Influencer marketing is a powerful tool for companies of any size. But for startups and small CPG companies in particular, influencer marketing is one of the most cost-effective methods for boosting brand awareness and sales. In this post, we’ll discuss:

Why influencer marketing continues to be extremely impactful for CPG brands in 2021 and beyond
What type of influencers your food and beverage brand should be targeting
A step-by-step guide on how to find those influencers and reach out to them

Let’s get started!

Why Influencer Marketing Works for CPG Startups

As with any startup, the beginning stages typically require a lot of bootstrapping and the founding team’s time and energy. Because, unless you’re flushed with cash from investors, there aren’t too many funds to go around during these early months and years. Plus, your company’s manpower is likely limited to you (as the founder or founders) and possibly just a few others. That is why finding free or low-cost options for marketing can be critical during these early stages. Influencer marketing is one of those options – and a powerful one at that.

Here’s why it works so well for smaller CPG companies and startups..

No Resources, No Problem

In most scenarios, paid advertising is the fastest way to reach your audience. However, as the name suggests, it’ll cost you. For those in a well-known, established category (let’s say, peanut butter), you’re competing with the big guys (such as Jif, Skippy and Peter Pan). Competing in the ad realm means higher bids to get in front of your target audience. For most startups, the cost of these ads are simply not within budget.

Then there are the free methods for marketing – word-of-mouth, social media content, blogging, etc. – that asks for nothing more than your time and elbow grease. And while these strategies should certainly be implemented consistently over time, the progress will likely be slow and the energy costs high.

In comes influencer marketing. With a reasonable amount of effort, little to no funds, and just a lot of passion and persistence, influencer marketing can help you reap the benefits of both paid ads and long-term marketing efforts. That is, you can find influencers who are happy to receive your products to try and promote to their audience (in many cases, pro bono) if your company and products meet their standards and align to their values. We’ll talk more about how to find these folks and reach out to them later in this post.

Reaching a Highly Engaged Audience

When it comes to recommendations, who are you most likely to listen to – someone you know personally or a random ad that pops up on your screen? You, like most people, would take recommendations from a friend over an ad any day. And while influencers may not be close, personal friends with every one of their thousands of followers, they still have more of an impact on their audience than an ad would on the average consumer. What that means is two-fold.

Firstly, the audience of influencers are more likely to actually look at, digest and engage with the content that the influencer posts. So while someone might scroll right past an ad on Facebook or Instagram, they are more likely to stop and consume the post of someone they follow. In other words, you will be more likely to get their attention. And that’s what all marketing is about – attention.

Secondly, influencers have built trust and rapport with their audience. When someone follows an account on social media, the reason is usually because they enjoy that account’s content, aspire to be like that individual, or get a sense of relief or escape from the posts. In any case, follows come when an individual has a perception that the account offers them value. And if they are receiving value from the content, they are more trusting of the account holder. That is, they are more willing to purchase whatever the influencer is recommending because they trust that it will be helpful or enjoyable to them.

Gathering Authentic Feedback

If you reach the right type of influencers for your brand, you will be able to provide them with products for free without actually paying for the promotions. This is not done through any type of pressuring or undervaluing of influencers and content creators, of course. It is simply a very genuine ask (because, as we’ve discussed above, sometimes there's just no money to be spent when your business is in its infancy and likely being bankrolled by you or the founders directly). Should the influencers accept, you will be able to have someone in your target market try your product and give you honest feedback without being biased by the all-mighty dollar.

As we’ll discuss in a later section, asking influencers to try and share your product with their audience is a no-pressure game. While the influencer may agree to receive your product and test it, it is completely optional whether they choose to make a post on it. This is, after all, a free collaboration. That said, in nearly all cases, any influencer who sincerely loves your product will want to share it with their audience. If you’re finding that more influencers are choosing not to share it than those who are, this is a good sign that you need to dig deeper.

In any case, whether they share the product or not, it is a good idea to ask influencers for feedback. Even for those who do not promote the product, they may be open to sharing their opinion about it with you. This is an opportune time to gain insight into what is or is not working when it comes to product market fit.

