As the world progresses and becomes more digital, many companies are starting to look for digital alternatives for their day-to-day operations.
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Traditionally, many businesses’ marketing campaigns included handing out flyers, putting up billboards, and marketing through word of mouth.
However, ever since social media became popular, many businesses have come up with innovative and creative alternatives for their marketing campaigns – that is, to market their businesses through social media.
And one question that continues to come up is, “How to ask an influencer to promote your product?
This article will explain the concept of influencer social media marketing. Also, it will answer the questions of how to find the right influencers to promote a business’s products or services and the best ways to ask them to agree to a collaboration, both by coming up with the right email design for the first outreach email or having the right pitch with agreeable terms.
What are social media marketing campaigns?
Social media marketing is one of the alternatives to traditional marketing, where businesses leverage the power of social media platforms to increase their brand awareness and recognition among their target audience and (hopefully!) earn high profits.
Some of the best social media platforms for these types of campaigns are Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn (yes, even LinkedIn!), and lastly, Snapchat.
How does marketing on social media work?
Social media allows businesses to market their products or services to their target audience using numerous functions, like stories, sponsored posts, short videos, and influencer marketing.
The use of social media marketing has shown effective results for marketers, and for that reason, many businesses have started to implement this type of marketing in their campaigns.
However, the increasing number of businesses on social media has made the competition fierce.
In order to stand out from the crowd, businesses have started reaching out to influencers to promote their products.
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is somewhat of an alternative to word-of-mouth marketing.
Influencer marketing is a collaboration between a business and an influencer who may have a similar following to the business’s target audience.
How does influencer marketing work?
Businesses reach out to influencers and offer them a deal in exchange for the influencer promoting a business’s product and giving reviews.
However, the trickiest part of influencer marketing is finding and asking the right influencer and getting them to agree to the offered terms.
Why is influencer marketing important and effective?
It might be understandable from the term “influencer” that these people hold a lot of sway over their followers.
Followers of a social media influencer are known to respond to what the influencer is suggesting very positively, because there is the feeling of a more intimate relationship with an actual person, rather than a faceless business.
So, when a business reaches out to an influencer for marketing opportunities and the influencer promotes the business, the business can expect better results than if they were trying to do it themselves.
How to find the right influencers to promote your products
As the number of influencers on social media increases as each day passes, many businesses find it difficult to distinguish between the right influencers for their brand and the wrong ones.
Finding the right influencer for a business is essential for the marketing campaign to be successful. Imagine if a business that produces cosmetics products reaches out to an influencer whose following consists of mostly men. Even if this influencer has a large follower count, the collaboration will probably be less effective than it could be, because men tend to wear less makeup than women.
So, to make sure that a business is collaborating with the right influencers, marketers need to put in some time and effort to find the best advocate for their business.
Here are some ways to make the research process for the right influencer easier.
Easy research methods to find the right influencers
Look for hashtags
Hashtags are a great method to make the research process easier.
Marketers can follow hashtags they would like to include in their promotional posts and see which influencer uses the same hashtags. This method will allow marketers to find influencers who are the best fit to promote their products.
See which influencers competitors are collaborating with
This method can be tricky because many influencers may not like to promote your products and the ones of your direct competitors.
There are other ways to find the right influencers, such as:
- Searching by keywords
- Using Google Analytics to conduct specific research
- Using tools that will display the right influencers in a specific niche
Nevertheless, when a marketer has found a great influencer, they should do their best to get them to agree to the collaboration, regardless of if the influencer has already promoted a competitor’s product.
Before your reach out to influencers, however, marketers need to determine the most suitable social media platform for their specific niche.
Two crucial steps that social media marketers should follow before sending outreach emails to influencers
1. Figure out the best social media platform for your business’s niche
The first thing that social media marketers need to focus on is determining which platforms can bring the highest possible outcomes for their marketing campaign.
In other words, there are numerous social media platforms where influencer marketing is effective. Nonetheless, the influencer marketing campaign for a specific business niche might work on one platform and not work on another.
So, marketers first need to determine the platform which is best for them.
2. Find the most popular influencers on the social media platform which fits your business
After figuring out the best platform for your campaign, social media marketers need to research to find the most popular influencers on that specific social media platform.
When you form a clear understanding of your influencer marketing campaign’s direction, you can start to contact influencers to promote your business.
Here are some of the best tricks that will increase a marketer’s chances of getting a confirmation from an influencer to continue with a collaboration and ensure that the marketing campaign will turn out to be effective and with a positive ROI.
How to ask an influencer to get them to agree to a collaboration
Create a list of potential influencers that can become advocates of your products
To make outreach to influencers easier, creating a list of potential influencers who can promote a business’s products is a must.
Having a clear list will help marketers determine whether potential influencers are a good fit for the campaign.
