How does a POS company add influencer marketing for the restaurants it serves?

Influencer marketing is when brands work with people with engaged followings to promote their products or services. Food influencer marketing borrows the credibility of those people to make a restaurant more visible and to turn their followers into new customers.

Take it in this order. Understand the target audiences, decide which products and offers are relevant to them, and then reach them where they are active.

Look at the tools the restaurant already has. If it has a promotions app, it can send offers to customers by email, SMS and Facebook from one place. If it has a customer-engagement tool, it can invite its best customers to share their experience, then thank them with a special offer or a promotional discount.

Help each restaurant build its first creator list. Small accounts make creator marketing approachable for a small business. Smaller influencers, also known as nano or micro influencers, cost less but are still influential in their own community.

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Start with creators who align with the restaurant's values and goals. Look at their audience and content style, as well as what a partnership would cost. Start with people who have a few thousand followers and strong engagement with their fans, and ask whether they would like to partner.

Lay out the pay options for each restaurant to choose from. A creator is paid in money, in free or discounted food, or both, and in return makes content that matches both their personality and the restaurant's goals. For a restaurant that only wants to show new menu items to its local area, micro creators are a sensible start. A first visit may cost no more than the price of a meal.

Where cash is added, micro creators with up to 100,000 followers charge up to $500 per post. Budgets have a massive range. In one survey of creators, each had a different idea of what fair pay means and whether payment is needed at all. They all agree on what it depends on: the experience of the creator and whether the brand alignment makes sense.

Creators, like the rest of us, value authenticity, so the first message should be clear and direct. Once the restaurant finds a point of contact, the invitation should not argue the case. It should have the creator come in to try the food firsthand.

The restaurant and the creator can discuss what the content is: a shout out, a giveaway or a product review. These can include videos, simple photos or a live stream.

Issue each creator their own code or link in the restaurant's offer setup. Creators can be given unique booking links and discount codes to put in their content, and a special code is something a creator can hand straight to followers. When a customer uses the link or the code, the restaurant can see what that collaboration returned.

Track two kinds of results for each restaurant. Likes, comments, shares and clicks show how the creator posts did with followers. Sales data and discount-code redemptions give insight into how well the campaign worked for the restaurant.

The authors of one multi-location restaurant case study measure their work by same-store sales impact, and urge every multi-unit operator to do the same. Compare these year over year, and also count redemptions of each creator's code.

If you would rather hand the work to a partner, CreatoRain offers a done-for-you influencer marketing service for restaurant platforms and restaurant groups. CreatoRain builds each provider its own creator network. In this model, the provider introduces its restaurants and sets its own price, and each restaurant approves its creators and hosts the visit. CreatoRain's in-house team finds, invites and pays the creators, tracks each post and follows up until each video is posted, so you don't send a single email. With CreatoRain, you can add a store any day.