Footwear Insight

30 • Footwear Insight ~ July/August 2019 footwearinsight.com market to get a sense of the going market rates and expectations. And once you have ideas, make sure you're getting the agreement in writing. Are you asking for a certain number of posts tagged with your handle or a specific hashtag? Is this ongoing or a one-off? Will they be coming into your store or just tagging your products? Are you picking the product to feature or are they? Will you be featured in their Stories or in a post or both? Will it be pinned? Nothing is too small to specify, so get creative — but get it in writing 3. Make it Actionable Store owners said it's critical to make it as easy and appealing as possible for the influencer's fans to take the next step. Whether it's a mobile friendly link to buy the prod- ucts the influencer featured or a coupon code for a discount or other inducement to come in store, you want to make sure you're capitaliz- ing on your new audience. Porter said that initial requests from the influencers they worked with to offer their followers a dis- count on product were hard to swallow: While a common practice online, it didn't fit with Abbadabba's full-price model. But, she said, the store has come up with a solution: Building a splash page on the web- site that their influencers can link to. They don't do e-commerce, she said, but a page on their site letting viewers order the products they're seeing means they can offer a dis- count in a limited way. And there's another bonus: Knowing exactly how many people are clicking through to shop, and how many of those shoppers actually buy. 4. Keep Cost in Mind Kardashian West aside, the costs for sponsored posts varies widely. Product, of course, is the baseline — it may, in a lot of cases, even be the bulk of the compensation. Porter said in the developed Atlanta market, some of the influencers they initially considered were more expensive than they were comfortable with. "We're finding some of them can be as much as a print ad," she said. "So we're not going with those people. We want to try it out on a lower scale." The range that made sense for her, she said, was $100 to $200 in product, and an additional $100 to $200 in cash compensation. "I don't mind starting there," she said. Adams said that brainstorming other benefits to share can be just as valuable to your potential partners as cash. "It's sitting down and having conversations [and asking] what do you need?" she said. For exam- ple, Fleet Feet Nashville's email list is active and growing at more than 45,000 members — that's an asset, she said. "Do you want more exposure via email? Do you want to write content to our customers? Do you love gear? It's finding a mutual benefit." And don't forget to account for back-end costs. Depending on your particular arrangements, you want to earmark funds for shipping product to your influ- encer (and making swaps or replacements if sizing and fit are issues), or paying for a pro- fessional to shoot photos and videos when they come in-store. For Abbadabba's, that calcula- tion has to include building and operating the splash page on their site, as well as shipping and processing costs in both dollars and manhours for any products ordered. "It's not just the cost of paying the influencer — it's the production behind it," Porter said. "That's why I'm trying to put up touchable trackpoints to track their post back to our website." 5. Get the Numbers Just as in the research phase, collect data during and after your influencer partner is post- ing — this is where social media marketing has the edge on more traditional media. Ideally, you'll be able to see not only increased views and likes for your mes- sages, but more impressions and engagement from new fans and followers. (And if you don't, that tells you something, too.) And, retailers said, don't hesitate to ask your partners to share their metrics with you after the fact, too — what results did they see? The more information you have, the better prepared you'll be for the next partnership. After all, as Wasserman put it, "We're looking for results." l CROWD SOURCE Store owners said it's critical to make it as easy and appealing as possible for the influencer's fans to take the next step. For younger shoppers especially, "influencers are far more important than textbook [advertising]."

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