Influencers have become a part and parcel of digital marketing in today’s world, regardless of the industry. Whether you want to increase your brand’s credibility or create hype about your products, you need their help. And if you are considering launching an unpaid campaign to get your brand out there, you may wonder, “How do I get influencers to post my brand for free?”

To do that, start by finding the right influencer for your business and talk to them about how a partnership between you and the influencer can help both parties. Entice them to accept your proposal by offering free samples or huge discounts on purchase. You can also consider making them your affiliate.

But just learning these might not be enough for everyone. That’s why, in this article, I will briefly discuss how you can get influencers to work with you for free. I will also answer how you can find the right influencer for your business and share some tips regarding working with influencers. Learning these will help you to launch marketing campaigns to increase your company’s success.

Here's How To Get Influencers To Promote Your Products For Free

In this section, I’m going to discuss a list of things you need to do to get social media influencers to promote your brand for free. These include:

• Reach Out To The Right Influencer

This is the first and most crucial step for launching a successful, unpaid campaign for promoting your product. This type of campaign will usually attract social media influencers or micro-influencers who have a smaller audience.

Most of the time, they are regular people who are trying to become an influencer. Look for someone who has the potential to become relevant and influential for your brand in the future.

If they elevate from the level of a micro-influencer to a well-known influencer while working with you, they may become more loyal to your brand. And when that happens, they will be more than willing enough to collaborate with your brand without a remuneration even when they become famous.

Do your research to find the right influencers for the job, and reach out to them directly. Tell them your story, why you like to work with them, and how it can benefit both parties.

• Talk About How Both Of You Will Benefit From The Partnership

When you contact an influencer, be very specific about your partnership. Tell him or her how this partnership can benefit both parties.

Influencer marketing is the most effective way to establish a solid online presence for your brand. Influencers can create content through which their audience gets to know more about your brand, who you are, what you stand for, and the products you offer.

One of the benefits of influencer marketing is that you don’t have to spend time and money on testing and finding your audience. The influencers have already done that job for you. And by partnering up with them, you will be leveraging their influence on social media platforms.

Talk with your influencer and lay out the groundwork so that he or she can understand how both parties can be influential for your brand. Discuss joint ventures, cross-promotional campaigns, live events on each other’s social media accounts. 

If you are out of content ideas, share your influencers’ content on your brand’s social media page. Also, provide the features of your brand’s pages such as posts, tags, etc. In that way, your followers can easily find your influencers’ Instagram or Facebook pages. 

As a result, their audience base will keep on increasing and at the same time, your brand will solidify its online presence. It’s a win-win situation for both parties.

• Provide Free Samples

You can give free samples to your unpaid influencers as a form of compensation. This type of product exchange can encourage them to post about your brand on their social media pages.

But before you do that, discuss the terms of exchange with your influencers and work out a deal that is beneficial for both parties. Does a monthly product exchange work for both of you? Or will a one-time exchange suffice? Find out which one works for both you and your influencers.

While offering them free samples of your products, instruct your influencers on how to promote them in ways that fit their social media pages and benefit your business at the same time. In that way, you are not only spreading words about your brand but also providing your influencer an opportunity to become more influential on social media platforms.

Another way you can work out an unpaid promotional campaign is by making a product review arrangement. Although this also requires a product exchange, it will give you more control over how the content is created.  

Provide them a review sample (of course for keeping) and have them review the product on their Facebook, Instagram, or other social media accounts, linking your brand’s page on the post.

This review arrangement is almost similar to the product gifting strategy I’ve discussed here. However, in the case of the second product exchange strategy, your influencer will be reviewing the product you sent over, talking about its features and drawbacks. 

This strategy works better as it helps increase your brand’s credibility as opposed to a blanket brand promotion through gifting a product to your influencers.

In case your products cost a lot and you are not willing to give any away, you can offer a good discount to your influencers. Let them know, if they are willing to post about the product on their social media accounts, they can get the product at a lower price. You have to make the offer worthy of their time and effort. And as you are trying to create an unpaid campaign, you have to attract influencers with lucrative offers.

