Full Service Social Media Marketing

We’ve heard the expression for ages: Word-of-mouth. It’s ultimately when a consumer's interest in a brand is reflected in their daily dialogues. Look at it as free advertising sparked by a customer experience — but in today’s world, daily dialogue is happening on social media, not in your traditional face-to-face conversations.

Businesses of all sizes should, on some level, tap into influencer marketing, but also realize it definitely isn’t free like word-of-mouth marketing used to be. Influencer marketing is vastly different from your typical forms of social media marketing. But with hard work, the risk can mean big reward.

For example, over a span of 6 years and with the support of 10,000+ influencers, subscription box FabFitFun has grown 300% year over year! You may also remember the viral watches by Daniel Wellington that were on every public figure’s Instagram page starting in 2011— since then, Daniel Wellington's branded hashtag has generated over 2.4 million Instagram photos and videos, both from influencers and regular consumers. Not only that, but their account grew from 850K to 2.1M followers in one year, an increase of 1.2M (source: Salesforce). Translation? These metrics mean big moolah for DW and FabFitFun.

Alright, so you now know influencer marketing is extremely effective and you want to give it a try. Well, before jumping in and activating your own business’s influencer marketing campaign, we recommend creating a well-oiled machine before hitting the road. If you haven’t already, we recommend reading our blog Influencer Marketing: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly that helps kick off the art of influencer recruitment (...or, as we call it, “scouting”).

Now, here are 7 tips for businesses kicking off their first campaign:

1. Mise En Place (i.e. Get Organized)

Much like any type of strategy, getting your tools ready prior to going live or activation is crucial. After determining your ideal influencer, your target audience, and setting your objectives, use Google Sheets as a way of managing and tracking all of the contacts you’ve reached out to along with the status of their participation. We also suggest setting goals, segmenting your market, and of course, deciding on exactly what you want from your influencers and how you’ll compensate them.

2. Don't Be Vague

When you’re in communication with potential influencers, ensure you fill in all the blanks. Try to think of questions or inquiries they may have about your product or service in advance, and answer them within the beginning stages of the offer. For example, what is expected of their delivery? Is it a reel? A Tiktok video? A Google review? A story sequence? Make it crystal clear. Other things to highlight are the campaign timeline, brand resources, and of course, base compensation.

3. Be Human

Nothing can deter a potential partner or influencer faster than a clear copy/paste or an AI-produced offer. We like to add personalization wherever we can and avoid any type of robotic language. Also, use your company email address and stay clear from DMs as they can get tough to track!

4. Time is Money - Respect That!

Look at the individuals you’re reaching out to as possible employees. Understand that tasks such as testing a product take time. On top of the actual review of whatever you have offered, your influencers will be putting their own time into copywriting, photography with editing, video development with editing, hashtag strategy, engagement on their posts, insight delivery, the list goes on... Let’s just say please, please compensate your influencers properly for their time! A general rule of thumb, but not standardized, is $10 per 1,000 followers.

5. Don't Shoot for the Moon

Set goals that are accessible to your company size and growth stage. Sometimes, just having 1-3 key ambassadors is more than enough to increase brand awareness and ultimately sales.

6. Get your DEI On

At Marr Media Group, we strive to include communities that are often shut out or overlooked when it comes to influencer marketing. Work to include diversity, equality and inclusion into your recruitment phase. There is immense talent in communities such as Indigenous creators or LGBTQ+ that tend to be forgotten.

7. Finally, Don't Get Discouraged

Like any marketing campaign, there is always a learning phase. You’ll want to test things out such as different styles of messaging and tactics in order to determine how to recruit in the best way. And be prepared for things like low response rates (the industry average is around 10-18%), lots of questions, daily scouting and follow-ups.

If you’re looking to kick off your very first influencer campaign, but aren’t exactly sure where to start, contact our team and let’s get going!