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."
