How to build an online influencer list
This post is a crash course on influencer marketing for those who are new to the concept. At the conclusion of this post, you should have enough information to get you started with influencer marketing. My goal is to dive into each of these topics in more detail in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.
What are influencers?
Influencers are individuals or brands that your customers (or target customers) turn to for content and information. As the name suggests, they have the ability to influence the opinions or buying decisions of your target audience. The most common medium for influencers is social media.
Why build an influencer list
Whether you choose to employ influencer marketing or not, it is important to know how your audience is consuming information. At the very least, better understanding the key influencers will provide you with better understanding of your audience.
People do not like advertisements, but they do like hearing product / service recommendations from other people they trust. There is a connection and authenticity that cannot be replicated by traditional forms of advertising.
What can influencers do for you?
- Influencers, when applied correctly, can catapult your market position.
- Advertise without spending money (sometimes)
- Direct line to your target audience
How does it work?
Ideally, an influencer will come about your product/service organically without any prompting from your team. There are a few different mechanisms for engaging with an influencer when that does not happen. The three most common mechanisms for companies are reviews, product placements, and contests. There are other mechanisms (like account takeovers), but these are the ones you want to focus on for your first time with influencer marketing.
In all 3 of these mechanisms, you supply your product/service in exchange for some type of social effort from the influencer. Depending on your product/service, you may choose to give your product/service to the influencer permanently or temporarily (whatever makes sense). Here is the distinction between the 3 mechanisms:
Review: You supply your product/service in exchange for an authentic review that the influencer broadcasts to their network.
Product placement: You supply your product/service in exchange for it being featured in the influencer’s normal content stream.
Contest: You offer a giveaway of your product/service to a member of the influencer’s network. The influencer communicates the contest to their network.
If your product/service is of high enough value, you typically do not have to offer any additional compensation to the influencer. However, if your product/service is only a few dollars then you probably need to offer cash compensation or sponsorship of the influencer’s content to get a quality influencer to engage.
Paid service options
If you have some money to spare, there are plenty of agencies that will put your influencer marketing efforts on autopilot. They will find influencers, negotiate compensation, distribute product/services on your behalf, and orchestrate all details of your influencer marketing campaigns.
If you do not have the money for that, or would like to be a bit more involved, there are dozens of software platforms designed to help you conduct influencer marketing. Most platforms focus on finding/contracting influencers and leave the orchestration of the campaigns to you and the influencer.
TheInfluenceMarketer.com put together a comprehensive list of the various agency and software options available to you. View the list here. If you go this route, make sure you compare a few different options. Some agencies and software platforms are stronger in some industries and weaker in others.
Do it yourself
If your niche is too narrow, or you prefer to get your hands dirty, then you can do it yourself. I will share how I approach DIY influencer marketing in this section. This method works very well when you are managing less than 100 influencers. If you are trying to conduct influencer marketing at scale, you may want to staff a dedicated person to the effort (or bring in an agency).
1] Define your goals
Are you trying to drive traffic to your website/social profiles to increase awareness of your company and offerings? Or are you trying to drive conversions (sales/email signups/event attendees)? Whatever your goal, quantify it. You will be measuring your success against it later.
2] Determine your mechanism
We covered 3 mechanisms at your disposal (review/product placement/contest). Which mechanism is best for you depends on your industry, your offering and your goals. If you have a really expensive offering, a contest may be best for boosting engagement. If you have a lifestyle offering (like clothing), then product placement may be best. If you have a tech gadget, reviews often work well.
If the number of influencers in your niche is very small, you may have to be flexible in your choice of mechanism and conform to whichever mechanism works best for the influencer.
3] Set your budget
What is the value to your business of achieving your goals? It is difficult to anticipate cost per acquisition prior to a campaign, so I find it simpler to assign a dollar value to the success of the campaign. The value plus costs that you can anticipate should help you set your budget for the campaign.
4] Build a list
With your budget set, you can begin your influencer search. Your budget will dictate how many influencers you can engage with for your campaign.
List size: In general, I recommend reaching out to 5 influencers for every 1 influencer you need. So, if your goal is to a run a campaign with 10 influencers, plan on reaching out to 50 influencers.
How to find influencers: Influencers are easier than ever to find. More and more influencers make their living off of campaigns like these than ever before. The best way to find influencers, if possible, is to survey your existing customers. Sending out a quick email or social media post asking who your gets their information from will provide the most honest and accurate results.
If you cannot tap your existing customers, then you need to do some digging. Find individuals in your niche who have a lot of followers and/or highly engaged audience. You can use tools like followerwonk to do keyword searches for your niche and compare potential influencers.
Building the list: I track influencers in a simple Google Sheet. It is a living document that I am always adding to when I find new potential influencers and updating as I run campaigns. I recommend tracking the influencer’s handle, reach (number of followers), contact information, and the status of their relationship to you. Nothing fancy; just keep all influencer information in one place.
5] Reach out
Most influencers make their contact information pretty easy to find. Check their bios across social media platforms for email addresses or other ways to get in contact with them. There is likely a preferred contact point for all business inquiries. When all else fails, direct or public message them. If you are interested in templates for these messages, feel free to contact me.
6] Manage
Managing each of the influencers is the most time consuming part of the process if you have a complex product/service offering. If your offering is simpler (like clothing or accessories), it should not take you much time to manage your influencers. Ideally, you want to engage with a test batch of influencers (1–3 influencers) before engaging with the entire list. It is a good idea to work through the entire process a couple times before attempting at scale.
There are some sub-steps in the management process:
- Schedule delivery of product/service
- Schedule delivery of campaign
- Deliver product/service
- Track key performance indicators against your original goals
For complex offerings, I like to make a standardized checklist that I use for every influencer engagement. It ensures that every influencer is setup for success and neither side is surprised when it comes time to execute the campaign.
7] Follow up
Most companies neglect this part of the influencer marketing process and miss out on valuable information. Schedule follow up communications with the influencer 2 weeks, 4 weeks and 6 months after the campaign. The goal of your follow up should be to find out how the audience received the campaign and if there were any friction points. If you hit your goals for the campaign, and the campaign was well received by the audience, you may want to explore additional campaigns in the future.
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I hope you found this introduction to influencer marketing helpful. It should be enough of a framework to get you started. I intend to go deeper into each of the stages in future posts. If you want to learn more about influencer marketing, but don’t want to wait, feel free to contact me.
