Influencer marketing means using celebrities, experts, big names, and other well-known people in your industry to promote your business to their audience. It's a style of online marketing that brands and companies are using to expand their audience and establish their own names as well as increase their reach and grow traffic.

One of the main advantages of influencer marketing is that it allows you to leverage someone else's audience for your own benefit. When Tony Robbins' team reached out to me to invite me to a champagne reception a lot of people asked “Why is he contacting you?”. Why indeed? Because I have an audience that he'd like to connect with. When an influencer mentions you or publishes your work to their audience, this puts your name out to a lot of people.

If your content or offer is a good match with the influencer you've chosen, you'll see great results. If you choose a Love Island contestant and your ideal customers don't watch the show, then you've thrown away your investment. By choosing the right influencer you'll also acquire some of their audience who will now start following you as well.

Influencer marketing helps you build trust and authority. When an influencer promotes you, they're giving you their seal of approval. They have a loyal audience that trusts what they say. When they say that you're worth following too, they lend this credibility to you. In a way, it gives you overnight expert status with the influencer's audience. This is a very powerful form of social proof.

Unlike content marketing and other online marketing techniques, influencer marketing can involve relatively little investment on your part. The way you get an influencer to promote you is through building a relationship with them. This may involve you doing some favors or work for them for free in return for the promotion you'll get from them. This makes it one of the lowest-investment but highest-return marketing methods available. Alternatively, if you have a budget, ask how much a “shout-out” would be, or an endorsement. Understand whether there's money exchanged or services, there is a transaction that will take place. Audiences take time to nurture and build, and influencers will not give away their hard work for free.

There are many different ways to get an influencer to market you. You could have them feature one of your products or services. You could create a piece of content for them to publish for you, or create content together. One extremely easy technique is to interview the influencer or have them interview you. Even the simple mentioning of your name on social media can gain you many new followers.

The first step is to decide what you want to achieve and identify influencers that can help you do that. Choose influencers that have a great deal of reach and that are relevant to your business; in other words, they have the kind of audience you want. Once you've identified some good prospects and narrowed them down to a manageable number, you should start connecting with your influencers and figuring out what value you can offer them. Connecting with an influencer and not understanding their motivation and goals will lead to a lot of wasted time and zero influencer interviews.

Influencer marketing is powerful because it's like a referral from a trusted friend. The only difference is that this trusted friend has thousands of fans and followers who are hungry for what you have to offer. If you don't do your research first you'll find it very hard to build rapport with your influencer and gain an interview.

Here are 3 simple steps for rapport building

1. Follow
2. Interact
3. Share

As you can see these 3 steps are very simple. So simple that many people don't bother with them. This means they go in cold and pay a lot more for their influencer content. Be human about your connecting and your influencer will be a long-term ally.

Have you tried influencer marketing? How did it work out for you?