Katrina Julia

May 30, 201910 min read

INFLUENCER MARKETING: 5 Ways to Grow Your Reach to Millions

Updated: Jan 10, 2020

You've learned some about Influencer marketing as an entrepreneur or as a brand. but have you considered growing your reach, and expanding your exposure exponentially? To millions and beyond?

Influencer marketing doesn't have to be complicated. At its basic core, when done right, influencer marketing is simply word of mouth. Think about all the times you did, bought, or experienced something because a friend recommended it.

It is becoming more and more important to stand out in the crowd among over a billion users each month on Instagram alone, not to mention all the other social media platforms with millions to billions of people on them daily.

Until several years, I myself didn't see the importance of social media and influencer marketing.

Then, when I personally experienced over 25X growth in the business on Facebook alone in 2014 without any paid ads, I realized it was simply story sharing and creating communities. Then, I started to ask what if I and we did this across multiple platforms with multiple people. We are naturally drawn to connect, to create, and to cultivate. We are drawn by sharing stories.

When you use this strategic approach and combine it with community and experiences, you will understand how and why we experienced over 2500% ROI in earned media last year alone with influencer marketing. You will understand how it is possible to get to a return of 11X+ ROI.

What you may be surprised, or even shocked by, is how we grew our reach and exposure of our transformation and lifestyle entrepreneurship campaigns to over 200 million last month alone and how it is even possible with just one platform.

Influencer Marketing: 5 Ways to Grow Your Reach to Millions

1. Get Clear on Who You Are

Who are you?

What are your passions and purpose?

How are you different?

Are you an influencer?

What type of influencer?

Are you a brand?

How do you work with influencers?

What do you offer?

What type of exposure?

What do you focus on?

Do you do lifestyle? Entrepreneurship?

I believe that as people are getting smarter and smarter on who they choose to work with, your personal brand matters. Who you are, and what you stand for may follow you for years to come with social media and online access. I also believe that brands need to adopt a personal brand strategy. More and more people are looking to see who the leader is, and if they trust them. It's also not enough to simply have a "personal brand strategy", it is key to be real, authentic, and trustworthy.

Are you who you say you are online?

Do you practice what you preach?

Are you aligned to your values?

Can people trust you?

Some of you may be similar to me in that I function as both an influencer as a brand. Sometimes, I will collaborate initially as an influencer to test drive the brand and mention our community of influencers and short to long term transformation and lifestyle entrepreneurship collaborations. This gives us each the chance to see if it is a great fit. Sometimes, with a tool I have used for a long time, I will directly approach as a business to business collaboration. I will and we will also reach out for business development with influencer agencies, hospitality brands, and conferences to mutually create value, leverage circles of influence, and more.

When you sit down to do this, I suggest you create with our free guide to help you jump start in influencer marketing first. This will help you walk through the process step by step.

2. Set Up a Stable Structure

Are you taking consistent action?

Do you have and review a 90 day plan?

What collabs do you create?

What collabs do you want to create?

Are you focusing solely on short term?

Are you asking for long term collabs?

When you set up a stable structure, it creates confidence, momentum, and results. When you don't, it will cause discouragement, stillness, and frustration. When you create a 90 day plan, and review it daily, you will be amazed at the results you get.

When I first started learning influencer marketing in 2014, my first consistent action was simply outreaching via Instagram and email. Then, I found someone to source influencers via Fiverr. His name is "thlonebookaneer" and you may find him via Influencer Marketing once you sign up. In 2016, we ran focus groups with various types of influencers during our Costa Rica and Cuba Retreats. I researched and tested over 10+ platforms in 2016 - 2017 alone. In 2017, I realized the power of story sharing combined with experiences and entrepreneurship short to long term, and I created our own lifestyle entrepreneurship platform.

I applied what I learned previously in starting non-profits, companies, and experience in over 7 industries with strategy, structure, scaling and systems with 6+ figure results + 1000+% ROI consistently to creating our community.

The end of 2017, I had the epiphany to fully start immersing our influencers in our online challenges, courses, and masterminds. You can see how consistent action and reflection led from one step to another. It led to creating our own transformation and lifestyle entrepreneurship platform with ongoing campaigns and ways for brands to integrate short to long term too. After a full year of listing our campaigns on multiple platforms, test driving various influencers, and rolling out experiences, we experienced over 2500% ROI in earned media last year alone (value of posts vs. investment given). The brand awareness grew exponentially directly to the community we wanted.

This opened up my eyes further to the importance of setting up a scaleable system for influencer marketing (or anything) not only for yourself, but your team.

I also got clearer on visibility, reach, exposure and conversions via influencer marketing platforms.

3. Scale Your Systems Now

Are you on influencer platforms?

Do you have a media kit with results?

Do you visit platforms consistently?

Are you researching new ones?

Have you listed campaigns?

Have you set up an incoming process?

Do you have a system set up to scale?

We've talked about getting clear on who you are, and what you offer; as well as a stable structure. Let's highlight setting up and scaling systems. The more clear you are on who you are, the clearer you will be on who you want to work with. The clearer you are on who you want to work with, the easier what platforms and campaigns make sense for you. The more you practice and apply in these areas, the easier it will be for you to create and scale your systems in influencer marketing. Systems are important whether you are an entrepreneur, influencer, or brand. They give consistency, continuity, and scaleability.

For example, as I sit here typing this blog:

1) We have an auto responder on our email that provides clear direction on several areas and sets a boundary for myself and the team to respond in 72 hours or less.

2) Our social media is repurposed across platforms with tools like IFTTT and Tailwind for Pinterest (you can learn more via our social media guide and social media webinar).