Create a priority list
After creating the general list, marketers can create a priority list to make the process even easier, which orders the influencers that the company wants to collaborate with, with the best fits and most ambitious requests at the top.
The different types of list creations will allow marketers to write the best pitch for each influencer.
Perform influencer analysis
By performing influencer analysis, businesses will understand what the engagement rate is between the influencer and their followers, how many times the influencer is talked about or mentioned in a post or story, and many other things that will help a marketer determine who is the best influencer to contact.
Come up with a pitch
Writing the pitch requires the most time and effort from social media marketers.
The pitch mentioned should be as eye-catching as possible. That is because the pitch will be the first message between the influencer and the business.
To write the best pitch, marketers can develop a cliche pitch, which they will send to the influencers on the general list. This saves time when contacting influencers who are a slightly worse fit.
However, for the influencers on the priority list, the pitch needs to be personal and offer a lot more to the influencer so it has the best chance of engendering a collaboration.
Have a unique outreach email design
Many marketers think that reaching out to influencers with the same email template is an effective way to increase the engagement rates of the outreach emails.
Although this is not an effective method of sending outreach emails, marketers don’t always have the time to send multiple influencers separate emails.
So, the best thing to do when planning an influencer outreach campaign is to have two unique designs.
One can be used to send emails to influencers that marketers do not consider a priority. The other template can be sent to those who the company is desperate to work with.
Here are some email outreach templates. However, every business should construct a unique email design to ensure they get high reply rates.
Email template for high-priority influencers
Hello [influencer’s name],
I am [marketer’s name] from [company], and we are a [a summary of what the company does].
We have been following your social media account and the approaches you take to promote and sponsor products for some time now.
We have been interested in collaborating with you on a promotional campaign ever since you promoted [an old successful marketing campaign that they have done]. We were impressed with your approach, and we are requesting to collaborate with you.
By partnering with [company name], you will be able to [describe the pitch and benefits that the influencer will receive from the collaboration].
Let me know what you think.
Email template for low-priority influencers
Hello [influencer’s name],
I am [marketer’s name] from [company], and we are a [a summary of what the company does].
The marketing team at [company] stumbled upon one of your recent promotional posts and stories on [the social media platform name]. We were impressed with the direction you had chosen to promote the product.
We are searching for influencers who can become great advocates to promote [company name]’s products to their followers.
If this would be of interest to you, please let me know.
I’d be with you throughout your journey with this marketing campaign if you were to agree to [company name]’s terms.
Connect and follow influencers on social media
Some influencers like to collaborate with companies that they are familiar with.
To ensure that influencers are familiar with a company, marketers need to follow and connect with influencers on social media long before sending partnership opportunities to them.
So, before asking influencers to promote a business’s products, constantly engage with these influencers on their social media platforms.
This method will make the influencers understand that a business is genuinely interested in their work, and collaborating with them will be a win-win situation for both parties.
Outreach through social media
Some businesses like to reach out to influencers by using social media direct messages. However, marketers should not send their first message and request to collaborate with the influencer through social media itself.
The first thing to do in this case is to build a relationship with the influencer, and after establishing that they have good communication, marketers can pitch their idea, preferably through email or by getting in contact with the influencer’s agent or manager. Sending a direct message to an influencer can be tricky since there is a risk of a direct message being lost among the numerous messages that the influencer has received.
What to avoid when reaching out to influencers
Some of the don’ts for reaching out to influencers for marketing purposes are also worth mentioning.
Not reaching out with the right account
Many businesses make the mistake of outreaching to influencers with accounts that are not that popular.
For example, it could be that the marketer uses a personal account to send a direct message to an influencer. Or when sending an email, not using a company email address.
To ensure that a message is seen, make sure to send it via the most known company account and email address.
Taking a long time to follow up
Another mistake that marketers may make is not following up on their first message, or even not replying to the influencer’s response.
After receiving a reply to an outreach email, marketers should do as much as they can to secure the influencer and start the collaboration as soon as possible.
Not pointing out what the influencer will gain from the collaboration
Several businesses send outreach emails to influencers without mentioning what the influencer will gain from the collaboration.
Like everyone, influencers agree on a collaboration request when they see that they will also gain something from promoting a business’s products through their social media accounts.
Not mentioning the benefits and advantages that an influencer will get through a collaboration decreases a marketer’s chances of getting the influencer on board.
Knowing how to ask an influencer to promote your product
In a nutshell, the number of influencers is increasing every day, and many businesses are starting to collaborate with influencers to promote products and increase brand awareness.
Knowing how to ask an influencer to promote your product is essential because it is proven to be one of the most effective ways of social media marketing nowadays.
By collaborating with influencers, businesses will be able to utilize the modern-day equivalent of word-of-mouth marketing, get recognized within their target market, and increase brand awareness and profits.
