Trying to give your brand’s social media reach an extra boost? Embarking on an influencer marketing program might be the answer here.
Some influencers may have large followings with interests similar to those your brand caters to. Put your products in front of these users, and they may just buy them—giving you a nice increase in sales!
Here are five tips for partnering with influencers and driving the highest brand awareness and revenue from your influencer campaigns.
1. Take up sponsored posts
Partner with an influencer for them to promote your products to their audience, often in return for a sponsorship fee or free samples.
Just take this sponsored post by influencer Iskra Lawrence, who was doing some promotion for Vital Proteins:
Of the two wellness tips Iskra discusses in the video, one of them features her sponsor’s Lemon Collagen Peptides product. She also shares how making a drink with the product is such an easy morning wellness routine.
If her followers are interested in getting the product, they can use her special code and link to do so. And by the looks of it, quite a few of them did—because they left comments asking Iskra for the code!
2. Organize a TikTok Duet or Instagram Remix challenge
“Duet” and “Remix” are TikTok and Instagram’s respective names for a feature that lets users reuse another user’s videos in their own post, with their video appearing next to the video they’re reusing.
So here’s how you could take advantage of this feature when partnering with influencers:
Have the influencer film a video featuring your brand or your product, where the influencer holds a challenge or contest for their followers to post a video response as a Duet or Remix.
This way, when users post their videos, their own followers will see the influencer’s video—and hence your brand’s product. It’s a neat way of increasing awareness of your products among users who may have not heard of your brand!
Case in point: this “Fuel Your Edge” TikTok challenge by influencer Spencer X, which promotes BODYARMOR’s EDGE sports drinks:
With a $1,000 prize for the best Duet video that used Spencer X’s challenge song and the words “BODY,” “ARMOR,” and “EDGE,” this campaign produced over 100 pieces of user-generated content. Spencer X’s original video also chalked up more than 92,000 likes.
That’s a lot of publicity for BODYARMOR right there!
3. Let an influencer take over your account for a day!
Influencer account takeovers are fun to do. As the name suggests, you’ll let an influencer post their content on your brand’s social accounts for a certain time period (such as a day).
If you and the influencer promote the takeover well before it happens, you could just drive a lot of users to your social account. That’s because the influencer’s followers will want to see what the influencer is doing on your account during the takeover.
These followers may even decide to follow your brand if they like your products!
Here’s an example of an Instagram account takeover, courtesy of BELLA AGENCY and influencer Mia Calabrese:
Since you’ll be granting the influencer temporary access to your account, lay down rules on what they can and cannot do with it. For example, you could state:
- The type of content they can post (and whether you want to approve such content before they post it)
- Whether they can send and reply to direct messages
- Whether they can tag other accounts in their posts (such as your sister brand accounts)
4. Create an exclusive hashtag for the partnership campaign
Have the influencer include this hashtag in all their posts promoting the brand. And if they’re challenging their followers to create posts under the same campaign, they should also get their followers to add the same hashtag to their posts.
Doing this allows you to review the content created in relation to the campaign by simply browsing the posts tagged with the hashtag. You can also track the number of posts to gauge how popular it has been with the influencer’s audience.
On Twitter, influencer Uwera Lyndah created this sponsored tweet to promote Smirnoff Uganda’s drinks. She also tagged the tweet with a hashtag of the brand’s Twitter handle (#SmirnoffFiestas), and an exclusive campaign hashtag (#MoreFlavourMoreEdge):
You don’t have to rack your brains too hard when coming up with your exclusive brand hashtag—turning your campaign slogan into a hashtag often works beautifully. Just make sure your hashtag is unique instead of being a generic word or phrase, like #happy or #SunsOutFunsOut.
Also, do a quick social search to check that no other brand has already swiped the hashtag for its own campaign!
5. Add the “paid partnership” label to sponsored posts
For greater transparency, influencers generally need to disclose when their post is a sponsored one. The disclosure lets their followers know the influencer is being compensated to promote the brand, instead of doing so just because they like it (though this could also be the case!)
Social media platforms therefore offer features for influencers to add a “paid partnership” label to their posts. Just take a look at the “Paid partnership” label on this Instagram post by influencer, Chanelle Coleman Törnqvist, which promotes Ellos’ clothing:
(If you can’t see the “Paid partnership” label from your computer, try viewing the post from your mobile phone.)
Apart from helping to indicate when a post is a sponsored one, the paid partnership label may also offer other features.
On Instagram, for example, a brand that’s been added as a brand partner to a “Paid partnership” post will be able to view the post’s performance stats.
Partner up to increase your brand awareness and sales!
Adding an influencer marketing strategy into branding for small businesses can be an effective method of spreading the word about your products. The key is to partner with influencers who cover topics in your industry so their audience is more likely to be interested in what you sell.
Once you’ve shortlisted some influencers, approach them to learn more about their audience, partnership terms, and rates. If everything sounds like a fit, then start brainstorming ideas for a hit post that will drive more publicity and sales your way! Want more resources on growing and marketing a small business? You’ll find them—all for free! —on the Gradient blog.
Qasim is a senior editor at PosterMyWall. Qasim is a reader and writer during and after work, and likes to explore a wide range of topics and niches. Outside of work, he likes to meditate, listen to good music and journal.
