How to run an effective outreach campaign

1. Define your purpose

   Every outreach project starts with the same question: What’s our aim here? Link building? Awareness? Conversions? We get it, it is a little daunting – but, it doesn’t have to be hard. Are you looking to raise awareness or change perception? Are you just looking for promotion or do you want to educate prospective customers about your project? Work this out sooner rather than later.

2. Identify your target audience

   The first task you must complete is to identify your target audience. Creating a customer profile is key. Knowing their age group, gender, interests and social media platforms of choice will allow you to shape your campaign so that you best target these people with your outreach. The most important of these to identify is which social channel they use the most and how much time they spend on it. Knowing this will allow you to find the right influencers with the right content to engage your target audience.

3. Audience engagement

   Design a strategy that uses various digital channels to spread awareness of your brand. But be smart! Nearly all digital channels used for outreach will have an analytics tool allowing you to track influencers and engagement with your brand. Rank the channels from most to least in terms of customer engagement so you know where to focus your efforts to yield the best results.

4. Research

   Research is key! Finding influencers who speak to your target audience is the first step. Be vigilant! More influencers than you think buy followers, a big no-no. Prioritise engagement over follower. Work out what you are willing to pay per engagement and the most cost-effective way to achieve this. For example, it may be cheaper to give out a one-time 100% discount code so that they can order through your normal delivery network rather than sending them a product separately. Also, keep an eye on how long an influencer has been active: the longer, the better!

5. Overall planning

   Remember to go with the flow! Work of this type is time consuming and requires a good amount of patience. Identifying and contacting influencers is no small task. Keeping at it and not giving up is the way to go. When contacting influencers, customisation is important. If you send them a customised message showing that you know about their channel, they are more likely to reciprocate this individual touch when posting about your brand, making your campaign seem more authentic, as if they came across your product by chance. Cutting corners in this area will significantly reduce the results of your campaign.

The most basic concept behind outreach is getting the right people to talk about your brand. As long as you put in the research from the off, your campaign could really take off and showcase your brand to previously-untapped audiences. However, at the end of the day, it’s important to remain flexible – no overly forced messages, no unreasonable time constraints – and keep things fun!