5 Tips for Stay at Home Moms to Become Influence Marketers

By the looks of it, remote work is not only the latest trend the world over, it could be something that’s here to stay. With many full-time jobs either being reduced to part-time work, or eliminated altogether, there has never been a better time to start your very own business. One of the fastest-growing stay-at-home-businesses is becoming an influencer marketer for powerful online social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. 

5 Tips for Stay at Home Moms to Become Influence Marketers
[ image: pexels.com by vlada karpovich ]

What’s an influencer marketer? In a nutshell, an influencer i.e beauty influencer finds a product and/or a brand that interests her and potentially her audience of social media followers. She then posts photos, video, and written content that includes the brand. If an influencer is doing her job, she will eventually see a steady stream of activity on her site along with interest in the products included in her posts. Activity that can lead to both sales and new, quality followers who will visit the site faithfully. And the best part about becoming an influencer marketer? You can do it all as a stay at home mom.

But how do you go about starting your very first influencer marketing campaign? Here are five tips to get you up and running.

1. Focus on Influencer Marketing for Specific Brands or Products

In professional marketing terms, this is called “niching down.” It’s always best to focus on one or two related items first before venturing out into dozens of items. For instance, if you regularly blog about fashion and fashion tips like we do here at SunshineKelly.com, you might promote a brand of watch bands or perhaps a line of expensive underwear. If you’re blogging about travel, like we also do here, you might start with a line of luggage or travel wear. 

But just writing and posting nice photos of these products is not enough. Be proactive. Do your research. Find the email of one or two brand representatives and approach them with a plan of action for partnering up. Inform them about your audience demographic and why you believe they would likely purchase the brand’s products. If the brand agrees to partner up with you, you can succeed at making your first sales with as little as 1000 followers on your Instagram or YouTube account. 

2. Contact a Professional Influencer Marketing Platform

If you’re the impatient type like lots of stay at home moms are (we just have so much time in a day), you will be well served to team up with a professional influencer marketing platform like Scalefluence, for instance. These platforms employ marketing specialists who work with a large number of influencers and bloggers. They will assist in matching you up with their large network of top brands who resonate with your blog, and your social media following. 

Influencer marketing platforms will also help you get paid on time, and if you’re willing to make a long-term career out of becoming an influencer, they will use data-driven algorithms to determine your pricing structure. All you have to do is go to the platform you wish to work with, create a profile, and as they like to say in the big city, You’re in business, baby!  

3. Think Long Term when it Comes to Influencer Marketing Success

Even when working with a top influencer marketing platform, becoming a leading brand influencer is not a get rich quick, work from home job. One needs to think long term. In order to do this, you will need to create a strategy that works for both your professional and domestic life. You might want to start out slowly at first, and see how things go. 

Not all brands will be willing to put up a lot of money for their initial influencer campaigns until they see some solid results. To them, influencer marketing is no different from paying for traditional advertising or even Facebook and Amazon ads. But once they see some positive return on investment (ROI), chances are they will expand their influencer budgets which means more sales and more money for you.   

4. Tailor your Influencer Marketing to your Channel, not the Brand

This idea might sound counterintuitive. But if you’re working with a strong influencer marketing platform, chances are they will encourage you to be true to your channel theme, be it fashion, travel, books, or whatever. Influencer marketing isn’t like traditional advertising where the brand is front and center. 

Your followers are coming to your Instagram page or YouTube channel because you post interesting copy and stunning photos/videos. It’s best to remain true to your channel while promoting the top brands and you will see significant sales. 

5. Create a Plan of Influencer Marketing Attack

Chances are, you’re not going to make a sale based on your first influencer posts. Plan on creating different stages of pitches in what’s called a purchasing funnel. Simply put, purchasing funnels are the stages a potential customer will go through before making the decision to pull out the Amex. Depending on which influencer platform agency you’re working with, you might find different versions of the funnel. 

One interesting model has four levels:

*Awareness: This is when your followers become aware of a product you’re using in your posts.

*Consideration: Now that your audience is aware of the product, they’re considering purchasing it.

*Purchase: Now that they are aware of the product and have considered making a purchase, they break out their credit card and tap the “Shop Now” icon. Congratulations, you’ve made your first sale, right from home.

*Loyalty: But the purchase is not the end all. If the product you’ve been backing with your posts is as valuable as you say, chances are your purchaser will come back for more. She will become a loyal follower and a loyal customer.     

One of the best ways to create loyal customers is to reward them with special promotions like flash sales, freebies, two-for deals, and more. If you’re working on your own as an influencer marketer, you’ll want to do more research on how to convince your brand representative to engage in such promotions. But if you’re working with a professional influencer marketing agency, they will assist you with creating promotions that will gain you more and more loyal followers.