8 Do's and Don'ts of Influencer Marketing With these tips you should successfully attract the right influencers to help your marketing efforts.
By Steve Young Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
When it comes to getting major influencers to help with your marketing efforts, you can be embarking down a treacherous path. While it's crucial to on-board folks who have a lot of sway with your market, you have to be careful not to rub them the wrong way.
In some cases, it can be just as easy to either get ignored by the influencers altogether, or goad them into giving you the wrong kind of marketing. With that in mind, here are four do's and four don't's to pay attention to when you are trying to get influencers to help market your product.
1. Do choose your influencers wisely.
First, and probably most importantly, is to choose the right influencers to reach out to. You want to make sure their following is actually part of your market. That way, your message gets conveyed to people who will actually have an interest in what you're promoting.
For example, in 2010 when author Shel Horowitz published his 10th book, "Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green," he quickly identified that the appropriate influencers for his market would be newsletter publishers, bloggers, best-selling authors and the like. He reached out to these influencers, and saw tremendous results from the campaign.
Based on a Google search showing 1,070,000 responses for an exact-match search for the book title, I estimate that at least 5,000,000 people were exposed to the campaign (that would be a very low average of five people seeing each page).
Also, remember that bigger isn't always better. Victor Ricci of Trend Pie says that "targeting the big name social celebrities is nice but doesn't always have the best results. When looking to get the lowest CPI, engagement is much more important than follower count."
Related: How to Create a Successful Influencer Marketing Campaign
2. Do amplify influencer messages.
Influencers are often under tremendous pressure to drive traffic to their message, so anything you can do to help them do that will be noticed and greatly appreciated. You should find an influencer you greatly admire, and start amplifying their content by sharing it on your own social media networks. Be sure to tag the influencer so he or she knows what you're doing.
Digital marketing entrepreneur Spencer X. Smith found out just how powerful this courtship could be when he began sharing articles by Cheryl Conner of Forbes. He would share her stories on LinkedIn and Twitter, always providing his own thoughts about the piece and how his audience might use it. As a result of his efforts, Conner actually contacted Smith to be the subject of a feature article at Forbes.
3. Do offer influencers something to entice them.
Sometimes, just building the relationship might not be enough. Many influencers need something a bit more tangible than just you sharing their message, so you need to entice them. This could take the form of a charitable donation in the influencer's name or something more along the lines of helping the influencer get even more exposure.
For example, Cloudways struggled at first to get influencers to promote its new cloud hosting management platform. They pitched a list of influencers one at a time, and were either ignored or told they were being too pushy. While part of this might be a lack of relationship-building first, what finally worked for Cloudways tells "the rest of the story."
Cloudways reached out to influencers again, this time inviting them to be interviewed for the company's blog. This got the attention of several influencers, especially mid-level ones and the response was strong enough that Cloudways has published more than 120 interviews and has created a community that loves the company's product and talks about it often.
Related: How to Get a Great ROI on Your Influencer Marketing Plan
4. Do use an evangelical approach.
Remember who you're approaching. Top influencers respond to a different kind of value propositions than regular users. While regular users respond to quantitative value propositions like "cheaper," "smaller," or "faster," top influencers are more interested in qualitative value propositions. This is where you'll use words like "revolutionary," "breakthrough," and "game-changing." Influencers want to be involved in exciting ventures, so you need to attract their attention with engaging text.
Rick Carlile, the founder of Aegora.com, the Professional Marketplace, used a very evangelical approach in trying to attract influencers to come on board. As a result of his influencer marketing campaign, Aegora.com was able to attract around 500 high-quality signups to the site, a tremendous number in a highly competitive niche.
5. Don't spam influencers with follow ups.
Yes, you should follow up with your influencer, but don't be obnoxious about it. This means having a bit of patience, since most influencers are very busy people and may not have an opportunity to reply to your email in just a day or two. If you don't hear back from the influencer within a week, then it's probably safe to send a follow up email.
Adarsh Thampy, CEO of LeadFerry, points out that you have to walk a fine line between persistence and pushiness. Thampy suggests you should send no more than two follow ups, with at least a week's gap in between, to maximize your chances of success. Remember, though, not to be pushy:
It goes without saying. But influencers are humans too. Do you feel like doing something if someone you barely know acts pushy? No. When you face resistance, let it go.
6. Don't forget to build influencer relationships.
Remember our suggestion in the do's section about courting your influencer? This is crucial, because it builds a relationship with them before you even think about asking them for help. Failing to build that relationship first will mean you come across as being spammy and pushy.
Chris Boulas, the founder and president of digital marketing firm Formulytic, has built businesses from $5 million to more than $30 million in revenue, largely on the back of influencer marketing. Boulas points out how you can go about developing a relationship first:
Business is about give and take, so don't approach influencers with a take-only mindset. Be ready to provide value in return. Do you have a skill, idea or feedback on an influencer's business? Apply your skill or share your ideas for free and provide value upfront first.
Related: 50 Online Marketing Influencers to Watch in 2016
7. Don't forget to set influencer guidelines.
How does your influencer reach out to his or her following? Through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or some other medium? Make sure you have specific guidelines in place for how you should be promoted and especially tagged, to generate the maximum exposure possible.
For example, Lindsay White of Lot801 Marketing points out that Instagram has recently made it possible to tag images. As a result of that, many influencers are only tagging people in the images when they are working with brands. This is a major problem, White points out:
"No one taps on the photo anymore to see who they tagged. But, they will read the captions. If your influencers aren't tagging you in the caption, you're missing out on some serious sales and social media followers. Since we've made this a requirement when working with any influencers, our sales are about 30 percent higher than if they didn't tag us in both the caption and photo… along with an increase of about 50 percent in sales."
8. Don't rely solely on the influencer for buzz.
Marketing almost has to take a multi pronged approach, so make sure you don't get tunnel vision. You cannot rely just on the influencer to generate the buzz that will make your campaign successful. Consider the influencer just a piece of the puzzle, albeit a possibly big piece.
Marc Nashaat, of Powered by Search, stresses the importance of this multifaceted approach. He points out that at the same time you are building your influencer network, you should also be identifying the people or publications that cover your campaign topic or the engagements of your influencer. Do outreach to them to help "seed" your influencer-based marketing campaign.
Run a great influencer marketing campaign.
With these tips under your belt, you should be able to successfully attract the right influencers to help you with your marketing efforts. Just remember to be yourself, and follow the advice of folks who have been doing influencer marketing with great success for many years.
