In a world where everyone has a voice, it is increasingly difficult for brands to break through the noise and gain exposure to their target audience – yet at the same time, it’s incredibly important to do so. Today, where almost everyone is online, engaging with your audience should be an integral part of any digital marketing strategy.

In this article, I will show you how influencer marketing can help boost your exposure and ultimately your revenue by drawing attention to the right people in the right places while also potentially reducing advertising costs. I will provide tips on finding the right influencers, getting in touch with them and building relationships. Once you have your influencers in place, I will show you how to measure the return on your investment by generating data that can inform future campaigns.

If you are looking for an easy-to-follow guide that will allow you to leverage one of the most powerful forms of marketing, then you have come to the right place.

Finding your influencers:

There are two ways you can go about finding the influencers in your industry. For most people, the first step will be to think of brands that they consider to be relevant and write down a list of influencers (often you can find them tagged in the photos or captions) that work with these brands.

Next, research each influencer’s website and social media accounts to see if they have a ‘work with’ page or similar where they list any brands that they currently work with. You can also lookup their individual websites and social media accounts to check if they feature any brands that they have worked with in the past.

Once you have a list of influencers, take note of how big their reach is. This will help you decide whether or not your brand would be able to work with them. I suggest measuring reach by assessing the number of email subscribers, Facebook page likes, Twitter followers and Instagram followers that the influencers have.

You should also determine what value they bring to their audience. You can usually find this out by looking at their social media statistics (e.g., ‘People talking about this’), reading any testimonials on their site or work with pages and trying to understand why they are an authority in their industry.

When you are confident that you have found a handful of the right influencers, I suggest you reach out to at least three of them to see if they would be interested in working with your brand. If all of them say no, try reaching out to different influencers until you find ones who are interested in collaborating with you for your specified budget.

How to get in touch with influencers:

If you are contacting influencers through email, I suggest that you keep your messages concise and to the point. Here are a few tips for writing an effective email:

* Introduce yourself and tell them what makes your brand relevant to them (e.g., ‘I hope you don’t mind me getting in touch, but I noticed that you recently worked with [competitor brand x] and loved the images you produced’).

* Make it clear how your campaign can benefit them (e.g., ‘I was wondering whether we could work together to create images for our social media channels’).

* Include a link to your website along with information about your social media accounts and any campaigns you might have run in the past (e.g., ‘You can find more details about me and my brand on our website: [insert link here]’).

Once you receive a reply from your influencers, always follow up with them to avoid letting leads slip through the cracks. I also suggest that you build relationships with them over time by regularly checking in to see whether they would be interested in working with your brand for future campaigns.

If you are contacting influencers via email, I suggest using an email tracking tool like Yesware so that you can monitor when they open your emails and mark them as ‘followed up’. This will allow you to prioritize your contacts and make sure that the influencers who are most interested in working with you get all of your attention.

Once you have secured an influencer for your campaign, it is time to outline the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that will help you measure its success by generating data that can inform future campaigns. I propose that you have the following KPIs in place:

• The number of followers each influencer has. This will provide insight into how big their reach is, which ultimately determines whether or not your campaign can be successful.
• The number of likes, shares and comments on each post they create for your brand. These are important metrics because they indicate that their audience is interested in seeing content related to your brand.
• The number of unique website visitors, leads and sales you receive as a result of working with influencers. This should be measured by having a dedicated landing page where the numbers can be tracked.

By setting KPIs for each campaign, it will become easier to justify your future influencer marketing efforts and find out which tactics work best for your brand.