Have you tried contacting influencers online but struggled to connect? Well you’re in luck because today I’m going to show you exactly why most marketers fail at influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing has been a popular PR strategy ever since Michael Jordan helped Nike sell billions of dollars worth of Air Jordan’s.

It’s actually a simple concept… pitch an authority (usually a blogger, celebrity or athlete) and ask them to endorse your product or service. This encourages word of mouth referrals all stemming from a trusted source, i.e. the influencer.

These days, influencer marketing on the web involves identifying the biggest influencers in your niche, then connecting with them to access their audience. It’s not just another trendy buzzword you can use to “sound” like an expert on marketing — quite the opposite.

Influencer marketing is a real, effective marketing strategy that has been shown to influence buying decisions.

A recent study by Deloitte revealed that both “digital influence and mobile influence on in-store retail purchases growing by double digits, with mobile growing faster than overall digital”. As online media continues to drive customer purchase decisions, companies are resorting to new marketing channels to acquire customers.

One of the best ways you can convert potential customers that are researching your product is to have an influencer post a product review or endorsement. This 3rd party validation allows you to piggyback their authority and acquire customers from an engaged and receptive audience.

Sounds like a win-win…

It is, and it’s actually quite simple to do. Yet despite its simplicity, influencer marketing is not easy (there’s a big difference). And that’s why most marketers fall flat on their face.

Why?

Most people approach influencers the wrong way, leaving nothing more than a backlog of unopened emails to show for their efforts. The typical approach is very “me” focused and doesn’t take into account the influencers frustrations, needs and desires.

The good news is that most people are making the same seven mistakes, so if you avoid these you’ll drastically increase the effectiveness of your influencer outreach and start to immediately see results.

Here they are…

Mistake #1 – Lack of clarity

As with any marketing strategy, the first step should always be getting crystal clear on the exact outcome you want to achieve. Without clarity, your influencer marketing campaign will feel like being on wild goose chase.

Again, that may sound simple… But most people get stuck at this first step. Here’s what I suggest: start by setting

Mistake #2 – Not aligning your goals with the goals of the influencer

Once you’ve gotten super specific on your own goals, it’s time to think about the goals of the influencer and how you can add value to their audience.

Some recent studies presented in Psychology Today show that self-centeredness and narcissism are on the rise. This probably explains why so many marketers make the mistake of only thinking about what they are trying to achieve and disregarding the frustrations, needs and desires of the influencer.

Most people miss this last piece, not realizing that influencers are extremely busy and don’t have the time to help you unless you can help them get what they want. By aligning your goals with those of the influencer and their audience, you’ll be able to build a compelling pitch, and increase the effectiveness of your outreach.

Once you are clear on the outcomes for yourself, the influencer and their audience, you must now plan out your influencer marketing strategy.

Mistake #3 – Failure to plan ahead

“Failing to plan is planning to fail.” – Alan Lakein

Knowing that it probably won’t workout exactly as you planned, it’s still important to recognize the power of intention, and that not having a plan is going to be a huge mistake. First thing that most people forget with their plan is to estimate the value of each opt-in or lead.

Knowing the value of a lead you can then map out your customer acquisition funnel and have a clear plan for how to generate revenue from the newly acquired opt-in or leads. This is the only way to objectively measure whether your influencer marketing efforts have been effective.

Mistake #4 – Not pitching enough of the right people

Once you’ve finalized a plan to connect with influencers, there are three crucial things you need to get right:

1. You need to choose the right platform
2. You need to reach out to the right influencers
3. And you need to reach out to enough people to ensure that the campaign is successful.

When it comes to choosing the right platform, this depends largely on where your target prospects spend their time and what kind of product you are promoting. For example, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle if you are trying to promote retirement packages through Snapchat or Instagram.

When choosing the right influencers and the right out amount of outreach, most people make one of two mistakes. First, they either do a very large volume of outreach and end up being too broad and not appealing to anyone, or second, they go too narrow and do not reach the sufficient volume of outreach required to achieve their initial goals.