Finding the Right Food & Beverage Influencers

When we use the word “influencers”, we are referring particularly to social media influencers. As of 2021 going into 2022, these are the top social media platforms for influencers:

Instagram
TikTok
Facebook
YouTube (not technically social media but offers highly impactful influencers)

From personal experience, we’ve found that Instagram influencers are the easiest to find and connect with. They are also the most likely to agree to free collaborations. Meanwhile, YouTubers are much tougher to get a hold of but their audience is much more engaged than the average social media platform. We recommend trying all platforms to see how the influencers react to your outreach. Depending on your product and target market, you will find varying levels of success on the different platforms.

To find the right influencers for your CPG brand, consider the following criteria: niche, brand values, follower count, posting cadence (frequency and recency of posts), and engagement on posts. We’ll dig into each criteria below.

Niche

First and foremost, you’ll want an influencer that’s in a niche similar to yours. If you’re reading this, you’re likely a CPG Food and Beverage company so you’ll want to search for folks who are foodies, recipe bloggers, restaurant reviewers, etc. If you’re a spirits company, you may seek out those who focus on cocktails. If you’re a flour company, perhaps reach out to baking bloggers specifically. The goal here is to find influencers who have an audience that are ideal customers for you.

Take a look around their content. Do you like the aesthetics? Do you like the captions? Do you like the tone of voice? What you see in their account is what you’ll get when they promote your products so make sure you’re happy with the way they approach their content and engage with their audience.

Brand Values

Next, consider your brand values. If your company is all about family friendly meals, finding influencers who are parents might be ideal. If you’re all about edgy, unique ingredients, find those who embody a contrarian personality. Whatever the case, this is another opportunity for you to reach your perfect audience. The last thing you’d want to do is waste time and resources on an audience that isn’t a good fit for your products because the influencer’s audience likely won’t connect with the content, should they choose to promote it in the first place.

Follower Count

Targeting influencers with a certain number of followers is important to ensure you’re getting enough eyes on your products. Though these influencers may be posting about your brand for free, the process and resources involved in shipping them these products is still an investment on your part. To ensure the investment is worthwhile, try to target influencers with at least 5,000 followers.

From there, you might be thinking that the higher, the better. However, that’s not necessarily the case. The fact of the matter is, the higher the follower count, the less likely an influencer is willing to accept free products in exchange for the promotion. Moreover, more followers doesn’t necessarily mean more engagement. An influencer with 10,000 followers and high engagement is more valuable than an influencer with 100,000 followers but low engagement. More on this later.

You will likely have the most luck with influencers with around 50,000 followers or fewer. Of course, if you find an account with 60k, 70k, 80k+ followers that is very aligned to your product category and brand values, there is no harm in reaching out and asking. But on average, try to stay between 5,000 and 50,000 followers.

Posting Cadence

Look through some of the posts from the account to see if the influencer has posted recently and how often they post. Ideally, the influencer should’ve posted at least once in the past week and post at least once or twice a week. This ensures that the account is still relevant, up-to-date, and the influencer continues to connect with their audience consistently.

Engagement

While looking through the influencer’s recent posts, pay attention to the numbers of likes and comments. You’ll want the number of likes to be in the hundreds and the comments to be 5 to 10+ per post. This shows an active audience that is engaged with the content being posted. Engagement shows that the audience cares about what the influencer has to say enough to like their content and/or leave a comment.

Lastly, check if and how the influencer responds to the comments. A sign of an influencer who truly cares about their audience is one who responds to nearly all comments and keeps a positive tone.

Reaching Out to CPG Influencers

When you’re leading or working in a startup, there is no shame in asking for help. Every successful company started with individuals who were not afraid to make the ask (many, many asks). That approach applies to all aspects of the business, including marketing.

Below, we outline the steps on how you can reach out to influencers to see if they’d be willing to help you in your marketing efforts.

Step 1: Establish the Right Mindset

Before reaching out to any influencers, it’s important to set expectations for yourself. When it comes to unpaid collaborations, remember that you cannot force influencers to do anything – even if they agree to receive your products and you ship it to them. You want their post (should they choose to do one) to be an authentic representation of them and their recommendations. They should only do the post if they enjoy your products. If they don’t, you may ask for feedback and learn from their input. No matter the outcome, it is completely voluntary as to whether they choose to post about your products, give you feedback, or further engage in any manner.

