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How to Hire an Influencer

Woman working on her laptop through a glass window.

Social media remains vital to your business and influencers can help you use it to its maximum potential. Influencer marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies. At least 61% of people trust a brand because of an influencer’s recommendation. Every dollar spent on an influencer campaign earns an average $5.79. This gives it one of the highest ROIs compared to other marketing strategies. You’re probably looking to hire an influencer for your brand and are curious how to start. An influencer relationship will ideally be long, so be certain to make relationships with the best influencers for your business. Here are some key tips for how to hire an influencer.

Determine Goals and Budget

As with anything for your business, you need to establish a goal and plan for hiring an influencer. Determine the promotion’s length and cost. You should also consider the sizes of influencer you are looking to hire to properly scale the promotion’s budget. Mega influencers bring large followings but also big price tags. Micro- and mini-influencers may have smaller follower numbers, but they boast higher engagement rates, can provide a closer partnership, and will cost your business less. 

The kind of campaign

Part of determining that budget will rely on you determining the type of promotion you’re hoping to get from an influencer. Here are some of the most common types of influencer promotions:

  • One-time mention – An influencer mentions a business in one piece of content 
  • Content integration – Products or services become part of the influencer’s content. For example, a fashion influencer may include a product as part of an outfit. 
  • Collaboration – An influencer works with a company to design a specific product. 
  • Review/Unboxing – An influencer creates content products and/or provides a (hopefully) positive review of your products/services.
  • Long-term cooperation – Sometimes called an ambassadorship. These are prolonged influencer relationships, which can include other kinds of the above campaigns. 

The kind of promotion will determine the cost. A one-time mention may be better suited for an influencer with a bigger audience, where you will have a larger, single payment. Other promotions like content integration, collaborations, and ambassadorships will be longer partnerships and contracts, so plan accordingly.  A digital marketing team can help you determine the right kind of promotion.

Consider Your Target

The strength of influencer marketing comes from their ability to reach and interact with those they influence: their audience. When hiring an influencer, be sure that their community aligns with your own business’ target. A proper match will advocate your business to many potential clients or customers. On the other hand, an engaged audience will mean little if it does not include those likely to be interested in your products or services. 

Fits your Brand

Along with your audiences, your brand and an influencer’s need to align, especially if you plan to have a prolonged promotional partnership with them. Be certain an influencer’s values, messaging, and tone pair well with your own business’. They don’t need to be identical, but they should be collaborative. Research their reputation and consider how that might affect your business. When an influencer’s values or messaging oppose your brand’s, it can lead to confusion, misrepresentation, or even damage your business.

Watch Their Work

When you have determined a prospective influencer you may want to hire, follow their content. The best influencers engage their audience with consistent content.  Watch how they regularly engage their audience. Do they respond to comments? Are they posting content daily or weekly?  These are key performance factors to help you determine the strength and value of an influencer to help your business reach a target. This analysis will also help you determine aspects of their brand and whether their followers are your target audience or filled with ranks of automated bots.

Develop a Relationship

The best relationships with influencers develop organically. You can begin interacting with an influencer by engaging with their content. This allows your business to capture their attention. Even better, you may have a previously built relationship. An influencer may have already recommended your products or services themselves, or you have previously sent them products which they enjoyed. This will put your hiring proposal before others who lack any familiarity with the influencer. 

The Hiring Process – Proper Communication

Once you have chosen an influencer and established a rapport, you need to propose hiring them. Use the preferred communication channels. Many prefer an email and provide one on their profiles. If there isn’t one provided, directly message the account and they should provide you with contact information. For smaller influencers, this communication will often be directly with the influencer themselves, but larger influencers may have a team who help them coordinate promotions and agreements.

In your communications, be clear about the kind of promotion, the products or services, and your goals. Explain to the influencer why you believe their perfect for the promotion, the products/services, and your business. In turn, listen to their suggestions or feedback about the promotion. They know their audience and how to create content. Maintaining this dialogue will be vital to continuing a long-term partnership between your business and said influencer. You can then negotiate payment to draw and finalize a contract. Compensation can take monetary and gifting forms.  

