Influencer marketing is basically about leveraging the authority or status of a well-known person online who has a lot of followers (e.g. via social media). This is done by connecting with such a well-known person and offering them a great incentive or compensation in exchange for using their powerful influence to promote your product or service to their followers – which as a result would boost your business brand and bring you more sales.

Imagine watching an advert that features a well-known celebrity and wishing you have access to the same influential figure that big companies have for their business? Well, as a local business you can now achieve this with influencer marketing.

Here are some tips on how to use influencer marketing to boost your business and get more sales:

Identify Your Marketing Objectives

Until you know exactly what you hope to achieve through your association with an influencer, it’s not a good idea to reach out to them. So, make sure you already have a strategy in place before connecting with an influencer.

Locate Prospective Influencers

Providing your objectives are in place, how do you discover influencers to connect and work with? The key is using tools to locate influencers who are most likely to have an impact on prospective customers in your localised area and that are ideal for your offer.

You can search for influencers who have lots of followers – using industry type. For example, if you own a Gym it would make sense to look out for localised gym bloggers via Google search and localised gym influencers via social media (like Facebook, Twitter).

Besides, an alternative option is to search for influencers relating to your local business industry in your area with tools that can speed up the search process. One powerful tool that is highly recommended to do this specific task is known as Klear. You can actually track influencers anywhere in the world based on their location (and other metrics) – by using Klear.

For illustration purpose only – image from “Klear” website

Filter Your List of Influencers

Accumulate a list of multiple influencers via your searches and then filter the list. You see, every influencer you find isn’t going to be a good match for your specific business and needs. Most of them perhaps won’t be.

That’s why before you reach out, it’s vital to dig in and do some research to narrow down your list and choose the most ideal influencers. You can watch out for things like number of followers, whether they have the right target audience for your offer and whether they are the right fit for your brand values.

Develop a Relationship

Once you’ve narrowed down your list, you might be tempted to go straight for the kill by asking your chosen influencers to promote your offer to their followers.

Not so fast. You should first take a little bit of time to develop some rapport with them. Sign up to their blog, follow them on social media. Get involved such as making comments on their blog and liking their posts on Facebook…

By doing this, you are strategically paving the way for your “request” to them to promote you to their followers. Besides, using this method provides the angle to be able to soften them up a bit in a non-salesy way and make them more receptive to your approach if you keep them aware ahead of time that you are a real fan.

Make a Request

As long as you have already established a connection with an influencer, then get in touch with them to make a request – by asking if they would be interested in working with you. For instance, if you are asking someone to help you out on Facebook, your best way to reach out might be messaging them on Facebook – and so on. Make sure you are polite and professional, and as people like receiving compliments it wouldn’t hurt  if (as part of your approach) you praise an influencer for doing an excellent job.

You should of course know in advance what you are willing to offer the influencer as compensation in exchange for promoting your product or service to their followers. Be prepared to negotiate – and if you can’t mutually agree on a deal, be prepared to walk away.

Regarding an incentive or compensation to offer an influencer, some may work to help you out only for cash, while some others may work with you in exchange for getting a valuable service or product for free.

Conclusion:

If influencer marketing is something of interest to you and you can make use of the above information to implement it, you would really be able to successfully strengthen your business brand and generate more sales as a result. If you want to learn about our Online Marketing Services that we provide for helping local businesses grow, simply visit our services website through the link here.

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