PR and Influencer Marketing

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Paid Influencer Marketing

You can pay influencers to help you get the word out about your product.  It’s most effective because these influencers take years to build up an incredible relationship with thousands or millions of their fans. You are able to tap into that trust through that influencer. If your product is a good fit for the influencer and their market, this can be a very effective tool to acquire customers. If you don’t have a lot of time, you can use an influencer marketplace that will help you connect with a relevant list of influencers across multiple platforms and help you manage all communication in one place. If not, get an intern and get ready to spend some time ramping up.

 

Paid PR

Some PR agencies have built relationships with reporters at tech & non-tech publications, and some even with celebrities, and can help you pitch the right story to the right reporter who will consider it because of the source (PR agency) is someone they have a relationship with. These agencies generally cost a lot of money with hit or miss results.

 

While both PR & Influencer Marketing, when they work well, cause a spike and then a drop off in your traffic. While PR is generally not a scalable method of  customer acquisition (you need to consistently produce stories that interest reporter), Influencer Marketing could be a scalable method of customer acquisition. While the reach of individual influencer might be less than a media outlet, there are a larger number of influencers, and product/brand promotion is part of their MO (unlike press reporters).

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Common Mistakes Founders Make

• Ignoring engagement levels when looking for influencers (5M follows with .03% engagement rate vs. 40,000 followers with a 35.2% engagement rate)

• Prioritizing audience size over type of audience (The goal here is to find an influencer with a high targeted audience in relation to what you do)

• Controlling the influencer’s output or messaging..There’s a reason the influencer got to where they are. Let them do their job.

• Getting too caught up in tools/influencer marketing platforms - start with an excel sheet and scale using interns or freelancers you can hire on Upwork for $5/hr.

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Fictitious Example

Let’s say your product is an alternative to a GoPro camera, since not too many people are actively searching for “gopro alternative”, but most adventure travelers and aspiring adventure travelers (your target customer) actively follow and post on instagram, this is a good place to start for influencer marketing.

Similarly, if you’re trying to acquire customers for your kids app, you can reach out to mom and dad influencers who can review your product in their blog. Since parents as a target customer are overwhelmed by the number of decisions they have to make and are inundated with products and services, influencers are trusted as the researchers, filters, and voice of reason.

 

Real Life Example

Ipsy is a great example of Influencers affecting growth. Read about it here and here

Old Navy did a paid influencer marketing campaign with Meghan Rienks, a mega influencer on Instagram. This is what the final product looked like!