How to Collaborate with Influencers

How to Collaborate with Influencers for Better Results?

If your brand is late to join the influencer marketing game, you might find yourself wondering how to collaborate with influencers to achieve success. Brand and influencer collaborations are not one-size-fits-all. There are several ways you can choose to approach collaborations, and the right one will depend on your budget and what you want to achieve with your influencer marketing campaigns.

How to Collaborate with Influencers? Choose the Right Creators for Your Brand

Before we discuss how to partner with influencers and their benefits, it’s crucial to mention the importance of selecting influencers that are right for your brand. Even the best tactics won’t do much if your influencer isn’t a good fit. Of course, this mainly means partnering with a creator working in the same niche as your business, so you can reach your target audience. 

But there’s a little bit more to it than that. Be careful when considering the personality of your influencer. Their values, beliefs, and style are essential for the success of your influencer partnerships. They will be the ones representing your brand – you want to make sure they send the right message to the audience. If they don’t, you might alienate both existing and potential customers, which is a huge influencer marketing mistake that will take a lot of time to fix.

Sponsored Posts Are One of the Most Common Ways to Work With Content Creators

We’ve seen sponsored posts a million times – a brand pays the influencer in order to get a spot in their feed or Instagram Stories. You can usually notice the content has a “paid partnership” label or there are #sponsored and #ad hashtags. 

The fee for this kind of exposure on social media can be fixed, or it can be performance-based. It depends on the deal you make with the content creator, as well as your budget. This kind of collaboration is best reserved for types of influencers with larger audiences, like macro and mega-influencers, but it also works well with other creators with a significant following.

It's a Go-To Method for a Reason, But It Does Have Downsides

Sponsored posts are a provenly efficient method. Brands get good exposure, and there’s very little risk that the influencer will go off the script since there’s usually a contract. The types of content that can be created for a paid partnership are numerous. 

Still, there’s one downside. The audience can sometimes consider sponsored posts inauthentic. This happens when you partner with the wrong creators – experienced influencers know how to maintain authenticity.

Brands Often Gift Products to Smaller Creators

Gifting products to influencers with no strings attached or any obligations to post about it is called product seeding. This is a simple, affordable, and organic way to introduce your product to a new audience. Of course, there’s no guarantee that the influencer will actually try the product and post about it. Nothing guarantees that their review will be a positive one, even if they decide to mention your product in their content. 

How to Make Product Gifting Work?

This tactic is quite popular and works well for countless brands. So, how do you make it work for you? The goal is to research which creators are more likely to enjoy what your brand offers. You can also curate the gift to match the influencer’s aesthetic and style. This form of strategic influencer campaigns works best with smaller creators like micro-influencers, and it opens the door to possible long-term partnerships in the future.

Partnering with Influencers to Organize Giveaways Is a Great Tactic as Well

Your Brand Should Also Consider Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs give influencers an incentive – this form of influencer marketing strategy is performance-based. It usually works for products with a higher price. What does the program look like? A brand provides the influencer with an affiliate link or a discount code, which they’ll share with their followers. For any sales made through the affiliate link or with a discount code, the influencer will get a commission. It’s simple, it doesn’t feel too forced or unnatural, and it gives customers an incentive to purchase. 

Long-Term Collaborations – Making an Influencer Your Brand Ambassador

The influencer becomes your brand ambassador and is associated with your brand regularly. This form of influencer marketing is great for brands and showcases how influencers build trust with their audiences. Just like brands, creators benefit from long-term partnerships in many ways. 

Let Influencer Marketing Specialists Choose a Tactic for Your Brand and Enjoy Successful Campaigns