Influencer Recruiting Best Practices

Whether you are recruiting influencers for a well-established program, or are just starting your first-ever influencer program, there are a few common practices that can either make or break your recruiting efforts.

Let's take a look at the things you should be doing.

Best Practices

1. Take the time to review and curate your prospects

It may seem more energy-efficient to take a shotgun style approach to recruitment, where you reach out to a mass of prospects without consideration of their content, but taking the time to review your prospects and tag them accordingly will make your efforts pay off that much more. Overall, we see a significantly stronger conversion rate amongst teams that spend time reviewing each prospect.

2. Respond to Emails

This is the most common pit-fall of an influencer recruiting initiative. You know how to send messages out to your qualified prospects but what do you do after the responses start to flow in?

The touch-points do not end there. Responding to emails is a timely fashion is an absolute must. In Mediarails you can easily track responses. Get in the habit of routinely checking your responses in Mediarails to help you keep on top of email responses. You can navigate to your Communications view in the load view dropdown, or you can add the filter Last Reply Date is not blank to see your list of responses. Click on the Last Reply Date column header to sort by most recent responses.

Even if an influencer responds by telling you that they signed up to the program, you should still engage in further conversation. Do not assume that they will guess the next steps.

3. Offer Appropriate Incentives

Keep in mind that many influencers may get an influx of marketing emails everyday and you want yours to stand out. Influencers want to feel as though they are getting something exciting and exclusive. Whether it be free product, pre-release products, high commission rates, or a first-sale bonus you want your offer to excite and inspire.

One common pit-fall is offering the same incentive to top-tier influencers that you would to micro-influencers. Scale your offers appropriately and keep in mind that brand-alignment is an offer in itself. A great offer for a micro-influencer might be only free product and the chance to be a brand ambassador. On the other hand, a top-tier influencer who has hundreds of thousands of followers will be looking for a high-commission rate, multiple free products to use in postings, the promise of a long-standing relationship, and possibly sponsored posts.

4. Consider Sponsored Posts

Many micro-influencers might be willing to post in exchange for product and brand-alignment alone, but many influencers will ask for an upfront fee. In these cases, do your research and negotiate. Be prepared to offer upfront fees to influencers who are a perfect fit for your program and who have loyal followings.

If they can drive the sales you need, it will be worth it to consider upfront fees when the partner is right. Do not approach your program with the mind-set that all influencers will work on commissions or free product alone. This is not the case. Ignoring these opportunities altogether could lose you valuable partnerships.

5. Mentor your Partners

Signing up is only half the battle. Getting your influencers to post and actively make sales will require nurturing and engagement from your influencer team. Make sure you setup an Email Workflow to target your influencers after they sign-up to your program. Offer guidance and support as your partners are ramping up.

This is the most important time to activate your partners and build lasting partnerships. This will be their first impression of working with your brand. If you leave them hanging with only minimal touch-points it is unlikely that they will become a valuable partner. Only with guidance and support through their first posting process will they become top-earners in your program. 

6. Treat your Influencers as what they are: Partners

Remember that your influencer program will be built solely on partnerships. Do not forget that a partnership takes work, time, and energy. If it doesn't, the likelihood of that partnership being productive is slim.

Try to think of your influencer program as a community of partners that need your nurturing and guidance in order to give you the return on your investment that you are hoping for.