Nationwide’s Kristi Daraban on Managing Influencer Marketing Program Costs Efficiently | Marketing Maestros | Blogs | ANA

Nationwide’s Kristi Daraban on Managing Influencer Marketing Program Costs Efficiently

May 5, 2021

By Barbie Romero, senior manager of committees and conferences, ANA

ANA

The annual ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference is one of the ANA's most dynamic conferences, with a long history and a loyal following. It brings together top client-side marketing procurement and finance professionals with advertising agency chief financial and revenue officers and other key industry stakeholders.

At this year’s conference, Kristi Daraban, associate vice president of social media at Nationwide, will discuss how to balance costs with agencies, influencers, owned and paid media to ensure an effective campaign. In advance of her presentation, the ANA's Barbie Romero spoke with Kristi to learn more.

 

Q. Do you think influencer marketing rates are rising due to the popularity of influencer marketing?

There are benefits and challenges to the increase in influencer usage. The big celebrities and mega influencers can come at higher costs, depending on the ask, but more niche and micro influencers are emerging that can help achieve certain goals like unique reach and authenticity or volume of creative. Sometimes influencers simply want to build relationships with brands and will negotiate for a mutually beneficial partnership. Often longer term relationships or generally larger asks vs. one-offs can help with costs as it makes their time and effort go further.

 

Q. How can procurement teams be a part of the conversation when digital marketers are thinking about starting an influencer marketing program?

Our procurement team helped us with a general RFI to hold master service agreements with multiple agencies allowing us to pull a lever quickly. We still RFP campaigns, but since we know that we have a few trusted partners to rely o,n it’s faster and easier. Additionally, they help us stay on top of contracts, changing terms, and balancing work. For smaller, direct contracts where we work with the individual influencer instead of through an agency, procurement will help us with documentation and benchmarking.

 

Q. Do you have any advice for smaller companies with smaller budgets when they are negotiating influencer compensation?

When thinking about influencers, there’s a scale from micro to mega, and often the micro can be really effective if you know your audience target. Multiple micro influencers may hit similar goals in the end than one larger influencer for a fraction of the cost. Offering up the potential for a longer term agreement or sometimes adding in compensation for sales through aggregate tracking can be extra incentive for them to want to work with you. Know your budget ceiling and benchmark based on engagement rate and reach. You can also offer non-monetary benefits like sharing their content on your platforms, providing them media dollars to boost your sponsored post, and highlighting them in channels like email and web.

 

Q. Are there any hidden costs that companies need to consider when starting an influencer program?

There are three things to think about: influencer costs, time and resources, and media.

You should always be very clear about your expectation and asks when entering negotiation with an agency and influencer. If you’re asking for content, who is producing it? Will you provide props or products, or are they getting reimbursed to procure items? When and where are they featuring the content, and how many times? Will you be able to provide rounds of feedback or is that additional cost?

Your time as a marketer is very important when leading from the brand side. You need to be available for meetings, creative review, collaboration, coordination and information sessions. This may require extra staff or add responsibilities to an existing role.

Often times media dollars are not included in contracts and are critical to the success of a program. This can be scalable, but make sure it is a key cost when thinking of engaging an agency and/or influencer.

 

Q. Do you use B2B influencers? Is compensation different for B2B influencers as opposed to B2C influencers?

Yes, our business model focuses on using intermediary partners to sell our products to consumers. We do have efforts focused on top-of-funnel brand building that reach both our B2B and B2C partners. B2B influencers can come at different costs based on their influence with specialized groups. There are often fewer of them too. Their reach is typically lower due to their focus but can be highly concentrated and therefore more effective.

 


 

Register for the ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference, Presented by Active International to hear this and many more illuminating and engaging presentations. We’ll see you there!


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