Now's the time to get your influencer ambassador strategy ready for implementation.

We recently talked about how more money is coming into influencer marketing in 2018, which is fantastic, but it made us realize that now more than ever, brands need to begin developing influencer marketing ambassador programs and locking influencers in to long-term deals. If you’re unsure if an influencer ambassador strategy is right for your brand, here are three reasons why you should consider this type of approach.

1. Influencer Prices Are Going to Increase

Along with the rise of campaign budgets, the cost of influencers is also going to increase. It’s a basic supply and demand issue. Any time more money comes into a market, prices go up. Locking in your influencers to long-term deals now is an effective way to isolate yourself from those increases down the road.

2. More Influencers are Hiring Managers

At Carusele, we’re personally seeing a dramatic increase in the percentage of influencers who hire managers. This is yet another reason why influencer prices are going to increase, but not the main issue. What makes this more problematic is that brands won’t be able to build as meaningful of a relationship with the influencer directly. A lot of the communication you have with your creative partner is now going to be back and forth with the manager.

3. Better Campaign Performance

While the other two reasons you might expect, our third reason is a bit more surprising. But, we’ve seen influencer ambassador strategies outperform one-off campaigns on many different levels. One example is a campaign we executed for a retailer, and we found a 65% decrease in the cost-per-engagement from the first program to the last program. Simply put, this campaign became more efficient as the target audience got more comfortable with the program. Another example regards a brand sold at retail where we had a 400% increase in the engagement rate. So again, people were reacting better to the content when they got used to these influencers talking about it on a regular basis.

These are just three core reasons to think about an influencer ambassador strategy for your influencers in 2018, but there really are many other benefits. If you have any questions about these types of campaigns, contact us today, or follow us to keep up with the latest influencer marketing news on The Spin.