In the age of social media, influencer marketing is playing a larger role in many companies’ business strategies. When chosen thoughtfully, an influencer can greatly increase your business’ visibility and profits. However, it’s not enough to find someone with lots of followers—the influencer must align with your brand above all else.
As experts in the marketing field, the members of Forbes Agency Council know the importance of properly selecting and cultivating influencer partnerships for your brand. Below, they share their top tips for businesses when reaching out to potential influencers.
1. Offer A Pitch With Clear Value
The biggest mistake I see people making in pitching influencers is to pitch their product or service without offering something of benefit to the influencer. These people get pitched all day, every day, and they usually only respond to the pitches that resonate with their brand/personality and offer something of benefit to them and their audience. Identify upfront what’s in it for them. - Blair Nicole Nastasi, Media Moguls PR
2. Find Synergy And Start Slow
Above all, we want to make sure they’re the right fit for us or our clients. For business-to-business influencers, we look for people who are not only experts in their industry, but who have also shown good conversions in that industry. Once we’ve found the right influencer, we’ll often ask them to engage with us in small ways before embarking on larger campaigns. This lets us assess our synergy together. - Paula Chiocchi, Outward Media, Inc.
3. Gauge Their True Reach And Value
I highly recommend looking at case studies and campaigns the influencer has worked on to gauge how well they performed. Secondly, I would try to validate their true reach/social impact and ensure their target audience is aligned with the product/service being promoted. Finally, I would determine the EMV (earned media value) post-campaign to assess the return on investment. - Jordan Edelson, Appetizer Mobile LLC
4. Confirm Their Followers Are Real
With the rising awareness that many influencers have fake followers, first take your time to do the research and make sure their engagement and followers are authentic. Ask for a media kit on their follower demographics and impressions. If it is a brand match, show the influencer the strength of a brand partnership with your company and how it will benefit both parties to build brand awareness. - Meredith Xavier, The Ligné Group
5. Make Sure Your Values Align
When working with a brand influencer, the key to success is to make sure that you are working with someone who has the same values that you do. That means that you are going to need to have a very clear idea of what you want to achieve as well as how you are going to execute it. There is no way that you will have success with anyone who has conflicting values. - Jon James, Ignited Results
6. Consider The Content, Context And Creativity
Use content, context and creativity. Content: Look for influencers whose content naturally touches on topics similar to yours. Context: Make sure the audience is authentic, engaged and has similar interests and demographics to your desired customer. Creativity: Look for influencers who are willing to be creative and work with you to get the most out of the partnership. - David Fouse, Pinkston Group
7. Don’t Waste Their Time
The worst thing you can do when approaching influencers is to waste their time. You may see them as valuable to your business, but what’s in it for them? Learn as much as you can about the influencers—personally as well as professionally—and think through the relationship from their side. Does it fit and advance their brand? The more it’s mutually beneficial, the more success you’ll find. - Jodi Amendola, Amendola Communications
8. Determine Their Bandwidth And Business Savvy
Some influencers are doing on-the-job training. While they may be incredibly skilled at creating content, they may lack some formal training as it relates to business operations. When working with influencers, get an understanding of their bandwidth (so they’re not overextending themselves), their process of communicating deliverables and how they ensure all contractual items are met. - Emily Porter, Havas Formula
9. Leverage Artificial Intelligence To Vet Influencers
First, do the research on whether they are a true lover of your product or service or have been influential in their vertical. This is possible manually, but it is time-consuming and can miss important variables like vetting for profanity, DUIs/criminal background, etc. We suggest you use AI tools to source the best micro-, macro- and mega-influencers. - Ryan Detert, Influential
10. Match The Influencer To Your Goals
Know what you want to get out of it. Understand your own goals and objectives before reaching out, and truly know what type of audience you are looking to reach so you can find the perfect, authentic connection. This is key to telling the right story. Try to find an influencer who is already engaging with your brand, and then start co-creating. The influencer will know their audience best. - Maddie Raedts, IMA - Influencer Marketing Agency
11. Offer Them Creative Freedom
Finding the influencer is only half of the job; unless you find an influencer who already uses your product or service, getting them engaged is usually a lot more difficult. You can give the influencer some general directions, but you shouldn’t dictate exactly how the campaign should look. Let them have fun with your brand. If the campaign is genuine, people will love it. - Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS
12. Tailor Your Pitch Based On Thorough Research
Do your research. Don’t blast out a general email. Show the influencer you’re familiar with their individual work by referencing some of their previous content. This can really show them how the collaboration you’re offering will be mutually beneficial. Influencer marketing is not a one-way street—it’s more like fun in the carpool lane with a common destination in mind. - Bernard May, National Positions
13. Make Sure They Already Know And Love Your Product
Make sure the influencer has an existing interest in your product or the topic you are engaging them for. Consumers are aware of genuine endorsements and not-so-genuine endorsements, so finding an influencer who may have already posted about your product will come across as more authentic and be more successful than one who hasn’t. - Jennifer Wentzo, coded{PR}
