When partnering with influencers to market your product or brand, it’s crucial to make sure that you are working with influencers who will reach the right audiences and give you the best return on your investment. Here are the questions to ask to find the right partnerships for your influencer marketing campaign.
What are my goals for this campaign? Having a business outcome in mind will help you stay focused while finding the right influencers to work with.
Who am I trying to reach? Having a target audience in mind will help you pick the right influencers to work with. You probably won’t want to work with a mommy blogger if your product is intended for college students.
How large is the influencer’s audience? You can determine the size of an influencer’s audience by adding up the his/her social media followers, and seeking information about web traffic and subscribers from a blogger’s media kit.
Has this influencer bought followers? If an influencer has a massive following on social media, but gets a measly amount of comments and likes, the influencers has likely paid for followers. This method leads to an audience full of fake accounts, which are useless to you, the brand, because they won’t engage with your company or buy your product. Based on my own research, Instagram accounts with 4,000 followers should be getting about ~100 likes per post.
Who is the influencer’s audience? The influencer’s media kit should give you insight into who his/her brand attracts.
Has the influencer worked with brands before? Ask to see samples of sponsored posts the influencer has done in the past to see if his/her work is up to your standards.
Has the influencer worked with your competitors? If an influencer has done partnered posts for your competitors, it’s best for you to look for a different partner.
How responsive is the influencer to your emails? If you’ve had to follow up multiple times to get a response from an influencer, chances are (s)he’s too busy to work with you and it will be hard to communicate with him/her during the campaign and afterwards to collect analytics.
What does the influencer expect in return? Some influencers are happy to promote brands for free, while others will only promote you in exchange for products and/or monetary compensation. While asking for compensation can seem frustrating for brands who are looking for free press, working with an influencer who knows what (s)he is doing is like working with a creative director, account manager, copywriter, photographer, and editor all in one. Think about how much money went into producing your last traditional advertising campaign. Chances are, influencer marketing will cost you less, and will help you reach more engaged audiences. When an influencer gives you his/her rate, determine whether working together will be worth it for your brand in terms of ROI.
Now that you know what to look for when choosing influencers to work with, find out how to launch your first influencer marketing campaign.
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