3) Our freebies and courses are set up and automated allowing anyone to get what they want.

4) Our events, retreat, academy, and brand process is set up for their first step

5) Our influencer transformation and lifestyle entrepreneurship platform provides information and details for each influencer marketing collaboration and an application process for next steps.

These are a few examples of setting up systems and scaling them. I am huge on time, location, and financial freedom. Without structure and systems, this is typically not entirely possible.

With influencer marketing, this means:

1) Explaining upfront what you are looking for.

2) Including media, testimonials, and results.

3) Listing your profile and/or campaigns on multiple platforms.

4) Including clear outline for campaigns and examples.

5) Providing step by step instructions on next steps.

6) Explaining future possibilities to create vision.

7) Giving information on when you will respond.

This will not only create know, like, and trust factor, but will save you time and energy. It will create clarity and focus for those you are looking for and those that want to work with you. It sets expectations and boundaries, and helps you learn to tweak your systems to get better. It creates calm vs. chaos. Most importantly, it creates peace of mind.

When we first started on platforms in 2016, I test drove platforms like Hypemarket, who actually reached out to us. I did numerous demos and trials with platforms here. We ran campaigns and found influencers via rep, Collabor8, Muses, and Tribe to name a few in 2018. We also fully launched our own platform early 2018 leading to the 2500% ROI in the first full year of operation.

While these were results are amazing, and many would stop here, I did not. I am driven by constant growth and refinement. Influencer marketing is no different as it is constantly evolving.

4. Measure and Manage Metrics

I started immersing myself in creating metrics from the beginning and tracking and refining them consistently. At the end of 2018, I realized that I was and we were playing small. That it was time to go big or home. I always choose breaking barriers. It is likely when you expand as an entrepreneur, influencer, or brand, you will realize the power of reach and conversions.

It is not enough to simply find incredible influencers, create amazing experiences, and outreach. To really get to the next level with influencer marketing aka word of mouth, or anything in life, we have to expose and educate. My big takeaway was we would have to do just that in 2019 in order to increase reach and results massively.

I set intentions for platforms that would allow us to solve the next opportunity for growth - to list our campaigns at scale in front of massive amounts of influencers.

Our influencer marketing metrics included from the beginning like target reach, targets per quarter, goals per campaign, engagement metrics, tracking reach results, click through results, and sales results.

What often happens in life and entrepreneurship is we think things will happen easier or faster. We will often quit when we are three feet from gold. However, each step gives you information for the next step. When you modify your mindset to this, you realize it is critical to keep going. You only fail when you quit. You only quit when you choose to. Yes, it will be hard. Yes, you will face circumstances you never dreamed of. At the same time, you can choose to let them make you or break you. I choose to let them all make me and rise in and through the fire.

Yes we experienced brand awareness, excitement, inspiration, earned media, reach, and click through results e.g. freebies with campaigns immediately, However, even with results as high as over 300,000 and engagement of 4600, it took more time to make sales. I realized the basic principles included alignment of ideal long term influencers who want to get healthy, make money, and build brands, experience refinement, increasing action and reach, and time.

In other words, learning, application, and patience.

Like many of us, patience is definitely something I've gotten to grow in the last several years.

I started to then ask the questions of what platforms could we be on to help connect and create faster with creators and campaigns, while increasing ROI.

5. Never Ever Ever Quit

I want you to stop and reflect on the journey it took to get here. The persistence, determination and drive to never quit. To choose to believe in our creator, in myself, in the vision of FIT Life Creation, the lives we may impact, and the legacy. This requires a mindset to never stop learning and to never quit.

I started to explore even more platforms. I started with the intention of alignment, simplicity, and scale. I ran several campaigns with reach to influencers of over 100 million to be exposed to our lifestyle entrepreneurship campaigns and platform. The response, traction, and results in less than a month were amazing with over 4,000 influencers. However, for a few reasons, the platform ultimately wasn't a great long term fit. I kept persisting and kept the faith.

I then ran across a new platform that is less than a year old - Perlu.

I found them via Instagram.

I immediately signed up for a call with Danielle. I immediately saw how in many ways they are similar to Activate. However, they allow the same access, exposure, and innovation for influencers and brands both. Their platform highlights abundance and community creation.

If you remember, I mentioned I realized the next big step was reach and conversions.

After an hour long call with Danielle, and massive insight into their platform and the intention, I was blown away!

They were allowing me both as an influencer and /or as brand to:

A) Join already created communities e.g. Packs with groups of influencers up to billions in reach;

B) Create my own custom created packs to invite and create communities with influencers; and

C) Invite pack members / people to our own custom created lifestyle entrepreneurial campaigns.

In essence, they were allowing us to list both the campaigns and the people freely as a member.

In less than one month, here are the visuals of our own created packs and the reach of over 200 million.

I am blown away myself!

In addition to that, I am a pack member already of over 80 packs totaling millions to billions.

They are also innovative, responsive, relatable and personable!

I also connected with Brent who is incredible as well on the brand side.

I could not be happier with the tool, service, and community overall!

We also have already over 10 collaborations listed with connection to 200 million+, and 100os of creators, and we've already got over 30 creators already in action from Perlu in 1 month!

If you would love to join, here is a quick link to jump start!

I can honestly say that without each and every step, we would not be here.

I am also super grateful for their team and innovation and the tool!

We are now already 3x our reach and results in less than 4 months than we were in all of 2018!

I recently also discovered an incredible tool via Julie Solomon that has been incredible for reviewing engagement, tags, reach, lists and more called People Map. I loved watching the two webinars created and offered for free and immediately taking action. I just started on this tool a week ago so stay tuned for more!