Influencer Management and Relationships: 5 Ways to Ace It in 2024

Influencer Relationship Management: 5 Ways to Ace It. Influencer Relationship Management or IRM refers to managing your interactions with influencers. The strategy draws inspiration heavily from Customer Relationship Management (CRM) which is about managing interactions with customers.

By realizing that influencers aren’t your employees but strategic partners, brands can manage their influencer relationships and marketing strategies effectively. In fact, you should focus on managing relationships with influencers as much as you focus on your customers.

Influencer Relationship Management is all about creating strategic relationships with influencers. This allows you to develop and maintain a controlling position over influencer marketing. You do so by partnering with influencers who have influence over your target audiences. The influence that is capable of swaying purchase decisions.

Why is IRM important?

Remember, effective Influencer Relationship Management results in building customer trust if done the right way. This will provide long-term benefits to your brand. However, building good relationships with influencers can be a difficult task.

A poorly planned Influencer Relationship Management strategy will not only weaken relationships with your influencers, but it may also result in ineffective influencer marketing campaigns. If your influencers are not invested enough in your influencer marketing campaigns, they will do a poor job of building your credibility.

So you need to strengthen your Influencer Relationship Management strategy. A strong IRM strategy will help you harness the true potential of your influencer marketing campaign.

This will not only increase brand awareness and customer trust, but also your returns on investment (ROI). So, maintaining relationships with influencers can also impact your sales and revenue indirectly.

Here are five ways your brand can establish strong relationships with influencers, which in turn help you gain customer trust and high ROI.

Ready to get started?

How Can You Do Influencer Relationship Management Effectively in 5 Ways?

Influencer relationship management is not a day’s work. It begins with influencer discovery and continues as long as the collaboration.

While there is a lot more that goes into managing and nurturing influencer relationships, the five ways explained below will lay a solid foundation for your collaborations and overall campaign management.

#1. Approach Relevant Influencers Only

Relevance is one of the key things to consider for effective Influencer Relationship Management. Partnering with influencers who have relevant and amenable audiences can be greatly beneficial for your brand.

Even influencers prioritize relevance when they vet potential clients. They prefer to work with brands that have relevant audience demographics and social media domains.

Think I’m exaggerating?

Check out this fact:

A Crowdtap study analyzed what motivates influencers to work with brands. It was found that 44% of influencers would like to work with brands whose offerings are relevant to their social media followers. In fact, relevance is the #1 motivator for influencers.

Image via Crowdtap

The study also found that 49% of influencers are keen on collaborating more than once if they get relevant opportunities.

So if you’re interested in building strong influencer relationships, you should definitely partner with relevant influencers. That’s the first step in effective Influencer Relationship Management.

Most influencers get way too many pitches from brands. Relevance is one of the key things they consider when they respond to them. This is the exact reason why most beauty and clothing brands are associated with fashion and beauty influencers in their marketing strategies.

Here’s an example. The Kellogg’s sub-brand Special K launched an influencer marketing campaign with the hashtag #StrongFeedStrong promoting women’s strength.

What’s special about that?

The unique thing about the influencer marketing campaign was that Kellogg’s didn’t involve any food or health influencers to promote the brand. Instead, they partnered with influential female entrepreneurs, athletes, and homemakers to increase brand awareness.

The company adopted a unique style of storytelling  on social media platforms encouraging women to reach their utmost potential.

Image via Instagram

YouTuber and motivational speaker Molly Burke, too, was one of the influencers whom Kellogg’s roped in. Here, we see her promoting the brand with a caption about the true potential of women.

This is how Kellogg’s collaborated with relevant social media influencers and made their influencer marketing campaign a success.

Get my point?

Because such influencers were relatable, it helped the brand win the trust of their customers more effectively. And for the same reason, they were able to collaborate with so many influencers for their campaign. Keep that in mind before you plan your Influencer Management campaign.

#2. Use A Warm Outreach Strategy

A cold outreach involves contacting the influencer using generic outreach emails asking them to collaborate with you. A common question that every marketer has after contacting influencers is, “Will they respond?”

Well, the answer is, there’s no way to know for sure.

Then, what’s the solution?

You can definitely increase your chances of getting a response by sending personalized messages.

If you wish to build influencer relationships, you should interact with them as a person, before you do as a brand. It’s a basic rule that you should follow not just Influencer Relationship Management but for any outreach campaign in general.

You can start by following them and their posts on social media and blogs. Try to engage with their social media posts as much as possible.

This means sharing, liking, and commenting on their social media posts on a regular basis. For effective Influencer Relationship Management, be consistent in your efforts.

Be sure to post insightful comments so that they notice you.

How will this help?

This is to make sure that you stand out from the crowd and the influencer remembers you.

