What is influencer whitelisting and how are brands using it as a tactic to boost Influencer and creator ROI and engage new audiences?
What is Influencer Whitelisting?
Influencer Whitelisting allows brands to promote influencer content through the influencer’s account on Facebook or Instagram. It means brands can run paid social campaigns from the influencer’s profile. The influencer grants the brand access to their Facebook Ads Manager, and once the two are connected, advertisers can create campaigns and put spend behind the influencer’s posts.
Level Up Your Influencer Partnerships
Since the dawn of influencer marketing, brands have been looking for ways to get more out of their partnerships. Typically, brands work with influencers to reach a new audience with the hopes of converting them into followers, brand fans, and buyers—and create some great content in the process.
Consumers are so accustomed to seeing influencers throughout their feeds, watching their Stories and their YouTube videos, that they feel like they know them. Couple that with the fact that 83% of people are more likely to make a purchase based on recommendations from people they know. And yes, we know that only a small percentage of an influencer’s followers will actually know them, but 88% of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, which is great news for brands and for influencers.
The ability for brands to put ad dollars behind their influencer’s content takes this to a whole new level. Not only can the brand increase reach and brand awareness, so can the influencer, which means growth all around.
Diversify Your Paid Social Strategy
Now we understand that brand-to-influencer relationships differ from company to company. Some brands have a roster of 500 influencers with a mix of gifted and paid, while others have 5 key ambassadors they’ll work with for an extended period of time. But influencer whitelisting provides an opportunity for brands to multiply their return from influencer partnerships by allowing them to advertise to new and existing audiences with top-performing influencer content.
Influencers’ feeds are often highly curated one-filter environments which take much planning and consideration. So how can a brand run their usual variant tests and make sure they’re putting their strongest content out there when the influencer will only agree to one feed post every two weeks? The answer is: dark posts. These are posts that are created in the Facebook Ads Manager that can be promoted to select audiences without being posted on the feed. With dark posts, the influencer can share more content with the brand, having posted their fav on the feed, and the brand can test and run multiple creative variants with nothing left on the cutting room floor.
Not only does influencer whitelisting help brands increase brand awareness and sales, it also saves time and removes some of the bottlenecks that are present in current influencer relationship management processes. It means the influencer can stick to what they do best—creating great content and maintaining a dialogue with their community—and brands can quickly and easily get to work on promoting top performing content.