Time to Start

Following these tips will help you be successful in hiring the right influencer, with whom your business will hopefully have a long relationship. The most effective influencer marketing is a sustained partnership where their audience becomes attached to your brand by association.  If you need help creating influencer relationships or planning a promotion, contact Rosewood’s digital services team.  Their social media expertise can help you determine promotion type, find the right influencers, and start building relationships.

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Getting Results with “Calls to Action”

Typewriter which has written "call to action" on a page

If you have even only dipped your toes into online marketing, you will have come across the term “call to action” (CTA). They’re ubiquitously mentioned because of their efficacy. Calls to action display a click-through rate (CTR) of 4.23%. That’s more than double the average CTR of Google search ads at 1.91%, and more than ten times the rate of 0.35% for display ads. A single CTA in an email can improve click rates by a staggering 371% and purchases by 1617%. Including well-crafted CTAs in your digital marketing is essential, so Rosewood’s digital marketing team has put together everything you need to know about calls to action to get you results.

What is a call to action?

Calls to action are a staple of effective marketing. They are the main way to motivate and direct your potential customers and clients to complete a certain task that’s being promoted in your marketing. An ad, email, or social media post may show an enticing product, service, discount, or piece of content to pique their interest. It is the call to action’s job to then rouse someone to click and follow their curiosity. 

CTAs are found in every kind of digital marketing. They are prompts in the text of blogs, posts, and ads. They are buttons on websites and ads. Even email subject lines can have calls to action. You may have followed a call to action to reach this blog from Rosewood’s own social media and you’ll find them in this article. They are everywhere because they are an essential conversion method of digital marketing. The ability of effective CTAs to convert marketing into revenue makes them integral to increasing your marketing’s results and return on investment. 

What makes an call to action get results?

There is precision to creating an effective call to action with impressive click-through rates. Here are the staples for crafting successful CTAs that get results.

Intentional – Know the results you want

To create any call to action you need to have a clear intention, a defined goal and result for that piece of marketing. The CTA will result in a click, but it needs to be associated with another action attached to that click. It could be a specific purchase, redeeming a promotion, or contacting for information about a service. Establishing that precise goal allows you to set the impetus of the CTA and where it leads.

Directional

CTAs are meant to guide someone, and that is only possible if it provides clear direction and guidance. Most call to actions include a simple command or suggestion. Some common examples include “Read more”, “Check it out here”, “Buy now”, or “Follow the link in our bio”. All of these make it clear where they are steering a user. That direction also needs to continue beyond just the written prompt. Every call to action should be linked so that it leads to the relevant page or contact method. The last thing you want to give a viewer is the first direction and then leave them lost on your homepage wondering if they need to take the next right or left. They are more likely to just leave from confusion.

Clear and Concise

That direction should be clear and concise. Short and sweet is the standard practice. Simple commands like “read more” or “buy now” explicitly and concisely tells a user what they need to do. Providing longer or more complicated CTAs reduces clarity and clicks. 

CTAs should also be visually clear. Hyperlinked text should be visible so that it is immediately recognizable that it leads to the relevant page. Even better are button CTAs with strong colours and text. These make a call to action more visually prominent and so they have better click-through rates. The average CTR of a button call to action is more than 1% higher than average at 5.31% with the highest performance at 70%.

Personalized

As with most marketing, the most effective calls to action are personalized. These identify a person by name, their location, language, or interests. A Hubspot study of over 333,000 CTAs found that personalized ones perform 202% better. Such personalization isn’t usually possible in social media, but Google and Meta ads and email marketing can utilize user information to create personalized marketing that speaks directly to your audience.

FOMO

Calls to action are about motivation. One of the most effective motivators is the “fear of missing out” (FOMO). This is not actual fear or anxiety but an incentive. FOMO incites someone to make an action a priority rather than forgetting and not following through later. Create this excitement by indicating time sensitivity. Identify clearly there is time limit on a promotion or that stocks are limited. Pair this with a call to action that creates urgency with words like “now”, “soon”, “today”, or a phrase like “don’t miss out” to inspire that click. Avoid making every CTA evoke FOMO, or users will soon become numb to its effects. If everything is urgent, nothing is.

