Numbers don’t lie. It takes A LOT of coordination to set up an influencer marketing campaign. Many brands underestimate this when they want to ‘try influencer marketing’. We’ve analyzed over 5,000 influencer x brand campaigns and in this report can tell you if you’re slower or faster on getting your influencer marketing campaign off the ground.

Does Your Influencer Marketing Suck?

The numbers are out. We can tell you how efficient or inefficient your influencer marketing campaign is performing vs the industry average.

Where are we getting our data?

We have analyzed over 5,843 collaborations between influencers and brands between 2015 to today, December 14, 2017. These influencers and brands fall under mainly 5 CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) categories: baby/mommy products, services (insurance, on-demand service), fashion/beauty, beauty, and food.

The influencers typically have under 100,000 followers, with a minimum of 800 followers on platforms: Instagram, YouTube and blogs.

Planning an influencer marketing campaign is heavily underestimated. There is a lot of logistical nightmares to solve and multiple contact points to orchestrate.

We have broken down the whole influencer marketing process into 7 stages and have analyzed what is the average time a brand and influencer spend in each stage until the influencer campaign launches.

The 7 stages of influencer marketing

Pending: When you’ve listed out the influencers who are shortlisted for your campaign. You’re perhaps ensuring that they’re a good fit.

Requested: You’ve gone ahead and sent them an email to ask them to be a part of your campaign.

Offering: The influencer accepts your offer or presents a counter-offer. It isn’t unusual for them to work with you for a monetary fee or sometimes, for product only because they’re such huge fans of your brand.

Shipping: You’ve shipped your products to the influencers who have accepted to work with you.

Submission: The influencers have been working hard on creating beautiful images or video testifying on how awesome your brand is and showcasing your product. These images/video are sent to you for review.

Approval: You’ve chosen which images submitted are on brand and can be published on social media.

Publishing: Influencers have received your approvals and will be posting on their social media profiles to amplify your brand and build awareness.

See you how stack up against the industry average

Pending: 5 days. Why? Brands are spending their time with their teams to ensure that the influencers shortlisted are the right fit.

Requested: 4 days. Why? Most marketers are testing the water with sending out batches of email invites to see if the influencers they’ve short listed are interested or if not, they need to evolve their influencer demographic target.

Offering: 3 days. Why? Influencers are evaluating other brands’ offers and invitations, trying to shape and schedule their own brand as well. They are ensuring that your specific offer matches their profile and timing.

Shipping: 6 days. Why? Most American brands use Fedex/UPS or United Postal to ship their products to arrive in 5–7 business days. Ideally, please always include a tracking code (we can also track those live on the MuseFind campaign site)!

Submission: 8 days. Why? This is the longest of all the stages. Influencers are creating art for you and often are also creating images and video for other brands or for their own personal blogs. Have patience, it’s worth it.

Approval: 3 days. Why? You’re sifting through images and may want small edits or changes to them that you’re communicating to your influencers.

Publishing: 5 days. Why? High-quality influencers are publishing content on a daily basis and schedule their content posts ahead of time. You can request when you’d like your posts, but ultimately trust the influencer to know when their audience will be the most ready to accept their sponsored content.

Total: 34 days

for a full influencer marketing campaign.

What does this mean for me?

We are totally tooting our horn but when you’re on MuseFind we show you how you’re performing on your campaign efficiency and your performance will light up as green or red to indicate if you’re over-performing or underperforming.

If you aren’t using MuseFind, you can create a spreadsheet and track day by day. You want to be faster and find ways to automate your influencer marketing campaign so you can reach out to more influencers and gain more brand awareness.

Need more help? We’ve launched Influencer Marketing Academy and it’s 100% free with tips and articles on how to improve your strategies.

Ready for it? 🤓

Starting your own influencer marketing program can be hard and scary.

Instead, you can find and contact verified influencers for FREE to grow your business on MuseFind.

Find and talk to real influencers, say ‘Hi’ with confidence, organize your followup, and reach more consumers.