Jun 7, 2022 4 min read

CVB # 007 : Influencer, Sminfluencer

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The influence of influencers is a powerful tool. Their influence is growing. But that depends on where you are. Among Europeans, Italians were most "under the influence", with 22 per cent saying in 2022 that they had purchased because a celebrity or influencer advertised the product. Denmark and Japan were among the countries paying influencers little mind, even though their following was growing. In Australia, we sit somewhere in the middle, so something worth considering if you want to tap into their influence to help fast track connection.

Let's start with the why. It's a great place to start for any question related to what we should focus on when marketing.

It's the best and also the most challenging place to start so here is why I often use an influencer strategy with clients.

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Influencers (be they small, large or mammoth) can fast track your connection to an audience that may take longer to attract through your existing strategies. Longer often translates as more resources - time, skills, effort and budget.

Now onto the what.

✅ Understand who your ideal customer {ICP} is! Don't do anything if you are not sure. If you aren't sure where to start, read CVB#006. Your ICP is the customer who will grow your business, as there is no point in engaging an influencer that is targeting the wrong customer.

✅ Understand what it costs you to acquire that (or any) customer. If you are spending nothing on marketing, then your answer is zero dollars. If you are spending money on marketing, take the total budget you spend for the year and divide it by the total number of customers you have acquired during the same time period. {we will cover this topic off in more detail in the coming few issues}

✅ Take a stab at the time it takes to convert a customer. Say it takes a year. There is a lot of effort used to bring that customer on the journey to a sale. And our job with marketing is to work on ways to shorten that time taken.

✅ Get clear on your brand values, as values misalignment can be costly and erode brand value. For example, if sustainability is a value, DON'T work with any brands who DON'T value sustainability. As their brand values will rub off on you! And you don't need to spend a lot of time on this. Just list the things that are really important to you!

✅ Understand your existing brand value as you want to connect with influencers who have more brand value than you but not so much more that there is nothing in it for them. All this means is DON'T approach brands that have a huge following if you have a really small following. Approach brands who are just a little bit bigger than you.

Influencers are really powerful when they are authentic, values-aligned and highly engaged with your ideal customer profile {ICP}.

They can fast track connection at a lower customer acquisition cost (CAC)!

They can shorten the time it takes to generate a sale.

A few examples of influencers you could try.

Individual influencers: people who have a genuine following. To see how genuine they are, use a tool like PHLANX to check their authentic follower count and engagement rate.
Brand influencers: businesses who have a really strong brand that is aligned to yours. This could be a product, an event, a store, a member organisation. Make sure you understand the WIN>WIN for them and you before approaching them.
Collaborations and partnerships: these can be individual or business partnerships and they are generally a pair or group that agree to come together in order to merge and share their influence.

Everyone has digital influence that can traded with another brand (business or individual) seeking something that your influence can give them.

Here are a few ideas of what you can trade

🖊️ + 📷 + 🎥 Content

Creating content is costly, but you can exchange content for exposure when your audience is large and your resources are low.

👩‍❤️‍👩 Engagement

You can leverage the love an influencer has if you are seeking to build that love within your community.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Audience

You can build your shared audience if you both seek to build the same customer base.

💰 Sale

You can leverage influence to shorten the time taken to generate a sale in exchange for commission or exposure.

Pro tip!

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Look at brands within the same space as you and reach out to see if they would consider a collab. That's a great toe in the water step to take into the bigger influencer ocean. Consider a giveaway! And don't respond to random people who have copy and pasted an approach message. Influence only works when it is genuine!!

If you enjoyed this tip, check you inbox in the coming weeks as we dig into what we do next. Emails will be sent on Tuesdays at 12:15PM. For no other reason than I love Tuesdays. 💕

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