The secret weapon in any major brand's arsenal tends to be their influencers and that makes an influencer marketing campaign critical. These key members of their community are the catalyst for marketing efforts and act as liaisons between a brand and the vast majority of their audience. Establishing a strong connection with your influencers is tricky, but ultimately worth the effort. Influencer marketing is the secret sauce that can turn a campaign around. The first step in this process, is making connections with the right people and doing it the right way.
To help you can leverage this connection to maximize your campaign's ROI, here are six tips you can apply to your influencer marketing campaign.
1. Define clear goals for your influencer marketing campaign
Before you start reaching out and connecting with influencers, establish measurable goals of your campaign. Your influencer outreach campaign can contribute to several goals including:
- Increasing brand awareness on social media
- Generating leads and raise conversion rates
- Targeting a new audience and engage them
- Renewed interest with your current audience
- Forging long-term relationships with your influencers
Starting with these in mind, you can properly curate and approach influencers that would be ideal for meeting these goals.
2. Choose the right influencers for your campaign needs
Choosing the correct influencer is far easier said than done. It involves a deep understanding of your audience, clear goals and a keen eye for people who hold sway in your niche or industry. Monitoring the activity on your social media profiles is a great way to see which people your audience engages with regularly. Tools like Buzzsumo can also help identify influencers in your industry and narrow down the candidate pool. Once you've found some options, take a careful look at their profiles. Make sure you review the ways in which they engage with their audience. Evaluate whether they truly do influence others' behavior.
3. Treat influencers like a brand
It's important to treat influencers like a fellow brand, because that's exactly what they are. They set about creating a blog and forging a memorable brand the same way your business did. It's important that you keep this in mind when you engage them. Like any strong brand, top-level influencers have a voice that carries across their audience. They work to create high-quality content in the same way that you do, and their influence is exactly why you're reaching out. When you approach them, keep this in mind and talk candidly about your campaign's objectives, your ideal voice and messaging, and everything else a partnership with another brand should know
4. Build the relationship first, before you go for the "ask."
Influencer outreach is a delicate process. Coming on too strong will turn off any influencer. You must establish a relationship with them first before you can start talking about marketing. This begins with subtle things, like following them on social media or subscribing to their blog. From there you can comment on posts, retweet their content, or simply send them a compliment on social media. Give them a reason to reach out to you by showing a true interest in their content.The key is not to ask for help until they see that you also want to do something for them.
5. Be authentic.
Robotic outreach, or canned messages will not help you build real relationships. If your heart's not in it, the influencer will see this and walk away. There are many ways to show authenticity in your influencer marketing. If you're using email use a strong subject line that's personalized. Mention something specific in the body of your email. For example, instead of a simple "I like your blog," mention that "Your post on SEO trends in 2017 was really insightful!" But don't say it if you don't mean it. An influencer will see right through inauthentic praise or glad-handing.
6. Showcase your authority.
The final ingredient to a successful influencer marketing campaign, is social proof. You need to give them a reason to work with your brand. Influencer relationships need to be reciprocal, so they need to see potential in your brand the same way you see potential in them. Show them content you've written on your own blog, or a guest post that was featured on a reputable site. This will showcase your brand's authority and the potential you can offer for the influencers you engage with.
Having good goals, choosing the right influencers and treating them well are all keys to successful influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is an excellent way for brands to utilize the marketing tools they have and work with major players in their industry for mutual benefit.
Have you had success with influencer marketing
? Let us know in the comments!