So as you might have guessed it takes a balance of creating a sufficiently large but also highly targeted list of influencers to reach out to. As anyone with any experience in cold outreach will tell you, it’s about building mutually beneficial relationships with influencers but it’s also a numbers game to find people who are open to engaging with you.

Mistake #5 – Going in cold without any prior contact

Another mistake that will drastically reduce your chances of being able to engage with your targeted influencers is sending your pitch on the first contact. No matter how good, compelling or exciting your pitch might be you’ll drastically increase the effectiveness of your outreach by using a multi-touch point approach.

According to the Online Marketing Institute, it can take 7 to 13 touches to generate sales-ready, qualified leads. In my experience the same dynamic applies for influencer outreach. So with this in mind, you’ll want to start by getting on the influencers radar.

As many other guides on influencer outreach will tell you, you can do this by interacting with the influencer on social media, commenting on a blog post and/or engaging with them about their content.  Ideally, you’ll want to do a varied approach on different platforms to spark some sort of engagement with the influencer so they know you exist and that you appreciate their content.

Once you’re on their radar by showing some genuine appreciation for their work, then and only then should you start pitching the idea of a possible partnership to promote your product or service.

Mistake #6 – Not personalizing your pitch

The worst way you can insult anyone is by not acknowledging their existence, and a sure way to insult an influencer is to spam them with a generic pitch. This is one of the most common errors people make when they hear that you must approach lots of influencers to get one to work with you.

Although it is true that you need to complete a sufficient volume of outreach to get influencers on board to promote your product, it is also true that almost no one will respond to something that is clearly copy and paste.

Think: why should they care?

First answer that question, then think about what email subject line would you open if it were someone pitching you. What would the email say? Would it be to the point or long and wordy?

When you take the time to put yourself in their shoes it starts to become pretty clear how you should personalize each message. Spend some time understanding their opinions, preferences, and what their audience responds to.  This can’t be stressed enough: you must understand their goals and explain how you can help them achieve them.

Mistake #7 – Treating influencer marketing like a magic pill

Influencer marketing is only effective when it is used as part of an entire customer acquisition strategy. It should be viewed as tactic for increasing the top of the funnel leads within a holistic marketing strategy.

Not every influencer you partner with will provide the results you were hoping for, so you need to be consistent in approaching new influencers regularly.

Try to have realistic expectations and track your results so that you may remain objective when you say your influencer marketing did or didn’t produce the results you were hoping for.

Conclusion

So as you can see, there are many pitfalls to avoid in order to run a successful influencer marketing campaign. Remember, that if you want to create a wildly successful campaign treat influencers with respect, avoid these 7 mistakes and put in the work.

Don’t have the time to manage an influencer marketing campaign yourself?
Click here to let us do the work for you and connect with the top influencers in your niche.

If your business isn’t marketing online, you could be missing out on a lot of business.

Even brick and mortar stores need an online presence. Why? Because consumers are online. And it’s essential that you get their attention to get ahead.

How can you do this?

By keeping on top of the online marketing methods that will help get you in front of those online consumers. Here are 6 online marketing skills that will get your business ahead online.

#1 Sharing videos that will bring in tons of business

Video has the amazing ability to convince consumers of the value of your business, and increase your conversions. Not convinced that you need video? Consider these stats:

• Businesses that use video increase their revenue almost 50% faster than those who don’t use video.
• 4 out of 5 shoppers claim that actually seeing how a product works is important to them.
• 7 out of 10 millennials watch a company’s video when they are shopping.

But it’s not just about consumers and sales. Video has the power to increase engagement and conversions in marketing. Look at these numbers:

• 87% of businesses marketing online are now using video.
• It’s 50x easier to reach a high page ranking in Google’s search engine results with video.
• An intro video in an email increases click-throughs by 96%.

