Instagram influencers’ responsiveness to a small business collaboration outreach

Abstract

Collaborations between social media influencers (SMIs) and brands have become increasingly popular in recent years, so many marketers and brands either start implementing influencers or intensify SMI use in their marketing strategies. Influencer marketing is the practice of compensating influencers for posting about a product or a service on their social media profiles. Influencers usually specialize in a particular niche area and possess highly devoted follower bases of different sizes. Their incentivized brandrelated messages are very effective and achieve increased engagement because of their personal manner, subtlety, and authentic advertising approach. One of the first steps in the influencer marketing process is to reach out to the right influencer with the aim of partnering up and collaborating in order to engage new potential customers and consequently grow a business. Therefore, influencer marketing basically starts with an influencer’s positive response to a brand’s outreach and collaboration consent. This research study aims to determine the responsiveness of Instagram influencers to a small business outreach offering an unpaid collaboration (a free product in exchange for a feed post). It was also analysed how different Instagram influencer categories, in terms of follower count, responded to the selected small business’ outreach (and consequently collaborated) and which Instagram influencer category is more likely to accept this kind of collaboration proposal. In addition, several practical recommendations are made regarding how small businesses should focus their efforts to make their Instagram influencer outreach marketing strategy more successful.