What is the best way to introduce your brand to the market? Influencer marketing may be your best bet. The great thing about this form of marketing is it leverages the existing followers of the influencer. This is far better than manually promoting your online store the traditional way. In conventional marketing, you need to submit your website’s link in every place possible. But in influencer marketing, you need to contact a few influencers, and that may be all you need to get your brand in front of your target market.
However, not all influencer programs will succeed. You still need to be strategic when it comes to implementing it if you want to achieve. In this article, you’ll learn some strategies on how you can ensure the success of your influencer marketing program.
Launch Promotions
When is the best time to contact an influencer? One of the best times to do this is when you have just launched a product and service. You see, influencers want to share the latest content with their followers. So if you have a new product or service and you allow them to be the first to promote you, they will most likely do it.
The key is to ensure that the product is relevant to them and their target market. You’ll know if an influencer will be interested in a product by looking at their existing content. Their content should contain some products that they love using. For example, a vegan influencer will most likely be using some vegan brands along with some cooking accessories. A fitness influencer may be using some brands of shoes, clothes, and yoga mats. A beauty influencer may be using some makeup products and buying a particular style of clothing. The key is to be observant and know their needs. From here, you will be able to know the best products to promote.
For this type of influencer marketing program, all you need to do is compile a list of influencers that are relevant to your niche. From here, you should reach out to them about the launch of your new product or service. The promotion must be done in tandem. This will strengthen the social proof of your brand.
PRO TIP: Aim to reach out to different types of relevant influencers. Don’t just aim for bloggers. Aim for YouTubers, Instagrammers and Facebook page owners as well. These people can also help you promote your newly launched product or service.
Start with a Referral Program
What is the quickest way to get another person to promote your product or service for you? You reward them. This is the reason why referral programs work so well. They don’t only allow website visitors and customers to promote products. They also reward them for doing so. Often, this reward entices them to not only join but promote the product or service to their family and friends. From here, the awareness of the brand grows to grant it more traffic and sales.
Fortunately, creating a referral program is easy. It doesn’t matter what platform you are using. There are plenty of referral marketing software, apps, and add-ons that you can use to set one up in a few clicks. There are plugins for WordPress and apps for Shopify. There are also some add-ons for other eCommerce platforms.
Referral programs work because of the reward system. When the brand called Best Hunting Bow Labs implemented a referral program on their website, they found that they can get more traffic and sales just because of it. It also works for influencer marketing as well. You simply sign up the influencer as a referral, and they promote your website in exchange for a reward.
PRO TIP: Want to further encourage the influencer to promote you? You can create a referral program just for them. Instead of giving them your regular reward, you can create an exclusive reward just for them. This will encourage them to promote your website for you. Plus, you can include their brand on the referral page as well as the discount code.
Contests
You can also encourage multiple influencers or marketers to promote you through a contest. In a referral program, the reward is given away for each successful referral. In a contest, the prize is only given to the winner/s. This is similar to an affiliate contest where the marketer who made the most referrals win. Contests work in influencer marketing because it allows multiple influencers to promote you at the same time.
You see, the best way you can get influencer marketing to work for you is to have them different influencers promote you at the same time. It is better to have several influencers to promote you than to have one big influencer to promote you. This is not to mention that you can get more traffic and brand exposure from multiple influencers than from just one.
One way to encourage multiple influencers to promote you at the same time is to host a contest. You can invite several influencers who are relevant to your niche and ask them to join. The great thing about contests is it allows the influencers to do more than promote you. They can also be quite competitive when it comes to winning the prize. They can also have some bragging rights if they manage to win.
PRO TIP: Want the contest to be more attractive to the influencer? You can create an exclusive contest just for them. You can invite a group of influencers who are friends with each other, and you can ask them to promote you. Then, they can win a prize and compete with each other. With the right price, this will excite them and encourage them to join.
Branded Content
One of the most common ways to promote an influencer is through branded content. This is where you ask for a promotion with your brand in the content. This is perfect for sponsored content or product placements. It is important to give the influencer the freedom to be creative when you choose to do this. Don’t overcontrol the content. Allow the influencer to promote your brand subtly.
