Whether you provide a product, service or experience, finding ways to advertise and increase exposure is absolutely essential to your brand’s existence. In many cases, brands that are just starting out have difficulty gaining traction in highly-contested niches where these offerings may already be available. As such, it requires a bit of creativity and planning to make a good and powerful impression.

Influencers exist in virtually every niche and industry, and can help augment the visibility of your brand. The hard part is convincing them to promote your offerings. Let’s talk about what you should consider when targeting influencers via the internet.

Inspect Reach

Before you do any marketing to influencers whatsoever, you first need to consider who you’re targeting. Most brands won’t want to waste too much time targeting the smallest fish in the pond, so to speak. Nevertheless, aiming a bit lower than you might otherwise choose could be a more effective way to initially generate positive reception and attention for your brand.

Likewise, figuring out who in your niche or industry is pinging links to the largest number of people via social media and websites is equally important. Once you’ve categorized all of your targeted influencers and have an understanding of who – and how many – they’re reaching, you can begin cultivating strategies that best cater to each particular influencer.

Inspect Relevance

There’s a seemingly countless number of influencers online these days: which ones are right for your brand? Even within one particular niche, not all influencers are going to be relevant to your brand. Because of this, it is important to do your research and narrow down who exactly you’re targeting. Some indicators of good influencers for your brand include the overall demographic makeup and interest of their audiences, the manner in which they communicate to their audiences and what particular angle(s) they use to communicate.

Inspect Style

Another important consideration to make when targeting select influencers is to observe their overall style in marketing. A variety of influencers use humor as a key way to promote products and services. Another type of influencer may be straightforward with their promotion. Yet another subset of influencers may decide to utilize personal reviews or testimonials in promoting a particular product. Whatever the exact approach might be, it is helpful to know – from the perspective of a brand – which influencers use strategies that best highlight a product or service.

Inspect Yourself

Last but not least, you’ll need to consider all of this information and how it will affect your overall pitch to each influencer. In order to get the most value from each pitch, you need to be mindful of the influencer’s time; keep things short. Approach the influencer with a summary of highlighted points or benefits and make sure you’re also pinging links to any relevant or supplemental information. Be sure to tell them that more information is available on request (instead of spamming them with huge walls of text) and express your gratitude for them taking the time to hear from you.

Reaching out to influencers can be a great way to improve overall reach for your brand. It also involves plenty of preparation in order to do things right. Now that you know what to consider before making your pitch, you’ll be better prepared to act successfully in future influencer marketing attempts.