Influencer marketing has become such a significant part of many businesses’ strategies that they’re always on the lookout for new talent to add to their roster. As an influencer, getting noticed requires the most amount of effort. Potential influencer marketers need to know what sponsors are looking for and try to deliver on that.
Businesses tend to regard an influencer’s ability to offer their brand message to the correct audience as the most crucial factor to consider. However, an influencer can deploy several strategies to make sure they get the right eyes on their content. Below, 15 associates of Forbes Agency Council explore how influencers can get themselves noticed by sponsors.
1. Become Part Of Influencer Networks
Brands rely on platforms such as CreatorIQ and others that provide recommendations to brands. The caveat here is that the data is not always accurate. If an influencer’s following and engagement rates are legitimate and accurate, brand marketers would be interested in seeing results achieved on previous projects in order to determine whether a working relationship would be beneficial. – Terry Tateossian, Socialfix Media
2. Leverage Automation Platforms
One of the biggest challenges agencies have is managing multiple influencer campaigns at the same time. It can be a lot to track. Automation platforms should be the wave of the influencer future. Rad Intelligence is one I can recommend. Full disclosure, we work with this group a lot and their latest iteration of the platform has performed well for some of our clients. The ease of organization and planning is tops! – Jason Fishman, Digital Niche Agency (DNA)
3. Don’t Be Afraid To Connect And Ask
If you have a well-defined brand image and audience, don’t be afraid to reach out to agencies and companies and ask for partnerships that make sense. There’s a lot of competition in the influencer space, and sometimes, all it takes is a little outreach and determination. Our agency has created fruitful partnerships with high-level influencers over Instagram direct message in the past. – Travis Peters, EightPM
4. Connect With Their Buyer Persona
For an influencer to be an asset to an organization, their audience and followers need to match with the buyer persona of the target company. The influencer needs to provide follower and audience demographics in addition to engagement metrics so the company knows that the influencer’s target audience is a prospective buyer and that their investment is going to attract the right audience. – Elyse Flynn Meyer, Prism Global Marketing Solutions
5. Build A Solid Media Kit
A solid media kit with statistics will help agencies partner with influencers easily. Also, having a website/blog adds a lot of credibility and is seen as valuable for agencies. – Sam Founda, Social Connection
6. Be Different And More Professional
Influencers range from everyday customers to full-time professional influencers. Be a brand yourself. Be professional. Consider how potential brand customers will regard your content and how they imagine you influencing their brand. – Jim Caruso, M1PR, Inc. d/b/a MediaFirst PR – Atlanta
7. Prove You Can Deliver The ROI
An influencer must not only be open to but should be able to prove the ROI they can deliver to an agency or brand. If you address this head-on and confidently, a company will be willing to invest in you and develop that partnership. – Jessica Hawthorne-Castro, Hawthorne LLC
8. Be Honest About Your Community
Don’t be something you’re not. Be open and honest about what works and doesn’t on your channels. What might not work for one campaign or brand partnership might work for another, so don’t try to be all things to all brands. And be open to collaboration — agencies can help. – Jackson Murphy, Pound & Grain
9. Have An Engaging Audience
If you engage with your audience regularly, you will get a better understanding of who they are and what they are into. From there, you need to fully represent that audience. Companies will see what your audience is and will partner with you based on the demographic you represent. Companies will also tailor their partnership to meet the demands your audience has. It will be a win-win. – Jason Hall, FiveChannels Marketing
10. Act Like A Business
To attract agencies and partnerships, an influencer needs to act like a business. It is not enough to have “followers.” Influencers must offer credibility and proof that they’ve helped other brands obtain actual ROI from their campaign work. They must quantify how their engagement has achieved results and provide thoughtful insights about their followers and past campaigns to prove their value. – Nicole Rodrigues, NRPR Group, INC
11. Target Brands That Match Your Influence
We see this all the time with restaurants hiring models with huge followers to be photographed in their establishment. The influence doesn’t work if the model doesn’t typically post food and beverage content. Their followers are typically looking for clothing and style influence and then boom, they see tacos and margaritas in the feed. Engagement and action is limited. No bueno. – Todd Maxwell, eMaximize
12. Have A Well-Defined Niche
A massive following is no longer enough to secure a brand partnership. A wide net of followers serves little purpose if they don’t interact with your content, so agencies today are putting a greater priority on smaller niche accounts with high engagement rates. Influencers should focus on tailoring niche content for an active audience in order to secure mutually beneficial brand partnerships. – Adam Binder, Creative Click Media
13. Post Quality Organic Content
Our greatest interest is whether the influencer will perform for our client. When we are looking at influencers, we look at the quality of content and the engagement of the influencer’s communities. We also make sure that every post is not a sponsored post. Too many branded partnerships start to dilute the messages from the influencer and it becomes less authentic. – Gina Michnowicz, The Craftsman Agency
14. Quantify Your Reach
Understand the potential reach of your audience. Companies need to know who you can reach, how much they engage around your content, and what traffic or impact your content can have. The more you can quantify your network into measurable outcomes the better. – Stefan Pollack, The Pollack Group
15. Define Your Personal Brand
In order to attract agencies and companies for partnerships, it’s important for potential influencers to first define their personal brand (values, personality, tone, etc.) and consistently exhibit it through all online and offline channels. Agencies and companies can identify if the influencer aligns with their brand, giving them trust and confidence with that influencer. – Tripp Donnelly, REQ
