A overview on Influencer Outreach
Influencer Outreach is the first and foremost step in creating an effective influencer marketing campaign. How credible & relatable an influencer is to a brand carries the success of the campaign. Every influencer marketing campaign needs an influencer outreach strategy. It is because influencer outreach, when done effectively, helps to build relationships with relevant influencers, choose credible influencers, and determine the best way to utilize the platform to reach the target audience.
Mistakes Brands do when choosing Influencers
#1 Not doing thorough research resulting in choosing non-relevant or non-credible influencers:
Brands often make the mistake of not researching the influencer enough before choosing them for their campaign. This can lead to choosing influencers who have a completely different audience, or even have a negative reputation.
#2 Underestimating the importance of authenticity:
Brands sometimes choose influencers who are not genuine in their endorsements, leading to a lack of credibility with their followers. It's important to choose influencers who align with the brand's values and can authentically promote the product or service. The influence influencers have over their audience depends not only on the type of content they create but also the type of content they promote.
#3 Ignoring the influencer's reach:
Brands may choose influencers with a large following, but if their reach is not targeted towards the right audience, the campaign may not be as effective. It's important to choose influencers with a relevant and engaged following. That is to analyze the demographics & insights of the audience.
#4 Focusing solely on numbers:
Brands sometimes choose influencers based solely on their number of followers, without considering other factors such as engagement rate, fake followers rate, consistency score, paid post performance and relevance to the target audience. It's important to consider a range of metrics to determine the best fit for a campaign. This is where Starbuzz’s Influencer Report is helpful too. A brand can analyze different scores & metrics of an influencer.
#5 Neglecting to negotiate:
Brands may not negotiate the terms and conditions of the partnership, leading to a less effective campaign. It's important to negotiate clear expectations and guidelines for the collaboration to ensure a successful outcome.
How to Identify Perfect Influencers for Your Brand or Product?
Identifying the right influencers for a brand is pretty much everything. Choosing a wrong influencer will not only cost money but also ignites a negative reputation for the brand.
Identifying right influencers for the brand deals with the goals of the campaign, target audience, choosing influencers by analyzing metrics & the type of content they create.
#1 Setting goals and determining target audience
The first step in identifying the perfect influencer for a brand is to determine who the target audience is & what exactly are the goals of the campaign. This will help understand what type of influencer is relevant to the brand. There are factors such as age, location, interests, and more to help narrow down the search & meet the brand’s requirements.
#2 Finding relevant influencers & some tools you can use
Use tools like Starbuzz’s Influencer Discovery, and Hypeauditor to find relevant influencers easily. It's important to know about the different types of influencers and what kind of influencer type is suitable for the brand before this.. It is usually a manual hectic process to find influencers across social media platforms.Using these tools will help save tons of time and manage influencer marketing campaigns more effectively. Understand the demographics of an influencer’s profile and insights to make sure it reaches the target audience.
#3 Analyzing the metrics of influencers
Once potential influencers are identified, evaluate those influencers by analyzing their engagement rate, fake followers percentage, consistency score, audience credibility, and many more. Use resources like Starbuzz Influencer Report to evaluate an influencer. It has all the metrics a brand needs to check whether they suit the brand’s values & requirements that includes the influencer's overall reputation and any previous collaborations they have had with other brands.
Influencer Outreach
Send Personalized Message
Communicate with them as a person to person showing genuine interest in their work and reach out to them explaining your objectives of this campaign.
Communicate clearly what’s in it for Influencers
Be clear with what you’ve to offer influencers for their work and what you expect them to do. Fees or a product in return are among the things you can offer.
Focus on creating relationships
Do not be spammy or pushy while communicating. Make sure you build a relationship exchanging genuine interest.
Be clear with what you expect from them
Make sure to mention what exactly are the objectives of the campaign and what Influencers are expected to do so that it doesn’t deviate from its way.
How to reach out to Influencers?
Even though Influencers are active in multiple platforms, they prefer communicating through very few of them. It’s important for brands to find those mediums and reach out to them to avoid delay.
Contact them through E-mail
As per Influencer Outreach Survey made by HyperAuditor, around 52% Influencers preferred communication through e-mails. It’s because
E-mails allow for personalized and direct communication, which can help to establish a more personal connection with the influencer.
E-mails are easily accessible and can be reviewed at the influencer's convenience, rather than being lost in a sea of social media messages.
E-mails are perceived as a more professional method of communication and can demonstrate a level of seriousness and respect for the influencer's time and work.
E-mails provide a written record of the communication, which can be useful for reference later on, especially if negotiations or agreements are made.
E-mails can be customized and tailored to the specific needs and goals of the partnership, allowing for a more effective and productive conversation.
Contact them through Social Media
As per the same report, 40% of the Influencers chose Social Media as their preferred medium of contact. Some of the reasons are
Social media allows for real-time communication and quick responses, which can be particularly important for influencers who need to make decisions quickly.
