YouTube influencer marketing has become a powerful tool for businesses to reach their target audience and promote their products or services. This approach is pretty new to marketing history, which leverages the immense reach and influence of content creators on the world's second-largest search engine. By partnering with the right YouTubers, companies can have access to engaged communities and benefit from the trust and credibility that influencers have built with their followers.
This innovative approach to promotion leverages the immense reach and influence of content creators on the world's second-largest search engine. By strategically aligning with carefully selected YouTubers, companies can seamlessly integrate their products or services into content that resonates with their desired demographic.
Moreover, the versatility of YouTube as a platform enables businesses to showcase their offerings in a variety of formats, from subtle product placements to dedicated review videos or even collaborative content creation. This flexibility allows for a more personalised approach to marketing, ensuring that the brand message aligns seamlessly with the influencer's style and audience expectations.
For marketing teams seeking to maximize their ROI and expand their reach, YouTube influencer partnerships offer a compelling solution.
Preparation Before You Research YouTubers to Sponsor
Defining Your Company Goals
Before going into the research for professional YouTube channels to sponsor, it's very important to define your company goals when it comes to paid sponsorship. What do you expect to achieve through these YouTube videos that get your brand deals?
It could be increasing brand awareness and sales, or promote a specific product launch. With these different types of goals the types of sponsorships that you will be looking for will be different. You need to find a good fit with a YouTube creator that aligns with the company's values and that can bring the target audience that will benefit the business the most.
Define Your Niche and Target Demographic
After you're done with what kind of purpose the paid sponsorships will serve your company, now you need to identify your niche and target demographic to narrow down your search for YouTube creators that are relevant enough. In this process, try consider factors like age, gender, interests and location of your ideal audience. This will help you find social media channels who have an audience that is in sync with your target market.
Define What Kind of YouTuber You Want to Work With
Now, down to the final part of the preparation; you need to define what kind of creators that should get sponsored on YouTube by your business.
This depends a lot on what you would like to achieve with your brand deals. Are you looking for YouTubers that do a lot of product reviews, where they go thoroughly in-depth of your product? Or maybe you want YouTube content that's more vlogs and entertainment that makes your product or service seamlessly integrated into the video.
Other forms of contents could also come in natures of tutorials, educational content, cooking or health content, giveaways and contests...etc. If you want to see a variety of examples of good sponsorships on YouTube, you can check out this blog post where I go more concretely in-depth about the subject.
Research Process
YouTuber Search Tools
In order to productively look for potential sponsor deals that you can do with YouTubers, you need to find YouTube channels that will be able to bring out the best potential of your company's product or service. Consider using specialized tools like Sponsorship.so. This platform analyzes millions of videos to identify creators who engage in sponsored content. It allows you to see your competitors' sponsorships, making the search process more efficient and targeted. You can click here to create your account.
Manual Process on YouTube
In addition to using specialized search tools, you can also manually explore YouTube to find relevant influencers. While this could be a bit more time-consuming, you can find valuable insights and unexpected opportunities that you missed with a quick analysis. You can get a deeper understanding of your target audience's preferences and behaviors by looking at the interactions below the YouTube videos. Start with YouTube's search engine, inserting a variety of keywords and strings of text that are related to your niche, product, or industry. Don't just type in obvious terms; think creatively about how your target audience might search for content related to your product or service.
Let's take an example; if you're a fitness equipment company, you could get interesting results if you search for "home workout routines", "fitness challenges", or "apartment-friendly exercises", or terms such as "fitness equipment reviews", rather than just "fitness equipment", or "weight lifting set".
As you go through the search results, you can start by looking at channels with a significant amount of subscribers, since this often indicate a creator's reach and influence.
However, there are a lot of small channels out there that are looking to make money on YouTube, that are even reaching out to sponsors for brand deals. Some small YouTubers get more highly engaged audience, and that could be more valuable than a larger, passive audience. Try to find YouTube content creators what consistently get a good amount of view counts relatively to their subscriber count. Likes and comments are also a good metric system for you to see if they have an active and invested audience.
Equally important is the content alignment with your brand values and aesthetic. Take the time to watch several videos from each potential influencer, noting their presentation style, production quality, and the overall tone of their content. Ask yourself:
Does their approach resonate with your brand image?
Would their audience likely be receptive to your products or services?
If the answers to these questions are yes, then you can go to the channel's About section, and get their email address like this:
Remember, this manual process is not just about finding sponsorship opportunities; it's an opportunity to gain valuable insights into your target market. Pay attention to the topics that generate the most engagement, what their viewers are the most curious about. This information can be invaluable not just for your influencer marketing strategy, but for your overall marketing and product development efforts.
Vetting and Outreach
Assessing Content Quality and Engagement
Once you have a list of potential YouTubers, you need to evaluate the quality of their content and the level of engagement they receive in order to see if the channel is a good fit.
A good starting point is looking for their posting consistency, production values, and overall presentation quality. Then, analyze their audience engagement by looking at comments, likes-to-dislikes ratio, and the interaction between the creator and their viewers. Do they reply to a lot of comments? Do they make the sponsorship obvious or subtle? Pay attention to the relevance and depth of discussions in the comments section, as this can provide insights into the audience's interests and the influencer's impact.
Consistent high-quality content that comes with active and positive engagement are a good sign of a dedicated creator, and this is what sponsors are looking for- a who could potentially become a valuable advocate for your brand.
