How to Get Influencers to Promote Your Product: The Playbook

Influencer marketing is no longer a novel approach that brands can use to go around the usual channels of mainstream marketing: it is a vital part of your marketing strategy. Many brands can benefit from knowing how to use this proven growth lever, but it’s not always easy to get the right influencers on board. Oftentimes, it takes a lot more than a quick DM.

Here, I’m going to look at the targeting, outreach strategy, and real relationship building that fuels an effective influencer marketing campaign. From launching new products to helping your brand reach new audiences, this playbook looks at exactly how you can get the right influencers on your side. We’ll break down the science (and art) of discovery, outreach, and collaboration on how to get an influencer to promote your product. Let’s start from the beginning.

Image sourced from Smart Insights

1. How To Find Influencers For Your Products

Before you learn how to get influencers to promote your product, you have to make sure that you’ve found the right influencers to work with. A lot of influencers’ campaigns fail on the first step by choosing those who are simply not well suited to them. Here, we’ll look at how you find influencers and, from there, how you find the right ones.

Know What Kind Of Influencers You’re Looking For

There are different kinds of influencers, first and foremost. Which kind you choose not only dictates the kind of value they can bring, but also how to ask an influencer to promote your product in the first place. You should look at not just follower count, but engagement rate, content quality, and their authority in the niche you’re trying to target. 

A micro-influencer with a loyal following of just 5000 can sometimes help you get more meaningful engagement than having a celebrity shout your brand out to a wide audience that doesn’t take their recommendations to heart. From content creators to product reviews to community leaders, know the kind of influencer you want to work with.

Use The Right Tools To Find Them

Using social media tools like Instagram Explore can help you get to see the broader world of influencers on the social media platforms they thrive on, but it’s not always the best way to find influencers that are best suited to you. Rather, tools ike Blog Collabs can be highly useful in forming direct, easy connections with those influencers that best fit your niche and audience demographics.

Another way to keep an eye out for the influencers that best match your brand is to set up alerts for keywords and hashtags related to your product category and industry. 

Audit Their Past Brand Collaborations

Before you worry too much about how to get influencers to promote your brand, you should see whether or not they know exactly how to work well with brands. To that end, check their past partnerships and see if they’ve been able to create authentic and engaging content within sponsorship relationships.

If they have worked with your competitors before, that doesn’t necessarily have to be a dealbreaker. In fact, it could show that they have a working understanding of the market that you’re trying to reach, which can make them easier partners.

Vet The Audience, Too

It is sometimes the case that the influencer may be a great fit for your brand, but their audience is not. You should know what analytics tools are available to look at audience metrics to make sure that their audiences are a) real and b) in your target demographic, including your region.

Even if an influencer might be a great cultural fit, if they don’t have an audience that contains your potential future customers, the ROI of any influencer marketing efforts with them might be pretty low.

2. How To Reach Out To Influencers Effectively

Once you’ve got the right creators (and hopefully a good few of them) in your sights, it’s time to think about how to contact influencers to promote your product. It may be tempting to send the same copy-paste generic pitch to each of them, but it’s not going to be very effective. You have to start your relationship off on the right foot with them.

Know What You’re Offering

First of all, you should think about what it is, exactly, you’re asking for and what you’re going to offer in return. You should not put the burden of crafting a sponsorship deal on the influencer. They don’t want to have to think about how they fit into your campaign, you should have already done that before. Whether it’s a paid partnership, gifting a product to review, or a long-term ambassadorship, know your aims before reaching out.

You don’t need to get into the nitty-gritty in your first message, but have an outline of the deliverables, timeline, compensation, and what kind of creative freedom they have, in case they come back with an interested response.

Show Up In Their World

Influencers do not want to feel like one of a few dozen names you picked out. They want to know that their content resonates, and as such, engaging with them before showing up in their DMs is a wise move. Follow the influencers, comment on their posts thoughtfully, and share their content to build a positive relationship. If they get used to seeing your name in their notifications, they’re more likely to form a positive association with it.

This is what some in influencer marketing call “priming the pitch.” It’s an early focus on building a strong, long-term relationship, which is often the real meat of how to get social media influencers to promote your product.

Face-To-Face Still Matters

If you want to really connect with the right people, then real life is still the best place to do it. If an influencer is attending industry events, pop-ups, or other brand occasions, meeting them there can lead to real connections, which makes for a much better introduction than cold pitches.

It’s also a great opportunity to catch up with those you’ve been in contact with before, turning a faceless email into a real conversation. Even small and well-curated gatherings can be highly valuable for nurturing influencer relationships.

