What every company needs to read before working with influencers to grow their business

This is more than a 101-Introduction, this is a must read before you approach influencer marketing for your business.

Reading and following this advice will result in more successful outcomes and help set realistic expectations.

Topics Covered

1. Is influencer marketing right for you?
2. How to start influencer marketing.
3. How to scale influencer marketing.

BONUS: Influencer marketing ROI

Firstly, who are we?

MuseFind is a FREE and easy self-serve platform to find and contact influencers to grow your business.

MuseFind — FREE platform to find and contact verified influencers.

1. Is influencer marketing right for you?

1. You have an e-commerce presence;
2. You are active on social media;
3. Your products are ready to ship.

Bonus: Word of mouth is already working for you.

Products that will struggle with influencer marketing

1. Drugs and pharmaceuticals: Too much red tape, the risk of violating many health codes and other legalities that will be hard to prevent and control.
2. B2B: The industry has not entirely matured yet for B2B influencers to make a real impact for the majority of companies out there.
3. Arts and crafts: Difficult to keep up with consistent inventory if products are handcrafted.
4. Alcohol: Too much red tape, similar to drugs and pharmaceuticals.
5. Bathroom/Toilet: Not the most glamorous products and aspect of an influencer’s lifestyle they’d like to showcase. May have a case to work with mommy and family influencers though.

2. How to START Influencer Marketing

Identifying influencers

1. Time: Do not spend too much time on this! We’ll explain why shortly.
2. Customer persona: Have customers? Great. Use that as a basic guideline to identifying influencers for your business.

IMPORTANT!!!!!

Small businesses: Stick with micro influencers and emerging influencers.

Experienced companies with influencer marketing or big corporations: All ranges, including celebrities are fair game.

Your influencer checklist.

1. 1K-70K Followers
2. Following vs Followers: See below
3. % Engagement: See below
4. Daily Activity: Consistently posting and creating content.

The influencer in blue has 10,000 followers and is following less than 1000 other accounts. That’s a good sign!

Influencer in red has the same amount of followers but she’s following 7400 other accounts. Red flag!!

Engagement rate for influencer in blue is a healthy state between 1–5% per post vs influencer in red showing a sickly sign of only 0.5% per post. Yikes.

How to calculate engagement rates

Found your influencers? Time to contact them

1. The more the merrier: Remember when I said to not spend too much time in identifying? This is because you want to contact more than 10 influencers at any given time.
2. Follow-up: If they didn’t respond to you in your first email, follow up!

MuseFind provides templates to help you start the conversation with influencers with confidence.

Contacting influencers: negotiate like a pro!

The three things you want to have as arsenal when negotiating with an influencer are:

1. Cash or your product’s retail value;
2. Your BRAND equity, history, lineage; and
3. Your brag-worthy press and other influencers who have featured your business.

You may not need all three, sometimes one or just two of these points are helpful. And remember that you can always walk away or find other influencers. Another reason why you should NEVER put all of your hopes and eggs into ONE basket!

3. How to SCALE Influencer Marketing

Scale influencer marketing if you meet these conditions:

1. You have existing influencer relationships
2. Dedicated team member
3. Influencer marketing works for your business.

Campaigns to scale influencer marketing

• Coupon codes
• Referral/Commission
• Repurpose their content
• Community involvement

Actual content created between brands and influencers from MuseFind.

Repurposing content is a great way to showcase influencers and to also add credibility to your business. Use their content for your social media, your e-commerce site and more.

Community involvement can be more than just a party. It can be a cause, get your influencers involved and care about the history and the purpose of your business.

Made it this far? Hurrah!

6 things to watch for: Influencer Marketing ROI

• New social media followers: Did you gain new followers since working with that influencer?
• Increased site traffic: Did you see a spike in site traffic?
• Coupon code usage: Are customers inputting your coupon code or attempting to?
• Engagement: Discussed further below.
• Hashtags: Is your hashtag being echoed and used by more influencers or consumers?
• Sentiment: Discussed further below.

Compare an influencer’s sponsored post with your business vs their usual organic post. How did it do?

Are the comments by the influencer’s followers about your product, or about something else? Gauge how negative/positive or neutral the audience of the influencer is following.

Lastly…

Take a holistic approach to influencer marketing.

Ready for it? 🤓

Starting your own influencer marketing program can be hard and scary.

Instead, you can find and contact verified influencers for FREE to grow your business on MuseFind.

Find and talk to real influencers, say ‘Hi’ with confidence, organize your followup, and reach more consumers.