Start using video in your emails and blog posts, and create videos to announce any new products or services, or show consumers exactly how they work. If you still aren’t sure, watch this video by Kissmetrics: How to Set the Goals that will Accelerate Your Video Marketing Success to get you started.

#2 Using email to acquire more customers

Email marketing is a great way to reach targeted customers, people that are truly interested in your business and your products and services. In fact, 44% of consumers who receive emails make at least one purchase a year based on promotional emails.

While email marketing can be a bit overwhelming, it really doesn’t have to be. Start getting people on your list, and use this list building guide, Acquiring Customers with Email, to really help you increase your subscribers and increase your conversions.

#3 Automating your marketing

One of the best ways to excel in online marketing is to automate your marketing efforts. And investing in tools that will help you automate can help.

Why automate? According to this Salesforce article, “a quarter of all B2B Fortune 500 companies are already using marketing automation, along with 76% of the world’s largest SaaS companies.”

If you need help growing your business with marketing automation, or even understanding how it can help, check out this HubSpot article, What is Marketing Automation? A Beginner’s Guide.

#4 Becoming a better copywriter

There’s so much power in words. Content has the power to reach customers, connect with them and even drive sales. If you really want to make an impact online, you need to consistently publish posts on your business blog. But not just any posts. You need to make sure the posts you publish are useful and valuable to the consumers you are trying to attract.

As more consumers and businesses venture online, it’s going to be extremely important that your content is compelling and convincing. If you aren’t sure how to write great content, start here: QuickSprout’s The Definitive Guide to Copywriting. It will cover just about everything you need to write great content for your website and blog.

#5 Using SEO the right way

Online experts may go back and forth on this, but SEO is still very much an important part of building up your online audience and bringing awareness to your brand. It can help boost your traffic and bring you new customers. However, SEO has changed over the years. In the last few years, Google has recently started penalizing websites that use underhanded, shady techniques to work their way up the ranks of Google.

To compensate, SEO is a little different. Keywords still play a big part, but content has an even bigger part to play. Use this guide on an SEO Driven Approach to Content Marketing to help you determine your own SEO approach.

#6 Developing and implementing a social media strategy

Content marketing and social media strategy go hand in hand. Like content and SEO, social media is constantly evolving, and it pays to stay on top of the current trends and practices.

To help you get more strategic and help you implement your own social media strategy, use MarkinBlog’s guide: 101+ Actionable Ideas to Explode Your Traffic Growth. It can help you pick with social networks to focus on, what times you should be sharing updates, how to track your progress and more.

Online marketing has moved from a small part of business, to a necessity. If your business isn’t utilizing online marketing strategies to their fullest potential, you could be missing out on a lot of customers. Conquer these 6 marketing skills and you will be on your way to mastering online marketing.

Blogger outreach is quickly growing into one of the top ways to help businesses build traffic to their websites.

Why?

Because it works. And it brings so many other benefits than just traffic.

It brings you targeted traffic, and helps your products or services get seen by the right audience. By guest posting on specific niche blogs, you can gain tons of exposure and credibility within your industry. Plus it makes Google happy by giving you some extra SEO-juice from those inbound links.

So why don’t more people guest blog?

It’s a lot of work.

Bloggers are savvy. And maybe even a bit picky. They aren’t going to accept a guest post from just anyone. Getting accepted to guest post often takes a well-crafted email pitch to big-name, prominent bloggers.

Nothing beats an email pitch that shows you’ve taken the time to get to know the blogger, thoroughly read their blog and personalize every aspect of your email, like this one.

But that can take hours upon hours to do. Especially when you’re pitching multiple bloggers each day hoping to land a guest blogging opportunity.

But here’s something that is a cold hard truth. Most of those long hours will be thankless and a majority of people will not get back to you.

And if you’re running a business and juggling 2 dozen other things, it’s easy to stop this tedious process with nothing to show for your initial efforts.

Instead of spending all your time figuring out how to customize your email pitch for each blogger, start off with an email template that you can use to scale.

Template?! Ew, no way, I’m not some spammer!

