Before I embarked on my current journey and moved to New York City, I was working as a Marketing Coordinator for a fashion influencer. By being part of a small team, I gained and learned skills required for different aspects of the business and within a year and a half, I had the opportunity to work with many different brands and other influencers. I've gathered some key tips that I learned, and feel you should know when working with your brand influencer. And by the way, if you're not getting as much out of your influencer collabs as you thought you would, then you'll want to check out our latest downloadable guide: Influencer Marketing 101: Steps to a Successful Influencer Collaboration.
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In this article you’ll learn…
1. Find a Brand Influencer with a Voice Similar to Yours
As an established influencer, my boss received tremendous amounts of requests daily for content collaborations. Through these multiple requests, we only replied to a handful. As a brand, it may be tempting to contact a popular influencer that has a strong engagement and following, but make sure you are reaching out to someone who has a similar tone and look to your own. As your brand searches for a suitable influencer to work with, influencers also search for brands who can help them reach new audiences.
While it may be difficult to manually navigate through the pool of influencers online, this is the most crucial step of the process. By identifying a brand influencer that has an audience similar to your own, your influencer marketing campaign will generate more engagement and leads. For your next collab, working with an end-to-end influencer campaign management platform will help you not only identify the right opinion leaders, but manage the full process and measure your success.
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2. Creating Content Takes a Significant Amount of Time
When brands requested Instagram content, sometimes it took us half a day to shoot and edit images. We all know how aesthetically pleasing an influencer's Instagram grid can be, hence why they put in extra effort to make sure all images align with one another, and are in the same color tone, brightness, or saturation, etc. Blog posts took much longer, especially when it required editorial content. When you're contacting an influencer for content and campaigns, make sure you reach out a month in advance, so they have enough time to create high quality content for your campaign.
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3. Compensate Them for Their Time and Expertise
Whenever we received gifting, many of the products ended up being donated or re-gifted to friends and family. While it may seem like gifting free products is suitable compensation, do set aside an actual budget for these influencer marketing campaigns and be ready to compensate them for their time and expertise.
If there truly isn't enough budget for the campaign, do research and gift products that actually fit the influencer's taste and needs. Another way is to ask the influencer directly to send you a wish list, so you know exactly what they hope to receive. It's also important to note that gifting does not necessarily guarantee a feature on their social channels. Keeping that in mind, do not push influencers to feature any content that has not been agreed upon in advance.
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4. Address Endorsement Guidelines and Compliance Rules
As FTC becomes more strict with their endorsement rules and guidelines, it's important to address these with the influencer and ensure that they are complying with these standards when they develop your campaign. As FTC notes, "If law enforcement becomes necessary, our focus usually will be on advertisers or their ad agencies and public relations firms". By disclosing this information, it provides your brand with transparency and authenticity, while alleviating any future concerns and violations. More on this in our downloadable guide: Influencer Marketing 101.
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5. Build Lasting Relationships
While my boss had a successful personal blog, we also had an online shop that curated the latest trends. As we worked with many different influencers for new collections, we made sure that we developed lasting relationships with them. For those brand influencers that we collaborated seamlessly with, we continuously reached out to them and sent them goodies on their wish list. Although they may not feature, it shows that you genuinely trust their voice.
As influencer marketing continues to grow in popularity, it's important to take time to plan ahead before your brand jumps into this growing trend. Make sure to download our latest guide: Influencer Marketing 101; you'll learn how to make the most out of collaborations with your brand influencer!
By Launchmetrics Content Team
The Launchmetrics content team is always on the lookout for new trends in the fashion and technology sector. We are geeks with style and lovers of good stories!
