Here is how to take your influencer collaborations to the next level

These days, just about every brand is convinced of the power of a good influencer collaboration. But it often remains limited to a few social posts and stories, which is a missed opportunity. This type of collab can also be part of your channel campaigns, partner communication, and much more. Ellen Buyens, Marcom Consultant at Favorite! and All Colors of Communication, explains how to optimally involve influencers for your brand. Ready to get influenced?

Influencers are no longer excluded from communication strategies. And rightly so, because an authentic influencer collaboration increases the reach and awareness of your brand and often also has a direct impact on sales.

Size does not matter, length does

Setting up a successful collaboration requires market knowledge, a good network, and answers to essential questions such as:

• With which brands has there been a previous collaboration?
• How did followers respond to previous collaborations?
• Does the community match with the target group you want to reach?
• Does the influencer only post short-term content (stories) or also long-form (YouTube, blog, …)? The latter is good for SEO and education.
• What is the engagement level in relation to the number of followers?

The last question is in fact a crucial one. Brands often fixate on the amount of followers, but a niche influencer with 2,000 followers can be much more relevant and effective than an macro-influencer who has 200,000 followers. Because let’s face it, even if generating more brand awareness is the main reason why you enter into an influencer campaign, the ultimate goal is always sales. This type of collabs is very measurable (engagement, click-throughs, affiliate links, …), and you can perfectly analyze whether the cost was worth the outcome.

We prefer long-term collaborations over one-shots. That way the collaboration is more authentic, repetition ensures extra sales and, not unimportant, you can also negotiate better price rates with the influencers.

Outcome = sales

We always advice to take influencer collaborations out of the PR silo and integrate them into your other campaigns. Because when you invest time, energy and budget into a collaboration, it is only logical (and efficient) that you make the most of it. Here are some concrete examples of how you can do more with a collaboration:

• Fun workshop from your influencer to other (new) influencers. We did this, for example, for Sipwell, the Belgian market leader in water delivery. Through a workshop and with an exclusive recipe book, foodie Steffi Vertriest inspired others to make healthy drinks. Read more.
• Exclusive reseller communication in collaboration with your influencer. For a product launch of hard drive manufacturer LaCie, Dutch photographer William Rutten created a photo book to uniquely introduce the new hard drive to 50 top resellers in EMEA. Read more about this campaign: LaCie - Stand out by using an ambassador | All Colors of Communication.
• Content blog posts that can be offered to resellers. Take our word for it, resellers are eager for unique content. Here is a great example of an influencer campaign with the Dutch company DroneHeroes that we extended to resellers across EMEA.
• Inspiring paid advertorials in which your influencers tell their story and authentically integrate your brand. For example, photographer Frederik Buckx in the Dutch Digifoto.
• Giveaways in which your influencer gives away a product and offers the “losers” a temporary promo code at a reseller. One tip: make sure the reseller has enough stock, because we know from experience that sales can go really fast.

These are just a few examples, there are many more. Have you ever considered inviting an influencer to inspire the guests of your next (partner) event? We are happy to check out how we can take your collabs to the next level. Show more cases.