Analyze Audience Alignment
Evaluate the alignment between the YouTuber's audience and your target demographic. Look at the comments section to gauge the age range, interests, and location of their viewers. Ensure that their audience matches your desired market to maximize the impact of your sponsorship.
Evaluate the audience of the YouTube account in comparison to your target demographic. Audience alignment is very important for sponsored videos and branded content for both parties to benefit the maximum. Either by looking at the comments section or utilizing YouTube account analysis applications online, you can get an estimation of the age range, interests, and locations of the viewers. Think about what kind of channel genre will fit your desired target market.
Review Past Sponsorships
It's always very important to go through background checks before you give out sponsored opportunities on YouTube. You need to get an idea of how the YouTuber's past sponsorship experiences went, and what kind of sponsors want to sponsor this specific creator. Do research on how much sponsors pay YouTubers, if they are reliable, if they connect with sponsors long term, if a lot of sponsors look for this type of YouTube sponsored videos from this creator. This will help you assess their suitability for your campaign and identify any potential conflicts or red flags.
Use Our YouTube Sponsorship Price Calculator
In order to determine fair compensation for your sponsored content, use our free YouTube sponsorship price calculator. This tool calculates your sponsorship offers taking into account factors such as influencer's reach, engagement rates, and content type to provide a competitive price range for your sponsorship deal. Know that you are looking for a deal that won't be over the marketing budget, but still making a fair deal with the sponsor YouTubers.
Negotiating and Structuring Sponsorship Deals
Setting Up Terms and Expectations
Before signing off a sponsorship agreement, clearly communicate your expectations and the terms of the partnership. If there are any, let them know that you're looking for specific deadlines, creative guidelines and brand messaging that needs to be included into the sponsored videos and branded content.
Sponsorship Compensation Models
There are various compensation models for YouTube sponsorships. It could include fixed amounts, but also with or without variable rates based on performance, cost per mille (CPM), exclusive deals, and multiple video packages. You can include free products in exchange in the sponsorship deal as well, but make sure the YouTube content creator is remunerated. Consider your budget and the influencer's reach to determine the most suitable compensation structure for your campaign.
Negotiating Mutually Beneficial Agreements
Approach the negotiation process with a win-win mindset. Avoid short term benefits and think of the long run. The goal here is to to create a mutually beneficial agreement that aligns with both your goals and the influencer's interests. Try to be open to their creative input and ideas to ensure authentic and engaging sponsored content. Along the process of making the YouTube video, be in the loop to also keep the creator on track.
Sponsored Videos Content Policies to Respect
YouTube Sponsored Content Policies
Familiarize yourself with YouTube's policies regarding sponsored content. Ensure that your sponsored videos adhere to the platform's guidelines, including proper disclosure of the sponsorship relationship and compliance with advertising regulations.
Ensuring Proper Sponsorship Disclosures
It is crucial to ensure that sponsored content is properly disclosed to maintain transparency and trust with the audience. Work with the influencer to include clear and prominent disclosures, such as verbal mentions or on-screen text, indicating that the video contains sponsored content.
Measuring and Optimizing Sponsorship Success
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Follow
In order to measure how successfully your marketing campaign on YouTube worked, it's important to establish 'key performance indicators', a.k.a KPIs. These indicators include views, engagement rates, click-through rates, conversions, or brand sentiment. A lot of these stats can be found on YouTube Studio of the YouTuber. Compare the KPIs with your overall campaign goals to understand and keep track of progress. With these tools, you can evaluate how well your YouTube sponsorship is going with the sponsored influencer and know if it is worth turning this brand deal into something more long term.
Tracking and Analyzing Sponsorship ROI
Think about implementing tracking mechanisms to analyze the 'return on investment', a.k.a ROI in a more efficient manner. Unique URLs, discount codes or affiliate links are a good way to attribute sales or website traffic to subcategorize your influencer marketing strategy, getting more thorough data on individual content creators. Regularly review and analyze the data to assess the impact of your sponsorships on your business objectives.
Optimizing Future Sponsorship Campaigns
Based on the insights gained from your initial sponsorships, optimize your future campaigns for better results. Identify the influencers, content formats, and promotion strategies that yielded the highest ROI and engagement. Continuously refine your approach to maximize the effectiveness of your YouTube influencer marketing efforts.
After the partnership video, brainstorm how you can optimize your future influencer marketing campaigns for better results. Which content creators worked the best? With short form or long form? What kind of niche did it work in the best? Any specific promotion strategies that worked the best? Narrow down the aspects that made the highest ROI and engagement. With every sponsorship, the goal here is to try and continuously refine your approach to getting the best results for the marketing, finding that sweet spot that works the best, but not being too closed off on innovation and creativity.
Building Long-Term Influencer Partnerships
Play the Long-Term Game
As Naval Ravikant, an entrepreneur and investor, wisely said, "Play long-term games with long-term people." Building lasting relationships with influencers can lead to more authentic and impactful collaborations over time. Nurture your partnerships by maintaining open communication, providing value beyond the sponsorship, and showing genuine appreciation for their work.
By following these steps and leveraging the right tools and strategies, you can effectively find and partner with YouTubers who align with your brand and help you achieve your marketing goals. Remember to prioritize authenticity, respect sponsorship policies, and focus on building long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with influencers in your niche.
