Running an influencer marketing campaign on YouTube is not an easy task, and it’s even harder and more overwhelming when you’re new to YouTube influencers.
Even so, running these marketing campaigns on YouTube has proven to drive massive sales and conversions to your platform or service, making advertising with YouTube influencers essential for any startup and product to rapidly increase growth.
In this article, I’ll quickly and easily guide you through the entire process of starting your very own influencer marketing campaign on YouTube.
3 Steps to a Successful YouTube Influencer Ad Campaign in 2025
After consulting with various influencer marketing experts at Favoree and elsewhere, here’s how to run a YouTube Influencer Campaign.
1. 🗒️ Define Your Campaign
Like any other marketing campaign, the key to success is preparation and insights.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” – Sun Tzu
I’m well aware of how pretentious this quote makes me sound, but there’s just too much truth to it for us to ignore.
By knowing exactly how much you’d like to spend, who you’d like to advertise to, and what is important for you to achieve with this campaign, you’re already setting yourself up for success!
If you’re reading this article you’ve most likely already done this or were already planning to do this. Before continuing with your campaign make sure you define all of these details about your campaign.
💰 Going Rates for YouTube Sponsorships
Keep in mind that these rates may fluctuate heavily based on niche and other factors.
Pre-Roll ads: $35 – $75 per 1000 views
Mid-Roll ads: $30 – $70 per 1000 views
Post-Roll ads: $20 – $60 per 1000 views (not recommended)
Dedicated Videos: 3x – 10x the above mentioned rates
2. 🔍 Find the Right Influencers to Work With
Finding the right Channels for your campaign is always the trickiest part to get right. You want to make sure that you’re getting the right bang for your buck, but how do you even do that?
First, find out what your target audience likes to watch, some statistics are freely available online and others you’ll have to find through more roundabout ways.
Second, check what your competitors are doing and try to measure the effectiveness of their efforts.
Third, start searching for channels either using a channel crawler, just good old YouTube.com‘s search feature or using a third party tool to get the right data for your campaign.
Lucky for you we’ve found articles on how to spot rising channels, and how to find YouTube Channels by Category.
If your campaign’s main goal is awareness within a certain target demographic, we recommend you advertise with a wide array of medium or small YouTubers with similar fanbases as this will make it seem like you are everywhere to the consumer.
To do this you’ll need a long list of many channels and their contact information which is a very tedious process even if you follow our guide on how to contact YouTube Influencers for your campaign. That’s where our team at Favoree comes into play!
📊 Favoree Channel Lists with Emails
At Favoree we’re building the largest and most comprehensive database of YouTube Channels. We collect in-depth data such as viewer and subscriber counts, topics and subtopics, average video length, and much much more.
With this data, we create curated lists of YouTube Channels with their email addresses for your influencer marketing needs.
3. 💌 Contact and Negotiate with Influencers
Once you know who you’d like to contact all that still needs to be done is getting their contact info and to start emailing/texting them.
For most YouTubers you can find a contact email that either leads directly to them or their managing team in their YouTube About Section as shown here:
If you’re looking to get a lot of emails at once or can’t find an email attached in the about section of the YouTubers you’d like to contact, check out our guide on how to find YouTuber emails.
When contacting influencers make sure to follow the golden rules of negotiation. Just like buying a car or negotiating a job offer, an influencer ad slot is just another purchase for your business.
🤝 Tips for Negotiating with YouTubers
- Be respectful and professional, make sure you don’t have any typos in your email and use professional vocabulary. Influencers might think you’re a scam or spam email otherwise.
- Ask for their rates, don’t reveal how much your budget is for their particular ad. This opens the possibility of undercharging while also immediately letting you know if an Influencer is too expensive for your campaign.
- Allow for some Creativity and Freedom in the ad-read. YouTube influencers are creatives, their viewers watch them for who they are as a person and their sense of creativity. Taking that away from a YouTube video will not only hurt your chances of landing the deal in the first place, but it will also hurt the effectiveness of your ad.
Keep in mind that most Influencers accept flat rates based on average viewership as well as rates per 1000 views, which option you’d like to choose is fully dependent on your risk tolerance.
FAQ
How do you get brands to collaborate with you on YouTube?
To collaborate with brands on YouTube, focus on creating high-quality, engaging content aligned with the brand, showcasing your audience engagement, and proactively reaching out to potential partners.
Do YouTubers charge for collabs?
Yes, YouTubers often charge for collaborations, with fees varying based on reach, engagement, niche, and the scope of the collaboration such as sponsored videos or product placements.
Why use YouTube for influencer marketing?
YouTube offers a vast, engaged audience, visual content that fosters deep connections, influencers with strong influence and trust, and long-term, searchable content for extended brand exposure.
