Influencer marketing is a powerful way to reach your target audience, boost your brand awareness, and generate more sales. But how do you communicate your goals, expectations, and guidelines to the influencers you work with? In this article, we'll share some tips on how to tell influencers what you want and ensure a successful collaboration.
Before you reach out to any influencers, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your campaign. Do you want to increase your website traffic, grow your social media following, or drive more conversions? How will you measure your results and ROI? Having specific and realistic objectives will help you define your budget, timeline, and KPIs, as well as align your expectations with the influencers.
Not all influencers are created equal. You need to find the ones that match your brand values, niche, and audience. You can use tools like BuzzSumo, Upfluence, or AspireIQ to search for influencers based on keywords, topics, or categories. You can also check their social media profiles, engagement rates, and previous collaborations to see if they fit your criteria. Once you have a shortlist of potential influencers, you can reach out to them with a personalized and professional email or message.
In my role within the power tool industry, I've been delving into the factors shaping my customers' purchasing choices. Unsurprisingly, word of mouth stands out as a major player. Consequently, a remarkably simple yet potent approach I've employed to identify fitting brand influencers involves investigating the individuals and entities followed by both my target audience and the partners associated with my company. By perusing their "Following" lists, I figure that the choices of people they follow invariably ripple into their buying behaviours.
Creating a brief for your influencer campaign is essential to ensure that all the details and requirements are outlined. Your brief should include information such as your brand story and mission, campaign objectives and KPIs, target audience and demographics, product or service features and benefits, budget and payment terms, deliverables and deadlines, creative guidelines and dos and don'ts, and legal and ethical disclosures and agreements. Having a clear brief will help you communicate your expectations to the influencers, as well as avoid any misunderstandings or conflicts. Additionally, you can ask them for feedback and suggestions to make sure they understand and agree with your brief.
Setting up a quick phone call or a video chat meeting to discuss the relationship is a great idea. It’s important to build a relationship with your influencers and affiliates that are creating content for your brand. One of the best way to do this is with a video call. This could be 10 minutes, or could be an hour, depending on how much relationship building occurs in where the conversation leads.
During the briefing session with your potential influencer for an upcoming campaign, along with covering aspects like your brand story, mission, campaign objectives, KPIs, and other essential details, I believe it's crucial to directly communicate why you've selected them. This serves two primary purposes: Firstly, it breaks the ice, fostering a more comfortable atmosphere for both parties. Secondly, it establishes a sense of trust and motivation by showing that your decision to collaborate is grounded in thorough research and thoughtful consideration.
Influencer marketing is not a one-time transaction, but rather a long-term partnership based on trust, respect, and mutual benefit. To build this relationship, you need to show the influencers that you value their expertise, creativity, and influence. You can do this by being responsive and supportive, providing constructive feedback and recognition, offering incentives and rewards, inviting them to exclusive events or opportunities, giving them creative freedom and flexibility, and asking for their input and opinions. Doing so will not only increase the influencers' loyalty, engagement, and advocacy for your brand, but also foster a sense of collaboration and co-creation that will enhance the quality and authenticity of your influencer content.
Genuinely championing influencers throughout their professional journey is the cornerstone of a strong and mutually beneficial partnership. After all, the essence of doing business revolves around individuals forming sincere bonds with others who share common interests. By providing the influencers with genuine support, we not only increase their loyalty and engagement but also foster a united community of audiences, potentially transforming them into advocates for our brand.
I think authentic relationship is an elusive goal. I on other social media platforms simply interact as i see is appropriate with as little i and as much appropriateness as can be brought to bear. Not an easy process until it becomes authentic which i find to be rare in social media to be brutally honest.
The last step in telling influencers what you want is to track and evaluate the performance of your campaign. You need to monitor the metrics and KPIs that you defined in your brief and see how they align with your objectives. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, or Instagram Insights to measure the reach, impressions, clicks, conversions, and ROI of your influencer content. You can also use social listening tools like Mention or Sprout Social to track the sentiment, feedback, and mentions of your brand and campaign.
Tracking and evaluating your influencer campaign will help you identify what worked well and what didn't, and how you can improve your strategy and results in the future. You can also share your findings and insights with the influencers and thank them for their contribution and collaboration.
There should be a proper Influencer contract in place if there are any objections from either parties. Professionalism should go both ways as this could be the birthstone for something in the future.