If a company like Coca-Cola wants more publicity, then your business needs it too.
And influencers can deliver all the publicity you want.
But there’s more.
Influencers can help you sell more products and achieve a healthy ROI.
According to a poll by Tomoson, businesses achieve an average ROI of $6.5 on every $1 spent on influencer marketing.
So, how do you collaborate with influencers to achieve mouthwatering ROI?
I’ll show you 11 influencer collaboration ideas to squeeze every ounce of benefit from your influencer marketing campaigns.
Let’s get started.
Effective influencer collaboration ideas
1. Sponsored posts
If you’ve ever seen #sponsored, #ad, or “Paid partnership with Brand” on a social media post, then you’ve seen a sponsored post.
The idea is simple.
Sponsored posts involve a brand’s collaboration with an influencer to promote their product on social media or blog posts.
This influencer collaboration idea works well because it helps you reach your ideal audience who has no idea of your product or how it can benefit them.
And again, the influencer’s influence also rubs off on your product. Followers already trust the influencer and will take their recommendations seriously.
Alo Yoga is a popular yoga brand on Instagram. Here’s an Alo Yoga sponsored post by yoga studio owner Brittany McKay on her Instagram account:
With this, her audience will get to know Alo Yoga and may likely buy their products.
Here’s how a sponsored post looks on the Search Engine Journal blog:
This is a sponsored post by .Store Domains targeting e-commerce businesses.
Of course, a sponsored post will work best on a blog if it resembles the general blog style.
That said, you need to keep a few things in mind to get the best results from sponsored posts:
- Engage influencers and blogs in your niche. This way, there’s a better chance of converting their audience to customers.
- Go through influencers’ posts to ensure their voice is similar to your brand voice.
- Give influencers creative freedom to create posts their audience will love. With that, the post will look less sponsored and more natural.
- You can repost some of these posts on your brand account to give them more reach and your business more social proof.
2. User-generated content (UGC) creation
If you have 2 million customers, you better be tooting your horn and telling every potential customer.
But sometimes, social proof can be as simple as collecting UGC and showing off how customers improve their lives with your product.
User-generated content (UGC), as its name implies, is a piece of content created by customers about your product.
Usually, you can encourage customers to produce these content pieces by specifying a hashtag. You can even sweeten the deal with an opportunity to feature on your page.
Luckily, there are many UGC examples on Instagram you can follow.
Sometimes, you’ll find influencers who use your product and love it. Maybe they’ve even posted videos of how they use your product.
Beyond just reposting on your brand account, you can collaborate with those influencers to create more similar content.
This is a potent strategy, especially on Instagram and TikTok.
These influencers already love your product and will be excited to collaborate with you. You may even be charged lower fees since these influencers already do it for free.
To get the best results from UGC content, keep these points in mind:
- Engage influencers that create positive UGC about your product. There’s no point in collaborating with someone who thinks your product is meh.
- Repost their content on your page.
- Send new products to influencers so that they can show real-life use cases.
3. Contests and giveaways
To run a giveaway, you have to specify actions participants will take for a chance to win a gift.
It’s a popular and simple idea, but it works really well.
After all, everyone wants to win against competitors.
Running contests and giveaways can bring a few benefits to your business.
First, you can use it to acquire more followers on social media.
Second, giveaways are a great way to build awareness for a new product.
Third, you can generate leads for future marketing campaigns.
That said, there are a few options to collaborate with influencers for a giveaway.
You can either host the giveaway or let the influencer host it. But whoever hosts the giveaway, both accounts will share it.
If you want to host the giveaway, you can see my list of the best Facebook and Instagram giveaway tools to make your job easier.
For example, see this giveaway by Beauty Bay on TikTok where they’ve collaborated with Sol de Janeiro:
Here, they’re giving away Sol de Janeiro products.
To make your giveaway successful, keep these points in mind:
- Use your product as the gift instead of a generally admired product (e.g. an iPhone). This way, your giveaway will attract people who need your product and can buy more in the future.
- Specify contest requirements that match your gift. For example, don’t tell people to create a video and enter their email address for a $5 gift.
- Use contest requirements that match your goal. For instance, an account follow will work well for brand awareness, while entering an email address will work well for lead generation.
4. Product review
Product reviews have a simple aim.
Product reviews explore various aspects of a product so that people who have never used it will know what to expect from it.
So, many buyers see product reviews as a part of product research before buying.
Today, many people deliver reviews on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and blogs.
With reviews, prospects can understand your product better and decide if it’s the best for them.
