I’m running a small marketing agency and thinking about adding influencer marketing to our services. My clients keep asking about it but I’m not sure where to start. What’s the best approach to get into this space without messing up?
Reflecting on an influencer campaign, we faced a significant challenge when our initial efforts failed despite good engagement metrics. The issue wasn’t in the content itself but rather in our email follow-up strategy. We were sending the same generic welcome emails to all new subscribers, including those from influencer relationships. Once we started segmenting our audience and tailoring workflows to acknowledge the specific influencers that brought them in, we saw a remarkable 40% increase in conversions. The key takeaway? Align your email strategy with the touchpoints where subscribers originate.
We stumbled into this when a client’s budget got cut and we couldn’t pay big influencers anymore. So we pivoted to their existing customers who had decent followings. Their authentic testimonials crushed every paid partnership we’d done before. That’s when it hit us - influencer marketing isn’t about finding stars. It’s about finding voices your audience already trusts in their own communities.
When we launched influencer services, I treated it like PPC - chasing reach and impressions. CTRs looked good but CPA was trash. Everything changed when we tracked post-engagement to actual conversions instead of just clicks. Micro-influencers with 5K followers in our client’s niche crushed macro-influencers with 100K+ - 3x better ROAS. Audience quality beats size every time.