Influencer Based Marketing For Your Small Business
Welcome to the inaugural “Ask Mandi” - a new feature here on foodbusinesscoach.com I’ll be answering one of your questions on the last Sunday of each month, so check back often and send me your questions yum@foodbusinesscoach.com
This month's question comes to us from Chris’s Ice Cream who was curious about if it’s worth it/ how to use Influcers to effectively market your small, food based business.
Upon receiving this inquiry, I immediately emailed my dear friend Allie of @yumyumyow. I’ve been working with Allie for about a year now on behalf of my clients and events around Ottawa, and I’m always so impressed with her integrity, content, and respect for the local culinary community. After that much time working together and sharing our passion for the Ottawa food scene, we became friends in real life too.
Allie has generously agreed to give us a peek into the world of Influencing, and I couldn’t be more excited. I’ll also be weighing in, sharing my personal strategies when selecting and engaging influencers for my clients. Thank you so much for joining us Allie.
M: So a big question I get from my clients is, what should I be asking/looking for if I choose to work with an influencer?
First off, research to see if the account/influencer fits with the niche of your brand. If an account is local to the city you’re located in, but the influencers core niche area is not aligned with that of your business, you may be targeting people with little interest in your brand/business.
Remember that the number of followers an account has is not everything. The reality is followers can be purchased and just because an account has a high number of followers, it does not mean they have a high level of influence.
Think of your goals for marketing- Are you looking for local influence? Nation-wide? International? What age range are you targeting or gender/sex? Does that influencer’s audience meet your marketing needs? You can also inquire about previous collaborations and/or reach out to them directly for references.
M: All good stuff! I also would like to add that I also like to check and see who they have worked with recently, if their grid (the first 12 photos a viewer sees when visiting a profile) looks strategic, and the quality of their photos and writing. Are the businesses correctly tagged? Are there spelling mistakes, etc.
M: So what exactly can influencers offer small businesses that differs from traditional marketing channels?
Instagram has quickly become the go-to spot for restaurant and small business marketing and reviews. While Google, Trip Advisor and Yelp reviews may provide insight into an experience with a restaurant or small business, these review platforms need to be actively researched/seeked out. Instagram provides in-your-face marketing and reviews that can be actively searched for (through location and hashtags) but also works passively. By passively we mean any Instagram user may be scrolling through their feed when they catch a delicious picture of a running oozing egg yolk from a local restaurant, or a long pull of chewy noodles appears in front of them and within seconds they are informed of a new (or new to them) product, restaurant or dish.
Similar to marketing through advertisements, influencers cannot guarantee products will be purchased or restaurants will be visited. That said, influencers often have a dedicated following of people who trust their advice and who regularly message them to ask for more information. The influencer then creates that community connection or community exposure for your product and/or restaurant, that you may not have been able to establish yet if you are a new business. They can also reach diverse communities of people that had not previously been targeted or reached. Furthermore, even if the population has been targeted/reached before, it can be a great, quick and easy, visually stimulating reminder of your brand, business or product to remain relevant.
M: Perfect- I’ve used influencers before to great results- once we even generated 100 new followers in a few hours for a client. It was really neat. As a business owner, don’t be afraid to ask the Influcner about their follower demographic.
Do you have any strategies you recommend to gain engagement via influencer based marketing?
Try to do something unique that other places aren’t yet doing. Influencers like to promote not only what is new but also what is unique. Uniqueness can come through an innovative product or simply in doing something so well that everyone wants to try it and influencers want everyone to know how great/delicious a product is. Create spaces in your business or products/foods that are “Instagramable.” People will come and try your product/business, take a photo and then post it to their account, “influencer” or not, bringing exposure of your business/product to an even broader reach.
I ‘live’ for a good Instagram wall- in fact I’m building one in my office this fall. It’s such a fun and exciting way to engage your guests. Not sure what we’re talking about here? Think the restroom at Charlotte on Elgin St, the Rose Wall at Common Restaurant, the Leaf Wall at Morning Owl Parkdale- these are all irresistible ‘instagrammable’ features that guests just love- and it’s some of the most affordable advertising out there- plus it gives you the ‘street cred’ of being user driven.
So let’s talk about money. Paying vs. not paying to be on an Influencer’s feed- what are your thoughts on this and what are the general rates?
Embed influencers as a part of your marketing strategy and make sure it suits your needs and budget, and that it makes sense for your business. Paying for collaborations depends on the value a business sees in the partnership.
From the influencer perspective at the level of direct collaborations, I think it is important to remember that creating engaging content and influence is more than just picking up a product and taking a few photos. Not only does content creation take time to conceptualize, create, edit etc, influencers will also be doing direct public relations for your brand via direct messaging and responding to post comments.
At the higher level, even more time is invested in growing community engagement, trust and therefore influence amongst their followers. This influence is what the value of a good collaboration is rooted in. Every influencer and business will determine what the value of the potential partnership is and come to agreement. Every influencer has different goals, branding and intentions just as every brand/business does and these may not always align. If the trade off is not deemed to be worth it for one party, that’s ok!
