With an average return of $6.85 for every dollar spent, it should come as no surprise that more and more businesses are leveraging influencer marketing. It’s a powerful way to develop your brand image and build credibility, as well as being an ideal form of content promotion.
Unlike traditional advertising methods, which are often extensive and time-consuming, influencer marketing allows you to immediately connect with thousands or even millions of target audience members at a time, through someone they admire and trust. But there is a problem.
As influencer marketing explodes in popularity, consumers are becoming increasingly numb to the constant stream of sponsored posts entering their feeds. This is making influencers more selective when it comes to what they’re willing to promote. The following are some tips to help you execute influencer outreach more effectively.
Clarify Your Objectives
Your first step should be to define a set of realistic goals for your first outreach campaign. These can become more complex as you progress. For instance, your first objective might be to get in touch with a certain number of influencers. Then, you can become more specific, which will help you determine which steps to take next.
Avoid the Numbers Game
Many businesses make the mistake of seeing their influencers as tools and not people. But they are indeed the latter and they have a reputation to uphold. They likely won’t respond if you expect them to share a generic “copy and paste” message to their followers. What they promote needs to be in-line with their own brand image.
So, before you get in touch, take the time to follow their social media accounts and get to know them a little better. Read their content, analyze the way they communicate, and the niche they operate in. It’s also a good idea to show some recognition for their work, such as by liking and commenting on their posts.
In a similar vein, avoid putting too much of an emphasis on the size of the audience, as it’s the connection the influencer has with their audience that matters most. Ideally, you should be working with someone who is truly interested in your brand and product, which reflects how interested their audience will be.
Use the Right Tools
There are some useful tools out there for improving your influencer outreach efforts. Nuwber makes it easy to obtain all the information you need about a specific influencer. If you can’t find their email, for example, you can enter what you currently know about them to uncover their contact details.
Sidekick is a plugin that allows you to keep track of your emails. This way, you can determine whether an influencer has read your message and if they’ve clicked any links, thus helping you determine if they’re interested. Another option is Pitchbox, which also has some useful email tracking features such as open rates and responses.
A successful influencer outreach campaign is the result of time and effort put into identifying the right influencers and building strong relationships with them. Don’t forget to invest time in gaining a better understanding of your audience, as this is key to identifying who you should be working with.
Keeping the above points in mind can help you gain a major advantage over your competitors and secure the best influencers before anyone else.