But product reviews are a double-edged sword. Just like positive reviews can move prospects toward the sale, negative reviews can do otherwise.
However, if you believe you have a great product (which you should), there’s nothing to fear about a product review.
To collaborate for a product review, you’d have to reach out to an influencer in your niche. Some influencers will request fees in addition to your product, while some are fine with product gifting.
Take Forrest Jones, who reviews cars on TikTok, as an example. Manufacturers regularly send him cars to review.
But even beyond reviewing cars, a brand like Ekster collaborates with him because most people who drive cars also use wallets.
If you want to promote a software product, you can go for a blog instead.
Here’s an example of a SaaS product review on this blog:
This is a review of Shortstack, a contest and landing page software. This review explores every aspect of the product to make a buyer’s decision easier.
Keep these points in mind if you’re collaborating with an influencer for product reviews:
- Seek reviews on your audience’s favorite platforms. For example, reviews of a SaaS product will work best on blogs and YouTube, while lipstick reviews will work on Instagram and TikTok.
- Collaborate with influencers who publish content in your niche.
- Encourage influencers to be sincere about your product. Buyers know no product is perfect and expect a review to mention its shortcomings. Even more, shortcomings help you learn about areas to improve in your product.
- Repost positive reviews on social media as a form of social proof to convince prospects.
5. Product collaboration
Product collaboration involves collaborating with an influencer from creation to promotion of some products. Usually, this collection will be named after the influencer.
This influencer collaboration idea makes sense for an influencer who is well respected in a field. Think about Nike creating a Michael Jordan collection.
Product collaboration helps you leverage an influencer’s popularity in a product category.
People who love the influencer may buy your products just because the influencer is involved.
That said, building a working relationship with an influencer is important before doing a product collaboration.
For example, you can go through a few sponsored posts to see the influencer’s ROI before going a level higher with product collaboration.
For example, Tommy Hilfiger collaborates with Shawn Mendes to create a collection in his name.
Of course, Shawn has input on the products in this collection.
Here are some points to keep in mind for product collaboration:
- Get the influencer’s input while creating products.
- Add the influencer’s identifier to the product branding.
- Create a product collection page on your website.
- Offer discounts or other forms of product promotion.
6. Guest blogging
Guest blogging means creating and publishing blog posts on other blogs. With guest blogging, you can reach a big audience on other blogs and bring them to your website.
While the idea is easy, executing guest blogging requires a proper strategy.
For instance, you’ll get better results when you guest blog on authoritative websites in your niche.
So, in this case, you may be looking for industry influencers who also run popular niche blogs. Of course, other industry blogs will also work well.
But before you can publish on authoritative blogs, you have to do your homework. You have to uncover topics their audience will love that the site has not addressed.
You also have to conduct keyword research to give your guest post the best chance of ranking in Google search.
For example, Leo Widrich used guest posting to grow Buffer’s users from 0 to 100k.
Gregory Ciotti, a marketing strategist at Help Scout, is another great example of using guest posts to build awareness.
Here’s his author bio on a guest post on Copyblogger:
With his guest posts, he has built more awareness for the brand and driven traffic to the Help Scout blog.
Here are some points to keep in mind to create a successful guest blogging strategy:
- Publish guest posts on authoritative websites in your niche. This way, you’ll reach people likely to be interested in your product.
- Use guest posts to target an important business keyword so that you can reach more people in Google search.
- Send topic proposals that the blog has not covered. After all, you don’t want to present a basketball as a gift to LeBron James.
- Aim to provide value through guest blogs rather than promote your products.
- If you can’t write for some reason, hire a writer to deliver your message properly.
7. Brand ambassador program
A brand ambassador is someone who endorses and promotes your products. In other words, a brand ambassador is the face of your brand.
They can show up in your advertisements, promotions, events, and other marketing activities.
Being your brand ambassador also means an influencer can’t promote competitors’ products.
Once an influencer becomes your brand ambassador, they’re telling their followers they trust your brand.
This can encourage followers to try out your products.
However, signing an influencer to your brand ambassador program is a serious relationship.
It’s important to collaborate on sponsored posts to see the influencer’s performance before signing them up to a brand ambassador program.
Pura Vida has many brand ambassadors. In fact, it has a brand ambassador page that explains the details of its program to potential ambassadors.
Through its ambassadors, potential customers can see the products in use and check them out.
Here are some points to keep in mind:
- Seek legal help in creating a contract for your brand ambassadors.
- Prepare a marketing strategy for each influencer in the brand ambassador program.
8. Interview in a podcast
A podcast is just like a radio show but online.
