Is your business looking for new digital marketing strategies to help reach a bigger audience and resonate more with your customer base? Influencer marketing is a great strategy to test out as a way of increasing your audience and growing your online presence.
Influencer marketing can be a cost-effective strategy that helps to elevate your business through social proof and word of mouth on social media. Learn more about how to use this strategy within your digital marketing.
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is a strategy that involves partnering with influencers like bloggers and social media users with high follower accounts. These partnerships typically entail offering a product/service for review in addition to compensation in exchange for a blog post, social media post, or full-fledged campaign.
There are many different types of influencers, so researching and finding the perfect ones to work with your brand is essential. You also have to decide how you want them to showcase your business before reaching out.
Let's dive a little bit more into the influencer marketing strategy.
How does influencer marketing work?
Influencer marketing works by having regular people promote your products to their followers. Most of these social media influencers are only going to partner with businesses that they actually like/believe in so that their followers will continue to trust them.
That trust is really what makes influencer marketing so powerful and so popular. Their followers believe in what these influencers have to say, and if they recommend a product, their followers are that much more likely to then purchase that product.
How do you get started with influencer marketing?
The strategy is pretty simple - it just takes some initial time to set up. First, you need to do research, then you need to build your campaigns/partnerships, and then you need to get started with your outreach.
Step 1: Research influencers in your niche.
One of the most common types of influencers that people have heard of is "lifestyle influencers" or "lifestyle bloggers." They cover a good bit of products/services/industries.
But what if your industry is much more niche? There are many different types of influencers out there; you just need to do your research.
Pay attention to the follower count versus engagement rate of each influencer. Followers don't matter nearly as much as engagement. If these users have hundreds of thousands of followers but only a hundred or so people liking and commenting on their content, that's not an influencer you want to choose.
You also want to make sure you're reaching out to the influencers that are most likely to resonate with your product/service, so pay close attention to their content, their voice, and their audience.
Step 2: Build your campaign/promotion.
What do you want your partnership to look like? Before you can reach out to any influencers, you have to have an idea of what you want to offer and what you want the influencer to promote.
Do you want to give them a free product and have them take photos of/with it? Do you want to offer a free service or trip? Considering what facet of your business or what specific product/service you want to promote is essential before discussing a partnership with an influencer.
Step 3: Reach out to the influencer.
Start by compiling a list of contact information for your potential influencers. If they have a business Instagram account, they may have an "Email" call-to-action ready to go. If the influencer also has a blog, you may be able to find an email or fill out a contact form on their website.
Send emails, social media messages, contact form inquiries, etc., to the influencers that you're interested in working with to see if they would be willing to work with your business and promote your product/service.
You also need to ask about rates. It's important to remember that these influencers are making a living off of their social media account, and offering a free product/service isn't enough compensation. Be prepared to set aside a budget for your influencer marketing on top of the product.
Step 4: Write up a contract.
Once you've found a handful or so of influencers that have agreed to partner with your business, you want to write up a contract. This helps to protect both you and the influencer. It ensures the influencer gets paid, while also ensuring you get everything they agreed within your promotion, whether it's a blog post, a blog post and a social post, just a social post, etc.
Step 5: Ask for results.
After your campaign has been completed, be sure to reach out to each influencer to ask for statistics and metrics from their end. How many views did the post get? Likes/comments/shares? If they wrote up a blog post, how many clicks did it send to your website?
Taking a look at your results at the end of any promotion or partnership helps you to understand if it was successful and if this is an influencer you want to continue to partner with in the future.
Interested in influencer marketing for your business? Contact Connection Model today to learn more about how we can utilize this strategy for your company.
Written By: David Carpenter
