How to Become a Luxury Brand Influencer on Instagram

Influencer marketing is a fairly new concept that has hit the ground running. More and more businesses are partnering with influencers to make both parties a lot of money.

But there’s more to it than that.

As an influencer, it is your job to make the company money while you get paid from the company.

A successful campaign should earn both parties money.

A failed company will lose the company money.

If that happens, they will simply stop working with you. You don’t want that to happen.

If you’re looking to partner with high-end luxury brands, you need to know what they’re looking for first.

Here’s 5 of my favorite techniques to increase your chances of landing a partnership deal.

5 Ways to Kickstart Your Career as a Luxury Brand Influencer

#1 Start off Small; Build Up

You’re not going to land a partnership with a luxury brand with a few thousands followers and no track record as a successful influencer.

You need a history of being successful.

That means partnering with other brands and making them a lot of money.

Remember that luxury brands are investing money in you in the hopes that they can make that money back.

All businesses, but especially luxury brands, are very specific on the people they choose to partner with.

If you don’t match their vibe and their mission, you simply won’t make the cut.

#2 You Need to Match Their Vibe

I’m not saying you should be someone you’re not, because eventually all of that BS shows.

You need to be yourself and partner with brands that like your vibe.

All companies have a set of principles they like to follow, a mission, if you will.

Your lifestyle/aesthetics needs to be in line with the companies target audience.

At the end of the day you are the face of their brand, and if you don’t meet the criteria, you won’t become an ambassador.

Basically, companies are more likely to choose influencers that think their customers are going to buy into their brand.

#3 Aim For 10k to 100k Followers

It’s true that people with over 100k followers and those in the millions get massive brand deals, but there’s also 40% of luxury brands working with smaller influencers.

Why?

For the simple reason that they have a more targeted audience, a laser targeted niche, essentially.

Engagement is one of the most important factors that brands will look at, and it’s easier to have a higher engagement rate when you have less followers.

Less than 10k won’t land you any partnership deals, but keep working at it, provide good content and when you have between 10k and 100k followers, you can start looking at sponsorships.

#4 Know Your Audience

If you don’t know your audience, how is anyone else supposed to know them?

• Who are your followers (that make up the bulk)
• What’s your demographics?
• What’s your engagement rate?
• What posts do they like the most?

You should know your goal/mission and who your followers are.

The better you know your audience, the better the content you can deliver and increase engagement rate.

When you partner with luxury brands, they are going to ask all of these questions and much more.

#5 You Need a Sense of Excellence

High-end brands are created to be absolutely perfect.

Your Instagram account needs to be flawless in every way possible, and you need to know the ins and outs.

You should know how to work Instagram, how to gain more followers (organically), how to successfully collaborate with others, etc.

You simply cannot be excellent if you’ve only been on IG for a few months.

You need to be experienced in the world of social media, and that’s why it’s so important to get some experience under your belt with smaller brands first.

Luxury brands don’t settle for anything less than the best, so become excellent before you try working with luxury brands.

So What Do Luxury Brands Want?

They want to increase awareness to their products and connect with their clientele.

Yes they will give you free stuff.

However, that doesn’t always mean that they will give you a free $10,000 piece of jewelry.

That’s simply not an ideal investment for them.

On the other hand, they will lend out luxury items for you to wear to events to bring exposure to their brand.

As long as you’ve put in the tips I’ve mentioned in this article, you’ll be well on your way to landing a massive sponsorship deal.

In Conclusion: Your Marketing Strategy Should Reinforce the Brands Goals

At the end of the day, your marketing tactics have to align with the brands mission.

And that’s what I want to drive home because it’s what every single luxury brand will look at.

They want to know whether or not you match their vibe when it comes to lifestyle and authenticity.

If one brand doesn’t want to work with you, keep trying until you find one that does.

There are literally thousands of them out there.

In summary:

Do the hard work in the beginning, get a couple of smaller sponsorships under your belt so that you have a successful history, continue to grow your business, and then work with bigger brands later on.

If you have an established Instagram account and a few successful sponsorships ALREADY, reach out to bigger brands now and see if they will work with you.

The least you can do is try.

PS: Here’s how I make 4-figures per month via blogging. It has nothing to do with social media and I make money on days I don’t even create content.