For a couple of years, marketers need to be aware of influencer marketing who can bring the golden eggs home. But most of them are not sure how to start working with influencers and how to choose them. What’s the process for actually building a relationship with social media influencers and how to hire them?
Spiralytics a Philippines based marketing agency created this useful infographic (Helping to answer questions for marketers and others with tips for identifying candidates, reaching out, and creating contracts.
What is influencer marketing? Influencer marketing is when companies partner with social media influencers in order to increase brand awareness or conversions among a specific target audience.
The First Step: Choosing Influencers
Starting with defining your goal makes you more successful. Decide what the influencers shall do for you, shall they broadcast your voice and brand to a large group of audience, then you might want to find those who have a large group of followers. On the other hand, you might want to target a specific group of audience with certain interests or geographic location, then you might be targeting a handful of micro-influencer.
How would you measure your personal success in this mission, gain more likes, have a successful reach, receive a lot of comments, get inquiries, or sales conversions?
Make a choice of your social media platform. Influencers do not only exist on Instagram, in fact, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, or raising platforms like TikTok are also places you can find them.
Now it is time to research and shortlist your favorite candidates you could find on your favorite platforms. You can create a scorecard and research their credentials. What do they post, and how often? Who is their target audience, and does it match yours?
Now go ahead and choose those who match best to your brand goals. You can ask for their portfolio or directly approach them with a proposal if you see strong benefits for your marketing goals.
The Second Step: Hiring the Influencer
Reach out to them via social media, this is the best test of how interactive they are with their audience. Send a DM or email proposal to the influencer asking if they’re interested in what you have to offer.
If required, you can reach out to their manager or agency. If you’re looking via a traditional influencer agency or know how to contact their management team. you can reach out to their agents to book them as well.
Request data from the last campaign they have been working on. As with any screening, it would be nice to see legitimate data from their previous brand partnerships.
Determinate the nature of the contract. Set clear requirements, compensation, and expectations on both sides. Added to that, you will need to determine what happens if expectations aren’t being met.
Document a legally binding contract that both parties agree on. Before starting the project. make sure that there’s a written and signed agreement that you can refer to anytime during the campaign duration.
One more thing: Things to keep in mind
Make sure you have set the goals for your campaign. Goals will help you set expectations and validate whether or not an influencer is effective.
Allow the influencers to have creative freedom. Hold back from micromanaging, and allow them to get creative as long as it’s on-brand. This makes your campaign authentic and gives its audience a known way of their way of communication.
There is nobody better than people who love your products, find those influencers if they exist. It’s easier for someone to market your product if you’re a believer of what you sell-and it will come off much more authentic.
It does not stop with a single campaign, keep it up, and build lasting connections. Don’t consider this a done deal after one project. take care of your influencer relations too. If things go well. chances are you might partner up again in the future.
Look out for audience engagement levels. Regularly monitor the status of your campaign and check how engagement is doing.
Summary
Influencer marketing combines a couple of things that make it work or break. On the one hand side creativity is important, make sure your hired social media influencers’ way of storytelling is what your brand is looking for. Also, see an influencer as a brand ambassador which ideal would identify her/himself with your product or brand. Get personal and don’t keep the relationship professional. Influencers are not always expecting money, they are also happy to receive gifts and freebies. Time to get started, make your first marketing strategy to success.
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