17 min read
| September 21, 2022
The influencer you select to promote your brand can have a huge impact on whether or not your marketing campaign is a success. Reaching out to the right person is just the first step though – you also need to design an influencer collaboration strategy so that they are able to promote your brand in the most effective way.
What sort of content should they be creating? How can they best get your message across to their audience? Would giveaways attract more attention to your campaign or sponsored blog posts and events? What about takeovers and brand ambassadorships? Which strategy would resonate most with your target audience and provide you with the most influencer marketing benefits?
Generally speaking, the right method for you will depend on your marketing goals, budget and resources. What’s more, a method could work well for one type of campaign, but less so for another. It all depends on what your ultimate purpose is.
Let’s take a look at a few popular types of influencer collaborations that you could try.
Takeovers
Instead of getting an influencer to post through their own accounts, you might decide to try an influencer collaboration takeover. This is where an influencer takes over your brand’s account for a period of time (usually a day) and posts content on your behalf. This can be a great way for you to expand your reach, strengthen your brand, and cross-promote your products. What’s more, if your followers see that a notable influencer is genuinely interested in your brand then it can help you build that all-important credibility and social proof.
Gifting
Another way to develop your influencer collaboration is by gifting one of your product samples to an influencer. You can encourage them to use your products and design content built on their opinions of your brand.
This strategy works best with an established agreement as that way you can be sure that their reviews will have a positive impact on your business. If you just randomly send out samples without making a connection first, then you run the risk of them not liking your product and doing more harm than good in terms of reputation and recognition.
Guest blogging
Guest blogging can be a highly effective way of collaborating with influencers to promote your brand. The key here is to find influencers who own blogs with high domain authority. You also need to make sure the content they usually post aligns with your own niche market and brand values.
Once you’ve created a shortlist of potential bloggers, reach out to them to see if they would be interested in publishing a guest post. It’s a good idea to pitch a few topics so that you can both be sure you’d be a good match. And most importantly, make sure your guest blog post includes a backlink to your own website so that you can drive traffic to your brand.
Sponsored blog posts
Similarly, sponsored blog posts can be another great influencer collaboration strategy. Instead of asking an influencer if you can publish a guest post on their blog, ask them to publish their own post promoting your brand. This might be through an exclusive post focused on your products and services, or in a roundup post where you are featured alongside a number of related businesses. If done well, this influencer marketing strategy can really help you to leverage the trust of the influencer’s target audience and increase your own brand awareness.
Giveaways
A giveaway is where an influencer asks their audience to perform a specific action, such as sharing a post, tagging a friend, or signing up to a mailing list, as a way to enter a contest and have a chance of winning free merchandise from your brand. This can be a great way to encourage specific customer actions, and boost conversions.
The influencer’s post should include information such as when the winner will be announced, what prize is up for grabs, and what followers need to do to have a chance of winning. Make sure the influencer includes a clear CTA (call to action) in their post.
Hosting events
An increasingly popular influencer collaboration strategy is hosting events, conferences or webinars. With this method, you partner with an influencer in order to promote an online event that you are hosting. Make sure that you collaborate with influencers whose followers are aligned with your target audience as this will help you generate relevant buzz for your event.
This strategy is best for attracting a large number of influencers, getting more attendees to your event, and boosting brand exposure.
Brand ambassadors
Finally, if you have been working with an influencer for some time and you are sure that they understand your brand and are able to embody its values and key message then you might consider taking things a step further and inviting them to be a brand ambassador.
Brand ambassadors use a brand’s products on an ongoing basis and continually promote them online. The benefit of this strategy is that they will be fully committed to your own brand and they will no longer partner with your competitors. However, keep in mind that this is an ongoing influencer collaboration strategy which obviously comes at a cost, so make sure you build a solid connection with someone before taking the next step.
