Influencer marketing is easily one of the most under-utilized tools that businesses have in their arsenal today. Because the influencer industry is so new, it’s easy to turn up your nose at “these crazy kids just asking for free stuff”. In reality, that kind of thinking is outdated and dismissive. For example, there was a headline that read, “Virtually unknown US blogger and his 8000 screaming fans bring Birmingham city center to a shocked standstill.” This headline sums up how the general public perceives influencers. Even when their very presence at a shopping mall causes it to be overrun with screaming teen girls, we call them virtually unknown.
Influencers work hard on their branding. They spend time and money building a loyal following that trusts and believes in their promotions. Frankly, if an influencer deems your product worthy of a shout-out, whether it's a paid post or you traded your product for a post, you should feel blessed. As someone who has been on the influencer side of things and the brand side of things, I find that most influencers will only work with companies they actually believe in.
If you're curious about influencer marketing, you probably have something you want to promote. Maybe it's an Amazon product you're selling, a gofundme that you're trying to attract attention to, or maybe an Etsy account where you sell things you craft. You have the product and you want to get more eyes on it. What do you do?
What is an Influencer?
An influencer is defined as a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media.
This definition is rather broad, so it makes sense as to why some would be confused by it. The best way to understand it is to categorize influencers into tiers. You have your small influencers, which are people with under 100k followers. Then you have medium, which is anywhere from 100k-500k followers, and finally, you have large. These are the Kylie Jenners of the industry, and unless you own Pepsi, you’ll likely be focusing on working with small and medium-sized influencers.
The first step to influencer marketing
First, you have to ask yourself if you know your category. Figuring out what your category is will dictate what types of influencers you should be working with. If you make costumes for dancers, you would look for dance-related Instagrammers and Youtubers. If you're selling pet supplies, you'd look for accounts people have made for their pets. Most of the time your category will be clear.
When it comes to service-based industries, the process is the same. If you’re trying to promote your restaurant business, you would look for local food bloggers and Instagrammers.
Now you want to figure out how to contact influencers you've found in your category. Most of the time they will have their email in their bios, which is the section at the very top of their social media page. If not, you can send them a DM (direct message) and ask for it. I highly discourage commenting on their page and requesting their information there. This seems impersonal and most influencers will brush you off as spam.
How to write your Influencer Outreach email
When writing your email template, you'll want to be straightforward and to the point. The goal is to quickly present who you are, what you do, and what you’re offering them. If you get an email back, this is when you can really explain what your company is at length. In that first email, however, we’re just trying to get the attention of the influencers. Here’s a great example:
"Hi ____! My name is ___ and I'm with ___ company. I admire your page and I'd love the opportunity to work with you. Let me tell you a little about our product." Proceed to explain your product or service to them and let them know what you're offering, whether it be trading products for a post or a paid sponsorship. I find that if I'm not sure how much I should offer someone, I ask them what their rates for a post are and that helps me gauge if they're within my budget.
Trading product for post vs. Paying for post
That brings us to our next question. What are you willing to give to an influencer in exchange for their post about your business? If you're a small business just starting out, you'll most likely be trading your product for a post. That's totally fine and there are plenty of influencers out there who are happy to accept that deal, but there are a few things to note when you're not involving money.
1. There is no guarantee that the influencer will actually make the post. As someone with a brand, I have sent many a product and never heard from the influencer again. Likewise, I've been sent a product for free and decided not to post about it. Maybe they didn't like the product, or perhaps they simply never got around to it. When there isn't money involved you're pretty much just taking a leap of faith.
2. To increase the likelihood that the influencer will post about your product, you want to target smaller accounts, around 1k-5k followers. Smaller accounts want to look like they're getting regular sponsorships so that other brands will recognize them as someone worth working with. However, this obviously means less exposure to your product, but you have to start somewhere.
In my personal opinion, it is worth working with small accounts just for the photo when you're starting to build your own business on social media. I would seek out talented people who just hadn't gotten a ton of recognition yet and they were almost always happy to post about my product for free. Then voila, I had a great-looking new post for my business Facebook and Instagram.
Let's assume you've worked with smaller influencers or perhaps your company is already more solidified and you have the advertisement budget you need.
Here are some things to note about paid sponsorships on social media:
1. As opposed to trading products for a post, legally you should be asking your influencers to put #ad in the caption of their post. Full transparency is very important. Otherwise, you could potentially get fined.
2. When paying for a post, you can get pretty specific with what you want from an influencer. From what the photo should look like to key points you want the caption to hit on. For an extra price, some may also put your website in their bio for a period of time to make it easier for their followers to access your product.
3. I've found that most (but definitely not all) of the time that you pay for a post, influencers will include your product for free in future posts if they like it enough. This is where knowing your category and marketing to the correct influencers come in handy. If you have a cosmetics company and send your product to a beauty blogger, they’re more likely to use that product again later, even if it’s unpaid, because it’s something their followers were genuinely interested in.
Influencer marketing is a constantly shifting variable, so you’ll have to try your hand at all of the steps I laid before you and find out which combination works best for your company. Test out influencer marketing on different social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube. By doing this, you’ll quickly be able to see which platforms your product or service has more success with, allowing you to optimize your sales.