This will make it easier when you approach your influencers as a brand. Your influencer will know that you’re a fan of theirs. Contacting your influencer as a person and not as a brand is the best outreach strategy. This is a crucial step in your Influencer Relationship Management campaign.

If you want to save on all of that effort and reach out to influencers who are well-matched and willing to collaborate, influencer marketing platforms can help you. These platforms have huge databases of influencers from all domains, as well as information about their efficacy and rates.

An influencer search on such a influencer marketing platform yields best-matched influencers and a direct channel to communicate with them. You will have to exert less effort to nurture your relationships with influencers since they will trust you already. You can directly pitch your collaboration proposal and shorten the onboarding process.

Still, you will need to create a formal outreach mail. Your outreach email needs to be personal and sound genuine. It should include the following:

• An attractive subject line
• Appreciation of their work
• The value you can provide them
• Examples of your previous collaborations
• A clear call-to-action

Example Influencer Outreach Email

Here’s an example of a personalized influencer outreach email to maintain a build a solid relationship with influencers.

“Dear [INFLUENCER’S NAME],

I’m [YOUR NAME], the [JOB TITLE] at [COMPANY NAME], and a huge fan of your work. I’m a  regular reader of your blog and I really love your content. Your recent post on [TOPIC] was extremely informative and engaging.

We have worked with [OTHER INFLUENCER NAMES] on our previous inlfuencer marketing campaigns [MENTION LINK] and they’ve enjoyed working with us.

We’re finalizing one of our social media campaigns at the moment and would love to collaborate with you. If you’re interested, please revert so we can set aside some time for a discussion.

Looking forward to hearing from you.”

A personalized approach is an asset for managing your relationships with influencers effectively.

Why, you ask?

A personalized message will help you gain your influencer’s trust. If they feel valued, then they will put greater effort in making you look good in front of their audiences. Your target audience will start trusting you more if a credible influencer recommends your brand.

#3. Offer Fair Compensation

Respect and good treatment are not the only things that will help you build strong influencer relationships. Your influencers also expect monetary returns for their work.

Don’t forget that it has a huge impact on your Influencer Relationship Management strategy. Many brands fail to understand this and approach influencers with just with freebies.

Both the TapInfluence and Crowdtap studies found that the major mistake brands make is to offer inadequate compensation.

The Crowdtap study found that 68% of influencers would like to work more with brands that offer competitive compensation. This is supported by the TapInfluence study where 72.2% of influencers have reported that they’re not offered adequate compensation.

What is the impact of compensating influencers well?

When you provide adequate compensation to an influencer, you show them that you value and respect their efforts in your inlfuencer marketing campaigns. This also indicates that you do not expect them to promote your brand free of charge. All of these are extremely important for maintaining good relationships with influencers.

The Real Cost of Influencer Marketing

From the perspective of Influencer Relationship Management, what’s the real cost of influencer marketing?

Influence.co conducted a study to understand how much it costs to partner with influencers for influencer marketing purposes.

The study found that influencers in modeling charge the highest with an average cost of $434/post. They are followed by photography influencers who cost $385/post leaving third place for food influencers costing $326/post.

Image via Influencer.co

The study also found that the cost of partnering increases based on the fan following of influencers.

For example, you may spend an average of $86.20/post with influencers having less than 1,000 followers. However, influencers with 100,000+ followers may cost you an average of  $763.30/post.

Image via Influencer.co

When it comes to pricing, here is a tip for an effective Influencer Relationship Management campaign: Do your research. Talk to fellow brands or use tools to find out the standard rates in your niche.

#4. Provide Creative Freedom

Creative freedom is of utmost importance to you as well as your influencer. Think about it, who knows the audience better – you or your Influencer? Definitely your influencer.

They’ll know the tastes, preferences, and opinions of their followers better. After all, it’s your influencer’s audience you’re targeting.

This means that your influencer knows what kind of content will engage their audience. Their motto is to publish content that will not only attract followers but also engage them.

So what should you do?

If you want to succeed at Influencer Relationship Management, you need to give your influencers some space and freedom.

However, a TapInfluence study found that 39.4% of influencers are not provided the required creative freedom. They are bound by overly restrictive content guidelines leaving no space for creativity.

Image via TapInfluence

This is further supported by the Crowdtap study on “The State Of Influencer Marketing.” The study found that 77% of influencers might partner with a brand more than once if they provide creative freedom.

Images via Crowdtap

Both the TapInfluence and Crowdtap studies found that better relationships are built with influencers when you provide them creative freedom. When you provide influencers with creative freedom, it shows that you respect not only them but also their ideas.

What’s more?

And if they feel good about working with you, they will make sure that their content makes you look credible. This can help you win customer trust more efficiently. So, providing creative freedom is a crucial aspect in effective Influencer Relationship Management.

