A Guide to Being Influential Through Influencers

Influencer marketing is still a relatively new vehicle for marketers with various nuances to navigate. How do you discover the best influencers to collaborate with for your brand? What are your goals, and can you measure the results? What kind of control can you expect? Having worked with bloggers and influencers for many years, Redhead Marketing & PR has learned a great deal about how to cultivate effective partnerships for our clients. Given Redhead Marketing & PR’s abundant experience with influencer collaborations, we thought we’d share ten tips for influencer marketing success. Continue reading below if you’re looking to pursue what can be a powerful, but sometimes unpredictable and disappointing element of marketing when not done strategically.

1. Clarify how influencer marketing fits into your overall marketing, public relations, and social media strategy.
   Then define your goals and definition of success.
2. Determine who will manage your influencer marketing programs.
   Will this responsibility fall under your marketing department or your public relations department? Or is it something you need to outsource?
3. Follow and engage with influencers whose content and followers are well aligned with your brand.
   While platforms exist to help you connect and partner with influencers, we are public relations professionals who prefer the tried-and-true approach of vetting and relationship building. Whether here in Utah or beyond, Redhead Marketing & PR seeks influencers whose followers belong to our clients’ audience demographic, and that we feel will produce authentic content. Follower numbers matter, but not as much as engagement. We generally prefer to work with an influencer with 15,000 followers who are highly engaged than one with 150,000 followers who aren’t.
4. Make a list, and check it twice.
   Create a spreadsheet of influencers who you feel would make beneficial partners in raising awareness of your service or product. Determine what form of compensation you’d like to offer – are you inviting them to an exclusive experience, gifting them with product, or paying them for sponsored content? Craft a personalized, professional pitch when you reach out to them just as you would to a news reporter.
5. Set expectations.
   We highly recommend creating an influencer agreement, so that deliverables from both parties are understood and accepted at the outset. This needs to be a mutually beneficial relationship. We wait until an influencer expresses interest in partnering before sending the agreement to review. Decide how flexible you’re willing to be with your agreement on a case-by-case basis. If an influencer is unprofessional or fails to meet the deliverables, it’s ok to offer constructive feedback. Consider whether you want to work with him or her again.
6. Create and define your metrics.
   There are many ways to determine your ROI for influencer collaborations. Are you looking for general brand awareness, an increase in TikTok or Instagram followers, more traffic to the website, or more sales? Maybe it’s a combination of some of these elements you’d like to measure. Whatever metrics are most significant to you, be sure to analyze them with each influencer partnership.
7. Remember that influencers are creatives.
   You want them to come across authentically when sharing your business with their followers. Don’t try to overly orchestrate their content. Do share your messaging, brand story, key talking points, website, etc. to make their job easier and to ensure content is relevant and meaningful.
8. Leverage the content.
   This means share away! Be sure to repurpose influencer content on your own social media. And don’t forget to tag the influencer.
9. Less is more.
   We’d rather work with fewer, awesome influencers on an regular basis than partner with an unmanageable amount for one-off collaborations. This helps build loyalty and authenticity for followers.
10. Send a thank you.
    Don’t get us started on how thank-you note etiquette is nearly as extinct as dinosaurs (or two-for-one entrée deals in Park City, Utah, for that matter), but it is crucial! Be sure to thank influencers soon after they share content, and ask for feedback about their experience. Each partnership offers an opportunity to learn.

Influencer marketing can be a fun, effective approach to increasing brand awareness and sales, but it’s also time consuming and complex. Let us know if we can help you meet your influencer marketing goals, or if you have any questions!