A follower recently asked:

You’ve mentioned before one of the best ways to grow your firm is to collaborate with other influencers. I’m not sure how to go about finding them. Can you help?

Yes! Influencer marketing (collaborating with influencers) is such an effective way to grow your firm. In fact, we helped add $70k in monthly recurring revenue in just a few months using this strategy.

We all know that building an audience from scratch takes time – a lot of it. Collaborating with influencers is a way to jump way ahead. They’ve already built their audience. If that audience is similar to yours, a collaboration will greatly expand your reach. 

But here’s the problem – this strategy doesn’t work for a lot of firms. Why? Because they failed to implement a few key pieces. Before I share our 6-step strategy for finding influencers, I highly recommend reading this blog post first to better understand how this all works.

Now, assuming that you’ve defined your niche (a critical step) and followed the guide above, let’s talk about our strategy for finding and reaching out to influencers.

1. Define Your Goals 

Before you can start searching for influencers, you need to define your goals. What do you want to achieve? Having an objective will help you find influencers who align with your target market.

For example, I’ve collaborated with FloQast for a few years now. Their objective is to put out educational thought leadership content that’s valuable to accountants. Together, we work to achieve this goal.

If FloQast’s only goal was to push their product, then I wouldn’t be a good fit for a collaboration.

The last thing you want is for a collaboration to seem inauthentic because it won’t have the desired effect. Defining your goals will help you find the right influencer.

2. Identify Potential Influencers

You’ve defined your goals – great work! Now, let’s start looking for influencers. There are many ways to find the right person for collaboration.

Here are a few of my favorite methods:

• The influencers you follow: You likely already have a few in mind you’d love to collaborate with.
• Podcasts: Look for relevant podcasts on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Search for keywords related to your niche. 
• Social media: LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, X and other social platforms are great sources for finding and connecting with influencers in your niche. Instagram is the top influencer marketing platform, according to 86% of marketers.
• Influencer marketing platforms: Platforms like Upfluence, AspireIQ or Influencity can also help you find and connect with influencers in your niche. 
• Google and blogs: Bloggers typically have great influence in their communities. Search Google or other search engines to find blogs or creators in your niche to connect with.

If you’re struggling to find influencers in these places, don’t be afraid to ask. Post on social media asking for recommendations on leading voices in your space. Chances are, you’ll get some great feedback.

3. Evaluate Each Candidate

You now have a list of potential influencers to work with, but should you reach out to all of them? Not necessarily. 

You don’t want to collaborate with just any influencer. Remember, we want to find the right influencers – people who will align with our goals.

To make sure you’re connecting with the right people, it’s important to evaluate each potential influencer. 

Here are a few things to consider:

• Relevance. Does the influencer’s message, style and content align with your target audience and brand? In other words, is the influencer relevant to your brand and market? 
• Reach and engagement. How many people does the influencer reach? How big is their audience, and are they engaged in their content? Check their likes, comments and shares to gauge their engagement rate. 
• Value ad. Will you add value to their audience? This is key because you’re reaching out about a partnership. You need to bring something of value to their audience, or the relationship won’t work.

4. Reach Out

You should have narrowed down your list of influencers, and now, it’s time to reach out to them via:

1. Direct message
2. Email

Influencers receive a lot of messages, so they will only notice your message if you personalize it. You want to do a few things:

• Pique the influencer’s interest in your mail
• State, as clearly as possible, what you’re proposing
• Explain how you can add value to them and their audience

Let’s assume that your main business focuses on the construction industry. You find a business coach who will be a good fit because they help construction firms grow. Perhaps you propose to:

• Hold a webinar together.
• During the webinar, you teach the coach’s audience how to leverage tax strategies to save money.

It’s a win-win proposal because:

1. You’re helping the coach’s audience learn how to handle their taxes
2. The coach continues to be seen as a valuable resource to their audience

In the worst case, you don’t get leads but can hone your communication skills. However, you’ll likely get at least a few very promising leads for your firm.

This strategy can be used for meetups, social media collaborations, and guest posting on podcasts. I’ve shared the script that I use to land great podcasting opportunities (check it out here).

Note: If your reach is much smaller than the influencer’s reach, offer to compensate them in some way. Larger influencers often ask for some sort of payment. It’s worth the expense and normal in the industry. The influencer has put in a lot of work to build their audience, so they’ll want to be paid for it. Considering the fact that businesses make $5.78 for every dollar spent on influencer marketing, it’s worth the return on investment.

5. Deliver on Value

Getting a “yes” from an influencer is a good feeling. Often, people don’t realize how much time and work it takes to get to this point. You’re up against a lot of competition.

You can be sure that others are also reaching out to the same influencer, making the market fierce.

But now that you have the person’s “ear,” you must:

1. Hold up your end of the bargain
2. Define your goals
3. Track performance

For example, if you decide to hold a webinar together, track things like:

• Engagement
• Traffic
• Sales

You want to deliver value by showing the influencer how your relationship benefitted you and them.

Be realistic though in how you measure your returns. Most people have to “see you” multiple times before they reach out to you to become a client. So just because they didn’t reach out to you right away doesn’t mean they won’t. 

6. Maintain Relationships

Did the collaboration go well? If so, you want to keep in touch with the influencer.

Why?

You may want to consider future collaborations with the individual. Social media marketing offers so many opportunities to promote new:

• Services
• Offerings
• Etc.

One-and-done relationships are not what you should seek with influencers who hit the mark with your audience. Influencer marketing can drive very high-value traffic to your firm, but you need to be strategic with the relationships that you create. You can build strong relationships with the influencers you work with, creating profitable opportunities for both of you.

And hey, depending on your audience, there may be an opportunity in the future to return the favor and give the influencer access to your audience. 

And, that’s a wrap on this Dear Katie question.

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Now I want to hear from you. Do you have a question? 

Submit it here

Until next time, cheers to your success!

Katie