Influencer Marketing Ideas for Local Businesses

As a local business, you may be wondering how you can get involved with influencer marketing. After all, it seems like such a big and daunting task! But don’t worry—there are plenty of ways for small businesses to get started with influencer marketing, and working with an influencer marketing agency can help you over the first hurdle.

What are the first steps you need to take when getting into influencer marketing?

1. Identify your target audience and the influencers they follow

The first step is to identify your target audience and the influencers they follow. This will help you narrow down your search and find the right influencers to work with. Alternatively, you can work with an influencer marketing agency to help discover and assess the best influencers to work with.

2. Reach out to influencers and start building relationships

Once you’ve identified some potential influencers, reach out and start building relationships. Many influencers are happy to work with businesses of all sizes, so don’t be afraid to approach them.

3. Collaborate on content that will resonate with your target audience

Once you’ve established a relationship with an influencer, it’s time to start collaborating on content. This could be anything from a blog post or video to a social media campaign. The important thing is that the content is relevant and interesting to your target audience.

4. Promote your content across all of your channels

Once you’ve created some great content, make sure to promote it across all of your channels. This includes your website, social media, email list, and anywhere else your target audience is likely to see it.

5. Measure your results and adjust your strategy as needed

Finally, don’t forget to measure your results and adjust your strategy as needed. Influencer marketing is an ongoing process, so it’s important to continually monitor your progress

Now you know the general process of working with influencers, here are some ideas of how you can leverage influencer marketing.

The first is through gifting. If your budget is somewhat constrained, you can gift influencers your products or services in exchange for a post. While influencers aren’t obliged to create a post from gifted items, smaller influencers will likely be happy to have received a gift, so will make a post.

Another method is through experiences. You could invite influencers to a pop-up event that showcases your services or products in a fun way. By having an event that’s centred around content creation, you will likely receive organic posts from influencers who are invited.

You can also use the traditional route of paying influencers to create sponsored content. To ensure your investment is optimized, you can repost this content to your own channels. Not only does this offer a variety of content to your existing audience, it will give your brand social proof. A recommendation from an influencer goes far in today’s social-first landscape, so reposting this to your channel reinforces that you are a brand to be trusted and worth investing in.

Influencer marketing can be daunting to begin with, but it is well worth the investment. If you have any concerns, reach out to an influencer marketing agency.