Ready to improve the conversions of your blogger outreach campaign?
To not have your emails fall in the spam folder or worse, get completely skipped over and disappear in the influencers inbox with no results?
After you start your blog and have some products and services to sell, influencer, and blogger outreach is a powerful means to make more sales.
Between the three businesses my wife and I run, we receive dozens, if not 100’s of outreach emails each and every week.
99% of them don’t even receive a response because they reach out the wrong way!
So how do you get an influencer to promote your product? Do you hire blogger outreach services? What do you need to do to make sure your outreach campaigns get results?
These three tips are going to help you massively improve your blogger outreach so you can get the contacts, build the relationships, and ultimately get those kinds of outreach campaigns working for you instead of against you.
Because when don’t engage in blogger outreach right, you’re actually killing your brand and you probably don't even realize it.
When you do this right you can get that famous blogger, podcaster, Instagrammer, or that bigshot YouTuber to spread the word about your blog, products, and your services.
Here are the three keys, the right work you need to do to get conversions instead of deleted emails.
No more failed outreach!
What is a Blogger Outreach Program?
In ANY type of business, as in life, relationships are EVERYTHING.
And this is where blogger outreach comes in.
The concept behind blogger outreach campaigns is to connect and leverage influencers or big brands with tens of thousands or millions of followers to talk about your product or service for greater exposure.
Since people look up to these big names in whatever industry they may be in, they pretty much say the word and get their followers wrapped up in whatever they’re preaching.
This outreach strategy allows an unknown, small, startup business to have a well-known personality promote products in exchange for free access to what they're trying to sell. And yes, sometimes, monetary compensation is required, depending on what the influencer demands.
So essentially, you want to build a relationship with that influencer who can potentially turn your product from being completely unknown to a household name over time.
But it’s not as easy as you think.
Find out how to do this right in this video!
Before you approach that blogger and get him or her to do something for you, make sure you do it right. Fail in it, and you might end up hurting your brand and making you look bad to your audience.
Your online reputation is extremely important and you want to make sure you’re not destroying your chances with those famous bloggers.
After all that hard work, time, and money spent building your brand…
I want to save your butt by making sure you get things right from the start!
Let’s get down to the surefire steps that will help you kill your outreach.
3 Keys for Successful Blogger Campaigns
So you’ve finally mustered up the strength to reach out to that blogger who can potentially bring a massive amount of exposure to your brand.
How do you actually do this, so your attempts won’t end up like one of those expectations vs. reality horror stories?
Three steps...
1. Don’t ask things from people you don’t know
A common mistake people make in their blogger outreach program is connecting to people they don’t know…
And who don’t even know they exist.
Yep, even if you think you’re some major YouTube star who has xyz number of subscribers, you’re getting it all wrong if you think this actually means something.
Successful online entrepreneurs don’t spend any time watching YouTube videos, they’re creating not consuming. So they probably don’t have any clue who you are.
By sending them an email and kind of boasting about how amazing you are, you’re pretty much just asking for trouble.
Instead of just getting a blunt no, you can also get a really bad rep from them and they may tell you to go away and never approach them ever again.
Ouch.
Most likely they’ll just ignore and block your emails, this is what I do. It saves time!
It’s kinda like when you’re at a bar, and there’s this good-looking lady you spot sitting by herself. You think you’ve got dibs on her just because you’re Mr. YouTuber guy, come on to her and say “Hey babe. You and me on Tuesday at 5. How’s that?”
You’ll be lucky if you don’t get a slap in the face.
But I’m sure it will be a straight no. Plus, she’d want you to get away from her because you’re a sleazy, creepy freak.
So don’t do it that way. Don’t just approach a random influencer with the hopes of getting exposure for your product.
You have to begin by initiating a conversation, build trust first, build a relationship, and really try to get to know them first.
Maybe you send them an email, give positive comments about the stuff they’re doing, follow their page, engage with them on social, buy their product or try out their service…
It takes time to build a relationship, and you need to give it a good amount of time before you introduce yourself and make a request from these folks.
If you send them an email, and maybe even attach your blog to them, they’re going to just ignore you or put that email over to their trash because you’re just wasting their time.
2. Give them value first
Since you’re the one who needs something from them, you gotta put forth extra effort upfront.
They already know what your motive is for reaching out. You are one of the hundreds contacting them this week.
You want to engage with them, build a relationship, and make sure you’re putting your best foot forward.
This is why giving of value is highly important in successful blogger outreach campaigns.
But let’s be real clear about what actually adds value to them.
These successful businesses are most likely not lacking something or have some hole that your product is going to fill.
Giving them a free trial for your new software is not adding value at all.
What a value-add means is that you’re featuring this person, create them a unique infographic, write up a post on your site, giving them a backlink from your blog. Now that’s a decent amount of value right there.
Another thing you can do is ask to interview that influencer on your channel, give them access to your audience. You promote their stuff, and at the other end of the stick maybe they’ll do the same for you too.
Makes sense, right?
So the main goal is to play by the rule of the laws of attraction, of reciprocation. You scratch their back, and they’ll scratch yours.
3. Respect their time
Time is something not a lot of people have these days.
Most especially successful businesses who grind it out day in and day out.
So if you want to reach out to someone who could expose your product, make you look good to their audience, and eventually have more people coming in to learn more about what you’ve got, then you gotta be short and sweet about it.
How do you send an email to a blogger?
K.I.S.S. Keep it short and simple.
That’s how your emails should be or your comments on their YouTube channel or blog must be.
Never ever send out those long drawn out emails because it’s absolutely a disrespect of their time. It’s only hurting you right from the get-go.
By keeping your messages and your subject line short and sweet, you are showing that you respect their time. Make sure your emails are something they can consume within 10, 15, 20 seconds.
In just one glance it should say who you are, where you’re from, what your goal is, what you’re doing, extremely clear and concise.
In 20 or 30 seconds, this person might consider what you’re requesting.
But if you go beyond 1 minute of their time because of that lengthy email, they’re just going to delete it without hesitation.
They don’t need some guy to rob them of their precious time because, for these successful individuals, time is money. If you don’t add value to their time from your repetitive, exhausting email, they’ll give you the boot, no doubt about it.
How to Put All The Steps In Practice for an Effective Blogger Outreach Program
If you want your outreach to be successful, you gotta do it the right way.
Connect with people after they know who you are, build their trust through the value you give them, and always, ALWAYS be respectful of their time.
Keep your message concise at up to the 15, 20-second mark while saying all you need to say in just one glance.
And most importantly, always have the mindset “how can I add more value to their life”. It’s always a “what’s in it for them” not a “what’s in it for me”, at least at the start. The value you receive is merely the result of you giving them value first.
The law of reciprocation is always at play in the world.
If you’ve got questions, shoot me a comment below and I would love to help!