In a survey carried out earlier this year, marketers from across the globe were asked what they think about Influencer Marketing and how the experts see it changing.

Here, Paul Neal, Marketing Exec at eXp UK and founder of Estate Agency Marketing breaks down his findings so that UK estate agents and letting agents can implement the same practices into their content marketing strategy.

Here are the notable highlights found:
- Influencer Marketing Industry is set to grow to approximately £9.9 Billion in 2021.
- 90% of our survey respondents believe influencer marketing to be an effective form of marketing.
- 67% of respondents prefer their influencer marketing to be campaign-based rather than always-on.
- Finding influencers remains the most significant challenge for those who run campaigns in-house but is becoming less of a problem.
- There was a major slow down in influencer marketing spend from March - July 2020 as the pandemic unfolded.

So What is Influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing that uses endorsements and product mentions from influencers. For example, individuals with a dedicated social following or are viewed as a key figure within their niche or community.
Influencer marketing works because of the high amount of trust that social influencers have built up with their following. Recommendations from them serve as a form of social proof to your brand’s potential customers.

How Can You Use Influencer Marketing For Your Estate Agency Brand?

Despite influencer marketing usually being a tactic used by larger brands (most notably, consumer brands), Paul Neal believes there is great potential for localised influencer marketing within our industry, no matter the size of the business.

“As with so many content marketing strategies with estate agents and letting agents, the key is to be seen, liked and trusted within your targeted territory.
Quite often, our strategy for our clients is to create a passive marketing approach where we build their brands identity to be heavily community focused. We want our clients to be seen as the local friendly property expert whilst waving the ‘Robinhood of their community’ flag too.”

Pauls Tips For Influencer Marketing

Identify Your Influencer Campaign Goal

Before you can find influencers for your campaign, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your campaign.

Whether you’re planning to run a short-term, seasonal campaign to raise brand awareness, or planning a longer-term ambassador-style partnership with an influencer, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve. Both in terms of marketing goals and physical results.

Research Influencers

Have you got any branded hashtags for your social media posts? Which communities, towns, and cities do you market in? These are always good places to start when looking for local influencers or key figures to work with.

Your findings could include:
- Local business owners
- Local charities and community centres
- Local football teams
- Local markets
- Local events
- Local radio stations and press houses

They might be your Michael Jordan’s or Beyonce’s, but for your market and goals, these local figures above would seriously be able to increase your visibility, brand awareness and trust within your targeted communities.

Reach Out to Your Chosen Influencers

Your first message to an influencer could make or break a partnership deal, so it’s worth putting in some extra time to make sure you’re reaching out in the right way.
Where some estate agents and letting agents won’t have a huge budget for influencer marketing, you will need to find another way in which to make any collaboration worth their while.

Here are a few ways in which you could approach that:
- Offer them a percentage of each of your sales for a set period of time
- Offer to set a set amount of your earnings to a local charity
- Offer to include their business or organisation into a number of paid ads
- Offer to pay them for any paid ad costs
- Offer them vouchers from a local business you have already partnered with

Share Resources with Your Influencers

It’s a good idea to bring your influencer up to speed with a great onboarding pack ahead of their project.

Think about setting up a Dropbox or shared Google Drive folder for all your influencer campaigns and sharing a resources folder that could include:
- Brand Style Guide: This should outline your business’ approved images, logos, colour palette, or tag lines.
- Editorial Style Guide: Sharing an editorial style guide with your influencer will help them get the right tone of voice in their copy, as well as using the right language when they’re discussing the aims and goals of the campaigns.
- Press Releases and Talking Points: Sharing some example copy or talking points for inspiration can really help influencers when it comes to drafting captions or storyboarding for stories. Try to include any important stats or figures from press releases here too, so they’ll always get the small details right.
- FAQs: Here’s where you can answer and explain all the frequently asked questions about your campaign and the deliverables, like what dimensions, file formats, and file sharing locations.

There are plenty of ways to discover local influencers and come to an agreement that works for both parties. The important thing is to get out there, introduce yourself to these individuals and start to network with them.

Good luck!

The original survey was carried out by Influencer Marketing Hub.

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