Can Influencer Marketing Succeed with Product-Only Payment?

Winfluence - The Influence Marketing Podcast

Can you achieve influence marketing traction, then success without having to pay influencers? We’ve asked that question several times on this show and it’s a bit of a controversial one.

One perspective is you might be able to, but you shouldn’t. You are, after all, getting not just access to someone’s audience, but also their talent in creating content, plus the content you can then negotiate to use. All three of those elements are worth money you would have to invest otherwise to get the same output. So why disrespect the creator by asking them to post for just product.

But then there are creators, mostly micro- and nano-influencers, who might be happy to just receive free product in exchange for a post. Those just starting out want to appear to be successful and big enough to warrant brands approaching them. Plus, they can also use the product-only content to prove their audience is responsive or content is successful enough to convert customers. That leads to them making more real dollar collaborations down the road.

The answer to most question in the marketing world applies here. Can you gain traction or be successful with influencer marketing without paying the influencers? It depends.

One person who can illustrate how to do it successfully is Taylor Lagace. He’s one of the co-founders of a company and application called Kynship. They are focused on product seeding to drive organic influencer placements. That’s right! Seed product with influencers, no payments on top of that, and they post everything from unboxing videos to honest reviews and endorsements of your brand.

If you’re a regular listener to this show or an influencer/creator advocate, that approach on the surface is probably going to irritate you. My stance has always been that you’re asking for an influencer’s time, creative talents and access to their audience. You should pay them.

But give Taylor and Kynship’s philosophy here a listen. They simply ask content creators if they’d be interested in receiving the product. For those that say “yes” they ship them the product. And that’s all they ask for … their approach is no strings attached. There’s no requirement for the recipient to post anything. They only do so if they wish to do so.

And the results Kynship’s customers are seeing are quite impressive.

I tried to shoot some holes in the philosophy with our conversation, but quickly realized Taylor and his team have emerged as the reason “it depends” is often the answer to marketing questions. Paying influencers to post isn’t a black or white issue. I think when you hear what he has to say, you’ll agree.

I also think for you brand or agency folks out there listening, you’ll very quickly lose your skepticism that just sending product out without asking for something in return is a bad idea.

Today's episode is sponsored by Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing solution. You can find out more for yourself at jason.online/tagger.

We’ve been talking recently to Meredith Jacobson, an independent influencer marketing consultant who was on a past episode of the show, to tell you about how she uses Tagger with We are Boosters.

Hear more about how she uses Tagger on today's episode.

To start building your own experiences with my influencer marketing software of choice, go to jason.online/tagger today.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices