While there are numerous marketing paths to take, most of them usually lead to one ultimate goal — to target the brand’s audience. One method that’s gaining the attention of brands and businesses is influence relations. The approach of teaming up with influencers is a great opportunity of raising brand awareness.
This marketing strategy can extend marketing reach by using someone with a strong online following to persuade their audience to sample or follow a brand. If you want to reach out to more consumers and make them listen, using market influencers is worth considering. To guide you in building better influencer relations for your brand, here’s a list of tips to take note of.
1. Be honest about your intentions
If you want to build better relationships with the influencers, you must first communicate your expectations and goals. Explain the goals of your campaign so that they know what they should do. It would also be helpful to provide the influencers with clear content guidelines without restricting their creativity.
Other things you should discuss are the number and type of content you’re planning to create and promote. You can utilize an influencer marketing platform to easily communicate with each other, from tracking the performances to creating assignments. If you’re not honest about your intentions or you and the influencers have different expectations, there could be some hostility between the partnership.
2. Let their creativity rules
One thing that you should remember is that influencer relations are not like any traditional marketing strategy. When it comes to influences, micromanaging every single step will not work. The creative process should be flexible and free. Restricting the influencers with their creativity when creating content for your brand can make them frustrated.
After all, you don’t want to publish content that feels corporate and bland. Give the influencers the freedom to inject doses of their creativity into the content. You can then review the finalized content from your influences before publishing it on your website or social media channels. Just give them a clear brief about your brand message, then let influencers convey that to their audience.
3. Communicate efficiently
As with any marketing relationship, influence relations require good communication. Keep them updated with the progress or changes in your campaign, as well as the other things your team is planning to work on. Everything that should involve their participation, they should know.
Don’t forget to ask your influencers for feedback or comments on the content or campaign. If they have questions, be sure to acknowledge them. Also, make sure that you finalize every information you share with the influencers. Providing wrong details can lead to project delays or expensive campaign revisions.
4. Give them exclusive items
You can make your influencers feel special by providing them with exclusive products or offers from your brand. If you’re not familiar with product seeding, you can seek the help of a reliable PR agency. They can help you determine the right products and items to give to your influencers.
This is a great way to make your influencers feel appreciated and valued. By doing this, you can also ask for their honest feedback when it comes to product launches. At the same time, the influencers can get their audience excited with the new products or campaigns.
5. Make your offers stand out
If you want to keep your current influencers engaged and attract new ones, you need to ensure every offer you release is appealing enough. Getting the attention of your influencers should be the goal. If you’re planning to get new influencers for your campaign, actively interact with your prospects on their social media content. You can also tag them on your campaign posts that you think they might find relevant.
6. Meet them in person
Connecting with your influencers on their social channels is essential to create a deeper partnership. However, you can improve that relationship if you can also meet and connect with them in person. Invite them to an intimate meeting with the team or an exclusive event. It will be easier for you to strengthen your partnership if you communicate with the influencers outside a digital medium. Plus, you get to have a more personal and authentic interaction with your influencers.
By having influencers on your side, your brand can build creative and engaging marketing campaigns that can authentically connect with your target audience. However, for you to create good long-term partnerships, the right strategies and effort must be exerted. Follow our tips here to boost your brand’s influencer relations.
