Influencer Marketing for Boutiques

Influencer marketing can be especially beneficial for boutiques. Marketing is an essential part of growing your boutique business, but working with an influencer to market your business and products can definitely improve your business and bring new customers your way.

However, there are two important things you should keep in mind when selecting influencers for your influencer marketing campaign. 1.) All influencers are not created equally and 2.) every influencer with a ton of followers is not the "right" influencer. 

To help you out, we've outlined a few tips for choosing the right influencers for your business.

Niche is Important

When choosing an influencer to work with, it's best to choose someone who falls into the same niche as your business. Here's an example. Suppose you a follow a woman who describes herself in her bio as a "fitness enthusiast who promotes living a healthy lifestyle including healthy eating and workouts." Now suppose your boutique is described as the "one-stop shop for cocktail and club dresses, perfect for a night out on the town."

Just from reading that person's bio and knowing your own motto should tell you whether she would align with your business. It is likely that her audience follows her for healthy lifestyle tips. Now, it may make sense if your business specialized in activewear. But, it's clear that the example boutique above doesn't promote a healthy lifestyle.

Often new business owners get tied up in the number of followers a person has rather than paying attention to who that person is and what audience they serve. So, choose an influencer who is in the same niche as your business.

Research First

Before reaching out to an influencer, take some time to research them. We recommend taking at least a week to research the influencer. Your research should include watching what they post, how often they post, how they write their captions, how they utilize stories, how many other companies they promote, how they engage with their audience, how quickly they respond to comments and questions from their audience, etc. 

Essentially, you want to pay attention to how they utilize the platform and decide if your business would be a good fit to work with them. If there is anything that you are apprehensive about but are still interested in working with them, take note of that and mention it in your contract or initial conversation. Before you agree to work with any influencer, you want to be sure that they will be able to execute whatever you are asking for.

Partnership is Key

Once you've found an influencer you want to work with, it's important that the process feels like a partnership, rather than a one-off job. Many influencers promote things as one-time situations and are just in it for the moment. Creating a partnership is a lot easier when building a relationship with a brand ambassador, but could be more expensive as working with a brand ambassador typically involves long-term work.

Building a partnership with an influencer involves relationship building. Although this is essentially a job for them, you also want to make sure that they execute it with care, as if they work for or with you. So, communication is key from day one. Make sure that you communicate not only how you would like to work with them, but WHY you would like to work with them and why you feel that would be the perfect match. Use words like "partnership." Let them know how this can be beneficial for them as well, besides just getting paid. 

If it feels like a partnership from the beginning they are much more likely to handle this project with care rather than to just rush through it.

Know Your Objective

One of the steps that most new business owners miss is creating an objective for every step in their marketing campaign. Having an objective for your influencer marketing campaign is important because it will help you communicate what you want from the influencer, it'll help you decide your next steps and it'll decrease the likelihood of you being disappointed at the end of the campaign when you see the results.

Some objectives that you may choose from include;

• creating a buzz
• growing your followers
• gaining sales
• growing your email list
• selling a specific product

Once you know your objective then you can decide what your next step(s) will be.

Know Your Next Steps

So, suppose your objective for working with and influencer is simply to promote a particular product. That means that ideally the influencer job is probably to wear the item in a photo and say something nice about your brand and the item in the caption. But, after they've done that, then what?

This is the time to decide what your next step will be. So, maybe you notice lots of people commenting and saying how cute the influencer looks in your product or maybe they begin to ask questions. Are you just going to sit back, watch and wait for the influencer to say something? We hope not! If we're being honest, the influencer has done their job at this point. 

Now is the time for you to jump in those comments and start engaging. Comment back! Say thank you, but don't just leave it there. Give the influencer's a call to action. Tell them to follow you. Tell them to check out the other dresses (or other items) on your page/site. Compliment them and tell them how great they would look in the items as well. Don't wait for them to come to you; invite them on over.

So, after the influencer has done their job, it's important to know that results are NOT guaranteed, but it's even more important to have next steps in mind.

Well, we hope that you've learned a bit about influencer marketing and how to choose the right influencers for your boutique. Have you dabbled in influencer marketing before? Comment and let us know how your experience was.