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Who are YouTube influencers and how can marketers collaborate with them? Here is your full guide to YouTube influencer content.

Digital marketing has become a top priority for most brands these days. Not strange, millennials and generation Zs travel, shop, study, look for food and drinks, communicate with friends and financial organizations via their smartphones and PCs. They seek advice and recommendations within their usual channels of communication as well. Choosing a game for the teenage nephew on YouTube? Searching a cute vacation style via Instagram? It may sound strange to the older generation, but it’s totally normal for modern youth. So, why not use the tendency to promote your brand?

Who are YouTube influencers and how can marketers collaborate with them?

There are YouTube channels and videos that get millions of views and likes. No, we don’t mean the Despasito video. Let’s talk about people or teams that are celebrities for their target audience. Sports gurus, travelers, photographers, gamers, journalists, models – you name it. They are like Messi for football fans. Or Ana and Elza (Frozen cartoon) for little girls. They are adored, copied, and followed. They are approachable since they communicate with their audience and establish friendly relationships with their followers. And they can influence their fans’ decisions and choices.

What is even more attractive for you as a marketer, is that YouTube influencers are far less expensive to partner with than sports or movie celebrities. Businesses benefit from cooperation with YouTubers: for every $1 spent on influencer marketing, brands are making $5.20 in earned media value. 92% of marketers who’ve tried influencer programs in 2018 agree that this is an effective channel. As a result, the industry is predicted to reach $10 billion by 2020.

So, where does the money go? There are several formats of cooperation with influencers depending on the platform (i.e., YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, etc.) and a company’s goals. Let’s focus on YouTube sponsorships and YouTube influencer content in this article.

Types of sponsored YouTube influencer content

Niche products, online services, games, and many more can be advertised via YouTube. Forget about frustrating commercial breaks when you listen to music or watch a tutorial. When sponsoring a YouTube video and elaborating the right message for your campaign, you reach your target audience via the influencer without any negative emotions from the users.

Influencers try to choose the products their followers will appreciate or at least won’t mind to see advertised, things that are more related to their channel topic. However, the more followers an influencer has, the more versatile brands he or she can promote. You should choose the channels that will be most suitable for your field and business goals as well as think of the type of video that will work best for you.

Dedicated video

The entire video is devoted to your product/service. An influencer talks about the pros and cons, how to use and where to buy, compares it with other similar products, etc. This video format works best for the brands that closely match the influencer’s audience and won’t be seen as a straightforward ad.

Let’s say we want to promote a platform for the financial market analysis. In order to do it, we will look for the traders, financiers, or brokers whose followers will be interested in our services. There’s no point in cooperating with beauty vloggers, travelers, or photographers since it won’t have a necessary effect.

Here’s a good example of how a photography influencer can naturally promote Canon by creating a whole video review of the product:\

Unboxing

If you have kids, you’re probably well acquainted with this type of video. Children love to watch the unwrapping of a new toy, and videos like these have millions of views. It’s also a type of dedicated content where an author demonstrates the packaging, unwrapping, setting up and using a product, adds his or her impressions and reviews. When we talk about a new smartphone or some high-tech device, unboxing videos are highly appreciated by the audience:

Dedicated and unboxing videos are considered an excellent fit for more expensive products. Influencers review products/services in detail, acquainting their audience with the brand and providing their feedback. Such videos generate more leads, but they also require more time for preparation and release and therefore are more expensive.

Video Ad Integration

This type of YouTube sponsorship uses influencer’s video as a marketing platform by integrating the product ad into the natural flow of the video. As you can see in this video, the author talks about entirely different things but includes the sponsored part about Ring. The channel audience is related – tech lovers – but not very specific (as talking about Canon in the photographer’s vlog). The sponsor doesn’t receive a close interaction with the audience since the promotional part within the main video topic is short. But it works well for brand awareness, and those who are interested may then check out the link included in the video description.

Video Ad Integration within the related topic

Same as the previous type, but this video includes the promotional part in the material devoted to the specific topic. Like when you talk about pet care and mention a sponsored automatic pet feeder that solves some problem raised in the video. For example, in this video, an influencer talks about the problem of data manipulation and then inserts a promotion for a VPN software that helps you protect your online privacy:

YouTube channel branding

YouTube influencer adds your brand’s logo to his or her channel like here. On top of that, your logo may appear in the videos. This type of influencer marketing works best in combination with dedicated or integrated videos, social media publications, other social handles branding, like Twitter and Twitch, etc. If you want your brand to be associated with this particular influencer, you should appear “together” as much as possible. Channel branding works well to grow brand awareness but to aid in lead generation, it has to be combined with other marketing channels.

YouTube giveaway video

Another type of YouTube sponsorship, giveaways, provide more engagement (who doesn’t love freebies?) and better audience engagement. A giveaway may be featured in a separate video or included into the how-to guides or unboxing (as in this video).

How does it work? You choose a target audience and an influencer within your field. You provide a free sample of your product for the influencer and several extras to distribute among his or her viewers. You can either set the rules of a giveaway by yourself or leave it to the influencer’s discretion. Note that everything should be fair and transparent not to affect influencer’s or brand’s reputation.

In order to be more effective, giveaways require some preliminary work. The more buzz you create in various social media and other channels beforehand, the better conversion you’ll receive as a result.

What type of sponsored YouTube influencer content does your brand need?

That’s the sixty-four dollar question. If you’re wondering how to sponsor a Youtube channel and cooperate with influencers, Youtube has some introductory guides to help you out. But how to define what format would work best for your business goals? How to find the right influencers and not get yourself robbed? What other platforms would fit for your brand promotion and lead generation?

You don’t have to know all the answers. More than that, there are hundreds of influencers on Youtube, Twitch, Instagram, and other platforms. Simply browsing through the profiles and channels doesn’t sound like a good idea. Let the professionals do the job. Talk to the influencer marketing agency: Cloutboost team will work out a strategy, and you’ll get an all-encompassing and strictly budgeted campaign in a month. For more details, drop us a note here.