That said, remember to keep all communication with influencers respectful, professional and positive. Staying authentic, producing creative content, and building and growing an audience is no easy task. Remember that the influencer is granting you a favor by accepting to try your products, even if they choose not to promote it.

Even so, don’t get discouraged if you don’t hear back from some or get turned down (in fact, this will likely happen countless times). It’s never personal. Just keep going and your efforts will pay off!

Step 2: Compose the Messages

Compose 3 messages to send to influencers. These messages can serve as templates but we recommend personalizing each based on the underlined portions marked below.

In the first message, introduce yourself, share what you like about the influencer’s account and content, tell them about your company and products, and ask if you can send them some products to try. Here’s a sample message:

Hi InfluencersName,

My name is YourName and I’m the JobTitle at YourCompanysName. We make incredible all-natural peanut butter inspired by the most popular desserts (insert one-liner about your product here; if you have a meaningful mission or support social causes - include a sentence on that as well).

I came across your account and really love the amazing baking recipes you post (make a genuine, personalized comment about why you love the influencer’s content)!

We were wondering if we could send you some of our products to try – on us. If you like it and want to share it with your audience, we’d be absolutely thrilled!

Let me know what you think.

Best,

YourName

Keep the message short, to-the-point, and friendly. The other two messages should be even shorter with the purpose of following up on this first message. Something very simple, such as varied versions of “Just following up to see if you’re interested in trying our products. We’d love to share it with you. Let me know!” These follow-ups should be sent 3 days after the original, then a week thereafter - if you do not receive a response.

Step 3: Find Contact Information

Assuming you’ve found the right influencers based on the criteria outlined in the previous section, it’s time to find their contact information. But first, be sure to give them a follow. This provides you with a connection to them, shows that you support their content, and allows you to stay-up-to-date on their posts should they choose to feature any of your products.

If possible, try to find their email address first. It may be on their profile, or you may need to go to their website to grab it or complete a contact form. In any case, this is the best route to connecting with them directly without all of the other interactions happening on social media.

If you’re not able to find their email address, send them a message directly on the social media platform where you found them. This will render a lower success rate because platforms like Instagram will filter messages into separate inboxes but it’s always worth a try.

Step 4: Ship the Products

Once you have influencers who are willing to try your product, ask for their shipping address and prepare the shipment to them as soon as possible. The amount and variety of products you send to them is up to you. However, it’s good to send at least a few SKUs and at least two of each SKU so that they have some to taste and some to use in the post. Speaking of the post, you’ll want to package your products in a way that keeps it looking pristine. After all, you’ll want them to be camera ready for the post!

If possible, supply the tracking number to the influencer so they can keep tabs on it.

Step 5: Follow Up

Once the shipment has been delivered, wait a few days to a week and follow up with the influencer. The message should be short and friendly. Simply ask if everything has arrived in good shape, if they’ve tried it, and if they have an idea of when they plan to do the post. Be sure to also supply them with your social media handle so they can tag you and possibly a discount code for their audience specifically, which will allow you to trace any orders back to them to determine whether your influencer marketing efforts are working.

Step 6: Stay Tuned & Repost

The influencer’s response to your follow-up should give you the information you need to keep your eyes peeled for the content so you can see how their audience reacts to it and save and/or repost it on your end.

Once the post is up, close the loop by sending a heartfelt thanks to the influencer. It’s always a good idea to keep in touch with influencers as you will likely launch more products in the future and already have an established relationship with these folks.

In Summary

Influencer marketing is the product of the incredible phenomenon that is social media. The democratization of content distribution and advertising has created endless opportunities for smaller companies and startups to have a voice and potential market share. This is not to say that bigger companies do not continue to have a leg up through their marketing dollars, nor can we deny the immense efforts required for small brands to grow organically. Still, with a little creativity and lots of grit, there continues to be an abundance of potential that can be reached through the invaluable influencers who are the voice of this pivotal age of digital marketing.

Julee Ho Media is a boutique media company that specializes in photography and video production services for CPG food and beverage brands. Click here to request a quote today.

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