Crystal Clear Communications Blog

Content marketing strategy with influencer outreach.

Content marketing is effective. We all know that. According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), 72% of marketers agree that content marketing increases engagement and is a great lead generation tool.

However, long-term sustainability still remains a challenge as brands need to find newer, ingenious ways to offer value to their audience and stay competitive in the market.

So, how to break free? The answer is – Influencer outreach. This marketing strategy is beneficial for relationship development, link building, and content promotion.

Benefits of Influencer Outreach

Influencer outreach completely changes the marketing outlook, making it more user-oriented. The benefits of influencer marketing include:

• Expands your social network/followers
• Builds trust in your brand
• Provides a platform to generate leads
• Improves customer engagement and satisfaction
• Grows website and social media traffic
• Provides an opportunity for a wider reach
• Drives more sales.

How to create a successful Influencer Outreach Strategy 

Follow these steps to establish a successful influencer outreach strategy.

1. Define Your Marketing Goals:

   Like any other marketing campaign, your influencer outreach campaign needs to have a purpose. Before initiating any plan, you must set goals and objectives to motivate your team to achieve it. It should have key performance indicators (KPIs) established to help calculate the success rate when the campaign ends. Without a clear aim, any campaign is set to fail.

2. Choose Your Influencers Wisely:

   Finding the right influencers is the most challenging part of influencer outreach. Even if you have the best content strategy, if your influencer isn’t right to execute it, it’s more likely to sink. While you are mapping influencers, make sure you avoid traps that connect you to the wrong kinds.

3. What should your influencers do?

   Be your brand advocates. They should be someone who can deliver the essence of your brand to the audience with utmost sincerity. What should your influencer look like? It depends on what you are aspiring to promote, your budget, and how much visibility you need. You can decide which one fits the best from these categories:

• Famous celebrities
• Bloggers and vloggers
• Fresh influencers
• Top class influencers.

3. Build a Strategy:

   Once you’ve established your goals and identified your ideal influencers, it’s time to create a strategy to understand when and how to connect with influencers. Timing is a crucial factor here. If you want more responses, ensure you schedule your influencer outreach emails at an optimal time. Some tips on influencer outreach emails:

• Schedule initial emails, replies, and follow-up emails.
• Send the emails on mid-weekdays, preferably Tuesday or Wednesday.
• Time them during breakfast and lunch hours.
• Don’t forget to personalize them.
• Address the influencer as a subject matter expert.
• Check the tone of the email; send requests, not demands.

4. Fix the Compensation

   Influencers’ compensation is usually fixed using two methods:

• Sponsored Content: In this method, you control the message/content. The influencer gets paid for delivering the content. Once the campaign ends, the influencer usually discontinues promoting your message.
• Affiliate Programs: In affiliate programs, influencers get compensated for each sale they refer to the audience. Influencers usually prefer affiliate offers.

5. Track Your Campaign Outcome:

   To figure out the return on investment (ROI), it’s important to track the performance of your influencer campaigns.

• Are the campaigns helping you achieve your goals?
• What can you do to improve your message?

Evaluate your influencer’s brand worth

You can also measure your influencers’ reach, campaign engagement (shares, clicks, views, reactions), impressions, traffic to your website, comments, and more. This helps evaluate your influencer’s brand worth, study different aspects of your campaign, and create a benchmark for future campaigns.

Tools to track the performance of your influencer campaign:

• Google Analytics
• Social Analytics
• Campaign URLs.

Common metrics to track include affiliate links, website visits, social media reach, referral visitors, and engagement.

A successful influencer marketing campaign has been proven to increase credibility, brand awareness, and ROI. If implemented correctly, influencer outreach can have a significant positive impact on your content marketing strategy.