In the pre-COVID years, we have seen influencer marketing emerging as a viable marketing channel and many brands wanted to capitalize on influencer marketing. However, smaller brands with limited marketing budgets have faced challenges trying to incorporate influencer marketing into their marketing campaign mix.

This is because influencers typically wants to get paid upfront for their work. Depending on the fame and following of the influencer, the upfront fees can be quite large. This complicates matters when brands want to pay on performance especially brands with affiliate programs.

Brands with affiliate programs have a specific return on investment (ROI) goals or sales they are trying to hit. Influencer marketing focuses on brand awareness which means influencers will introduce the brands to their audience and followers rather than focusing on conversion or selling products to their audience and followers. Therefore, this makes it tough to incorporate influencer marketing into brands with affiliate programs.

COVID-19 has changed traditional influence marketing. Due to COVID-19 pandemic’s negative impact on many brands’ financial budgets, flat fees for influencer marketing had been slashed in 2020 as brands moved toward a stronger emphasis on payment for performance. Influencers have recognized this change and have begun to evolve around the concept of performance, so as to be included in the marketing mix.

Recruitment Strategy Of Influencer Marketers

Define influencer marketing goals

• Depending on the campaign which you will be running, you can choose to work with one to two influencers with a huge following and also tap into a handful of micro influencers to target specific audiences.

Choose the social media platform

• Influencer marketing does not only exist on Instagram. You will need to check out influencers who are popular on YouTube, Facebook, blogs, podcasts, and TikTok.

Make A List Of The Potential Influencer Marketers Which Your Brand Should Work With

• Check the credentials of the influencers.
• Check out how frequently the influencers post on their social media (engagement level).
• Check if their followers are relevant to your brand and campaign.

Choose The Influencers & Content  Publishers That Best Match The Brand’s Goals

• After heavily considering the factors above, you have to make sure that you are picking out influencers who align with your brand values and campaign objectives. Once satisfied with the list of the influencers that you hope to onboard, you can reach out to the influencers to request for their portfolio or approach with a proposal.

Pitching To Influencers – Onboarding Strategy

Know your campaign goals

• Before contacting any influencers, you need to set the marketing goals and objectives for the campaigns for your influencer marketing strategy. They can include raising brand awareness, creating content, and/or increasing sales.
• If we do not have a properly planned influencer marketing strategy, influencers will not understand what your brand is trying to achieve in view of collaborations. It can limit the influencer’s willingness to work with you and in many cases, it can affect their ability to deliver a strong brand message with their sponsored posts. Be very specific about what you want to achieve from your collaborative efforts.

Research influencers for relevancy

• Your outreach strategy will see greater success if you reach out to influencers who are relevant to your company’s brand values and business.
• To maintain their authenticity, influencers also want to partner up with brands who match their profiles and values. They are also more likely to promote products which they already like. Influencers will ignore messages from random brands, especially when they notice that the brand did not put in any effort to check them out before contacting them.
• Connecting with relevant influencers will not only increase your chances of receiving positive responses to your outreach messages. It will also increase the success of the brand’s overall influencer marketing campaigns. If the branding aligns with the influencers’ social media profiles, their sponsored posts will resonate with their audience and help drive a positive ROI from the influencer marketing campaign.

Engage with influencers on social media

• To make it easier to connect with an influencer, you can start to follow and engage with them on social media around 2-3 weeks before you begin your outreach. Therefore, when you send out a DM to the influencer via Instagram or an email later, they will be more willing to respond since they already know the brand.

Sort Campaign Logistics

• Before reaching out, you should already have a clear idea of what you want the influencer to do, when you want them to complete collaborations by, and the compensation plan. This will give you an idea of how early you need to start contacting influencers and anticipate any questions.

Create An Awesome Influencer Marketing Brief

• Create an impressive influencer marketing brief outlining the campaign and marketing goals is critical because you will need to provide all the information you have so as to get influencers excited by the opportunity of working with your brand and on your campaign.
• The brief typically highlights your objectives, timelines, expectations, deliverables, guidelines, and KPIs for collaborations. It will also include legal clauses on disclosure and content usage rights.
• Remember always to include how the opportunity will benefit the influencer.

