so make it count! 

If you think working with an influencer is only about paying them for new content, you can’t be more wrong. Creating authentic relationships with your content creators is a must! If your collab goes well, and the influencer enjoyed the partnership experience, they will later be thrilled to work with your brand again and maybe even recommend other influencers to work with you. So keep this in mind for your next collab!

Influencer marketing impacts your SEO. By collaborating with content creators, you are expanding the pages that quote the name or your brand. Moreover, most vloggers work on their social media and blogs. So you can ask them to write a small article in which they name your brand and add a link that redirects the reader to your website. Not only will the Google search engine find a new source that cites your brand, but this will also bring more visitors to your website. 

YouTube Influencer Marketing Tips

So, as you guessed, working with influencers is about creating your own experience. However, there are a few guidelines to follow regarding different social media platforms. For instance, Instagram and YouTube collabs are two completely different types of influencer campaigns. One will require photography skills, while the other involves editing skills. So here are a few tips for entering the world of YouTube Influencer Marketing and why you should consider partnering with YouTube Influencers!

Choose the Youtuber with the right topic and niche. Every YouTuber has their channel topic, from gamers to lifestyle vloggers and fitness influencers, be sure to find the right YouTuber that corresponds to your brand. For instance, if you are a fashion brand, then it goes without saying that a fashion influencer is your content creator. Yet again, brands can adapt to different topics as well: a food brand could either partner with a mukbanger or a “day in my life” influencer. There are no rules, but you’ll have better odds of reaching the right audience and your target market by partnering with an influencer that matches your topic.

Plan content that is adapted to their original one. Every single influencer has their organic content, their signature catchphrase, or that little something that makes their channel unique. And more importantly, this specificity of their content makes their content stand out and recognizable from other influencers. So be sure to respect and adapt your campaign to their YouTube channel. Need an example? 

This influencer is a “day in the life” vlogger who enjoys sharing her cooking with her followers. We can easily recognize her account from other vloggers as we never see her face or hear her voice. Her videos are aesthetic, soothing, always have calm music as background noise, and mirror a Korean lifestyle. So a brand that would partner with this influencer should already consider that the influencer will most likely not describe the product other than by presenting it to the camera.

Plan your campaign type. As there are different topics on YouTube, there are various content formats for influencer campaigns. Among the most popular ones, we find brand awareness videos, unboxings, reviews, sponsored content, tutorials, vlogs, day-in-the-life giveaways, etc. So be sure to choose the appropriate content that best showcases your product while staying in line with your influencer’s original content. 

 

Your titles and thumbnails must be appealing and SEO-proof! YouTube Titles have a massive impact on the views of the video. By finding strategic keywords, you’ll have better chances of appearing on users’ feeds and on Google. Moreover, the title and thumbnail must be catchy to grab individuals’ attention, so they wish to click on the video. 

Be sure to be satisfied with the influencer’s video quality. There is a reason why TikTok and YouTube are so different other than the duration of the video. It is also the quality of content that differentiates both social media platforms. As the majority of TikTok users watch their videos on the phone, content creators don’t need to have professional equipment and so on. However, YouTube users watch videos on their computer, requiring more professional equipment for better image quality, editing, etc. So don’t forget to analyze the quality of the content of the influencer videos to decide if they are suitable for your campaign.

Editing is key! A YouTube video must be well structured to keep the audience captivated long enough to watch the entire video. So take your time when planning a collab with your influencer. You should discuss the order of the video, the different scenes when the product appears, and so on. For instance, if the influencer presents your brand at the end of their video, you’ll have fewer chances of reaching the maximum audience than appearing at the beginning or middle of the video.

Don’t forget to share the news! Once the video is ready and posted, some influencers will agree to share it on other social media platforms like an Instagram story. However, some influencers might charge extra for promoting your brand on another platform. Even so, your brand can share the campaign on your social media. YouTube can increase your sales so don’t hesitate to bring extra users onto your video!

Best YouTube Influencer Marketing Campaigns

Now that we shared our YouTube tips let’s give you a few examples of the most popular and successful YouTube Influencer Marketing campaigns. These examples will make you want to work with YouTubers! You have probably come across one of these collabs as these companies have partnered with numerous influencers. So let’s get to it!

Honey

Honey is a brand that will help users find promo codes when purchasing online. They are quite known on YouTube as they collaborated with famous influencers such as Mr. Beast!

Audible (Amazon)

The second most popular YouTube Influencer Campaign goes to Audible, an Amazon service that, as you probably guessed, has appeared on several YouTube channels. In most of their collabs, influencers introduce their services in a few seconds by giving a shoutout to their sponsor. As we mentioned, there are different types of content formats on YouTube. In this case, Audible always appears as sponsoring YouTubers’ videos.

Nord VPN

You must have come across this VPN service, as they tend to mix influencer marketing campaigns and paid ads on YouTube. Like Honey and Audible, in the grand majority of their collabs, influencers shout out NordVPN for sponsoring their video. This company has even created a unique program for YouTubers to easily sign in and get sponsored.

Coldest Water

Coldest Water is the most popular influencer campaign in the YouTube world of Mukbangs! Mukbang is a YouTube community in which influencers share their eating skills. They mainly prepare large food portions and film themselves enjoying their delicious (yet giant) meals. Coldest Water has built an empire by collaborating with every famous mukbang influencer. They simply worked on product placement by sending a water bottle to the mukbanger and appearing on the video. YouTubers don't even need to discuss the bootle or present the brand. Their only mission is to make the bottle visible throughout the video and use it while they are filming (a pretty simple task when your content is eating). Yet, by appearing in every mukbang video, Coldest has become a signature brand in the Mukbang community.

Go Pro

Let’s end this article with one last famous brand known for its partnerships with YouTube influencers: GoPro! This camera brand has a history of working with travel influencers or adventure and athletic content creators such as professional surfers, bikers, skydivers, etc. As these influencers live extreme journeys that need resistant filming equipment, GoPro has become their best friend. Their waterproof cameras are resistant to different climates, temperatures, and heights. In other words, they are reliable. And by appearing on YouTube channels, various sports and adventure communities have purchased GoPro equipment as they reached their target market.

That is it for today’s article. If you are looking for more influencer marketing tips, check out our Blog. We share new tips and best practices regarding social media, influencer marketing, and influencer news every week!