A host presents information about a topic for 20 minutes to 1 hour. But in most cases, podcasts feature guests who answer questions about their expertise in a field and how they became successful.
Put simply, podcasts are popular. According to Edison Research, more than 6 in 10 U.S. consumers above 12 have listened to at least one podcast.
That’s 177 million people in the U.S. alone.
People listen to them when working out, doing house chores, or even driving to work.
So, it’s a great option to collaborate with influencers. While podcasts may not be great for selling products directly, they work excellently for building brand awareness with a target audience.
Since a podcast will usually be about a broad topic, you can find ones that address topics in your industry. Or host one.
For a podcast, collaboration can be in 2 ways:
- You can invite influencers to a podcast you host.
- You can offer to sponsor an influencer’s podcast episode and be a guest on the episode.
For example, Lilach Bullock, a marketing influencer and coach, regularly interviews business executives on her podcast.
She also sends newsletters about podcast episodes to her email subscribers to get them to listen.
With this, executives who offer marketing services or products can reach marketers.
Here are some points to keep in mind:
- Ensure that the podcast addresses topics relevant to your business and ideal buyers.
- Talk more about your personal and business values on podcasts. People who listen to podcasts don’t expect a hard sell of your products.
- Research the audience and engagement numbers of a podcast before showing up on it.
9. Co-host a webinar
A webinar is a web seminar. In it, you can explain important concepts to your audience.
The great thing with webinars is that apart from educating your audience, you can also use them to acquire leads.
To boost brand awareness, you can co-host a webinar with an influencer.
In this case, the influencer will be a known expert in the topic you want to address in your webinar.
Since the influencer will promote the webinar to their audience, you’ll get more people to your webinar.
For example, Wynter teamed up with copywriting expert and influencer, Joanna Wiebe, for a SaaS webinar.
And Joanna shared the webinar with her email subscribers.
With this, many of Joanna’s subscribers will know Wynter.
That said, this influencer collaboration idea works better for software or technical products.
Here are some tips to keep in mind:
- Ensure the influencer is an expert in the webinar topic.
- Promote the webinar to attract your ideal audience.
10. Account takeovers
The idea of an account takeover is simple.
An influencer will take over your brand account on a social media platform and publish content on your behalf that day.
Of course, you’ll know and approve all the posts before they go live on your page.
This can be a way to increase engagement on your accounts and offer something new to your audience.
MS Association collaborated with actress, Selma Blair, to take over their Instagram account on their 52nd anniversary.
MS Association states that Selma will talk about her journey with multiple sclerosis during the takeover.
This can create more awareness for the association.
Keep these tips in mind for account takeovers:
- Only collaborate with trusted influencers for account takeovers.
- Ensure the influencer’s voice will work on your account page.
- Deliver an important update or a new product during the account takeover.
11. Hosting events
Events let you take engagement with your audience offline.
And events can be for many reasons. You can organize them to educate your audience, announce new products, or just have fun.
Just like a show organizer will bring Beyonce to attract more people, the same thing can work for your business.
You can collaborate with relevant influencers to deliver their expertise at your events.
Of course, this may be more expensive for your brand, but attendees will love to see influencers in the flesh.
And if the event delivers great results, you can make it an annual event.
Red Bull collaborated with Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian skydiver, to set a new record for the highest skydive.
While this event didn’t bring attendees to a location, it attracted over 8 million viewers to the livestream of the event.
Alo Yoga is another perfect example of this. The brand organizes a 5 km run with run instructor Ceren Kalyon.
Many people who will show up for this run are yoga enthusiasts who can buy Alo Yoga’s products in the future.
However, I wouldn’t advise hosting events if you’re still a relatively unknown brand.
It’s easier for popular brands to pull this off.
A great byproduct of hosting events is that influencers and attendees can post about their experiences on social media. So, you end up getting engagement both offline and online.
Keep these points in mind about hosting events in collaboration with influencers:
- Pick an event location close to your ideal audience.
- Collaborate with an influencer that can attract people to an offline event. Even though this may be more expensive, you’ll get great results.
- Create a strategy to help you acquire leads before or during these events. This may be a registration page. This lets you reach them after the events.
Conclusion
Whatever medium your audience consumes content, you can collaborate with influencers to reach more of them.
So, when you’re looking to give your marketing campaigns a boost, consider these influencer collaboration ideas.
But while collaborating with influencers is attractive, only the right influencers will deliver your intended results.
Remember to collaborate with influencers whose audience can buy your products.
So, test out these ideas and see which one works best for your business.