3. Crafting The Perfect Pitch For Influencers

A great influencer pitch goes beyond more than just a message, it’s the first impression your brand makes on them. Influencers, even relatively small ones, can have busy inboxes, so here’s how to make sure that you’re able to stand out from the crowd and prove your relevance and value to them.

DM or Email?

When it comes to how, exactly, you should be reaching them, there’s no single correct answer for all influencers. Some micro-influencers may respond to public comments, others might prefer the personal feeling of a DM, and others like to keep things professionally organised in an email.

Look for the influencers’ preferred communication methods on their social media bios or, if they have one, their website. If they don’t have any, some guesswork may be necessary. Often, marketers will send a brief DM letting influencers know a more detailed email is on the way to their inbox.

Subject Lines Matter

As mentioned, influencers have busy inboxes. You want to make sure that your message gets opened, and, as such, a good subject line is crucial. Keep it concise, personal, and curiosity-driven. Avoid any clear cliches, focusing immediately on the connection you have with the creator, such as “Loved your skincare tips; let’s work on something great together.”

Some aspect of personalisation and the benefit of reading the email should be visible from the subject line alone.

Have A Clear Offer

As mentioned, if you want to know how to approach an influencer to promote your product, you have to have an idea of the deal you want to make with them. Your first message shouldn’t always be the detail-filled pitch, but you should have the following readily available to provide:

• The type of content you’re looking for (the deliverables)
• The timeline you are hoping to complete the campaign
• The compensation that you offer in exchange
• How much creative freedom does the influencer get?
• Examples of content you hope to see

This all makes it a lot easier for an influencer to see where they fit in, should they be interested.

Personalise Your Message Genuinely

Anything that feels AI-generated or pre-written is not going to do the trick. Don’t just address the influencer by name, go further and show that you’ve actually spent time on their content. Make reference to a post, campaign, or discussion they’ve been part of and why, exactly, it caught your attention.

The best outreach starts with a greeting, an introduction, and an example of the content you’ve seen that you like from them. This should all happen in one or two sentences before you go on to the pitch.

Show The Audience Alignment

While influencers might want to make money or get access to products, maintaining and growing their audience typically comes first. As such, you should show where the overlap is. Demonstrate that you know who their audience is and how your product fits into the connection they have with them, already.

Use language that shows a clear understanding of their niche and the kind of people their content appeals to and why. It shows that you’ve actually done your homework, beyond seeing that they are an influencer in a relevant sector.

Include A Clear Next Step

Starting gradually to highlight your interest in working with an influencer, rather than bombarding them with campaign details off the bat, can be wise. However, the purpose of your pitch and the next step to take should never be vague.

Make sure there’s a clear call to action at the end of the message, whether it’s asking them if you can offer more details or if they’re willing to take part in the campaign.

4. How To Get Influencers To Respond To You

If you’re aiming at a successful campaign, you want to learn more than just how to message influencers to promote your product. You want to know what will actually get their attention and, hopefully, a yes. Here’s how to boost your reply rate, using strategies relied on by the marketing pros.

Keep It Short (But Purposeful)

Influencers are busy, and they’re going to be flicking through their inboxes without fully engaging with the messages they see in there. One way to make your message easier to engage is to keep it short and sweet. Three to five short paragraphs are enough to outline the following:

• Who you are
• How do you know them (their content)
• Why are you reaching out
• The next step to partnership

Be concise and edit things down, while still using personal language to make clear that you’re a human with a real engagement and interest in them.

Follow Up Thoughtfully (But Not Repeatedly)

Sometimes, an influencer just isn’t going to open your message. It’s not always out of disinterest, they might simply forget to, as it gets shuffled further and further down their inbox.

Following up 4-5 days after the initial message is a way to check in, showing that you do have a genuine interest in them and are a real person behind the message. If there’s no response, simply move on. A professional and non-pushy attitude keeps the doors open for potential future collabs.

Focus On Fit, Not Just Popularity

Influencers know that you want to benefit from their audience reach. Making that the key of your message isn’t very flattering; it just seems mercenary. By ensuring that your pitch focuses on a true fit, you speak to what really makes them unique: their values, aesthetic, and voice. What’s more, it’s an important step in making sure that they legitimately are a fit for your brand.

Before you approach an influencer, ask if they would naturally use your product or if they already speak to the community you’re trying to reach. If it’s a no, then the answer from them is likely going to be a no, too, if they respond in the first place.

Personalisation Is The Priority

I can’t hit this nail on the head enough: a personal pitch is the only one worth sending. If it’s designed to appeal to everyone, it’s going to resonate with everyone. If you have to spend more time with the influencer’s content to get a good idea of how to write specifically to them, do it.