Now hold on a second

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with combining the right strategy with a customized template that will get your tremendous results.

Let’s look at a typical response we get using this template:

I have to say this is one of the best pitches I have received in a long time! Well done.

I am happy to add your resource to this post!

So stop spending hours on just email, and start spending more time on writing epic guest blog posts that will bring your more business, boost your traffic and increase your credibility.

If you want to get scrappy with scalable pitches that still get results, here is our 6 step pitch template creation process.

Structuring the Initial Outreach Email

Step 1: Introduce yourself 

Something short and sweet. A 5-word introduction that includes your name, role and company works best.

Step 2: Say something about THEIR site

Either mention something specific that their doing OR just say you came across their blog post and paste the URL.

Step 3: Clearly and simple state your ask

In simple terms, be very straightforward with what outcome you’re looking for from a collaboration with them.

Step 4: Mention a few fun facts about your business

Tell them something about your product or service in bullet point format. You can also highlight some key features.

Step 5: Offer something in exchange

What I’ve found works best is if you have access to a different site that has some authority, to offer to include their website and brand in the next blog post you do for that site.

Step 6: Reiterate the request and thank them for their time

Close your email politely and you’re done!

Let’s look at what these steps look like in action.

Hi blogger,

I’m Andrea, owner of ReminderPal. 

I noticed your article here, www.businessblog.com,about productivity tools and was wondering if you’d be interested in a content marketing collaboration with me.

I’d like to submit a well-researched article for your blog about the newest data surrounding the benefits of prescheduling your work day.

I regularly cover topics such as this on my blog for ReminderPal, an app that lets you schedule your calendar and automatically sends you a text message for each calendar item. For anyone who regularly uses their phone, these reminders can be incredibly useful.

Fun facts about ReminderPal

• Founded in 2007, after searching online for a resource to continually remind me what needed to be done that day but couldn’t find what I was looking for
• Mission is to help others keep track of their to-do list and be more productive throughout the day
• The online calendar immediately syncs with the mobile app, and will automatically send the user text message as a reminder

If interested, I could submit an insightful article about prescheduling that will fit your audience and their needs.

Of course, if there’s anything specific you’d like me to focus on instead, I’m very much open to that!

In exchange for your time and opportunity, I’d be happy to reference your website on the next blog post I do for [site] which is an authority site that provides entertaining and informative business and entrepreneurial advice to an active and engaged audience nationwide.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on it!

Best Regards,

Andrea

Template for 5 Follow-up Emails

Beyond the initial email, you should do at least 5-email follow-ups to drastically improve your positive response rate.

Here is the basic outline:

Follow-up 1: Simple follow-up

Follow-up 2: Another simple follow-up which includes reiterating the ask

Follow-up 3: Another offer. Send something like “in case you’re not interested in a guest post, I’m wondering if you’d be interested in …” Suggest another topic, or even another collaboration idea.

Follow-up 4: One more chance follow-up, “Just thought I’d try one more time.”

Follow-up 5: Last chance email. This is your last follow-up for a guest post or collaboration with the blogger. The fact is, people are just busy so even if they are potentially interested, you have to catch them at the right time. There have been so many times where a blogger responds after the 5^th email thanking us for our persistence and would gladly work with us.

Guest posting is a great way to get your business name out there, connect with influential bloggers and also drastically increase your traffic with readers who are really interested in your business and your products and services. But reaching out for guest blogging opportunities can be time consuming.

Well not anymore. By using our 6-step template, you can still easy customize each email and convince bloggers to give you and your guest post a shot, while allowing you more time to work on your business.

More Blogger Outreach Templates for Link Building

Blogger outreach for link building isn’t just limited to guest posts. There are tons of ways to reach out and score backlinks.

Here are blogger outreach templates from outreach experts that are yours to steal.

Have a question? Templates to add? Leave a comment below.

Cheers,

Ajay

P.S. Looking for a blogger outreach service? Check out OutreachMama.