Partnering with an influencer can provide your business with a range of benefits. Higher social reach, improved brand awareness, and a better relationship with your target audience are all within your reach through influencer marketing.
But a successful influencer partnership isn’t limited to just the online sphere. Events are a great way of bringing your collaboration into the real world. Here are just a few ways that you can incorporate events into your influencer marketing strategy.
Create Hype With Influencer-Led Launch Parties
Everyone loves a launch party. Whether it’s a new product collection, a new partnership, or even a new office space, the glitz and glamour of a launch party are intoxicating.
They’re a great way to create publicity for your brand as well as provide you with some great PR.
But every launch party needs a VIP to publicize the event and give it some edge, and influencers are perfect for this. With their broad social reach and unique style, they’re ideal for building hype around your launch.
Create an event through InstaMeet and promote it across all your channels, encouraging your influencers to do the same. You could even get them to take over your brand’s social media channels, handing over the reins so they can publicize your event in their own inimitable way.
A great example of an influencer-led launch party is Armani’s launch of their makeup pop-up, Armani Box. Teaming up with beauty bloggers Aimee Song and Camila Coelho, Armani drew in crowds of fans who turned up to see the pair give a live makeup tutorial and beauty advice. The event was naturally a huge success and serves as a great example of the kind of results an influencer-led launch party can return.
Sponsor An Influencer Meet and Greet
Every influencer, no matter how large or small their following, has a devoted audience—a following of attentive individuals who are engaged with the content and personal style.
You’ll have chosen your influencer because their niche aligns with your brand in some way. For example, if you make boutique kitchenware, you might partner up with a food or cooking blogger. As a result, their audience will likely be viable leads for your service or product because their interests overlap with what your brand offers.
One way to take advantage of this in the real world is by holding a sponsored meet and greet with your influencer. Offering free samples, subscription forms, and taste tests (depending on your product) as part of an immersive meet-and-greet experience is a great way to hijack your influencer’s following. Media content from the event can also be reused and repurposed for use in your broader marketing strategy as well, further strengthening the connection between your brand and your influencer’s audience.
Middle Eastern-based ITP Media Group executed an influencer meet and greet perfectly when they invited YouTube star Logan Paul to speak at the ITP Live conference in Dubai. Around 11,000 fans turned up to see Logan speak, generating serious buzz around ITP Media Group’s brand.
Provide a VIP Experience With An Influencer
In a similar vein, creating an exclusive meet-and-greet event with an influencer is an effective means of ramping up hype around your brand.
Create a contest that offers one lucky fan the chance to spend a special day with your influencer. To be in with a chance to win, entrants should like and share your brand’s social media page, extending your reach massively. The lucky winner will receive full access to your influencer and a unique VIP experience. Capture the day with interviews, videos, and snapshots and publicize them on social media — even those who win will want to see what they’re missing!
By creating content for a super-exclusive event like this, your brand can increase your social following massively. Plenty of brands, both large and small, use like-and-share competitions to grow their online audience rapidly. And like before, you can also generate engaging multimedia content that can be repurposed and cascaded across your online channels, providing value to your audience through content marketing.
Let Influencers Lead The Way With Your Pop-up Shop
More and more businesses are cottoning onto the importance of bridging the gap between online and offline sales. A changing economic landscape brings stricter challenges to brick-and-mortar stores and empty units lie vacant on the high street. The explosive growth of e-commerce SaaS solutions like the store builder from Shopify on both sides of the pond is a testament to the growth of hybrid commerce.
On the flip side, this gives both e-commerce and physical stores the chance to branch out and broaden the way they do business. Savvy brands are turning to pop-up shops to diversify their sales channels at a low cost, and are using influencers to help them.
Health and beauty retailer Superdrug for example recently opened up a makeup-only pop-up shop in London’s Shoreditch. But this pop-up had a twist: every item stocked was chosen by one of four selected LGBTQ+ social media influencers, who in turn promoted the pop-up across their social channels.
In getting social media stars to curate their offline presence, Superdrug effectively turned their online audience into real-world sales. Bridging the gap between online and offline retail in this way is a particularly effective tactic for growing your e-commerce business in the real world. Creating a real-world influencer-curated event in this way can extend your brand’s reach and provide a new revenue stream for your business.
Partnering with an influencer can provide your business with a range of benefits. Higher social reach, improved brand awareness, and a better relationship with your target audience are all within your reach through influencer marketing.
About the Author
Patrick Foster is an e-commerce pro from Ecommerce Tips — an industry-leading community website dedicated to sharing business and startup insights from the sector. Check out the latest posts and HQ happenings on Twitter @myecommercetips.
