Why Your Best Influencers May Be Hiding in Your Customer List

 “It’s easy to invite customers into something, but it’s a lot harder to actually activate them, unless you treat them like an influencer.” – Neal Schaffer, Author of The Age of Influence

For many brands, the hardest part of growing their influencer marketing program is finding the right influencers. Brands will send out hundreds or thousands of messages to potential customers and hear very little back. It can be very discouraging. 

Rather than reaching out to people who have never heard of your products, or maybe had a bad experience with your company, brands should first turn to their customers, who already know, like and trust them. Brands can use social listening tools to find influencers, large or small, within their own customer base. From there, brands can grow a relationship based influencer marketing program that drives ROI over the long term.

Breakdown of the GRIN Gets Real Podcast Episode 13 

In this episode, Katya from GRIN, talks with Neal about the state of influencer marketing, how it has changed, and where it’s headed. Together they discuss how companies across industries are changing their approach from strictly transactional to relationship based strategies and how this can benefit their bottom line.

“Recently, the question I’ve seen in a lot of pitches, which didn’t appear until this year, is, ‘are you a current user of our product?’”  – Neal Schaffer, Author of The Age of Influence

Neal explains how influencer marketing began with mostly, what he calls, “transactional” arrangements between companies and influencers who had huge follower counts. Neal believes there is still a use for the transactional approach, but it’s not the best for the long term. Instead, he outlines how going to your customers can be a really powerful way to grow an influencer marketing program that is authentic, effective and easier to implement.

Neal discusses some of the key benefits of this approach such as

Neal has been researching influencer marketing for several years, and he has a ton to offer. You’re gonna want to take notes! You’ll hear why an influencer program might look great on paper, but may not actually translate into ROI.  You’ll also hear Neal and Katya explain the best ways to find these influencers who are also loyal customers and transition them into revenue generating partnerships. 

So grab a pen and paper, or open up a blank document on your laptop and…
Listen to the podcast now!

Quotes from the episode

“Influencer marketing is the biggest untapped potential in digital marketing, regardless of what industry you’re in.”
 
 
“The [influencer] that you’re dealing with who’s taking the one time transaction, even though they may never use your product… it’s going to show to be a little bit less authentic…. and  the people following can read through that as well.”
 
 
“So don’t get lost and just think [ROI] is a sale, because it’s not that easy… It takes money to make money. And it’s not always a direct route.”