matt higgins

Whether every self-identified social media influencer is actually influential is debatable. What’s undeniable is that influencers have become a significant part of modern digital marketing. In my experience, when marketing special interest products to enthusiast audiences, the right influencers can deliver a tremendous lift in awareness for new products.

Awareness vs. Relevance

Influencers are excellent at the top of the funnel, but awareness is not the same as influencing purchasing decisions. Eyeballs and influence are two different things.

The key to turning the influencers you partner with into genuine advocates for your brand, advocates who build real relevance, comes down to how you treat them. They need to be treated like media.

Most marketers simply send products and then count views. I’ve worked with hundreds of influencers, and the real results come from the work you do on your end. Once the agreement is in place, I send a detailed media brief before shipping anything. This PDF spells out positioning, key features, and benefits. I never tell them what to say. I want authenticity, but I treat the partnership the same way I would when sending a press release to a journalist.

I can’t stress this enough: don’t just send products. Build a professional media brief. Make it easy to consume but make sure it has the key details needed for a product to be seen as relevant.

Again, I’d never tell an influencer what to say. Not only is that unethical, but it will also surely backfire. My goal with a media brief is to make it easy for them and to educate them on what we feel is important. This cuts down on errors and helps make sure the influencer shares useful information and not just a superficial assessment. The influencer featuring your product builds awareness, but the media brief helps them share content that builds relevance. The combination of awareness and relevance is what influences purchasing decisions.