Use Branding to Help Shape an Influencer Program

The benefits of influencer marketing can be numerous. By targeting and developing relationships with key influencers in particular market segments, companies can enhance their position as a thought leader, generate more sales leads, and drive more traffic to their website.

But boosting brand awareness is also another huge component of every influence marketing program.

After all, as a company develops relationships with those influencers (writers, analysts, bloggers, and  thought leaders) and word spreads, the brand will inevitably benefit from increased exposure through inclusion in trade publications and discussions among industry leaders and potential customers.

On the flip side, companies can also use great branding to help shape its influencer program. To do that, businesses — especially at the expansion stage — need to first embrace the concept of a brand platform.

According to the Brand Tool Box, an effective brand platform practically defines how a company applies its core values and competencies to consistently create value for its customers. To do that, organizations must:

• Align senior management on key strategies to deliver differentiated value to customers

• Create clear, compelling marketing messages that result in more efficient brand communications

• Focus on connecting its employees’ behaviors to consistently deliver differentiated value

So how does the cultivation of that brand platform relate to influence marketing? It starts with how effective branding can impact the content marketing component of the influencer program.

With a consistent approach and a unified marketing message, companies can create content that clearly conveys their brand’s relevancy and the importance of the information they’re submitting to influencers. The days of simply sending stock press releases and hoping they’re compelling enough to warrant publication or syndication are over. In order for an influence marketing plan to work, the content a company is creating needs to be relevant and useful to both the influencer and the end user.

Communicate a Relevant Purpose

One way to do that is to have a strong brand platform that allows the influencer to quickly understand what the company does, what it’s value proposition is, and why it’s relevant to the people that they have the potential to influence.

To get started, BrandChannel suggests companies focus on five main brand platform elements. Hammering out each element before fully engaging influencers will help solidify the organization’s position as a valued thought leader. Those elements include:

• Brand Vision: This component describes the brand as it relates to its targeted customers. In BrandChannel’s words, the brand vision is the brand’s guiding insight into its world.

• Brand Mission: The mission should describe why your brand exists and how it will act on its insight into the customers it plans to serve. The Brand Gym does a great job of explaining the brand mission, highlighting how Harley-Davidson made it a priority in their content marketing strategy.

• Brand Values: This is the code by which the brand lives and breathes. The brand’s values should be the benchmark that its behaviors and performance are measured against.

• Brand Personality: Essentially, a brand’s personality will convey things like its trustworthiness, uniqueness, or relevancy. Derrick Daye at Branding Strategy Insider argues that a brand’s personality should be communicated with several adjectives, similar to how you’d describe an individual.

• Brand Tone of Voice: This element certainly comes in to play when you’re crafting a content marketing strategy within your influencer program. Brands need to effectively speak to their audiences with a consistent tone of voice.

I’ve written about the importance of influence marketing before (here, here and here), so it’s pretty clear that I think it’s a critical marketing initiative. But there are several moving parts that a company must shore up to ensure an influencer program’s success.

A strong brand platform is one big part. But once the essential components of your brand are ironed out, you can use them to help share your messaging strategy. Armed with a well-defined brand, a company should find it much easier to connect and engage with influencers and, ultimately, the potential customers they may attract.