Building a Partnership Program From the Ground up: The Role of Influencers

The late Major League Baseball player Casey Stengel once said, “Finding good players is easy. Getting them to play as a team is another story.”

In a business context, you know the importance of building a strong internal team — it’s why you invest so much time in the interview and onboarding processes. But this sentiment of finding and collaborating with “good players” applies to brand partnerships too.

Building a partnership program from the ground up isn’t an easy or simple feat. It takes a lot of strategic planning, negotiations, and ongoing work to get the type of results you and your partners are striving after.

And for most marketers (73%), managing these partnerships is challenging in its own right.

In this guide, we outline everything you need to know about introducing (or re-introducing) influencers into your brand’s partnership program.

Whether your partnership program is still being formed or needs a revamp, you’ll walk away with a better understanding of:

• Why partnership programs are important for businesses
• The role of influencers in partnership programs
• How and why to form partnership deals with influencers

Why Brands Invest in Partnership Programs

Partnership programs appeal to businesses of all sizes and industries for several reasons.

For one, these programs are fully customizable, which means that you can allocate your time and resources to nurture major enterprise partnerships and/or a diverse group of brand and individual partnerships.

(So long as your team has the bandwidth to form and sustain these partnerships, you can pursue any and all options.)

For another, successful partnerships generate additional revenue, brand awareness, engagement, and additional perks for both sides of the partnership.

Before getting into the influencer portion of this discussion, let’s take a look at a couple core benefits of partnership programs:

1. Improved CX & UX

As consumers, we benefit from brand partnerships every day. And oftentimes we forget that a partnership is the reason why we have access to a certain plugin, integration, or extension that improves our customer experience.

Take the partnership between Zoom and Slack as an example.

The Zoom integration on Slack has made it possible for teams to streamline communication and jump directly from message boards to Zoom meetings in a matter of seconds. Not only that, but teams also benefit from calendar integrations.

This partnership speaks to the impact of partnership programs and the fact that two companies can work together to improve user experience in new and meaningful ways.

2. Mutual Benefit

Because partnership programs are fully customizable, businesses can work with other businesses, nonprofits, influencers, and even publishers (for context, check out this partnership between Coors Light and National Geographic).

Whatever the case might be, partnerships are most effective and sustainable when they are mutually beneficial.

To get the most out of a partnership program, you have to first sort out which potential partners would be the best fit for your brand. Even though there are plenty of “good players” out there, not every player makes a good partner.

The ongoing partnership between Uber and Checkr is a good example of what a good partnership looks like. Both companies benefit from this partnership — Uber can outsource its employee background checks and Checkr can offer these services without having to ward off competitors.

It’s an exclusive partnership that works to both sides’ benefit.

Here’s Where Influencer Marketing Comes In

Given that businesses can and do benefit from partnering with other companies, is it really necessary for influencers to be added into the mix?

The short answer is yes.

Influencer marketing spend is expected to reach up to $15 billion by 2022 and for good reason. Influencers — but especially micro influencers — have a built-in audience of engaged followers that businesses can reach through a single sponsored post on social media.

Now, turn that one post from a single influencer into several campaign posts by multiple influencers, and your audience reach instantly triples.

Not only can influencer marketing boost brand awareness in this way, it can also increase audience growth, engagement, traffic to your website, and conversions.

The Role of Influencers (And Micro-Influencers, Specifically)

Because influencer marketing and social media marketing typically go hand-in-hand, it makes sense to partner with influencers that can help elevate your brand on and off social media.

But the question remains: How do you recognize a good influencer partner when you see them?

While your first instinct might be to partner with macro or mega influencers with 100,000 or more followers, partnering with these influencers isn’t always in your best interest. And here’s why.

Micro influencers that typically have between 10,000 and 100,000 followers generate 6.7 times more engagement from campaign posts than macro-influencers.

Consider that in this context: A single post from a macro influencer could cost your brand $2,000 to $50,000. That’s a steep price point, especially if the post ends up receiving minimal engagement.

With the money that you would invest in a single macro influencer partnership, you could finance two or more micro-influencer partnerships that each deliver a good ROI.

In order for this to be possible, you have to first make sure that the influencer is a good fit for your business. So, as a best practice, conduct market research to learn more about each potential partner’s audience demographics, engagement rates, and analytics.

As you negotiate the terms of your influencer partnerships, remember that the audience you’re trying to connect with values authenticity. And they choose to subscribe to and follow certain influencers because these influencers have already earned their trust.

By openly communicating with influencer partners and giving them creative agency over how they promote your business, their sponsored content will be more genuine and true to their personal brand.

This, in turn, positions your business as a company that is deserving of their followers’ trust and investment.