Here’s what subtle promotion can do for you. First, it can help you get more traffic and sales. Your audience is probably so used to promotions. They are probably bombarded with a ton of them every day. If the product or service is not overly promoted, it will get more results. Plus, the influencer has to be transparent in their promotions. They need to inform their audience that the content is sponsored. This is so their audience will keep on trusting them.
PRO TIP: A creative approach is to ask for a review of the products and services. You can easily do this by asking where you can send them or how you can serve influencers. From here, you can wait for their reply to see if they are interested. You can then give them a sample of your products or service. From here, it is up to them to create branded content for you. If their experience is positive, they will most likely write a review.
Ambassador Programs
Want to attract influencers to your website? You can do so with ambassador programs. There is a reason why big brands launch these programs. It is like a formalized influencer marketing program where you select the influencers who will get to promote your brand. The great thing about these programs is that they are influencer magnets. Instead of the usual approach of reaching out to the influencer, the influencers reach out to you. Imagine having influencers lining up to promote your brand. This guarantees that you already have influencers who will promote you even before you launch.
However, this approach will not work on brand new brands. Your brand needs to be quite popular for this to work. You need to have some customers already. It will also help if your products are unique so that influencers will be encouraged to promote it.
PRO TIP: Always make your ambassador programs limited. It is important to limit the number of people who get to promote your brand. Making it free for all will make your brand less attractive to big influencers. So be sure to only allow a set number of influencers to be your ambassador. Why do ambassador programs work? Aside from the fact that it connects a brand with the influencer, the influencer also takes pride in being connected with the brand. If the brand is a big name, the influencer will be more than happy to be treated as the brand ambassador. Even if it is not that big, there is something about being an ambassador that just attracts influencers to it.
Events, Challenges or Support a Cause
Another strategy to get an influencer on board is to invite them to an online or offline event. You see, influencers love sharing their lives with their followers. Events give them something to share and it also allows their followers to support them. Some ideas for this are offline events, challenges, and causes.
Events are great for getting multiple influencers to promote you at the same time. If you are targeting a particular niche, you can invite several influencers and ask them to join an event for you. This can be something as grand as a conference or as simple as a meetup. The key is to get the influencers together so that they can connect and also get to know you and your brand.
Online, you can also invite influencers to challenges. This can be simple tasks that require a hashtag for support. You can then challenge several influencers in the niche if they can do it. This is great for viral content as well for you’ll find that the influencer’s followers will be happy to share content about the challenge.
Then, there are causes. Sometimes, the influencer just needs a reason to share your brand with their followers. The great thing with causes is it doesn’t only focus on selling. It also focuses on helping other people. Many influencers are doing what they do to help others. So if you can resonate with this, they will be more than happy to help you.
PRO TIP: Do you want the influencer to join you in your event? Collaborate with them. You can ask them to be a part of it. This way, they will also invite other influencers in the niche. This way, you can act as a sponsor for the event held by the influencer instead of inviting them to it. This is easier if you have a new brand. It is better to leverage the influencer’s brand instead.
Collaborate on Products and Services
A creative way to get influencers on board is to ask them to work with you on products and services. This means that the influencer will have a contribution to the final product or service. I have seen brands do this. They invite the influencer to create a unique item with their brand on their online store. This is great because it gives the influencer a creative outlet while also creating a product that they will surely promote to their followers. How can you be sure? Well, if it is something that the influencer personally created, you can be assured that they will share it.
The key is to invite them to create a product that they care about. Fashion influencers, for example, will be interested in creating a clothing collection. Craft influencers will be interested in creating custom notepads or notebooks. The key is to consume their content before you offer them anything. This will help you know the types of products that they will be attracted to.
PRO TIP: It may be best to go for influencers with ten to a hundred thousand followers for this strategy. You’ll want the newly created products to gain as much exposure as possible. But this can only happen if they have a good amount of followers to promote it to.
What do you think of the strategies listed here? Which will you implement in your business? Tell us all about it in the comments below.