Influencer marketing programs aren’t a new marketing strategy. They’ve been around for many years.
Influencer marketing programs have grown out of traditional public relations and focus on working with thought leaders, connectors and influential people, who can influence and drive your brand’s message.
Sometimes companies hire influencers and provide them with access to products and services so that they can share their experience. And sometimes influencers are simply inspired by your message and share it of their own accord.
Today, with everyone being online, engaging with influencers has never been easier.
The question is, how do you integrate an effective influencer program with your Inbound Marketing strategy?
We are here to help!
Start with You
Before you launch into your influencer program, you want to be sure that you are representing yourself online, the best you can.
You wouldn’t (purposefully) meet with an influencer in the real world without a glance in the mirror and some attention to your personal presentation.
Go through your online profiles and ensure that you are prepared to invite influencers into your world. Update your social accounts, engage with your followers, get your best content up front and centre on your website, blog, and social, and be sure to share valuable third party content that you admire.
Just like you, influencers want to create relationships with companies that are valuable to them and their brand. It is a reciprocal relationship and they need to know you’re professional, insightful and a credible partner.
Create Your Buyer Personas
A crucial step in any effective marketing strategy is determining your buyer personas, or target audiences. If you haven’t had a chance to check out our blog on developing your B2B Buyer Persona, this may be a good time to do so.
A Buyer Persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer and helps every member of your team engage with the right people. As with any campaign, by ensuring you have defined your ideal customers before developing your B2B Influencer Program, you can ensure you are targeting the right people. Sure, Justin Bieber is popular, but are his followers your ideal customer?
Identify Your Goals
It is hard to determine whether you have been successful in any campaign when you forget to identify goals, and ways to measure their progress.
Not only will this help you find the right influencers, it will help you determine what you need from them, to reach your objectives.
Common objectives, when developing an influencer program, are:
- Increased Brand Awareness
- Product/Service Trial or Demo
- More Social Followers
- Increased Sales
- Increased Leads
Once you have determined your objective, you will need to identify your key performance indicators (KPIs). Common measures include social following, engagement (shares, likes, comment), influencer driven traffic, content downloads and brand mentions. Ultimately, your KPIs will depend on your specific goal.
Find Your Influencers
When you know who your buyers are, you are ready to start finding the people they look to for quality and trusted information. You may already have an idea who your key influencers are from your business experience and persona research.
If not, that’s okay too. Do some research online and talk to your customers. You’ll be surprised by how many peers, bloggers, speakers, associations, analysts, publications, journalists, social media stars, and industry experts you will be able to identify. You will also want to make note of how they keep connected to their own followers – what’s their preferred channel for communications – blogging, LinkedIn, a trade journal?
When identifying influencers that you should work with, consider three key factors:
- Do they currently influence your personas?
- Do their values and messages align with yours?
- Will they help you meet your influencer marketing objective?
Just because someone attracts your buyer persona does not mean that they will align with your brand personality or have the ability to help you with your marketing objectives. Selecting an influencer solely because your buyer persona is drawn to them could have adverse repercussions on your company and brand.
It is also important to keep in mind that your influencers don’t have to be the most well-known individuals or companies. Instead, focus on rising stars and thought leaders that are new to the arena.
Engage Your Influencers
The next step in an effective influencer program is to engage. To do this, focus on doing things that benefit them.
Create content about them, comment and inquire on content that they have created, quote them, and take a look at the content they share. If someone in your network is connected to them, try and get an introduction. Not only will it help you find content that your readers will appreciate, it will attract the influencer’s attention.
Once you have their attention, start strengthening the relationship. Like relationships in other areas of your life, be supportive, motivating, and helpful. Help them in the way that you would want them to help you and they will likely return the favor.
If something positive happens to your influencer, make sure to say congratulations. This could be on a blog comment, or a comment on a social platform such as Facebook or LinkedIn.
Acknowledge the expertise of your influencer and recommend their content to others. Help increase their visibility by quoting them, amplifying their content by sharing and promoting their offers.
And if there is a way that they can use your products or services, give them access. It may even lead to a shout out or review.
The key to engaging influencers is to focus on the influencer and how you can help them. If done correctly, you’ll be ready for the next step.
Work with Your Influencer
Now that you have the influencer’s attention and have successfully built a relationship with them, it’s time to reap the rewards.
If you’re not sure it’s time to approach them with a request, such as asking them to write a guest blog post, wait for them to acknowledge you. Perhaps a simple thanks to a comment you’ve made could be used to start a conversation.
When that moment comes, and you are directly communicating, you will want to be ready with a request. Based on the goals you made earlier, have a prepared list of requests that they can help you with at hand.
Some great ways an influencer can help your brand are by:
- Sharing content
- Providing a quote for a blog
- Working with you on a piece of valuable content
- Attending an event
It’s best to start with simple requests like providing a quote for a blog and work your way up to the big one – such as a jointly authored eBook!
And don’t forget - keep helping them too – never stop – and influencer marketing program can be developed and go on for years.
Making it all about you, and if you have another agenda, is a sure fire way to end any influencer relationship quickly.
When all is said and done, your influencer program is about building strong relationships, and is a natural addition to your Inbound Marketing program. Focus on developing affiliations with a select number of influencers at first. The more focused you are on them, especially at the beginning, the more successful you will be in the long run.
Have a question about developing your Influencer Program? Contact us today – we’d love to hear from you!
