Working and Winning with Influencers

“My friend’s friend’s college roommate’s dog has an Instagram; she would love to promote your brand.”

“Well... celebrities just call us to use our product. It cost us nothing and we get tons of sales.”

Have you experienced either of these conversations? Both?

If you haven’t, consider yourself fortunate.

On the one hand, all influencers aren’t equal. Your friend's friend’s college roommate's dog with 100 followers and three hearts per post might be free but as the saying goes you get what you pay for.

On the other hand, massive accounts with incredible influence don’t fall out of the sky to give you untold media value for zero to no cost. We all love Ellen but hoping by some miracle that she promotes you isn’t the type of intelligence you’ve used to bring you this far.

We have all read the headlines about influencers as the next best marketing channel, so what can you do to start? Here are five steps to help you work with and win with influencers today.

1. Look inside

You might already have an untapped audience of influencers who love your product/service and would love to tell everybody they know about you. Start to understand your current customers before you find someone to influence new ones. What social channels are they primarily on? Do they post about your product/service without being prompted? How can you encourage your current users to post on social media?

Pro Tip: Create a brand hashtag. You can reward and monitor when consumers are posting about your product/service.

2. Focus on relatability

After you have looked inside, you might realize that you need to step out of your current sphere of influence. When starting the search for influencers, focus on the accounts that look like, act like, speak like and feel like your core audience.

Pro Tip: Avoid vanity metrics (impressions and likes) when selecting influencers. Focus on engagement (comments and shares). The reason is that engagement is more difficult to fake.

3. Reach out 

Once you’ve found the perfect influencer that exemplifies your brand, has amazing content and good engagement, it’s time to reach out. Option 1. Direct Message. Option 2. Third-Party Sites.

Regardless of how you approach them, you'll want to keep your message short and sweet.

Outline

1. Introduce your brand
2. Admire their social channel (mention a recent post but be genuine)
3. Outline the opportunity
4. End with a question (Are available next week to talk more?)

Third-party sites

BuzzSumo

Followerwonk

Sprinkler

4. Win Together

Given the wide variety of cost associated with influencers, be cautious when selecting an influencer to represent your brand. For most products and brands, developing a long-term partnership with a few influencers will serve you better than a flash in the pan with many influencers. If an influencer is willing to invest in your company, their audience will most likely do the same thing.

Pro Tip: Don’t go right for the sale when the influencer posts about your product/service. Have the influencer tell a story about how they discovered your product/service, learned about it and determined it was the best solution for them.

5. Track it

Most companies don’t have the luxury of attributing ALL of their marketing efforts directly to sales but in the world of digital marketing, we should at least be trying. Again, don’t go right for the sale. If you can’t use a digital marketing tracking tool, here are a few ideas.

• Have the fans of the influencer message a photo of their receipt to the influencer for an opportunity to get something extra
• ·Have the fans of the influencer use your brands' hashtag and tag the influencer when they first post about your product/service
• In a post-purchase survey, have them select the influencer for their reason for buying/downloading/booking your brand

The world of influencers will continue to grow given the normality of social networks, shrinking attention spans and the consumer need for unbiased, segmented and relatable information.

As it stands today, you can sit back and let your friend’s friend’s college roommate’s dog promote your company, cross your fingers and hope that Ellen messages you tomorrow, or start to create your own influencer strategy.

Joe Meyers is the Founder and Chief Digital Strategist at SHARE, a digital marketing agency solely focused on the pet industry. SHARE ’s mission is to share information and give pet companies’ owners the information they need to be successful.