The PR BlogDigital PRInfluencers & AudiencesThe Honeymoon Outreach PR Strategy: Influencer Relations 2.0
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The Honeymoon Outreach PR Strategy: Influencer Relations 2.0

Get permission to pitch first.

Jerry Silfwer
by Jerry Silfwer

Cover photo: @jerrysilfwer

7 min.

The hon­ey­moon out­reach should improve your influ­en­cer marketing.

In a best-case scen­ario, you have a pre-exist­ing rela­tion­ship with the influ­en­cer you’re pitch­ing. However, we all know that this often isn’t the case. 

Typically, you must con­tact an influ­en­cer who doesn’t know who you are and what you’re selling. In a way, this is the mar­ket­ing equi­val­ent of cold-call­ing.

I hate cold sales—as I’m sure most of us do.

So, how do you avoid pitch­ing cold?

Table of Contents 

How To Do a Honeymoon Outreach

The fun­da­ment­al prin­ciple is straightforward:

Never sell or pro­mote any­thing in your first con­tact with an influencer!

But how should you get in touch with influ­en­cers, then? 2 – 8 weeks before your planned out­reach, drop your pre-selec­ted list of influ­en­cers an email and intro­duce your­self. Don’t try to act as if you’re about to become best friends or any­thing — state the fol­low­ing clearly:

  • Your full name, your loc­a­tion, and your con­tact details.
  • Who you work for (or what type of cli­ents) and why you con­nect with them.
  • The crit­ic­al ques­tion: Would they be inter­ested in poten­tial brand collaborations?

Non-Interested Influencers

  • You can remove them from your influ­en­cer map­ping entirely since they would have turned you down anyway.
  • You and your col­leagues don’t need to waste any pre­cious time on this influ­en­cer in the future. Win-win.
  • You run less risk of get­ting a hate­ful post from an influ­en­cer that likes to “burn” pitch­ers. A great safety net.

Interested Influencers

  • Getting a per­son to say ‘yes’ to one thing psy­cho­lo­gic­ally increases their chance of say­ing yes again.
  • You ensure that your map­ping con­sists of influ­en­cers that are 100% pos­it­ive to cor­por­ate collaborations.
  • You don’t have to “cold call” them when you finally approach them with an actu­al pitch.

And this, ladies and gen­tle­men, is how you do a hon­ey­moon outreach.

In my exper­i­ence, hon­ey­moon out­reach increases influ­en­cer mar­ket­ing res­ults sig­ni­fic­antly. After all — you’re only con­tact­ing influ­en­cers who have giv­en you their per­mis­sion to pitch them. 1See also Permission Marketing by Seth Godin.

Still, it’s not only about avoid­ing the ‘not inter­ested;’ you will most likely write bet­ter out­reach emails if you’ve been in con­tact with the people you’re reach­ing out to.

Please sup­port my blog by shar­ing it with oth­er PR- and com­mu­nic­a­tion pro­fes­sion­als. For ques­tions or PR sup­port, con­tact me via jerry@​spinfactory.​com.

Update: Since this post was writ­ten in 2012, the influ­en­cer mar­ket­ing industry has grown con­sid­er­ably. Today, there are many spe­cial­ist out­reach agen­cies whose primary strategy is estab­lish­ing many influ­en­cer rela­tion­ships before con­nect­ing them with brands.

PR Resource: Different Types of Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing vs Influencer Relations

There are four main types of influ­en­cer mar­ket­ing and influ­en­cer relations:

Influencer Marketing

Influencer advert­ising = The influ­en­cer will pub­lish the brand’s pre-made con­tent in their channels.

Influencer spon­sor­ship = The influ­en­cer will read a script to con­vey an offer­ing fol­low­ing the brand’s instructions.

Influencer Relations

Influencer col­lab­or­a­tion = The influ­en­cer show­cases the brand’s offer­ing by cre­at­ing con­tent sim­il­ar to the influ­en­cer­’s reg­u­lar content.

Influencer out­reach = The influ­en­cer receives invit­a­tions, demos, or exclus­ive mater­i­al with no ser­vice in return asked by the brand.

Advertising and spon­sor­ships are what we typ­ic­ally refer to as influ­en­cer mar­ket­ing. Collaborations and out­reach are typ­ic­ally referred to as influ­en­cer rela­tions.

Organisations look­ing to util­ise the poten­tial reach of rel­ev­ant influ­en­cers will be wise to pay atten­tion to these dis­tinc­tions. 2See also The Influencers in Public Relations (Doctor Spin).

Learn more: The Four Types of Influencer Marketing and Influencer Relations

PR Resource: More PR Strategies

Doctor Spin’s PR Strategies

Make sure to explore a wide vari­ety of PR strategies for every dif­fer­ent type of situ­ation and challenge:

Learn more: How to Create a PR Strategy That Actually Works

ANNOTATIONS
ANNOTATIONS
1 See also Permission Marketing by Seth Godin.
2 See also The Influencers in Public Relations (Doctor Spin).
Jerry Silfwer
Jerry Silfwerhttps://doctorspin.net/
Jerry Silfwer, alias Doctor Spin, is an awarded senior adviser specialising in public relations and digital strategy. Currently CEO at KIX Index and Spin Factory. Before that, he worked at Kaufmann, Whispr Group, Springtime PR, and Spotlight PR. Based in Stockholm, Sweden.

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The Four Types of Influencer Marketing and Influencer Relations

Influencers & Audiences
Get influencer outreach right by knowing the four types of influencer marketing. In this blog article, I've clearly defined them to mitigate confusion.
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