Boosting: Extending reach of influencer marketing through paid media

By March 13th, 2020

The Power of Influencer Marketing

In fact, 68% of Instagram users say they come to Instagram to interact with creators. Despite influencers being such a driving force behind the platform, Instagram stands behind its algorithm. Why? Because advertising is where the company makes its money. More ads on Instagram means less space in the feed for organic content, which reduces the organic reach.

Regardless, influencers still manage to promote and sell product on behalf of brands, with 87% of shoppers taking inspiration from an influencer before making a purchase.

Increasing The Reach Of Your Influencer Marketing Campaigns

Boosting means putting paid media advertising behind the post(s) of an influencer. This way, you can ensure that the influencer content reaches a wider audience besides just followers of the influencer. Based on interest and demographic targeting, you can extend your audience and reach people your content is relevant to, increasing your return on investment.

Five Tips For Boosting A Campaign

Influencers can be valuable because of the close connection they have with their audience. Extending the reach of your campaign shows the best results when it is done with respect to the influencer’s original audience. Boosting should only ever be used as an extension of organic reach, not as a standalone strategy.

  1. Don’t make changes to the influencer content: The influencer post should be boosted in its original state. Don’t make changes to the caption, no matter how small. Again, you’re not advertising from your own channel here.
  2. Think about your audience targeting: Make sure your target audience for boosting complements the organic audience of the influencer. Influencers are likely to gain new followers thanks to boosting, but if these new followers are not like their existing audience, their audience quality can go down. By ensuring that your target audience location, age range and interests match the influencer’s current audience, you’ll be able to strengthen their audience quality and not damage it.
  3. Don’t boost your influencer content until it has been live for over 24 hours: Most post engagements and impressions on organic Instagram posts happen within the first 24 hours that the post is live. Boosting best practice asks that you wait 24 hours before you start your boosting. That way, any occasional overlap between the organic and boosting audiences happen on different days.
  4. Don’t drag out your boosting unnecessarily: Try to boost your content for no longer than one week. Influencer content is often seasonal or related to a specific event. To make sure you boost your posts while they are still relevant, we recommend activating them within one week of the organic post going live.
  5. Respect the influencer’s organic reach: If your influencer’s organic post achieved 100K impressions, as a rule of thumb you should limit your boosting to this as well. Boosting too much compared to an influencer’s organic reach will take you from an influencer marketing campaign to an advertising campaign. Why is this distinction important? The power of influencers lies in their credibility, in the connection that they have built with their followers.

Source Citation: Instagram Business, IMA, IAB

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