I think that’s something a lot of folks overlook too- building and cultivating a great relationship with the Influencers you work with. I’ve worked hard over the past few years to communicate with the pool of folks I work with, taking time to learn about their business goals, what kind of places they’re looking to feature, learning about their style, preferences and personalities. On that note, what is a good way to go about choosing an influencer to market your business and build a relationship with?
Do your research. Start by checking out local hashtags on Instagram that reflect your business. For example, for someone in the food industry, Ottawa has a variety of hashtags of different sizes related to local food and local restaurants. Do a quick search at who appears in the Top photos but also who is posting regularly (see Recent photos) and what type of content you find best matches your business/brand. Searching tagged pictures of restaurants within your niche to see if other similar restaurants have collaborated with influencers and with who, could also be a good starting point. From there, ask around. Word of mouth and recommendations are extremely important. Have previous collaborations been satisfied with the outcomes? Did the content meet their needs/match their branding? Did the influencer deliver quality content within the given timeframe? Everyone leads busy lives but I believe mutual respect is the most important principle in collaborations.
In just over a year of launching my own food Instagram blog, I’ve learned so much about the industry and about the different reasons people start and maintain influencer platforms. Try to find someone whose mission aligns with your own and don’t hesitate to ask them why. It’s your business and your marketing approach, so you want to make sure the match-up works for you.
I would also consider the trade off between being selective and not. Recently some local restaurants and businesses have been working with every local food account they can reach out to. While this approach may “get your name out there,” seeing the brand in your face, all the time quickly becomes less and less genuine. Based on the direct messages I receive from followers, both friends and others, I’ve noticed a lot more people saying “I’m seeing X restaurant or X product everywhere but not sure if they’re just paying for social media posts”– and then asking for me “true review,” if I’ve been etc. This gives me a sense of “influencer fatigue” for some local products and restaurants and in the longer run may be less effective/influential. But again, this depends on your marketing strategy and own preferred branding.
I’ve noticed quite a bit of saturation as well since COVID-19 as a direct result of the pivot to get online quickly in the resto industry. It’s important to take the time and curate which feed(s) you’ll appear on, allocating the timelines so you don’t end up with a few days of being everywhere and then crickets. It’s just not effective. How can we as business owners and marketers go about cultivating win-win relationships with our local influencers?
First I would reemphasize the importance of mutual respect. Influencers often get a bad reputation for “just wanting free things;” while of course there are some accounts that are in it for the wrong reasons; I believe that a majority of influencers work extremely hard to maintain regular, consistent and engaging content (sponsored or not) for their followers, simply because they are passionate about their community and/or area of interest (insert influencer niche here – food, fitness, mental health, beauty, parenting etc.) Organic influence is grown overtime with dedicated time and effort.
That said, influencers also need to respect the business and/or restaurant they are approached to collaborate with in terms of providing timely, and quality content. If a business has chosen to work with an influencer because they feel the influencer aligns with their brand or provides excellent quality content alongside esthetically pleasing photos it would be extremely disrespectful for the influencer to not deliver the same quality content, within expected timelines etc for all collaborations. Influencers should also respect that whether they are being compensated in food or monetarily, they are being compensated for marketing and unless otherwise discussed, a positive representation of the product/food should be represented. Its fine for influencers to do 100% detailed, nitty gritty, honest reviews on their own dime if that is the style they are going for, but there are always ways to promote positive aspects of a business in a post, even if some part of the experience or food isn’t exactly what they expected – and that is an important part of the “transaction.”
This actually leads to what I would consider my biggest lesson learned in the past year since I launched my page and that is the importance of mutual transparency and agreement of expectations. Businesses approaching influencers should have a concept of their expectations and share those as explicitly as possible with the influencer. While influencers will often want creative freedom to create content that fits with their own brand/style - type of content (stories vs feed posts, aspect you would like highlighted, etc) are all things that can be easily requested. If an influencer is mutually open and transparent in their own requirements and cannot agree with certain terms due to their own brand/style there should be openness to negotiation or acceptance that not all partnerships are good matches – and that’s ok! It's a public representation of your business, so make sure you’re asking for what you want and there is a mutual agreement to those terms and expectations.
Thank you so much for pointing that out Allie- it is so super important to be clear and up front when approaching Influencers. When I approach, I include a bullet list outlining what I’m after in my email with the following:
desired date/ timeline of the post
The links to all business/ event social media and any relevant hashtags
what you're offering (dinner for 2 for you to put on your feed and then a gift card for one of your followers, for example)
The medium you wish to be posted/promoted on- just Instagram or IG, Tik Tok, or Facebook for example
what your current selling / advertising goals are
what kind of / the frequency of post. 2 stories and a feed, for example. Or how many stories / feed posts ahead of time if you’ve engaged them to help sell tickets to an event, for example.
Taking this direct approach will ensure that everyone is clear on what is expected, and will run a successful campaign.
I’d like to thank Allie for being so generous and transparent with her knowledge (and being so damn good to my clients!). Please show her all the love and give her a follow.
I’d also like to again thank Chris’s Ice Cream for his inquiry that inspired this piece.
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