Marketing can be a never ending black hole. With so many different places to advertise, all the fees it takes to stay into business, web hosting, services, and all the other marketing expenses can get overwhelming, your paying for ads on FB, IG, Twitter, Youtube, Google, your paying $300 a year on web hosting, $500 a month on SEO Services, and countless other things, then you hear about influencer marketing and think it could grow your business, but you don’t want to fork over any more money for marketing expenses. Well, I show you some ways that you can snag some effective influencers without paying them money.
We all know influencer marketing is huge, and for good reason. Influencer Marketing can bring tremendous value to your social status. Right away it adds social proof to your brand, it shows that you have partnerships and that someone other than yourself endorses your brand, someone that people look to. This drives a ton of new traffic to your page and products.
The thing is though, is that Influencers can be pricey, especially if your looking for someone with 2 million followers. So I wanted to share the strategies that I use to scale my social media accounts with influencers without paying them.
First of all, you need to realize some one does not need 2 million followers to be an influencer, that for sure makes them a more effective influencer, but even someone with just one follower has the potential of influencing that one person.
Reaching out to multiple Influencers that want 500 dollars for a post can bury you in fees very quickly. I would recommend a few things if you want to start using influencers to grow your brand.
For me to lay this out, lets say your a soccer page on Instagram with 5k followers. Here’s what I would do if I wanted to start using Influencers without any money to do so.
Now first, you need to stop thinking only about how an influencer can help you, and you need to start thinking how you can help each other, this is especially important when your not paying them, if your paying them, you tell them what you want and they do it, but if you not paying them you need to provide them with enough perceived value that their willing to help you out.
The way I do this is mostly with; Shoutouts, Features, or Joint Giveaways.
So for this method I tend to look for people in my niche that have less followers than my page but still a decent amount, they usually are always willing to help out a bigger page in hopes of sharing their audience, the same reason your looking for an influencer.
I will also look for people with the same amount of followers as me, and I will usually reach out to people with double the amount of followers I have, but in my experience if you reach out to people with more than double the amount of your followers, they see that as them having all the power and that your really desperate for an influencer so they will ask for money, but it doesn’t hurt to ask! I have formed partnerships with influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers for free on a page with only 10k followers, its all how you structure and word your proposal.
And when I say look for influencers, all you have to do is simply search hashtags that are related to your niche and start reaching out to those people.
So once I find a list of influencers I want to reach out to, I start thinking of ways that could benefit us both, as I said before, I usually use shoutouts, features, or joint giveaways and the influencers are usually all for it and super excited. Let me explain each method for those who may not understand fully.
1. Shoutouts:
I will email the influencer something like “Hello, We noticed your page and love your content, when reviewing your page we see many opportunities for the both of us to grow. We would Love to do a shoutout for shoutout if you are willing to partner up for some great marketing with High ROI and no cost!”
Then I would precede to work out the details on the actual post. (Image, Caption, Time, etc.)
2. Features:
Features are like shoutouts, but in my experience make for better content, which means better engagement, which means, well you get the picture. Features would be, me looking for awesome soccer players with the right amount of followers as described above, I would message them saying “Hello, We love your content, We’re a soccer page that shares only the best content in this niche and we would love to feature some of your content with a shoutout to you of course, let us know what you think or if you have any other ides on ways that we can help each other grow” now if your sticking to people with less or around the same amount of followers as you have, this message should be enough for them to get on board.
Then you just use a repost app and repost their content to your page, or you download their content off of their page and you change it up a bit to make original content and then you post it.
Now this is good for both of you, it gives you content that you didn’t have to create yourself (curated content), and it gives them one more place to share their content giving them more reach and more traffic which means more sales, but you probably figured that out. This method is different from a shoutout because Im not requiring them to give me a shoutout, what I do is I take their content and change it a little bit or edit their videos to make new original content, you don’t have to do this, but it makes for better content and every-time I do this, those people will either repost it cuz they think its awesome that they got shared or they will give you a shoutout anyway on their wall or stories telling people to go check out their feature, people love being featured, Ive only ever had one person say no to me being featured. Being featured makes people feel important, loved, it gives them social proof, its just beneficial to both parties all the way around.
3. Joint-Giveaways:
Now giveaways are a great way to increase your audience. If you don’t do giveaways I would highly recommend figuring a way out to do them, they are extremely beneficial. Now if your doing giveaways why not reach more people for free.
So here’s what I would do, lets say we’re going to give away a soccer ball. I would find an influencer and Direct Message them something like “Hey we love your page, we are thinking about doing a free giveaway, we were looking to partner with someone for this particular giveaway, we would cover the cost of the product, We think our audience would love you and vice-versa, we are very interested in hearing your thoughts, let us know!”
Then you would work out the details which would be, you guys post the same image, and the caption would discuss the giveaway and the way to enter the give away is to like the post, follow both accounts, and comment “I WANT IT” or whatever you want them to comment. This is driving both audiences to the other ones page and requiring them to follow to enter, increasing both pages follower count, the like and comment are giving you more engagement which makes Instagram’s algorithm favor your post, which leads to more traffic, which leads to more, well again you get the idea.
And there you have it, those are some methods that I am using to reach out and make deals with influencers that help scale my brands, and as you get bigger so do your free influencers.
One thing I can not stress enough, is the power of the DM. Do not be afraid to reach out, even if you think the person will say no or not even reply, who gives a shit, just keep moving on to the next one until you land one.
Marketing is all about being creative, one part of being creative is realizing that money is not the only thing that holds value in this digital age.
-Evan
