If you want to succeed in influencer marketing, it starts with building a mutually beneficial relationship. It’s unlikely you’d ask someone to be in an exclusive relationship with you before you got to know each other first. Usually it takes weeks or months of hanging out, text messages, phone calls and opportunities to show the other who you truly are. Eventually you decide if the other person is a good fit or not, and then the relationship begins. Influencer marketing shouldn’t be any different. Here is how to treat influencer marketing like dating.
Show Interest
You’ve done an influencer audit and found the top influencers you want to work with for your brand. Start the process by showing your interest. Follow them on all the platforms, comment on a relevant picture, retweet their content. Consider this the phase of dating where you want to show the other person you think they’re interesting. Don’t be pushy or inauthentic, but begin investing time in them.
Get To Know Them
Influencers are people with brands to protect and businesses they are running. Before you ask them to partner with your brand, make sure you understand what they stand for and what their brand is all about. During your influencer audit you started to get to know them and now is the time to really take a deep dive. Review the types of content they regularly post, read the comments, see who they engage with and pay attention to other brands they work with. Spend some time making sure that you are both a good fit for each other.
Be Real About Who You Are
No one likes to be catfished. Before you start engaging with influencers, be clear on who you are and what you stand for. Develop a content strategy or brand guidelines you can share with the influencer to guide conversations. Consider sharing content on your feed that is on-brand for you and that will pique the interest of the influencer. Show them what you stand for and the type of brand they’ll be partnering with. If a cultural issue arises or negative comments pop up online about your brand, have a plan in place to address these.
Communicate Effectively and Work Together
Once you’ve spent time getting to know the influencer and have determined you can both mutually benefit from a partnership, it’s time to reach out. Initiate contact via social media or email and invite them into a conversation. Be prepared to show you’ve done your research and to clearly communicate how you’d like to work together. Make sure your proposal compensates them in a way that is aligned with both parties. Work together to come up with ideas that benefit both brands and will have the largest impact on campaign results. Be flexible in your approach. You may find an idea they have actually works better than the way you hoped to work together. They know their brand best after all and you chose them to represent you.
Check in With Them
Once you’ve secured a partnership with an influencer, the dating doesn’t end. Continue to nurture the relationship and make sure the influencer feels set up to succeed. Provide them with tools to help generate relevant content and follow up to see if they have questions. As the relationship evolves, communicate about new ways you can work together and continue to strengthen the partnership.
If you are ready to engage in influencer marketing but aren’t sure where to start, we can help! Contact us here and we can talk about your goals and how to begin an influencer audit.
As an influencer or brand that does influencer marketing, what else would you add to create mutually beneficial relationships?