• Talk About Your Story

When reaching out to influencers, focus on building a good relationship with them. Don’t start by boasting about the opportunity you are offering them. Rather, share your thoughts on their contents and what you love about them. 

I will also recommend you to reference content such as a podcast or post that you liked and how that led you to contact the influencer.

Keep your pitch simple and clear. Let them know who you are and what you do. However, don’t expect they will fall in love with your offer just after a single message. And it is always a bad idea to pitch your product to an influencer in your initial contact. If someone is interested in your brand, they will express their desire to work with you.

Also, be very specific about how much work your influencer will need to do. If possible, help them out by providing instructions, sample images, and content that they can use. If you make things easier for your influencers, they will be more eager to work with you.

• Make Them An Affiliate

Nowadays, “affiliate marketing” is a well-known term. Here, you will be providing affiliate links to your affiliates. They will post these links on their social media page so that their audience can purchase the product using these links. For each successful sale, affiliates will receive a small percentage of the purchase price.

You can make influencers your affiliates. And this will encourage them to promote your products aggressively. By doing so, you will be giving up a small percentage of your profit. But, it can bring in new sales through your influencers’ affiliate links. And this will ultimately increase your revenue. Using apps like the Affiliate & Ambassador Portal can automate your affiliate program.

How to Pick the Right Influencer for Your Business?

First of all, find someone whose niche matches your brand. Check the engagement rate of these influencers and perform influencer analysis. Also, avoid people who will promote anything they get their hands on. If you do everything right, you will have no trouble finding the right influencer for your business.

Working with the right influence can do wonders for your business. But finding the right one can be quite a daunting task. Down here, I’ve listed some of the things you should consider that can help you find the right influencer for promoting your business. They are:

• Avoid Influencers Who Will Promote Anything They Can

The number of aspiring influencers is increasing at an astounding rate. And many of them are ready to jump at any offer without knowing anything about promotion campaigns. 

And if you choose someone like that, it can negatively impact your business. Find someone who puts the values and quality of their content first and brand promotion second.

• Find Someone Who's Niche Matches Your Brand

In order for an influencer marketing campaign to be successful, there needs to be a significant amount of relevance to your products and the lifestyle your influencer promotes. And an influencer-brand mismatch can hurt your brand’s reputation.

Your influencers have to have a clear idea about the product they are promoting. They need to know how to use it before they recommend it to others. And by utilizing this approach, they will resonate better with their followers. And that will result in a much more effective marketing campaign.

For instance - Logitech is a gaming peripherals brand. And their products are naturally perfect for professional gamers who need the best peripherals so that they have a competitive advantage over others. Logitech has targeted influencers with these characteristics for its influencer program. And they have achieved remarkable results through their promotional campaigns.

• Find Out The Influencer's Engagement Rate

Only follower count can’t tell you how connected they are with their audience. For that, you will need to check their engagement metrics.

Engagement metrics are a measure of how connected an influencer is with his or her followers. In social media platforms, these metrics are mainly the number of comments, likes and posts shared. And after you start working with an influencer, you will have access to some additional engagement metrics such as coupon code redemptions, the number of link clicks, etc.

Before recruiting influencers for your business, check the number of likes, comments, and shares on their posts. Keep in mind that just the number of likes doesn’t represent how connected an influencer is with their audience. When a follower takes the time to comment or share the influencer’s post, these activities can count as quality interactions.

You can also consider campaign-specific hashtags that an influencer is using as an engagement metric. Search the hashtag and find out how popular it is on that social media platform. It is better to gather as many different engagement metrics as you can to get a clear idea about your influencers’ relationships with their followers.

You can use automation tools to calculate a social media influencer’s engagement rate for you. Or you can do that manually. To do that, use the simple formula given below:

Engagement Rate = (Total Number of Engagements) ÷ (Total Follower Number)

• Perform An Influencer Analysis

In some cases, you can decide whether an influencer is right for you or not just by looking at his or her latest posts and audience response. But most of the time, this might not be that obvious.

For that reason, many business owners use influencer analysis tools to perform an in-depth influencer analysis. These tools will look at their posts’ quality, aesthetics, consistency, and relevance between the lifestyle promoted by the influencers and their sponsored content.

