Influencer Marketing Tips
For local brands, small and relevant beats big and famous. How to pick partners, brief them loosely and measure past the likes.
Written by
Samantha designs the way our sites look and the way Cold looks on social. Once she's on a brief nothing else exists, and she'll keep researching until it's right. Nearly right doesn't count. Show her an AI-generated photo with seven fingers and you'll get a full review. In summer she runs the streets round the office.
Read bio ↓Small and relevant beats big and famous
The word influencer conjures millions of followers and invoices to match, which is why most local businesses write the channel off. The version that works for them looks different: creators with a few thousand engaged followers in the right area or niche, whose recommendation reads like a mate's tip rather than a billboard. Engagement rates fall as follower counts rise, and trust falls faster. For a restaurant in Essex, a local food account with four thousand real followers beats a national name with four hundred thousand strangers.
Pick for audience, not audience size
Scroll their comments before their follower count. Real conversations, local names, questions getting answered? Good sign. Rows of emoji from accounts that sell engagement? Walk away. Then check the fit is believable. A personal trainer promoting your bakery can work, but only if their audience would believe they'd eat there. The recommendation only carries the weight the relationship does.
Brief loosely
The instinct is to script the post. Resist it. Creators know what their audience responds to far better than you do, and content that sounds like the brand wrote it performs like an advert, which defeats the point of the exercise. Give them the facts that must be right, the thing you want featured, and the freedom to say it their way. The slightly awkward, unpolished version usually outperforms the one you'd have approved.
Do the paperwork
In the UK, paid partnerships must be labelled as ads. The ASA is clear on it and enforcement lands on the brand as well as the creator. An #ad label doesn't hurt performance the way brands fear, and getting caught hiding one hurts considerably more. Put the deliverables, usage rights and labelling in writing, even for a gifted collaboration.
Measure past the likes
Likes are the creator's metric. Yours are the trackable ones: a discount code unique to them, a link with tracking on it, a "how did you hear about us" that staff remember to ask. Concede the limits, some value arrives as awareness you'll never attribute cleanly. But if three collaborations produce no codes redeemed and no mentions at the till, the channel is telling you something. Rented attention has to convert into owned customers, or it's just rent.
Written by
Samantha Coltart
Samantha designs the way our sites look and the way Cold looks on social. Once she's on a brief nothing else exists, and she'll keep researching until it's right. Nearly right doesn't count. Show her an AI-generated photo with seven fingers and you'll get a full review. In summer she runs the streets round the office.
