If you’re a brand you’ve likely heard many people stress the importance of paying the right person to represent your brand, delivering the perfect message to the right audience in the right way. It could be quite challenging to reach the right person, like how Haig Club needs a David Beckham, and L’Oreal seeks collaborations with someone like Eva Longoria. But it’s all about investing in your heroes for mass visibility and developing a distinctive brand identity.
The effort will always be on the brand, and the power in the hands of the talent, celebrity or influencer. This is where paid partnerships or paid collaborations come in place, where brands and influencers collaborate to reach a mutual benefit and a value exchange.
We’ll walk you through everything you need to know about paid partnerships with influencers and content creators on social media like Instagram and TikTok.
Paid partnership is a collaboration between a brand and an influencer or content creator to promote specific products or services in exchange for payment or commissions. Normally, the brand pays the influencer to promote their products on social media channels like TikTok and Instagram. Paid partnership content can take various formats including a static image, carousel posts, or video content—it’s all up to what works best for your brand, the influencer, and your target audience.
Brands can do a paid partnership campaign with an influencer across various social media platforms depending on where their audience is. The most common social media to do paid partnerships are Instagram and TikTok. Here is what you need to know about paid partnerships on Instagram and TikTok:
Instagram paid partnership is when a brand compensates an influencer or a content creator to promote a specific product or service through branded content on Instagram feed, story, reels, or live videos. But what does paid partnership content on Instagram actually look like?
Instagram comes with a convenient paid partnership tool that simplifies your collaboration, makes it more trackable, and helps it stand out. This tool includes a tag that says “Paid Partnerships With…”. Influencers can use this tag to show that they have a commercial relationship with the brand, which also means they get compensation for their posts. This feature aims to increase the level of transparency and make it clear that the content is an advertisement. Brands could also incorporate a discount code or affiliate links into the influencer’s sponsored content to drive more sales or conversions.
In addition to Instagram, brands can collaborate with TikTok influencers or content creators to promote specific products or services through the creator’s content and provide monetary compensation in return. TikTok's storytelling format has created valuable opportunities for brands and creators to work together in developing more personalised, natural, and engaging advertisement videos on TikTok.
On TikTok, ads created in partnership with brands are categorised as branded content and must follow the platform’s guidelines regarding sponsored TikTok posts. It needs to be clear which product or service you promote through the video or the caption. Also, influencers must disclose that the partnership video is a branded content by activating the Branded Content toggle on the app.
In an effort to support advertisers, TikTok has recently launched several paid partnership programs. For example, TikTok Pulse is a new service that guarantees brands’ videos to appear alongside the top 4% of videos on the platform at any given time. Additionally, there is the “Branded Mission” initiative, which allows advertisers to source authentic videos from creators and convert the most performing content into ads. Then creators will receive cash payments if their videos are chosen.
Paid partnership is one of the most effective ways to collaborate with influencers. Here are the benefits brands can expect when partnering with influencers:
Raising brand awareness and exposure
Influencers have a large circle of niche audiences who are highly engaged individuals with specific interests. Partnering with an influencer to create branded or promotional content can get your brand in front of many new potential audiences and raise awareness of your products or services. The more people are aware of your brand, the more likely they are to engage with your products or services, consider your offerings when making purchasing decisions, and become loyal customers over time.
Gain credibility and trust
Influencers are trusted by their audience, who regard their content as authentic and reliable. When influencers genuinely enjoy a brand’s offerings, they will provide authentic endorsements of the products and willingly promote them to their audience. Plus, influencers consistently create content that resonates with their followers. Therefore, partnering with influencers helps brands earn more trust and credibility with their desired audience.
Increase conversions and sales
Paid partnerships with influencers can help to drive more traffic to your brand’s website as your brand will be exposed to a new audience base that could be interested in your products or services. Also, endorsement content from paid partnerships can motivate audiences to make purchases based on the influencer’s recommendations, as they perceive the influencer’s content as credible. Therefore, by partnering with the right influencers, a brand can enhance their website traffic, boost conversions, and increase sales.
In most cases, influencers' paid partnerships can be tracked and measured, allowing brands to assess the impact of the collaboration on sales and ROI. Most of the social media platforms also already have a metrics tool to measure and analyse the results of the campaign. For example, on Instagram, you can see the paid partnership content insights which include the reach, engagement, impressions, reactions and comments, CPM, CTR, and many more.
Sometimes, the only thing you’re trying to sell isn’t the only thing they want to buy, and, in listening to our clients, they’ve held up a mirror to one of the truisms we’ve always championed.
For every one of you who’s heard us trumpet the benefits of paid collaborations, as sure as night follows day - the follow up is always our ‘but…’. Altogether, here’s the catch: “There are too many brands paying too much money to too many people to promote them.” This is where we come in with our unique selling point (USP): connecting brands and influencers for a mutual benefit, a value exchange.
We’ve banged the drum, hung out the banners and advertised hard and in doing so, we’ve been told we’re ignoring a large piece of the jigsaw. The importance of ‘meeting in the middle’ and mutual benefit, doesn’t need to live in the non-paid space only. Cue ‘light bulb moment’.
Our longest serving client said they were really interested to see what Room Unlocked could do for their paid collaborations. Brand love, they suggested, could still be factored into commercial relationships. So, after a bit of internal reflection, we ran a campaign for them. And saved them 70% of their allocated budget because the perfect match was so desperate to work on the opportunity.
So we ran another, and the same thing happened - the client’s budget went far further because people who wanted to represent the brand offered their services at better rates. And another brand, another example, same result.
And so paid collaborations are now live at Room Unlocked - where brands will use us to unlock their influential advocates who are available, interested and keen to partner; for the love - not just the money.
That’s the beauty of Room Unlocked, the space where collaboration and brand love are still the most important factors. So join us, save time and save your money. Unlock your heroes to create your identity, and then reward your advocates to spread this message further and wider.
Business is always better when it’s a meeting, not a chase. Book a free platform demo today and find out how Room Unlocked can make a difference for your paid partnership campaign.