Restraint and Focus

Lastly, calls to action are a crucial aspect of your marketing, but practice restraint. Don’t flood every piece of marketing with multiple to try to generate clicks. CTAs turn from motivating suggestions to tedious, overwhelming commands if they are a constant stream. Every piece of marketing should stick to a clear focus. Longer pieces of marketing like emails or blogs can have multiple CTAs; however, they should still be restricted to a thematic few that fit the overall piece of content. 

Start Creating Your CTAs Now

Now you have the essentials to start crafting effective calls to action to see more directed results from your marketing. Want some assistance in creating or honing your CTAs for social media, blogs, ads, and emails? The best time to start is now. Talk about CTAs and the most productive for your business with our digital marketing team today. See? Urgency, clarity, and direction. 

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Rosewood’s 2022 Year in Review

The Rosewood team reviews all they accomplished in 2022

After a relaxing and celebratory holiday break, the Rosewood team are back and busy at our desks in our various offices today, and 2023 is proving to be as exciting as its predecessor. We’re excited for all the amazing projects this new year is bringing and anxious to get started, but first, we’re taking an opportunity to review and reflect on the incredible year and successes the Rosewood team and our clients have shared in 2022. 

Rosewood Grew in Team Members and in Service Offerings

Overall, 2022 proved a productive and fruitful year for us and our clients. Rosewood saw growth in all divisions of our company and reached some fantastic milestones. We grew to over 120 active clients and white-labeled for 5 other agencies. We also started a new nonprofit fundraising platform in collaboration with Graf-Martin Communications. Our Canada-wide team even met up this Fall and spent some quality time together for a photoshoot and day of fun.

Rosewood Rebranded to Serve Our Clients Better

Rosewood saw some exciting changes and developments alongside our growth in 2022. In November we celebrated our seventh anniversary. It’s astonishing how much Rosewood has grown and changed over the years. To match our development, in August of this past year we launched our rebrand with Rosewood 2.0. Our loyal peacock departed for a new logo look and feel. To match the growth of our services over those years, we also took the opportunity to clarify our company core values, mission and vision. Along with that new look, we implemented a new target audience and social media strategy. We’re still growing and changing and will soon be launching a whole new website that better reflects Rosewood’s path forward. 

Rosewood Welcomed a New Account Coordinator

2022 was certainly a year of news for Rosewood. To better organize our wide swath of projects, we implemented a new project management system through Monday.com. That was spearheaded by another new at Rosewood. We brought on our newest team member Paige as an Account Coordinator to our clients and to support Rosewood internally. Paige has been an incredible addition to our team. Her passion and enthusiasm are contagious, and her penchant for planning has been vital for customizing Monday.com’s setup for each division and their specific needs to ensure the utmost streamlining for everyone.

Speaking of our divisions, they also have plenty to boast about for their 2022s. 

Here are just a select few of their wins from 2022:

Websites:

  • Designed and launched more than 25 new websites
  • Completed over 640 updates and requests
  • 18 new clients signed on for maintenance for regular updates, optimal functionality, and high-quality content from our expert web team
  • Developed a new fundraising platform for nonprofits in collaboration with Graf-Martin Communications

Ads:

  • Our advertising team produced a nearly 20x return on advertising spend (ROAS) which also produced a customer acquisition of up to 6x for some of our clients
  • Ads team was able to generate over 7,300 visits to just one of our client’s websites
  • One client’s ads reached nearly 71,000 people, and another was seen a staggering 312,646 times

Digital Media:

  • Created and published well over 1100 posts 
  • Numerous new clients signed up for our social media services to improve their business’ discoverability, reach, and authenticity
  • Successfully increased clients’ reach through social media to develop high-profile partnerships, including two from the ground up

Catch the Ace:

  • Helped nonprofits raise over $500,000 to support community programs

Misc.:

  • We successfully put our heads together to solve an escape room during our team building day
  • Our Director of Digital Media, Georgie, became a proud mother to the first Rosewood Baby (and she’s adorable)

It proved to be an eventful and accomplished year, but we’re even more eager to continue our work and growth into 2023. We have some new services that we’re excited to announce soon. Keep an eye on our social channels for updates. For now, we hope you all are also having a good start to the new year. Thank you all for being a part of this past year, and we’re looking forward to sharing in success this year.

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