So you’re thinking of running a giveaway.
You know that it helps you to create buzz and grow your email list.
But at the same time…
You’re concerned about the fact that nobody knows you.
You have no website traffic.
You have no recommendations.
What if people won’t take part in your campaign?
What if you attract the wrong audience?
Let me tell you this:
You don’t have to do it all by yourself.
You can leverage the popularity of someone in your niche. Someone whom people trust and take advice from. That “someone” is called an influencer.
Today I will teach you how to create an influencer marketing strategy.
At the end of this post, you should be able to find an influencer who can take your giveaway to the next level.
Ready?
What Is Influencer Marketing and How Can It Help You?
Here’s what influencer marketing means:
It’s the collaboration between a brand and an influencer. The influencer’s role is to promote the brand’s campaign to his or her loyal audience.
By tapping into an influencer’s audience, a brand can gain results overnight. Influencer marketing helps a brand, big or small, reach any goal:
- Brand awareness
- More traffic
- Social media followers
- Product sales
- Build social proof
Here’s a simple example of an influencer marketing campaign in action:
Fashion company ASOS works with Instagram influencer Gemma Talbot. Gemma has over 67.1k followers. In Gemma’s post, she wears the brand’s dad suit blazer.
Notice how she promotes the blazer. She tags ASOS and leaves a link to the outfit for anyone who wants to buy.
Gemma also does the same thing with other brands like Zara and MISSGUIDED. She’s all about fashion and style. Businesses in the same space ought to reach out to her.
Now, you might think that influencers only work with big brands.
But the truth is, you can get them to help promote your giveaway. It doesn’t matter if you just started out. What you need is the right influencer marketing strategy.
How to Create An Influencer Marketing Strategy for a Successful Giveaway
I’ve got you covered in this guide. Keep reading.
Step 1: Define the goals of your giveaway
Before anything else, know what you want to achieve from your giveaway. Most people who run contests seek to grow their email list.
Your end goal will dictate how your influencer references your brand.
For example, if you want more brand awareness, then you would expect the influencer to talk more about you.
If you want to increase your social audience, the influencer may ask his or her audience to follow you.
No matter what goal you set, remember this:
You should be realistic. (You cannot expect to get 100,000 new Instagram followers if your influencer has only 50K followers!)
Step 2: Pick a giveaway prize.
Now that you know the goal of your giveaway, it’s time to select a prize.
Truth is, there are many ways to choose your prize.
You could pick something that’s:
- Rare
- Pricey
- Unrelated but awesome
- Cheap but useful
But to attract qualified leads, you need to offer something that’s RELEVANT.
A lot of businesses choose generic prizes because they get attention fast. Generic prizes appeal to everyone.
But try to ask yourself:
Will my giveaway participants stay after the contest ends? Most likely not.
You might also be wondering if you should offer your own product or buy it somewhere else like Amazon.
But for the best results, give away your own product. Prizes that are directly related to your business help you earn potential customers.
We recently published a case study about how Bunkie Life was able to gain $300,000 in sales from their giveaway. One of their biggest secrets was that they used their own bunkie as the prize.
At the end of their giveaway, those who didn’t win but were genuinely interested in bunkies, bought one.
Step 3: Decide how you will run the giveaway.
Will you do everything on social media or will you use a giveaway tool?
If you’ve been considering a tool, here are some of its benefits:
- The ability to track the results of your campaign. (for example, the number of leads you collected, social shares, etc.)
- Easily review your previous campaigns and analyze how much you’ve grown.
- Automates the process of picking winners.
A great tool to use would be UpViral. UpViral gives you a lot of options for running a successful giveaway. It lets you:
- Create beautiful opt-in and share pages
- Run many campaigns at once and automate tracking
- Create and send email notifications
- Block fraudsters
- Offer different ways for your audience to earn points
Step 4: Find the right influencers
Are you ready to partner up with an influencer?
There are so many influencers to choose from. They’re everywhere on the web. Your influencer could be a:
- Blogger
- Local who has many connections
- Authoritative figure
- Micro-influencer
- Celebrity
No matter the type of influencer you choose, you need to be sure that he or she is a good fit. Use these questions as your guide when choosing an influencer:
Does the influencer’s audience match yours?
Your influencer’s audience needs to be aligned with your target market. If not, they might not take an interest in your giveaway or become your future customers.
Try this useful tip:
See if your prospective influencer has mentioned brands or products in your niche. If an influencer is already doing it, that’s a good sign.
On what platforms is the influencer more active?
Some influencers promote more on certain platforms. Popular platforms today include Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Also, find out if your niche works well on a certain platform. For example, fashion, food, and travel are ideal for Instagram, while tech is more for YouTube.
By knowing where most of your audience hangs out, your influencer campaign won’t be in vain.
Did they promote a giveaway in the past? How did it go?
Most importantly, you’d want to partner with an influencer who had run giveaways in the past. Did the previous giveaway get high engagement?
If yes, it means that the influencer has a solid relationship with his or her audience.
Ways to Find Your Influencer
Ready to connect with an influencer in no time? Here are a few ideas to speed up your search:
Start with Google.
You can simply type in top influencers [your niche] and get a list of results. Let’s try to find influencers in the fashion niche:
As you can see, Google shows us a featured snippet of leading fashion influencers. From here, you can manually search an influencer’s social media and contact information.
Here’s how to search Instagram micro-influencers with thousands of followers.
Type this:“k followers” site:instagram.com [your niche]
Let’s try it.
This method may bring you a variety of results aside from fashion, but it’s extremely helpful.
Take advantage of tools.
Influencer marketing tools take your search to the next level. Examples of good influencer research tools include:
Step 5: Pitch your giveaway and get clear with what you want
This is probably the most nerve-wracking part of your influencer marketing strategy:
Approaching an influencer.
Before you can get an influencer to say yes, you need to build trust.
You can contact the influencer directly through email. If you cannot find an influencer’s email, use other channels. Send a direct message on social media.
Remember that this is your first outreach. Create a good first impression.
Be friendly. Show respect. Engage in an authentic conversation.
Here’s the most important tip when crafting your outreach message:
Personalize.
To be able to personalize, you should know your influencer first. Go beyond the follower count. What are the influencer’s interests? What do they value?
The more you know the influencer, the better your message will be.
Here’s a list of helpful tips for writing your outreach message:
- In the subject line, address the influencer by his or her first name. Give a sneak peek of what the message is about. But don’t reveal everything. An example would be: “John, I want to offer free stuff to your followers”
- Introduce yourself but don’t put the focus on you. Mention your shared interest. For example, your influencer is passionate about food, and you happen to focus on cookware.
- Let the influencer know why you’d love to work with them on the giveaway. Be sure to tell them what makes them stand out above the rest.
- Consider offering a free sample of your product (as the giveaway prize) if possible.
- Offer something that the influencer wants. This is how you compensate the influencer. Since many influencers prefer monetary compensation, ask about how much they would charge.
Step 6: Plan the content of the giveaway.
Now’s the time to discuss the giveaway campaign. Once the influencer agrees to promote your contest, get clear with your expectations.
This is where you’ll need to present the guidelines and details of your contest. However, allow the influencer to use his or her own style and creativity.
Final Thoughts
Are you ready to implement your own influencer marketing strategy? Influencers can help promote your giveaway and take it to the next level.
Remember the 6 steps we discussed:
Define your giveaway goal.
Pick a relevant prize.
Decide if you’re going to do everything on social media or use a giveaway platform.
Find your ideal influencer.Discuss the details of your giveaway with the influencer.
Learned something valuable from today’s article? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
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