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Looking to grow your business and increase brand awareness with an influencer marketing strategy? Well, good news: Influencers are looking to partner with companies for money, free products, notability, social good, and many other reasons. Here’s how to begin your influencer outreach.
Start With a Healthy Dose of Research
Do your research into the kind of influencer that would be the best fit and into the specific influencers themselves. Learn about their backgrounds, common themes in their content, values, previous controversies or affiliations, etc. On the more logistical side of things, it’s essential to know about their reach and important engagement metrics such as:
- Follower count
- Engagement volume
- Engagement rate (which can help you determine if an influencer has fake followers)
- Post frequency
- Comment quantity and quality
- Overall reaction to the content
Now it’s time to create a list of low-risk influencers that you think would be a good fit and have the potential to give you high ROI. You’ll want to compare and contrast several different metrics such as fees, reach, engagement rate, and brand compatibility.
Make Them Aware of Your Existence
The next step is to get into those influencers’ fields of view. This doesn’t mean that you immediately ask them for a partnership or send them an offer in their DMs.
Instead, you can interact and engage with several influencers on your ‘maybe’ list the way that any other follower would: like their content, share or link to their posts on your own social media pages if relevant, and leave genuine comments.
Authenticity is more important than ever in business, and people (especially the younger generations) like to get a glimpse of the person behind the curtain, so to speak. When you start leaving comments to make yourself known to a content creator or influencer, be genuine and human. Avoid language like “super cool!” and “wow, let’s collab!”. In fact, it’s good practice not to reach out to influencers for partnerships or collaborations under public posts.
Think About Motive and Cement Your Strategy
Once you have a closer relationship with your influencer(s) of choice, it’s time to put some serious thought into what a partnership would look like with each specific person. For example, some social media influencer partnerships are simple–you pay them to promote your products X times per month or for X seconds in a video, and that’s that.
Other influencer partnerships can be more complicated (and less expensive), especially if they have motives and goals other than making money. For example, some influencers want to be associated with a brand for the social status or fame it brings, some want to represent a business or a brand because they genuinely believe in the cause and want to help their community (social good), and some enjoy getting free products or priority access to items that they like.
In reality, of course, an influencer’s motivations will be a mixture of several different things, and you should consider all of them. For example, suppose there’s an influencer that is very closely aligned with your brand’s mission, has high engagement, and has direct access to your target audience. Naturally, you’re going to want to work with them. Knowing their reasons for being an influencer and motivation for working with brands can help you create an irresistible proposal.
Figuring Out the Money
Once you’ve decided on an influencer you want to reach out to and have a good grasp on who they are and how they operate, it’s time to finalize your proposal. A large part of this involves figuring out what you’re going to pay them.
Coming up with a figure can be challenging and confusing for many smaller businesses, especially when working with micro-influencers. Celebrities and top influencers likely have pre-set expectations and managers that handle their pricing, whereas micro-influencer pricing can be more inconsistent. Here are a few factors to consider when coming up with prices:
- The type of content (video, photo, blog, etc.)
- How much/what kind of promotion you’re looking for (full blog post vs. one back-link, full YouTube video vs. short 30-second mention, Instagram story vs. Instagram post, etc.)
- The social media platforms on which you are running your campaign
- The reach and follower count of the influencer
- The industry you and the influencer are in
It’s essential to research these factors before settling on a price. Even more importantly, it’s essential to settle on a price within your influencer marketing campaign budget.
Remember that you can also try to sweeten your proposal by adding things like free items or services, special access to events, and discounts if you think the influencer would be receptive to that.
Making Contact
Once you’ve decided on your initial offer for compensation and have a proposal ready to pitch your partnership, it’s time to make contact! This can be done through DM or through email. Many influencers add their business email addresses to their social media profile for all marketing inquiries, so this is an excellent place to start.
It’s a good idea to keep the tone professional and polite but also genuine and friendly.
If the only readily apparent way to reach them is through direct message, leave a brief note about how much you like their content, share a bit about your brand, and ask them if they’d like to collaborate with you. If they are responsive, your partnership can be discussed more thoroughly over email.
Here’s an example of a simple message to send over DM:
Hi ____,
Your content is a massive hit over at [business name]! We love your [ex: authenticity, fashion sense, passion for the environment, etc.]. As a brand, our mission is to [ex: make high-quality & comfortable exercise clothing available to everyone, clean up the oceans one bracelet at a time, make the internet a safer place, etc.], and we’d love to collaborate with you. Let us know what you think!
Over email, you can share a little bit more about your brand, your mission, and your values. You can also speak more about why you think the influencer would make a great fit as a promoter of your products and business. You can also start alluding to the benefits they can get by working with you.
Here’s an example of an introductory email:
Hello ____,
I’m [name], [position] at [business name].
Our business is dedicated to [briefly explain what your business makes, does, values, etc.].
We’ve been big fans of your content on [platform] for quite a while and are so happy to see your community growing! We think your content aligns closely with our mission and values, and we would love to collaborate with you on our new campaign on [platform].
The goal of this campaign is to [your business’s end goal].
By working with us, you can expect to benefit by [share some benefits, including monetary compensation, supporting a good cause, growing their authority in their niche, etc.].
I think this partnership is a great opportunity for both of us, and we hope you’ll consider discussing it further!
Please reach out at your convenience.
Respectfully,
[Name]
Every message will look different, but you get the gist. If you don’t get a response after several business days, send a follow-up email to kindly remind them of your inquiry and let them know you’re still interested in working with them.
Wrap Up
Follow the tips above to get the ball rolling on your influencer outreach, and remember the following two things: 1) Treat influencers like people, because they are. 2) Do your best to make decisions about influencer partnerships based on ROI while still prioritizing authenticity and social good.
Fave fun researching and reaching out!