Influencers are often active on social media and can be reached directly through their profiles, making it a convenient and accessible way for brands to make contact.
Influencer collaborations and partnerships are often made public through social media, and contacting an influencer through social media can help to maintain transparency and authenticity.
Social media allows for interactions with an influencer's community, which can be an effective way to engage with and gain exposure to a wider audience.
Social media allows for a more relaxed and informal communication style, which can help to establish a more authentic and trustworthy relationship between the brand and the influencer.
Other than E-mail, or Social Media, some influencers also prefer contact through phone, social media comment, and through talent agency.
What Influencers expect from a Brand?
While reaching out to influencers, it’s important to know what are the details they expect from a brand so that brand’s receive much sooner response & strike a deal. Here are the 5 things influencers expect from a brand:
They want to know the objectives and the benefits they get
Influencers expect to see a clear understanding of the objectives of the collaboration and what benefits they will receive from it. Brands should mention the specific goals they hope to achieve and how the influencer's involvement will contribute to those goals.
Information about the target audience
Influencers want to know about the target audience for the collaboration and the demographics of the audience the brand hopes to reach. Brands should include information about the target audience and how the influencer's audience aligns with that target.
What products or services does the brand offer?
Influencers want to understand what products or services the brand offers and how they will be involved in promoting them. Brands should provide clear and detailed information about the products or services and how the influencer will be involved in promoting them.
Compensation and Perks
Influencers want to know about compensation and any additional perks that may be included in the collaboration. Brands should be transparent about the compensation structure and any additional perks that the influencer will receive.
They expect a detailed timeline
Influencers expect to have a clear understanding of the timeline and deliverables for the collaboration. Brands should provide a detailed timeline and list of expected deliverables to ensure the collaboration runs smoothly and is successful.
Tools to find Right Influencers
There are multiple tools in the market that make influencer marketing less time consuming and more efficient. Some of them are Starbuzz.ai’s Saas, HypeAuditor, Modash.io and others. Let’s see how exactly to use Starbuzz.ai Influencer Discovery tool for finding influencers.
Using Starbuzz.ai Influencer Discovery Tool to find right influencers
Starbuzz.ai Influencer Discovery Tool helps to find influencers at a much faster pace. With multiple filters to apply, it is easy to identify influencers who speak a particular language, who’s audience are from a particular place or language, who has a particular range of followers, who has followers of a particular age, audience’s interests, and who’re from different niches.
And the Suggested Influencers which we’d like to call as ‘Match-Making’ feature directly suggests you the perfect influencers suitable for your brand based on its type and requirements.
Manual Influencer Outreach vs Starbuzz Influencer Tool
Time Consumption
In Manual Influencer Outreach, brands have to find influencers through social platforms. Perks here are unless you know the influencer by name, it takes so much time to find the right influencer for the requirement. And especially when the campaign is running with 50+ influencers, it's a severe headache.
With Starbuzz.ai Influencer Discovery Tool, it consumes very less time to find influencers as the list of influencers are all in the software itself.There won’t be any need to go to another platform to find influencers.
Filters
In Manual Influencer Outreach, there is a lack of filters. Brands have to check manually analyzing each profile whether they come under a particular niche or range.
With Starbuzz.ai Influencer Discovery Tool, multiple filters can be applied at the same time which saves a ton of time and headache. Filters like follower’s range, niche, audience interests, etc can be applied within seconds.
Scaling the campaign
In Manual Influencer Outreach, it is hard to scale the campaign to big as it involves reaching out to more number of influencers, communicating, deriving results which is very time consuming.
Starbuzz.ai Tool is made for large scale campaigns as it automates most of the manual work in finding influencers, communicating with them, deriving results.
Personalization
In Manual Influencer Outreach, as there everything has to be done manually, proposals & briefs to influencers often lack the personalization which is a huge factor that affects the decision of the influencers.
Starbuzz.ai Tool suggests brands with predefined templates that are influencer friendly. Those templates not only support personalized proposals, but also suggest the details influencers expect from a brand to include.
Key Takeaways
Influencer outreach, when done effectively, helps to build relationships with relevant influencers, choose credible influencers, and determine the best way to utilize the platform to reach the target audience.
Some of the mistakes brands make while choosing influencers are not doing proper research, choosing influencers solely based on their followers, and underestimating the authenticity of an influencer.
To identify perfect influencers, brands need to determine their target audience first, use tools like Starbuzz.ai Saas to save time, and analyze the metrics of an influencer.
While reaching out to influencers, it's important to send the message personalized, with clear information on the benefits, and objectives.
Most preferred mediums to contact the influencers are E-mail and Social Media.
What influencers expect from a brand's proposal are objectives of the campaign, benefits they get, products & services the brand offers, target audience, compensation, & proper timeline.
Conclusion
Influencer outreach is often underestimated or undervalued in the process of creating an effective influencer marketing campaign. Influencer outreach strategy is one of the points where it holds a vast amount of power in making an influencer marketing campaign successful.