If you’re sick and tired of not getting anything out of your influencer marketing efforts, then we’re on the same boat!
At least that’s what I would have told you a month ago…
After having tweaked my outreach template and overall process of connecting with influencers, I am happy to share with you how the results that I’ve been getting from my campaigns have drastically improved (and I’m talking about a 16% increase in reply rate).
Instead of sharing with you the mistakes that I did in my previous campaigns, I’ll just fast forward a bit and talk about the guiding principles which I used to tweak them. After having implemented these changes, that’s when I’ve gotten a 16% increase in my reply rate.
1) Answer the acid test from the get go.
These influencers are just like you and I; for the most part, a lot of us are only interested in learning about how we can benefit from collaborating or when helping someone. That is why, every time we get an email, the question we first ask ourselves (whether consciously or subconsciously) is, “What’s in it for me?”
That’s the acid test that we need to deal with. Unless we have a solid enough answer for that question, the chances are close to nil that the influencers will respond to our email.
Now before you start thinking about what incentives you’ll offer to them, I’d like to give you a fair warning…
These influencers usually know their worth. They know how your conversion rate can increase 3 to 10 times more if they’ll share your content.
That being said, before you even think about what kind of incentive you’ll offer, I urge you to do a quick research on the things that your prospect influencers need. Once you’ve determined that, you can then anchor your incentive based on what they need so it becomes more enticing to them.
2) Keep it brief and direct to the point.
Interesting fact. I would’ve never thought that I would one day learn how to craft one of my best converting outreach templates from getting a reply from a legal website.
Just a month and a half ago, my friend Kardel had a bus accident on his way home wherein his leg ended up fractured. My wife and I thought of helping him by looking over Google to get him a good attorney for the case.
That’s when I stumbled upon cohenandmalad.com. I used their “contact us” form to find out how they can help us with Kardel’s case. After having received (and read) their reply, that’s when I had a “eureka!” moment.
I was amazed at how short, crisp, and punchy their reply was! Because I was so amazed at how they crafted their reply, I then reengineered it and applied what I’ve learned to the outreach template that I use for my influencer marketing campaigns.
Here’s a brief overview of how they crafted their reply:
- It has about 80 – 100 words.
- The words they used were warm, comforting, yet firm – very fitting to their audience.
- They left a very clear call-to-action at the end of their message.
- They used subheadings on their email message.
After having incorporated these to my outreach email templates, my reply rate immediately bumped up by 8%. That’s when I realized that I was on the right track.
3) Focus on building relationships.
One of the things we tend to focus on when running influencer marketing campaigns is the technical aspect of it. A good example is the data mining process where we have to acquire the website’s Page Rank, Domain Authority, Alexa ranking, the website’s Klout score, etc.
Focusing on these things can easily distract us from what our main focus should be, which is to build relationships with the influencers.
What solution am I proposing then? Use a comprehensive tool that can help you with these technical tasks so you can focus on relationship building.
While there are TONS of web apps that you can use to aid you with your outreach, I have found Ninja Outreach to be the best so far. With this tool, you can easily set parameters when searching so the app’s search results will only bring you websites that are within your parameters/filters.
A quick look at how their filters look should tell you how amazing this tool is.
When you have a software like this helping you with your outreach efforts, then you won’t have to bother much with the whole mining process.
I’d also like to note that the software has pre-made email templates which you can use for outreach among other features that can help you organize and scale your outreach process.
Note – I’ve written quite extensively about how to guest post. If that’s something that you might need right now, then you can read my post about The A to Z Guide to Guest Posting That Will Help You Grow Your Blog
Conclusion
There is a reason why 74% of marketers (globally) are reportedly planning to use influencer marketing as one of their marketing strategies. It flat out works! If you’ve been using it yourself but aren’t getting the kind of results you were hoping to get, then you can use the tips that I shared above.
Photo courtesy – © kasto / Dollar Photo Club