Charity
28th June 2019

How Charities can use Influencers.

At Big Cat, we regularly collaborate with influencers to help our clients reach a more targeted audience through slightly different means than traditional PR or social media campaigns. This is especially true for our charity clients, who have found influencer collaboration to be very effective.

Influencer marketing is continuing to boom. We know that people trust people rather than brands and it was only a matter of time until the power of influencer collaboration took its hold on the charity sector, with a very firm grip. By pairing up with an influencer, charities are able to have access to broader or different audiences to project their message. With the rise in popularity of influencer activity, audiences are beginning to wise up to the paid ads; seeing the hashtag #sponsored or #ad is a real turn off for potential consumers now so companies are having to become more savvy in their collaboration with influencers. However, this isn’t to say that a paid approach doesn’t play a vital part in an integrated marketing strategy – it’s still key in reaching all corners of the target audience.

The best way to work with influencers is to find those that share the same values as your brand – this is especially important in charity influencer collaboration. Someone with a genuine passion in what they’re promoting is far more engaging than someone who has no interest in the cause or product they’re pushing.

Charities are focused on helping those in need and are uniquely positioned to leverage influence as a core strategy for marketing, principally because their central focus is based on giving and helping others. Therefore, organisations in the non-governmental sector often have a genuine competitive advantage when deploying influencer marketing programmes.

Collaboration, not reach, is the name of the game. Next time your organisation is thinking about using influencers, start with thinking about how to create shared value. By carrying out research on your potential influencers, chatting with them at length and really getting to know them is how you will recruit a brand ambassador rather than someone who may just be in it for the money. Ideally, you want to build a lasting relationship with your influencers that means you can mutually benefit each other in future campaigns and continue to work together for a long time, thus creating loyalty with their follower base too.

Sign up for our latest insights, ideas and inspiration