#5. Provide Adequate Time

Influence Relationship Management is a long-term strategy. If you want your brand to develop and maintain solid influencer relationships, you should respect your influencer’s time. You must understand that influencers need adequate time to create authentic and engaging content.

This is important for influencers who work part-time or full-time jobs along with being an influencer.

Not convinced?

Hear it from influencers:

The TapInfluence study found that 32% of influencers don’t like working with brands that don’t give them adequate time.

Similarly, the Crowdtap survey found, many brands have a misconception that content creation does not take up much time. Nor does it requires much effort.

Image via TapInfluence

The truth?

Hashoff created a report called “A Hashoff State Of The Union Report”. Here the company studied the amount of time individuals spend on social media and influencer marketing. It found that 35% of influencers surveyed have a full-time job along with influencer marketing.

25.3% of them are students and 22.2% work part-time. So, it is important for brands to realize that influencers also have personal and professional lives. And they cannot be expected to put all their time into creating original and engaging content for your brand.

For effective Influencer Relationship Management, it’s important to acknowledge the fact that they may have other commitments. If you want the best quality work from them, you have got to give them time.

Another thing which you should consider is meeting deadlines. You and your influencer must agree on a deadline for the delivery of influencer marketing content.

Communicate your requirements and expectations honestly with your influencers. Also, provide them the timeline during which your marketing campaign will feature. Clear communication and transparency are crucial for Influencer Relationship Management.

This will help your influencer determine the amount of time they will need to create your influencer marketing campaign content. If you feel that their delivery estimates are unreasonable, you can negotiate with them fairly and assertively.

If you respect your influencers’ time, they will respect yours too. And such a relationship will encourage them to be more involved in the success of your influencer marketing campaign.

The result?

Greater credibility for your brand and greater likelihood of sales. So, make sure to provide adequate time to influencers as it’s crucial for effective Influencer Relationship Management.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What is influencer management?

A. Influencer management is the process of managing your relationships with influencers. It includes everything from negotiation to collaboration, content creation, approvals, campaign management, payments, and long-term relationship building.

Q2. Why is it important to form a relationship with influencers?

A. Consumers trust what influencers say about products and services more than what the brand says about themselves. These content creators are experts in their own niches and can get people to trust your brand and buy from you.

It is, undoubtedly, important for brands and marketers to form strong relationships with influencers in their niches.

Q3. Do influencers have managers?

A. Celebrity and macro-influencers are more likely to have managers than micro- and nano-influencers.

There are many influencer agencies and platforms that help social media influencers with negotiations, strategy, and signing contracts with brands. You can contact these agencies to partner with the right influencers for your influencer marketing campaigns.

Q4. What is an influencer relationship management platform?

A. An influencer relationship management platform (IRM) is a tool that helps streamline your influencer marketing efforts. It helps you find the right influencers for your campaigns, review their past work, content style, and engagement data, and partner with them.

You can manage everything from negotiation to content creation, approvals, campaign monitoring, and results in one place.

At the same time, influencer relationship management platforms help influencers find and partner with brands and agencies with similar values and aesthetics.

Q5. What are the best influencer management tools?

A. The best influencer management tools include:

• Heepsy
• Traackr
• TapInfluence
• Onalytica

There are many other influencer platforms that can help you with influencer discovery, potential influencer lists, content creation, and campaign management.

Q6. How do you manage influencers in influencer marketing?

A. You can manage influencers using an influencer relationship management platform or hire an agency to help you coordinate with influencers. Or, you can do it manually if you have a limited number of influencers.

Regardless of the method you choose, here are a few things that can help you build and manage good relationships with influencers:

• Define your expectations clearly.
• Give them creative freedom when it comes to content creation.
• Sweeten the deal with perks such as free products or experiences.
• Appreciate them for their good work.
• Use custom affiliate codes to encourage them to help drive sales.

Q7. How much does an influencer collaboration cost?

A. An influencer collaboration can cost anywhere from $25 to over a million dollars. The cost totally depends on:

• The number of followers an influencer has
• Their engagement rate
• Your campaign requirements: How many social media posts do you want them to create? Does it include images, carousels, or videos?
• Past collaborations and per post charges of an influencer
• The duration of your campaign
• Other benefits you offer to your influencers

Are You Ready to Establish Real Connections with Influencers?

Some marketers believe that collaborating with many influencers will help create a successful influencer marketing campaign. They objectify influencers as commodities that they have purchased for a price.

Is that any good?

But that’s counter-productive if you’re trying to build a relationship with influencers.

Unfortunately, this kind of mindset often leads to clashes with partnered influencers and does not generate the best results (brand awareness, gaining customer trust, and high ROI).

Keep in mind that the best results are often generated when you build strong relationships with influencers. The above-mentioned steps can really help you create a great Influencer Relationship Management strategy.

Do you know of any other tips to help brands establish an effective Influencer Relationship Management strategy? Feel free to share them in the comments section below.