Tom breaks down how brands can partner with influencers to outmaneuver competitors. The key: give influencers real value beyond money, like access to assets or VIP contacts, so they genuinely advocate for your product to their audience.
Hey everybody, Tom here. I just wanted to touch base with you for a few minutes this afternoon because I wanted to talk to you a little bit about how you can bypass your competition or even make them irrelevant altogether. And the way to do that is to first focus on your business, focus on your goals, because nobody outside of you has anything to say about those goals. So those are all completely up to you to determine and follow through on. The other thing is you can work with online influencers to completely bypass your competition, and in that way you make them irrelevant. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to switch the screen to a diagram, and I'm just going to walk you through the basic idea of this so that you can get a better understanding. So, here we are. We have this nifty little diagram which I put together for you, and on the left we've got the customer. And as the customer finds the influencer, the customer gets to know the influencer, likes their content, and after a while even starts to purchase things that the influencer recommends. So the influencer recommends, the customer buys, so it's a win-win for both of them. The influencer gains more trust with the audience and also grows the audience because most likely the customer is going to talk about the influencer to other people that he or she knows. So it's a win-win all the way around. Now, the way that you get yourself involved in all of this, here you are down here, you need to insert yourself into this dynamic. And the way to do that is to give the influencer, you're gonna have to introduce yourself to the influencer first, because assuming that that influencer has that ideal customer that you really, really wanna reach, you need to give some value to that influencer so that the influencer really wants to work with you. They see it as an opportunity. and they see it as an opportunity to relate, as a relationship, to build a relationship. So the way you do that, like I said, is you exchange some value, you give some value. And there's any number of ways to do that. The way that most people do it today or think of first is money. And there's nothing wrong with money. There's nothing wrong with sponsoring some ads on the influencer's site or blog. And there's nothing wrong with even paying them to produce some content for you if that's what you wanna do. But there are plenty of other ways give value to an influencer other than just by paying them with money. For instance, if you're with a cool cutting-edge company or even a well-established company, you probably have access to assets inside your company that the influencer might like to have access to. So maybe it's about granting them access or maybe it's about getting them access to people inside of your company because you've got some movers and shakers, some well-known people, some VIPs, whatever. And those that influencer would really gain by knowing those people. Maybe it's access to people. And there's, like I said, there's any number of things that the value can be, but you can think more creatively than just relying on simply money. So essentially what you do is you create the relationship with the influencer and you start to get your content or your products or your services talked about by the influencer. And in that way, You are inserted into this entire dynamic, and it's a win-win for all 3 of you. So hope that helps you out a little bit. If you got any questions or whatnot, just give me a ring or ping me, whatever, and I'll get back to you. Talk to you soon.
