The chances are good that you’ll get TONS of prospect customers inquiring about your services. In short, you’re in marketing nirvana! That’s why business nowadays are keen on connecting with the best marketing agencies to help them with their PR.
However, chances like these are often in the realm of impossibility for small to mid-sized businesses, simply because they do not have enough clout or influence to be noticed by the big shots.
While that is true in most cases, there is a way for the influencers to take notice and mention your brand even if you’re just a nobody on the web.
And you do that by (drum roll) – wait for it – influencer marketing!
You probably already understand the gist of this marketing strategy, don’t you? But just to make sure we’re on the same page, allow me to share with you in layman’s term what it is.
Influencer marketing defined
Influencer marketing is a strategy where you identify, target, and build a relationship with individuals who have influence over your target audience so they can aid you in creating visibility for your services or products.
It’s important to note that in this case, influence is no longer confined to the corners of how many followers an individual has, it’s no longer just about popularity. You can still be considered an influencer if you have a few followers but you’re expertise in the industry is top class (among many others).
Now that we’ve pretty much squared away what influencer marketing is, there’s one more thing – a warning – that I’d like to share with you before you start feeling all giddy and excited inside. And that warning is, many have tried this marketing method and have failed miserably.
Influencer marketing, is one tough nut to crack. You need to give this marketing method some careful planning and consideration for you to truly succeed. As you can probably imagine, these influencers are very busy and receive hundreds of email everyday. That said, there’s a huge chance that you’ll just be ignored. And should you succeed in connecting with them, there’s a huge chance that they’ll reject whatever it is that you’re requesting of them simply because they aren’t interested.
Alright, now that we’re pretty much on the same understanding on how effective yet, challenging this marketing method is, let’s hop right into the actual tips and strategies you can use on your influencer marketing campaign to make it a success.
1) Address the “What’s in it for me?” question on your pitch
Just like you and I, the influencers are also asking the same question every time someone asks them for something, and that questions is – as mentioned above – “what’s in it for me?”
It’s nothing against them or us, that’s just human nature. Since we’re all busy doing something, we can’t simply deviate from what we’re doing unless we benefit from it, right?
And so, when you send the influencers and outreach email, you ought to make sure that you’ve included in your email the direct benefit that they can get from helping you.
There are several incentives you can offer. It can be money, publicity, sharing your product for free, collaborating on a project that can be beneficial for the both of you, etc.
Related post: How NOT to Write a Pitch Letter – Forbes.com
2) Make your message brief and punchy
While there’s no hard rule on how lengthy or short your message should be, I have found that keeping your message to 1 – 2 paragraphs while staying within 100 – 150 words tend to give the best results.
As you can probably imagine, we’re trying to keep our message as brief as we can since the influencers are busy. Write a long message, and the chances are good that you’ll just be ignored.
As for the headline, I tend to use “Hi first name, Quick Question!”, this one has worked well for me on a lot of campaigns that I’ve ran. Another headline I use is “Possible Collaboration?“.
Related post: Ultimate Headline Formulas for Tweets, Posts, Articles and Emails – Entrepreneur.com
3) Focus on quality while playing the numbers game
You can use the best outreach email and share the best incentive to entice the influencer to help you and still fail miserably.
The fact is, there are a lot of circumstances that can cause your influencer marketing campaign to fail. No matter how solid you think your incentive is, it’s quite possible that the influencer isn’t in need of it right now thus causing its value to plummet.
So the question becomes, how do you deal with the campaign with these odds against you?
The answer is quite simple, just focus on quality while playing the numbers game.
If you do that, you are bound to connect with influencers who will find your pitch and incentive enticing enough that it becomes impossible for them to decline it.
Remember, don’t just focus on quality. Focus on both quality and quantity.
What’s next?
If you’re looking for the best PR services that can help get your brand mentioned on authority sites the caliber of Huffingtonpost.com, Forbes.com (and the like), do connect with us. We’ll be more than happy to help.
