Before you can start to reap the benefits of influencer marketing, you need to know how to hire an influencer for your campaign. Finding the right influencers and building new partnerships is a key skill for any marketer. But, hiring an influencer doesn’t need to be a long and complicated process. As long as you know what type of influencer you want to recruit, the expectations for the campaign, and your planned compensation, you have everything you need to begin the hiring process.
Often, the longest part of this process is identifying influencers who meet your criteria. However, the hiring process doesn’t stop there. In order to launch a new partnership, you need to get your creators onboard with your initial outreach message. Then you must negotiate compensation and successfully prepare them to take part in your campaign. The good news is that once you’ve hired a top-performing influencer for your business, you can work with them across several campaigns. 56% of brands surveyed said that they had worked with their influencers multiple times.
If you’re new to influencer marketing or looking for a way to streamline your influencer recruitment and onboarding, then this step-by-step guide to how to hire an influencer is a must-read!
How to hire an influencer for your brand the right way!
There are 6 easy steps to hiring an influencer. Here’s what you need to do to go from identifying influencers, reaching out to them and getting them onboard with your campaign!
- Create an influencer shortlist
- Decide your compensation offer
- Reach out to influencers to invite them to join your campaign
- Negotiate the terms of your campaign
- Share the campaign brief and content production expectations
- Sign a contract!
Identify influencers for your shortlist
The first step is to build a list of influencers that you’d like to work with. You should have a checklist of criteria in mind to help you choose the creators who are best suited to your brand. By analyzing the factors below, you’ll be able to select the most relevant influencers for your campaign:
- Influencer’s audience – does it match your brand’s target audience?
- Influencer’s content – does it align with your brand values?
- Influencer’s performance – do they generate high social engagement and conversions?
There are several strategies you can use to find influencers for your campaign. You should choose your recruitment strategy based on how many influencers you want to hire, your budget, and the size of your team.
Search an influencer marketing software database
Using a dedicated influencer marketing software such as Upfluence can help you to find influencers at scale by searching a large database of creators. This method allows you to use sophisticated filters to search according to audience demographics, social media channels, engagement rate, audience size, and keywords. Then you can review a large selection of influencers to start building a shortlist. With access to influencer performance data, you can easily pinpoint the top-performing influencers with the most potential for your brand. It’s the best way to identify a large number of influencers who are aligned with your brand.
Influencer matching
This strategy takes your brand’s network as a starting point for influencer identification. By analyzing the social reach data of your brand’s customers, followers, and subscribers, you can identify influential individuals who already know and love your brand. This is a great strategy for identifying organic brand advocates for a brand ambassador or affiliate marketing program. Upfluence can conduct influencer matching for brands by analyzing social reach and purchase data to find influential customers who match your influencer criteria. Influential customers who already have experience using your products are your brand’s most authentic content creators!
Value proposition and compensation
When inviting influencers to collaborate with your brand, it’s important to provide them with an incentive to take part. The partnership needs to be mutually beneficial, so coming up with an attractive offer will help you to secure a collaboration. An effective value proposition could include free products, event invitations, and VIP brand benefits, in addition to monetary payment. As a brand, you want to find the right balance between offering an attractive compensation offer while minimizing your costs. That’s why offering free products, discount codes or early access to exclusive products is cost-effective. These perks have a higher perceived value for the influencer than the actual cost to the brand.
Influencer outreach
The next crucial stage of how to hire an influencer is reaching out to invite them to join your campaign. You need to write a convincing first message that introduces your brand, goals, and values and gets the influencer interested in signing up for your campaign. Your initial outreach should be clear and not too long. The influencer wants to be able to scan your message for the essential information so they can make a quick decision about whether they want to take part or not. While your message should be short, it’s worth including a few personalized details. You can reference a recent post that you like, or highlight how your brand values align with their content.
We offer more detailed advice about creating the perfect outreach message and defining an influencer outreach strategy in these blogs.
Negotiation
Once your influencer is on board with taking part in your campaign you need to negotiate the terms of your partnership. This means agreeing on the compensation, timeline, and expectations. It’s better if you make an up-front offer of compensation whether that be free products, a flat fee, or the opportunity to earn commission. There aren’t any official guidelines for deciding influencer compensation, but you might find this blog about how much to pay an influencer helpful in calculating how much you’ll offer. When having negotiation discussions, aim for mutually beneficial partnerships which balance the amount of effort needed from the influencer with the compensation they’ll receive.
Remember not to go over your influencer marketing budget just because a certain influencer is particularly popular. There is no way to predict when an influencer will create a viral post or for how long a creator will be trending, so it’s wise to stick to your budget and collaborate with influencers with a proven track record.
Campaign brief
Your influencer marketing campaign brief should be shared with your influencer early on so they can fully understand the goals and expectations of the campaign. The campaign brief offers more in-depth detail about the campaign than you have shared in your initial outreach. The brief will include important details such as timeline, content production instructions, and dos and don’ts. You can decide when is a good time to send the brief, either before the contract, at the same time, or after. If you have a complicated campaign with several elements, or you need your influencers to abide by certain industry guidelines, it can be useful to discuss the brief before the influencer signs the contract.
Create a contract to hire an influencer
The final step needed to hire an influencer is creating and signing an influencer contract. Creating a written influencer agreement or contract helps to conclude the hiring process by defining the terms and conditions of your agreement and asking both parties to demonstrate their commitment by signing the document. Signing an influencer contract helps to build trust because the expectations and terms are set out clearly and transparently. It’s a document that protects both parties and lays the foundation for a successful campaign. Check out this recent blog to find top tips on how to create an influencer contract.
Now you know how to hire an influencer for your next campaign. These 6 steps will help you build trust and nurture a strong working relationship with your influencers, which is vital to ensuring campaign results. It’s important to have your influencer strategy in mind and communicate clearly throughout the whole hiring process to increase your chance of success.
Whether you want to recruit a small number of influencers or scale your current influencer program, be sure to follow each of these steps in turn. They apply to all types of influencer marketing campaigns, whatever your goals, types of influencers, or audience. Keep this step-by-step list handy at the beginning of each campaign and you won’t go wrong!
Another resource you won’t want to miss out on is our guide, Everything You Need To Know About Running Influencer Marketing Campaigns.
