Social media has transformed the way businesses market. It has brought about the influencer marketing trend, where brands work with famous internet personalities to promote their products or services. It’s a strategy that can give businesses the highest visibility by tapping into these influencers’ audiences.
Influencer marketing requires a lot of work before even starting a campaign. The process starts with finding relevant influencers, and then comes the most critical step – reaching out to influencers.
Reaching out to influencers can be split into two broad ways – manual and automated outreach. Let’s take a look at both ways.
Manual Outreach
As the name suggests, manual outreach includes researching and reaching out to influencers manually.
Let’s understand how to approach manual outreach.
Make a List of the Right Influencers
There is no shortage of influencers today. In addition to big names, nano and micro-influencers are also creating an impactful wave in the social media space. Therefore, your goal must be to rope in the ones that would bring the most relevance to your partnership. Before talking to influencers, you must shortlist a few based on:
- Sponsored posts influencers have done in the past
- Followers/community size
- Engagement rate
- Quality of comments (how relevant and authentic the comments are)
This will help you predict the outcome and select influencers wisely. Using an influencer marketing platform to help choose the perfect option is always a great idea.
Craft Your Pitch
The influencers we are talking about are popular and busy personalities who consistently deliver content, respond to brand marketing requests and stay socially active. So, if you fail to create an outstanding pitch, your email may go unnoticed or unread.
To make sure your pitch captures influencers’ attention, keep these tips in mind:
- Write a clear subject
- Don’t talk about what the influencer would need to do. Instead, talk about what the brand would do for them.
- Specify the collaboration or paid process clearly.
- Talk about how your vision connects with the influencer brand.
- Mention a response deadline and create a sense of urgency.
Connect With Influencers on Social Media
According to a Backlinko study, only 8.5% of outreach emails receive a response. But by establishing a connection on social media, you increase the chances of your email pitch being opened. For example, if you connect with an influencer on social media and engage with their posts, there is a better chance that they will remember you and open your email. This will also give you a better insight into what they post, which can help you craft the perfect pitch that’s way more than just a cold email.
Send Your Outreach Email
If you’re only connecting with a couple of influencers, sending and tracking emails is easy. But if you’re planning to go big with influencer marketing, you might need influencer marketing software to manage your conversations and campaigns. In any case, make sure that you keep track of all the responses and progress.
Automated Outreach
Automated outreach includes using AI influencer marketing tools to eliminate the human effort and optimize marketing campaigns. An influencer marketing platform such as Affable.ai, for example – uses Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing to connect you to the ‘right’ influencers and also manage campaigns most seamlessly.
Here’s what you can do using an AI influencer marketing platform:
Find Authentic Influencers
As of 2020, two-thirds of brands experienced influencer fraud by collaborating with fake influencers. An AI influencer marketing platform eliminates this risk and helps easily find genuine and the most relevant influencers without spending hours vetting them.
Negotiate Incentives or Compensation
AI-based influencer management tools take historical data from tons of influencers to understand various content and compensation metrics. It then uses an algorithm to decide what incentives are the most effective for an influencer you’re looking to work with.
Predict Future Influencer Performance
An AI-based influencer marketing platform enables data-driven influencer marketing, which helps in predicting the performance of influencers. This information can further help change a marketing strategy, create influencer contracts, and optimize campaigns without any trials and errors.
Measure Performance and ROI
Calculating ROI using historical data from older influencer campaigns against consumer personas can get very complicated. Influencer marketing software removes these complications and uses AI to calculate ROI from different angles, such as seasonal trends, content, benchmarks, and consumer personas.
A smart influencer marketing platform helps in everything from reaching out to influencers to managing different influencer campaigns on a single dashboard. Therefore, it is an excellent investment for small businesses as well as renowned brands.
What’s important is implementing the most accurate strategy based on your business size and audience type. So, start with understanding your business requirements and expectations, and then move on to approaching influencers. Follow the latest influencer marketing trends and create a successful influencer marketing campaign for 2022.
Namaste UI collaborates closely with clients to develop tailored guest posting strategies that align with their unique goals and target audiences. Their commitment to delivering high-quality, niche-specific content ensures that each guest post not only meets but exceeds the expectations of both clients and the hosting platforms. Connect with us on social media for the latest updates on guest posting trends, outreach strategies, and digital marketing tips. For any types of guest posting services, contact us on info[at]namasteui.com.