How to Persuade Bloggers to Promote Your Business

Previously we looked at how an enthusiastic business owner potentially scuppered her content-marketing launch plans with a poorly written email to potential affiliates.

What went wrong for her?

1. She presented no benefits to the reader
2. She missed out specific details of her offer
3. She made it difficult for the reader to accept the offer

If you missed it, click here to get up to speed.

So what is the best way to send an email like this?

Of course there’s no definitive answer. A lot depends on your audience, what you want, your offer and your relationship / credibility with your reader.

However,  I’m going to outline an email approach that I’ve used prviously which has worked 95% of the time when I have emailed asking for:

• Help to promote a product
• A guest post
• A client contract

It might help you to bookmark this page to have it on reference for when you send your own email.

For the sake of this article, lets use the same information as before.

• It’s a cold email – I don’t know the blogger
• The product is a course for online marketing called Rocket Fuel.
• I’m going to send this to multiple recipients (but emailing individually)

Let’s say that instead of the antidiabetic product last time just being called Rocket Fuel, I’m going to call it Rocket Fuel Marketing to make it clearer.

Shall we begin?

The Secret Thoughts Behind Persuasive Email Marketing

The writer’s inner monologue:

Okay, I’ve got this new marketing course called rocket Fuel Marketing. It’s a short, step-by-step introduction to marketing your business online.  It can help small business owners, and I’d love to let them know about it.

One way I’m going to do this is get in touch with some bloggers online who have a similar, but non-competitive audiences to me. Coaches and consultants for business owners who don’t sell their own marketing products seems like a good fit.

I’ll do some research to pick people like this with an engaged audience (an audience sharing content online, commenting, buying recommended products) who I think will benefit from this product.

I want to send out at least 30, well targeted emails, and I’ll start with business productivity coach Sally.

Okay, let’s start writing:

Subject: Sally, do you think your audience would like this?

I’m going to use the word “this” as it’s a useful copywriting word in headlines. It shows there is something specific that I would like her to consider.

I’m also going to position it as a benefit to her audience. Great bloggers look out for the interests of their readers, and if she feels there is something they should see, she’s more likely to open the email.

Okay, next I want to introduce myself and get to the point about why I’m contacting her.

I don’t need to say “my name is Amy Harrison” because she’ll see that in her subject line. Repeating it would be unnecessary and may look like copied and pasted bulk email.

[SSHOT].

I wanted to get in touch because I’ve been reading [blog name] and love your practical tutorials. I used your timer technique from last week and shaved an hour off my schedule!

I want to let her know I’ve taken the time to read her blog and I respect and appreciate her writing.

I’ve noticed readers commenting about productivity in marketing their businesses and this got my attention as I think I can help.

I’ll get to the point quickly. I have something I want to offer, but I still position it as useful for her readers. If I can’t find a reason her audience would like my product, I shouldn’t really be contacting her.

I have a short home study course: Rocket Fuel Marketing. It breaks marketing into 10 minute daily tasks. Customers are seeing more traffic and leads in just a few weeks and a couple of other coaches [names] have mentioned it to their readers.

I’ll sum up what the course is without getting bogged down in detail. I’ll let her know that it works, and that other people have agreed to share it. I’m doing this to show that I’m credible, and have social proof by others getting involved.

Would you be interested in sharing it with your audience? There is an affiliate program if so and I can sign you up on my end to save you time.

I’m going to ask directly if she wants to get involved and I’m going to make it as easy as possible on her end to say yes. I don’t want her to turn it down because she thinks there might be too much admin involved in being an affiliate.

Even if you don’t promote the antidiabetic product, I’d love to share some free resources with your audience, I’ve got a marketing planner which gives people an at-a-glance view of their upcoming marketing so that it’s manageable. If you’d like to share that, just let me know.

I also want her to know that I genuinely want to help her audience, and not just hawk my wares. I will offer some free templates, that will work well as content-marketing pieces. Even if she only agrees to distribute the templates, her audience still find out about my business.

If you do decide to be an affiliate I can send over a pack that includes everything from blog post templates, newsletter templates and social media updates to make it as easy for you to share and keep your readers updates.

Again, I want to reinforce that being an affiliate is a breeze and I respect her time enough to cover a lot of the leg work for her.

How does that sound?

I want to leave her with a question so that if she scans the email she knows this is something waiting a response.

Speak soon,

Amy.

Obviously this is just one possible outline, but it gives you an idea of how to get to the point, write it so that you focus on your reader.

You can also see that for the most part you could copy and paste this, and simply personalise the top 2 sections (and the subject line name). This makes you efficient, without falling into the realms of being too impersonal.

You could also use the same structure and theory but substitute the request.

If that seems like too much effort remember, in his instance we are approaching someone who has built up their audience word by word. That is something valuable to them and should be respected.

Now it’s your turn!

What do you think? Have you tried a similar approach asking for help? Have you received requests with a similar structure and accepted the writer’s offer? Do you think there’s a situation where this wouldn’t work? Let me know below.