Using influencer marketing to promote your product is an effective way to establish trust and credibility with your audience. Not only do influencers have access to thousands of people, but they’re promoting to followers that already hang on their every word. To get an influencer interested in promoting your product or services, follow this step-by-step guide.
Step 1: Find the Right Influencer
It’s tempting to go straight for the mega influencers with millions of followers, but they’ll often be out of your price range or have a large number of inactive accounts. Instead, look for micro-influencers that have high engagement. Even a 10K follower count can pull a lot of people to your business if the influencer loves to engage with their audience.
Unpaid or Paid?
Many influencers will ask for an incentive to promote your product. You can either offer them money, a product, or a discount, but if the influencer loves your business and buys regularly, they may even do it for free. Search your brand name and relevant hashtags to see if you were tagged in a post or if the influencer follows you to ensure they use your products.
Stay in Your Niche
Always stay in your niche when asking an influencer to promote your product, or you won’t get far. For example, if you’re a clothing brand that asks a food blogger to wear a blouse, you’ll hit a wall. Not only will they be uninterested, but their followers likely won’t be either.
Write a Contract
No matter how many followers an influencer has, it’s safer to create a contract. Creating a contract protects you and the influencer from future disputes and safeguards both parties from scammers or failed promises. Check out Bonsai’s influencer contract template to save you time.
Step 2: Creating the Partnership
Whether your project is paid, unpaid, or has some incentive attached to it, contact the influencer(s) of your choice by direct message or email to initiate the agreement. It’s best to do some research on your prospects to know how they want to be contacted because they may never receive your proposal if you don’t direct your inquiry to a business email.
Determine whether you want a product review, how visible the product should be, and what you want them to say. Be absolutely clear, or the influencer may misrepresent your brand by accident.
After giving your initial proposal, they may have some questions like: how often do you want me to post? Will I receive payment per post? Per Month? While some questions prove they’re interested, others could have been explained in your initial proposal. Ensure that they have all the information they need to decide whether or not they want to enter this partnership.
Once all the terms are laid out, ask them to sign your created or edited contract.
Step 3: Start Building Brand Awareness With Influencers
Work with your influencers to create branded hashtags that are specific to your promotion. With branded hashtags, you can determine if your product or service was a success by how many shares it receives. You also create product awareness through influencer posting. Another way to do this is by creating custom promotional codes with their names.
Ask them to put their promo codes either in the post itself or in their profile description for more visibility. Hashtags work better in posts, especially on Instagram, and they’re easier to track because you can’t determine on your end how many times someone visits an influencer’s profile.
Step 4: Adjust Based on Analytics
All of your social profiles should have analytics built into them, but you can use third-party programs like Google Analytics to measure data. Work with your influencers and adjust how they speak about your product to ensure it receives the most amount of shares or likes as possible. Be direct – if something isn’t working, tell your influencers immediately.