The concept of influencer marketing describes the practice of targeting your marketing to a select group of individuals, e.g., journalists, analysts and bloggers— that have influence over the buying decisions of your target audience. If you have a media list that you regularly pitch to, you’re already using influencer marketing in your PR program. But are you leveraging this strategy for your content marketing program as
well?
True influencer marketing is more than simply sending pitches and press releases whenever you have a new announcement to make. It’s about cultivating relationships in a meaningful way. If done correctly, those influencers will be eager to share the information about your new product announcement when the time is right.
Properly leveraging your influencer relationships builds your credibility. A great example of this is the Oprah effect. Any product she endorsed on her show as one of her “favorite things” went flying from the shelves; while any book she selected for her bookclub was guaranteed to become a best seller. All thanks to the incredible influence she has over the purchasing decisions of her audience.
True, as a B2B tech company, you may not have any Oprah-worthy products or services to offer, however, you almost certainly have something of interest to a top mobile, wireless, or telecom writer or analyst with thousands and sometimes millions of loyal readers and social media followers. Perhaps a product review by a certain GigaOm journalist or Current Analysis analyst is just what you need to send hundreds of new leads to your website and down your sales funnel. Here are five ways influencer marketing can work for you.
- Ask. Ask influencers to contribute to your content. Conduct a Q&A to obtain their unique insights into your industry. If they’re short on time, simply ask for a brief quote that you can include in a blog post, ebook or whitepaper. If the relationship is really strong, try asking them to write a guest post on your site.
- Encourage. Also encourage influencers to write about your brand on their site. Keep them abreast of company news, send them new products to try, offer a free trial of your service and kindly ask them to write a review if they like it.
- Share. When you create a top-notch piece of content (and this is important, as reaching out whenever you publish a new blog post will get really annoying, really quickly), send it out to your influencers, ask for their thoughts via comments, ask them to share it with their followers or link to it on their site if they happen to be writing a post on the topic.
- Offer. With that said, a strong influencer relationship shouldn’t be one sided, so be sure to provide something in return. Read and comment on their articles and analyses. Also retweet and post their work with your audience. Ask influencers what stories they’re working on and if it’s appropriate, offer yourself up as a source, or play matchmaker by introducing them to other experts in your network that may be a good fit.
- Connect. Keep in touch with influencers online and off. Whenever you find yourselves attending the same tradeshow, or you have a meeting near their office, offer to buy them coffee, lunch, or a cocktail. Avoid meeting with them solely when you have news, but aim to form a friendly, mutually beneficial relationship and you’ll find that they’re more likely to take your calls when you do.
The beauty of influencer marketing is that by building a relationship with someone of great influence in your industry, you are able to reach many more people than you could on your own, and because that influencer’s audience trusts him or her (this is key), having their stamp of approval is an invaluable endorsement for your brand.
If you already have a strong PR plan in place, then you should have a pretty good idea of who your influencers are. Work toward strengthening those relationships and extending them into your content strategy for greater impact and increased brand awareness.