You can also use the influencer mapping approach here. Using this technique, you can compare the effectiveness of multiple social media influencers.

Dos and Don'ts of Working with Influencers

Down here, I’ve listed a few dos and don’ts that will help you to get the most out of your partnership with influencers. Just have a look at them!

The Dos

• Explain Your Goals and Metrics Clearly to Your Influencer

In this digital age, the number of aspiring influencers is increasing at a dramatic rate. Most of them are young and inexperienced. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t understand how performance metrics work and what this means.

Most of the social media influencers nowadays are either millennials or members of “Generation Z”. They grew up with technology. So, it is common sense to assume they will understand the concepts of different performance indicators.

So, tell your influencers what you want from your campaign: more sales, more likes, more subscribers, etc. By clearly explaining your goals, they will understand what they need to do and tailor their content accordingly to ensure the success of your digital promotional campaign.

• Keep In Mind That Influencer Marketing is a Collaborative Situation

In influencer marketing, influencers will work with you as your partners, not your salesperson. So, if they have any suggestions regarding your marketing campaign, don’t ignore them. And, do not try to micromanage just because it’s your brand they are promoting.

You know your products and your target audience. And influencers know their personal brand and their followers. And in your campaign, you will need to combine all this knowledge so that both you and your influencers can benefit from it. 

If you treat them as your employees, they might walk away at any time. Doing so may result in a breach of contract and they may have to pay a small amount of money as fines. But this amount will be minuscule compared to the revenue you are missing out on by not having that promotional campaign.

• Reward Your Influencer

A good relationship between you and your influencers is very important for the success of a digital marketing campaign. And the longer you maintain this relationship, the better it will be for your business.

So, if your influencers do a good job, reward them by making payments, through product exchange, or by some other means. Maintaining a healthy relationship with them will only benefit your business.

The Don’ts

• Don’t Spam The Influencer

Don’t spam the influencer if they do not reply to your messages. They may be busy with something or simply not interested in your campaign.

Please, refrain from spamming their mailbox and inbox with your influencer marketing offer. If they are interested, they will try to contact you eventually.

• Don’t Opt for Quantity Over Quality.

As mentioned before, when it comes to influencers, it is the engagement rate that counts the most, not the number of followers. Usually, influencers with higher follower counts have lower engagement rates. So, don’t reach out to an influencer just by watching his or her follower number.

However, the size of an audience does matter in some cases if that industry is not oversaturated with content creators. For example, 100,000 followers are very impressive for an influencer who reviews RC cars. But in the world of food bloggers and social media stars, that reach is not even big enough to matter.

How Our Affiliate & Ambassador Portal Can Help You?

Affiliating with influencers is the best way to brand your business. This way you get free initial advertisement and then only have to pay for each sale. Commissions are also a great motivator for your preferred influencers to keep promoting your business or products. But, managing and tracking all their sales takes a lot of work.

Sure if you have a full blown affiliate team doing all the dirty work for you, it’s nothing big. But, when you are a small business, every bit of responsibility you can free yourself from means you can put more focus on developing your business. That’s where our Affiliate & Ambassador Portal comes in.

It is a platform where affiliates (Most of which are influencers) come to form an automated and hassle free symbiotic relationship.

Affiliates can easily create a promo code for your products and share them with audiences that would be interested in them. This makes the whole process so much easier.

And you’re probably wondering how much all of it will cost you. Well, you can start for free. Yes, that's right. FREE! Just register on our app, make your code and we will only charge you 5% per transaction. And when you are confident about our services, you can move on to our growth and pro plans where you only have to pay 2% and 1% respectively for each transaction for a small monthly fee.

So, what are you waiting for? Download our app now and start promoting your business right away!

Conclusion

Working with influencers can be beneficial to your brand. Make sure to set your goals and let your influencers know about them. Be creative when it comes to planning your campaign and make sure it will benefit both parties. And evaluate your results on a regular basis to make sure that all your efforts are effective.

Hopefully, through this article, I was able to answer your question, “How do I get influencers to post my brand for free?” Thanks for stopping by. Wishing you the very best in your future endeavors!