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1. How to nurture an Influencer Relationship
Influencers are people. Brands cant forget this fact. This means relationship
marketing techniques play a crucial role in keeping influencers happy. Marketers
need to understand the tactics to get the most out of an influencer. Those that will
motivate as well collaborate. It’s not about short term goals and sucking the life out
of their followers as quickly as possible. There’s far more value in a long-term
relationship.
Something most marketers forget when working with their influencer, is that in many
cases the relationship is with their audience, not the influencer themselves. This is
because in many ways the influencer is just the middle man, the one promoting.
While their audience is the one engaging or buying. If your brand doesn’t connect
with their audience, then it’s not being marketed correctly, or you chose the wrong
influencer. Your proposition wasn’t suitable for their audience, or their audience is not
as interactive as once thought.
This brings us onto the question of how to nurture an influencer relationship. Top
industry professionals advice of the common techniques to nurture. In many cases
these follow the same techniques an affiliate manager would use to manage their
publisher portfolios. To utilise hospitality, excellent reporting and analytics available,
provide all content and creative to their needs, provide valuable commission at a
tiered structure, rub their ego. And all of these are of course true with Influencers.
Though to add some value to this article we’d like to discuss some of the more
particular techniques one should utilise to nurture Influencers that you might not use
for a publisher.
Firstly, Influencers more so than Affiliates truly care about the content they put out
there. An affiliate normally cares more about the offer and the commission. But the
Influencer’s number one focal point is their audience. This is paramount to their
success and they are driven by continuously providing new and interesting content
for them to soak up. This is where a partner brand can really help and nurture that
relationship, by providing, assisting or creating content for them. This means far
greater creative skills and processes are required with influencers, in comparison to
affiliates. But this can be a collaborative effort, coming up with a way to show your
brand within their content. Working with the influencers to produce something new
and entertaining. Either that or providing content to support a larger piece, with your
brand advertised before or after the video. The influencer will massively appreciate
your efforts here. One that certainly ticks the nurturing box.
Secondly, comes the concept of hospitality. Although a huge tactic in the affiliate
industry, Influencer hospitality is even more personal to them. These are individuals,

2. not companies, therefore diving deeper into the relationship between Marketer and
Influencer is even more important. One shouldn’t just take them out for a drink or a
meal. These are most likely millennials, with short attention spans, so entertainment
is key or something they can blog about or take a photo of even more so. Think
about what they post about regularly and offer to take them to a superior experience
of that. If they are huge into sports, offer them VIP, front row, tickets and become part
of their experiences. Hospitality is one of the best ways to forge a better relationship
and become friends with your influencers. This gives far higher leverage in your
future campaigns.
Thirdly, lets consider influencers on a smaller scale for a minute. Not all influencers
have tens of thousands of followers. Some focus on a niche group of hundreds.
These might be the exact customers you’re looking for. Loyal, highly engaged, and
interested in your niche. To nurture these types marketers should utilise the
communication tools they have at their disposal. Not quite as much attention or
expense might be put into these influencers compared to ones with far greater reach,
but they are still important. Which is why email and phone are key avenues to
communicate regularly with them and keep them feeling close and wanted. There
are also new innovations to help, such as Streak which is a Gmail plugin which
allows you to keep related details of influencers together and associate them to
specific email threads. This helps add notes about that influencer read at hand, in
case they call, or you need to personalise your emails to them.
You should never stop nurturing your influencers, even when you have established a
good working relationship with all of them. There are always areas you could
improve. And you want to prevent your competition stealing them from your base.
You need to keep the communications channels open and operating at all times.
Keep them in the loop with your plans and intentions, particularly in relation to your
future marketing intentions. And make them feel like part of your marketing
department. Through events, through nights out, include them in meetings and
introduce them to senior members of the company. All of these techniques are
crucial to getting the most of your influencer relationships.