Influencer allowlisting can increase your marketing ROI
You’ve joined forces with an influencer, and together, you’ve crafted a piece of content that not only resonates but also exceeds your expectations in terms of engagement and sentiment. Now, you might be wondering how to harness the full potential of this success.
To make the most out of this opportunity, brands can go beyond the confines of their initial campaign and find ways to repurpose and amplify the assets created with influencers. This approach ensures that the benefits continue long after the collaboration has ended.
One of the most successful strategies for maximizing the value of influencer-generated content (IGC) is allowlisting. But what is allowlisting, you ask?
What is allowlisting?
Allowlisting is a process where brands run social ads through an influencer’s social profile instead of their brand account. Allowlisting is used to expand the reach of top-performing organic influencer content, amplifying its impact. Running ads through a creator’s account appears more relatable and trustworthy than brand-owned ads.
What are dark posts?
Dark posts are similar to allowlisting. They are social ads run through a creator’s handle instead of the brand’s accounts, but they do not appear on general feeds. They only appear in the feeds where audiences are specifically targeted. This helps prevent spamming of followers who may have already seen the content.
What are the benefits of allowlisting?
Brands have a lot of options for amplifying IGC. Some opt to acquire usage rights for a designated timeframe and use IGC in advertising across paid and owned channels. Others, however, embrace the practice of allowlisting and dark posts due to the numerous advantages.
- Increases your reach and extends the shelf life and impact of your successful influencer content.
- Ad content has already been tested organically, so you know it will perform well.
- Gain access to better targeting and influencer audience data to build custom lookalike audiences.
- IGC ads deliver higher performance with call-to-action buttons (“Shop Now”, “Learn More”, etc.)
- A/B test multiple ad formats, like shorter/longer videos, or with different copy or CTAs.
- Seen as more relatable and trustworthy than brand-owned ads.
- Can help avoid audience ad fatigue and prevent the doomed auto-scroll.
- Typically cheaper than brand-owned ads thanks to high impressions + lower cost-per-click and cost-per-view rates. For example, a Belle client achieved a 6-second CPV of less than $0.01 with allowlisting, surpassing internal paid social benchmarks!
- Influencer content, in general, costs less to create than brand-produced commercials or photo shoots used in traditional ads (particularly when created with micro influencers.)
- More data collection on allowlisted content than organic posts – conversions, clicks, purchases, page views, etc.
- Builds strong creator partnerships, as it helps the creator expand their reach, too.
How do you decide what influencer content to allowlist?
Remember the point of allowlisting – to appear more authentic and less like an ad. Choose content that shows high organic performance and resonates with your audience.
Brands should evaluate a mix of quantitative and qualitative metrics when determining what content to put extra ad dollars behind: reach/views, engagement rates + comment sentiment.
High-performing assets will continue to perform well as ads, because they’ve already proven to be a great media type for that platform and for that audience segment.
When and how to build allowlisting into influencer contracts?
It’s often more cost-effective to negotiate allowlisting rights up front when building influencer contract agreements. And while you won’t know right away which content you’ll allowlist or repurpose, negotiating terms early on can help simplify the process.
Be overtly clear about which content is allowed to be used where and for how long. Contracts that loosely mention allowlisting permissions without exact details leave room for disagreement and even lawsuits.
How much does allowlisting cost?
With lower CPV and CPC rates, allowlisted ads are often a better bet for brands to pursue. We recommend brands set aside budgets for allowlisting or plan to reallocate some of their paid dollars to amplifying influencer campaigns.
Allowlisting partnerships typically require an additional payment on top of the original collaboration fee + the advertising spend. While allowlisting rates are case-by-case with each creator, generally, influencers request 20-50% of what they’re being paid for the entire partnership in exchange for advertiser access to their accounts. These fees are often negotiated for 30-day timeframes, as most creators do not let brands use their content indefinitely.
If negotiating allowlisting rights, brands should simultaneously negotiate licensing rights for organic/owned content. Doing this at the same time will help simplify contracts.
Expand ROI of top-performing IGC with allowlisting
As marketing budgets continue to shrink and be scrutinized, finding ways to maximize ROI is imperative, as is finding new, creative and engaging ways to reach target audiences. If you’re not already putting ad dollars behind your organic IGC, adoption of an allowlisting or dark post strategy could be a game-changer for your brand.
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