Choose a contact method

• Instagram DMs are a casual, informal way to reach out to influencers. If we use DMs for outreach, you need to keep them short and concise because you’ll have a 1,000 character limit.
• Email is a more formal way of contacting influencers than via through Instagram.

Pitch your brand

• Personalize your messages
• Keep the message brief
• Be clear and concise
• Add a call-to-action (CTA) – The CTA can be a question on whether they would be interested with the opportunity, or a push for a meeting or call.

Follow-up

• After you send out your first wave of outreach messages to influencers,  you will need to create and update a spreadsheet or list with the dates when you had your initial contact with the influencers (the first outreach). This will help you and your team keep track of when you made your first contact. It will also be easier for you to know when to send follow up messages and give the influencers a friendly nudge.
• Usually, it will be sufficient to send up to 2 follow-up messages before you risk being spammy. The recommendation is to send follow-up messages 2 days apart because it will help your brand stay on top of the influencer’s mind. If you wait too long to send a follow-up message, the influencer may not remember your initial message to him or her.

Hiring Of Influencers

Reach Out To Influencer Via Their Social Media Channels

• For independent influencers who do not have multiple channels, it is sufficient to send them a DM on Instagram or a formal email expressing our interest to connect.

Approach The Influencer Via Their Manager Or Agency

• If you looking via an influencer marketing agency, you can reach out to their influencer agency to book them. You must also include the overall vision of the campaign you want to involve influencer in.

Request Data From Their Previous Campaign To Validate Legitmacy

• You will need to do your due diligence and screen the influencers thoroughly, especially if you contacting many but only selecting a few.
• Ask for their portfolio and check their previous work. If they are experienced influencers, they will have figures to show detailing their follower growth, audience profiles, and average reach.
• If you are targeting micro-influencers, they may not have solid data to show, but you should always request for data and information about their previous work with other brands.

Determine The Nature Of The Contract

• Communicate your expectations with the influencer.
• Have precise requirements and details of the compensation and day of the payout, and smooth out any discussions which arise in the inquiry phase of your collaboration.
• You should also discuss contingencies, like what happens if expectations are not being met.

Document A Legal Binding Contract That Both Parties Agree On

• Before starting the campaign, you need make sure that your brand and the influencer has a legal binding agreement signed by both parties which the influencer and yourself can refer to during the duration of the campaign.

Some Tips Working With Influencers

Set Clear and Realistic Goals

• Before the start of the campaign, the marketing goals will need to be communicated clearly to the influencer.
• Goals will help you set expectations and validate whether the influencer is effective or not.

Give The Influencer Some Creative Freedom

• Hold back on micromanaging the campaign and give the influencer some freedom to get creative as long as they are on-brand since they know what works best to entice and convert their audience and followers.

Look For Influencers Who Genuinely Loves Your Brand

• It will be easier for the influencer to market your brand if they are already using the products from your brand, so that when they communicate and deliver messages about your brand to their audience and followers, they can be perceived to be more authentic and genuine.

Look out for audience engagement

• You must regularly monitor the status of your campaign and check on the engagement levels of the audience (IMPORTANT).

Build A Lasting Relationship With The Influencer

• Some brands do use influencers for a one-off deal, but it will be in your best interest to manage influencer relations well and build a lasting relationship with them. If one campaign goes well, your brand may want to partner with the influencer again for a second campaign. If you manage the influencer relationship well, the influencers will be more than happy to vouch for the brand.

Conclusion

At some point, any brand will need to work with influencers in order to leverage the significant role they play via social media channels and are content creators in the journey to online purchases. Studies have shown that 8 out of 10 consumers have gone on to buy an item after seeing it recommended by an influencer whom they are followikng. Authenticity is also king when it comes to influencer partnerships that convert. As mentioned in the above, the influencer who is also a customer to your brand will sound absolutely more authentic, credible and legitimate when they promote your brand and products on social media.

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