At one time, influencer marketing may have been limited to celebrities a decade ago, but that has since changed, and social media influencers are rising. If you are looking into influencer marketing for the first time, you may find conflicting information about getting influencers for events or brand promotion. While there are cases where getting an influencer may be harmful, this is only when you choose the wrong person to promote for you. That’s why we’ve created a comprehensive guide on the secrets to influencer marketing for your event below.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influence marketing is considered a type of social media marketing. Here, endorsements and promotions of products, brands, and events are made by influencers, which are the people who have a dedicated social media following. Also, they are viewed as experts in their niche.

This type of marketing works because social influencers have built up trust within their following, and their recommendations are seen as a form of social proof. As a result, influencer marketing ROI is also 89% better than other marketing channels.

How To Find The Right Influencers To Promote Your Event

Like all types of marketing, you need the right strategy with influencer marketing. So the first step is to find the right influencer.

You’ll firstly need to choose a platform, although you can expand to other platforms later. Find the platform that your audience spends their most time on, and you can select your influencer there. Or, you can also choose a platform depending on your strategy, such as Instagram or Youtube for events with visual attributes, or Facebook if you want to promote to a larger audience.

Then, you’ll need to do some research to find suitable candidates. And one of the most important things you need NOT do is to look solely at the number of followers. What you need to consider, instead, is if the influencer’s target audience and your target event attendees coincide with yours.

There are different tiers of influencers:

• Mega-Influencers or Celebrities (1M+ followers)
• Mid-Tier Influencers (50k to 1 M followers)
• Micro-Influencers (10k to 50k followers)
• Nano-Influencers (1k to 10k followers)

Micro-influencers are also as effective as macro-influencers. This is because their engagement rate with their followers can be higher. So, are you interested in someone with less than 2000 followers or around the 5,000 to 10,000 range? Remember that this decision will also determine your budget.

It will be challenging to find the right influencer. So, the help of an influencer agency will be helpful. However, some platforms have made it easier for brands to find and reach out to influencers such as Grin, CreatorIQ, Influence.co and others. Check out Influence.co: https://influence.co/go/rates for possible rates.

How To Have Influencers To Grow Event Attendance

If you’ve finally found the right influencer, here are your next steps to have them promote your event and grow your event attendance.

1.    Plan An Influencer Strategy

This step will usually require a contract that clearly states what you need from the influencer as ROI (return on investment). Contracts will also be a good point to discuss any disagreements or objections.

Make sure not to overwhelm them with information and requirements, and be as flexible as possible. Influencers have their ways of doing things to stay true to their image and values. So, as long as you are clear on the deliverables, the changes in the contract will likely be minimal and your partnership more productive.

2.    Be Authentic and Clearly Outline Compensation

During your exchange, be sure to be clear about the nature of your arrangement, including both your target audience. Be authentic with your approach to the influencer and provide fair compensation. Generally, influencer agencies have their own set of rates for their talents.

However, suppose you have chosen a micro-influencer not affiliated with any agencies but has the right target audience, which you think can help you grow your event attendance. In that case, coming up with a mutually agreeable compensation will be helpful. For instance, some are amenable to free products or services other than project-based payments. In this case, you can give them free VIP event passes.

3.    Determine How You Can Measure The Results

You need tools to measure their results to track your influencer marketing strategy. There are three ways you can choose from:

• Reach or the number of people who see information about your event
• Engagement or the number of likes, shares, comments and replies
• Conversion or the number of people who take action, such as registering for your event

Set your campaign objective – in this case, growing your event attendance. Then you can analyse the results from the marketing campaigns through referral traffic, unique coupon codes, affiliate links, and social media engagement. You can take account of the latter by checking the number of likes, comments, mentions, and shares of the influencer’s post about your event. You can save all this data into a spreadsheet or automate the process with software such as Bit.ly that tracks clicks and the course of those clicks. Find out more here: Top Influencer Marketing Tools in 2020.

4.    Ask Them To Promote Pre-Event Hype

You’ll want promotion before your event begins to get people to start talking about it. This is called pre-event hype, where you raise awareness and generate high engagement with your audience. The best and fastest way to do this is to ask your chosen influencer to help you reach your target audience and start promoting pre-event hype.

5.    Host A Small Pre-Event Show With Your Influencers

In addition to having influencers create pre-event posts, you may also invite them to participate in a pre-event show on your social media accounts. They can ask their audience and followers to head over to your social media accounts because they’ll be there. A good example is a live event hosted by your brand’s/event’s Instagram account with influencers as the guests.

6.    Don’t Forget To Request a Post-Event Post

This step helps increase event attendance during your subsequent events. Having influencers post about your event and their experience will also serve as a credibility booster for other big names and influencers to attend your future events and likely promote your next event. You can further utilise influencers to ensure you have post-event engagement with your audience by posting content to enjoy the event.

Don’t forget to thank influencers for supporting your event. Influencer marketing is effective, but influencers end up more like a partner since you’ll be dealing with people instead of the usual digital marketing tools. So, to establish a connection with them, you both need to have the same values when it comes to providing what your shared target audience needs.