How to Get Started Creating an Influencer Marketing Plan

Are you looking to add more credibility to your brand or share your product with a bigger audience? Creating an influencer marketing plan is a great opportunity to enhance your social media marketing strategy. It can also be a great way to add an element of authenticity to your business while also attracting new customers.

Influencers work hard to build a loyal and engaged following. Their followers trust and believe in their promotions. If you’re just starting out, you may be overwhelmed with wondering how to work with influencers or even get started in approaching. We put together a few tips you can follow to start your Influencer Marketing Strategy.

1. Be clear on who you are targeting – It’s important to ensure that the influencer you are working with has followers who are a good fit for your business. This means that you are extremely clear on your company’s goals and buyer personas. Even if the influencer has a large following of 50K+, it won’t make a difference if none of their followers are interested in what you are selling. For example, if you sell items for infants, you would want to connect with an influencer who is either expecting or has a new baby. This also ensures their message comes across as authentic to their audience. A mom to a teenager isn’t going to be as credible if promoting items for new babies. Knowing your target customer and buyer persona is key to being successful with influencer marketing.
2. Be clear on what you are offering the influencer – For small businesses who are just getting started, sometimes a free product in exchange for a post is a good way to get your feet wet with influencer marketing. The challenge with an unpaid influencer is that there are no guarantees that they will post about your product. They may forget about it and prioritize their paid campaigns over a free item offered. To ensure you aren’t just wasting your products by giving them away, you can start by offering a small fee such as $50-100. When you create your offer, people are more likely to want to work with your brand if you are generous and show that you value their time and network.
3. Start with targeting smaller influencers – Influencers all start somewhere. If you focus on smaller accounts who are just getting into paid sponsorships, they will likely accept a lower fee. Accounts with less than 10K followers can help grow your brand if they have an engaged audience and they will do their best to showcase and highlight your product because they also want other brands to see the value they can provide. This will help them attract other companies to reach out to them for future partnership opportunities so they have a good motivation to create amazing content for you.
4. Provide a positive experience for the influencer – As the business who is hiring the influencers, it’s important that you also create a positive experience for people you’re working with. If an influencer has a great experience with your business, they are likely to introduce you to other influential people who are in your same target market. Some things you can do to provide value to your influencer is to share their posts on your social media accounts so they get more exposure and send them bonus products beyond what you promised them.
5. Offer something valuable that influencers can give to their audience – People who follow influencers love receiving unique offers and promotions. Create an easy opportunity for your influencer to share a special promotion that they can have their followers sign up for. This may be a discount or a special product bundle. You can also have the influencer host a giveaway promotion.

If this seems overwhelming and you would like more guidance on connecting with the right influencers for your brand, we are a full-service branding agency here to help. We can map out your entire brand strategy for influencers to ensure you not only get connected to the right influencers but that the promotions you run with them on are successful.