Don’t roll out the red carpet for influencers who won’t influence right
As someone who formally studied media and worked in major production houses, influencer marketing was nothing new to me.
However, back then it was known by different names – product placement, celebrity endorsement, product sponsorship – and the platforms used were traditionally only print and television.
These were less fancy terms but they meant the same exact thing — influencer marketing. A feature of a product or service by someone influential in exchange for money or the product or service you are selling.
When I started Baby Peppers, I jumped on the bandwagon easily and reached out to the key influencers from my own list.
Initially, I had my fair share of nightmares. The bitter truth is that the majority of the influencers will not be a perfect fit for your branding.
Even if influencers readily accept the assignment and receive your products or monetary payment in exchange for a post or blog feature, they may not invest sufficient time or effort to truly understand what you’re all about.
Which brings me to my first point.
Finding the right influencers: who should you target
It can be frustrating when we get caught up in the world of ‘numbers’ where we inadvertently tie someone’s self-worth or even our own to the number of followers on a social media account.
As Jeanie Intrieri eloquently sums it up “numbers are everywhere, connected to everything that we do”. From measuring time, money, distance, years, metres, inches, to our own successes and failures, “numbers have a definite effect on us”.
But, the numbers don’t mean anything if they can’t translate into relevance for your brand and give you good returns on investment.
Research thoroughly on influencers and only connect with those that are aligned with your branding and can put your products in front of your ideal target audience. Don’t be too caught up with how many followers they have on their social media channels because numbers become meaningless if their followers happen to be people that you don’t want to be associated with your brand.
At first, I made a key list of influencers whom I felt a strong connection with. People whom I felt were the ideal customers to promote my product. I reached out to a few and worked with them, but some turned out to be the wrong fit.
Generally, I found that many influencers accepted assignments from different brands, placing your product on a ‘queue’. I had to constantly follow up with some influencers for over six months even though we had agreed on a much earlier time frame. Finally, when the day came for the post, either the content didn’t align with my branding or the key message was lost.
It was very disappointing.
The one influencer I did find considerably successful with was Beverley Mitchell. Even though she didn’t create any content for me, her short post on my product made a difference and increased sales.
I’ve followed Beverley Mitchell for a long time, even before social media. I’ve never missed an episode of 7th Heaven during my teenage years in the mid 90s. When I was doing some research on small business advocates, Beverley’s name popped up in the google search and I instantly felt a surge of re-connection.
So, I checked out her blog and felt even more compelled to reach out to her having read her features and blog posts on small businesses plus her tips and hacks on motherhood and parenting. She was a perfect fit for my business values and ethics.
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I sent an email to pitch my business and also included how this collaboration would benefit her readers and give them a better opportunity to make a social change on a global scale. Beverley’s prompt reply surprised me and she said she would love to promote our totes (which was perfect because they were hand-woven by marginalised single mothers living in the slums of Chennai).
We figured we could show how an empowered woman like Beverley enjoyed this form of sustainable fashion, handcrafted by women who were trying to live a dignified life with decent work and wages.
I made a pretty package with the tote and sent a few other goodies in case Beverley or any of her friends who saw the products might be interested in purchasing one.
Beverley confirmed product receipts and told me when she had scheduled a shoot with it. I had only commissioned a small batch of totes to stock but Beverley’s shout out on social media (both Instagram and Facebook) sold out the totes which was amazing news for me!
Interestingly, the people who bought my totes were not her followers but people noticed when both Beverley and I cross-promoted the post on our social media channels.
Which is the right platform?
The right platform is something you need to best amplify your product or service.
Majority of influencer marketing takes place on Instagram (about a whopping 92 per cent!), but there’s no reason why you should ignore other channels. One of my personal favourites apart from Instagram is finding the right blogs to feature your business.
Personally, I’ve had a lot of success in this platform. Bloggers typically interview you about your business and core beliefs, which then helps them structure an article around your business model and why your products or services are worthy of purchase.
When you’re reaching out to bloggers, make sure you take time to read their blog and see if it will be a good fit for your brand or business. Go through their media kit in detail and see if it all adds up – their monthly readership base, what they expect in return for a feature, monthly page views etc.
If a blogger hasn’t blogged in more than two years or even in 12 months, clearly you wouldn’t be wasting time with them. You want someone passionate and enthusiastic to feature your brand – not someone who hasn’t blogged in ages and has lost traffic to their site but is still willing to send you a media kit in hopes of making a quick buck.
And when bloggers get back to you and say you are not a good fit (even though you still may be), keep your chin up. Don’t lose hope – there are millions of other bloggers out there and there will always be someone willing to collaborate with your brand and business.
Pitching your brand and business
When you craft an email to an influencer, it is absolutely important to lay it out in a way that is compelling and read-worthy.
Drop the slimy sales pitch and work on something more authentic, raw and real. Keeping in mind that influencers typically get anywhere from 30-100 emails a day (depending on their popularity), your email needs to be stand out and provide the influencers with a measurable benefit.
What’s in it for them? Think about how you or your branding can raise the visibility and profile for this particular influencer and what part you can play in their growth.
Remember that if you want someone to invest time and energy into your brand, you have to give value first and be equally invested in their success.
Of course, there will be times where you would have crafted the perfect email but still not hear back from your favourite influencers. But, the email could have landed in their junk folder, or they simply didn’t connect with your email or they just never got around to it because it got lost in the 900 emails they receive monthly.
I have made it a point to only follow up with someone whom I have built a relationship with. If I haven’t heard back from someone after a couple of weeks, I move on to another key connector.
I always operate on this philosophy: Don’t look at it as rejection. Think of it as a re-direction.
If something is not working out or if there is a lack of response from someone you truly admire, redirect your focus on something that does matter and can give you a positive outcome.
We are all influencers in our own way
When I speak to other like-minded businesses about making a key list of influencers to connect with, it’s funny how almost all of them only think of celebrities or you-tubers with a large following.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but you have to ensure that they are deeply connected with your goals and have their values aligned with yours. This way, your audience can truly understand why you partnered with that particular influencer.
While people with a large following could be an ‘okay’ fit for your brand, someone with a smaller but deeply engaged and dedicated following would be a much better fit to help achieve your scalable goals.
These type of people are known as micro-influencers.
Have you ever stopped to think that your own clients could be powerful influencers? Till today, one of my biggest influencers are my customers.
My first customer raved about my products and put up positive feedback on her social media handles, which then prompted her followers to check out my feed. Whether or not she influenced someone to make a purchase is secondary.
The first step is for your potential customers to be made aware of your brand and for you to create that visibility.
At the end of the day, the right influencer is someone who has access to your target audience, drives engagement, raises brand awareness and ultimately increases the sales of the product or service you are offering.
The content they create for your brand has to deeply connect with the audience and build credibility and trust because that’s how you can truly influence a person.
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Image Credits: ammentorp
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