Working with an influencer who has influence and connections to a community or audience your business wants to reach can be very helpful to your business. I’ve worked with large brands to help them connect with small business owners for many years. These relationships have worked well for a few years. In large part because we’ve followed the important and key bullet points listed below.
Know Who You’re Working With
For the brand who wants to work with the influencer and for the influencer who wants to work with the brand, both should know who they’re working with.
The influencer should have taken the time to understand the brand, and their products or services.
In particular the ones they’ll be representing to their audience. The influencer should also, of course, be USING the product. Understand what are the core values of the brand and their messaging.
In addition to knowing the “brand” get to know the person who you’ll be working with in the brand engagement.
For the brand, it’s important that the marketer of the brand, take the time to get to know the influencer they’re working with. You should have spent several weeks following the influencer so you’re away of how they communicate, their messaging and how they show up online, does it align with your brand values.
Measure of Success
At the end of the day the brand wants to work with an influencer to increase sales. However, there are several metrics that can be measured, leading to the sale.
- Direct sales measured with a tracking link.
- Brand uplift as measured by engagement and traffic.
- Leveraging the influencer to add content to the brands channel.
There’s several things you can measure, be clear on what’s important to you, the brand.
What Do You Want the Influencer To Do
In addition to the speeds and feeds of traffic, engagement and sales, there’s other things you might want to work with an influencer to do. Sometimes you might want to work with an influencer for their energy and enhance the credibility for your brand. Maybe the influencer doesn’t have millions of followers. Or they have a lot of followers but you don’t like their messaging. Another influencer might have less online influencer but they can be an amazing spokesperson for your brand.
You can work with an influencer to not only generate trackable sales, but you can also work with an influencer to be your brand ambassador and help better represent your brand online or at events.
What Will This Engagement Costs
How much it costs to work with an influencer is not easy, there’s no one right answer.
Some influencers, especially those who are starting out, might do some promotion for you in exchange for products. I’ve worked with computer vendors, and they’ve given me notebooks (and some other things) in exchange for promotion.
Many times I’ve been paid for the promotion. Maybe it’s $5,000 for a package of blog posts, videos, and social promotions.
If the influencer is going through an agency, then the agency will take a percentage of the contracted amount.
For the brand, you’ll need to know what it’s worth to you for the influencer’s promotion and the relationship with them.
Put Things in Writing
Handshake and video calls are nice. But whatever is agreed on, put it in writing. This way, things are super clear for both the brand and influencer. No one’s confused. In addition, if the brand representative or someone on the creator’s team changes roles, others can read the contract and know what the deliverables and expectations are.
Learn from Each Other
The brand you’re working with might have never worked with an influencer before. They can learn from you.
Influencer, you might be new to influencer marketing, but you can learn from the brand, especially if they have experience in influencer marketing.
Be willing and open-minded to learn from each other.
Stay in Touch
Don’t just sign the contract and forget things. Keep in touch. Have check-ins. If it’s a long-term contract, expect to pivot and adapt. Maybe how you thought things would work will be different than how they work in actuality.
Successful influencer marketing is about communication and relationships.
Ramon Ray
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