You don’t have to compose a sweeping tribute to their creative works. Even small comments complimenting editing touches, storytelling, or their humour show enough connection to build a working relationship.

Focus On The Long-Term

While it’s important to have a clear next step and CTA in the message, you shouldn’t try to include every bit of information necessary for the collab off the bat. Include the essentials, but don’t turn it into a full campaign brief.

Save the fine details for after they have expressed interest, sticking to campaign purpose and compensation, if it’s available. You want to give them enough to be interested in learning more. You can win them over with a long-term conversation.

5. Approaching Bloggers To Promote Your Posts

Although social media and video content have become major platforms for influencer marketing, bloggers still remain highly influential. Not only do they lead the conversations in certain detail-heavy niches, but they’re valuable for SEO, long-form reviews, and product-trust building. 

Blog content lives a lot longer than other forms of content typically do, and ranks in search engines. However, bloggers often require a slightly more tailored approach, as well. Here, we’ll look at how to approach influencers with a blog.

Know Their Pillars And Style

As with any influencer, you want to show you know their content. With bloggers, this means going beyond the homepage and their About page. Look at their recurring themes, the post formats they follow, and what type of blogger they are. How you might work with a product reviewer would differ from how you work with comparison writers or lifestyle storytellers.

Your outreach should reflect the type of blog they run, such as by showing how your products can fit into post formats they’re already producing.

Give The VIP Treatment

Blog content is, on the whole, less readily discoverable than social media posts and short-term videos. Other platforms benefit from enabling users to speed through a handful of posts a minute. Blogs typically require at least a couple of minutes to read each one. As such, bloggers have to stand out, and making an offer that helps them do that can be vital.

You can do this by offering a blogger early access to a product, behind-the-scenes access, interviews, or any other kind of exclusive content. Show bloggers that you appreciate their need for a good angle. Exclusive content is also a lot more likely to earn backlinks from other sites.

Make Monetisation Clear

Although blogs might be highly valuable to your campaign, they do tend to offer less immediate earnings for the bloggers themselves. As such, having a means to offer support that they can immediately understand can be highly valuable.

Offering a commissionable affiliate link, co-branded content sponsorship, or sponsored post payment is a lot more likely to get a response than a vague lead-in.

Go For The Evergreen

Bloggers benefit from long-term traffic towards their content, as well as content that fits well enough with their general interests for them to be able to link back to time and time again.

As such, proposing content that has long-tail potential, rather than being too specific in their reach, can make it fit their analytics, making them more likely to agree. At the very least, you can allow them creative control to make their content as long-term search-friendly as possible.

Respect Their Editorial Calendar

Many bloggers have their content planned out for weeks or even months in advance. They can’t often get content live as quickly as short-form video creators. Blogging generally takes more work, so don’t expect overnight deliverables.

In your pitch, ask when their next relevant content slot is. Offer plenty of lead time. A respectful, low-pressure timeline increases the chance they’ll say yes.

6. How To Pay Influencers For Product Promotion

If you want creators to engage, then you need to know how to pay influencers to promote your product. Fair and strategic compensation is the best way to build lasting relationships. There are no industry-wide standards, so it’s important to navigate payment carefully.

Know Your Pricing Models

There are multiple ways to pay influencers, including:

• Flat fees for specific deliverables
• Affiliate commissions on tracked sales
• Product gifting
• Performance bonuses for engagement targets
• Retainers for long-term brand ambassadors

Know how to use these models for different contexts, whether you want guaranteed posts with flat fees or retainers to build a consistent relationship with a high-value influencer.

Don’t Base It On Follower Count Alone

While some brands do pay influencers based largely on follower count, following it alone can be a mistake. Make sure to take into account their engagement rate, content quality, and production effort. If a highly produced video is likely to get you more conversions than a single social media post that reaches millions more people, it’s worth paying more for.

Understand Usage Rights And Whitelisting

If you plan to reuse influencer content in your own ads or on your site, you should make sure you’re paying for it, too. Be up front about how and where you will use their content and how they get compensated every time it is used or posted.

Put It In Writing

Most important of all, always use a written agreement where any form of compensation is involved. Be sure to include payment terms, deliverables, deadlines, cancellation policies, and usage rights. This protects both parties and ensures expectations are aligned.

Learn How To Reach Influencers With Blog Collabs

Successful influencer partnerships require more than free products and generic pitches alone. You have to ensure that you have the brand alignment, thoughtful outreach, and the right offer to get influencers on your side. Every step of the process matters, and Blog Collabs can make it easier to make the first step right, so sign up and start building smarter relationships today.