How to Partner With Fitness Influencers

As society becomes more health-conscious with their food choices, exercise, and well-being choices, it is not surprising that fitness influencers have become beacons that people look to get inspiration and learn from on their health and wellness journeys. 

Learning how to partner with fitness influencers can be a great way to market your brand, particularly if your products or services naturally fit into the fitness and wellness niche. We will explore who these influencers are, why they should matter to you, and how you can collaborate with them most effectively.

Who are fitness influencers?

These influencers create content about exercise, dieting, and general well-being. Some big names that may come to mind are YouTubers Blogilates, Fitness Blender, Chris Heria, and Chloe Ting. These influencers use various techniques, including workout videos, diet plans, mental health resources, meditation, and other things to help their audiences reach their physical and mental health goals. They typically use innovative styles that are characteristic to their brand to craft a particular image or lifestyle that the audience engages with either peripherally or directly.

They are essential today because many consider these influencers as role models for achieving a healthy lifestyle and maintaining general fitness. They use photos, videos, personalized training courses, diet plans, blog posts, and other mediums to promote their healthy lifestyles to their audiences, motivating and encouraging them along the way.

Why should you care about them, and how can you partner with them?

Fitness influencers undoubtedly have a prodigious impact on the general fitness community because they use innovative, popular techniques to promote wellness. Being physically and mentally fit has never been more on the tip of peoples’ tongues, so these influencers often have large audiences and can influence people readily. 

Hence, how can businesses and brands partner with these content creators? The following are tips on how to do so.

1. Send them products that fit their image

Fitness influencers promote healthy and balanced lifestyles, or at least that is what they strive to do. Because of this, these influencers often promote products and services that reflect their brand on their social media channels. These can be services such as mental health counseling, therapy, massages, physical therapy, etc., or products like fresh foods, low-sugar alternatives to popular snacks, fitness clothes, and sneakers. 

When considering working with fitness influencers, you will want to ensure that your products fit their brand (and, of course, yours too)! Align your products or services with the influencer’s brand. Send these goods to them as a gift or a paid sponsorship. This process will be simple if you are a brand that naturally values wellness and health. However, suppose you are a brand that only sells products often thought unhealthy or harmful to the body or environment. In that case, it may be a much harder sell to the fitness influencer because they may feel that your products do not align with their values and personal image.

2. Have long-term partnerships with them

Fostering long-term relationships with fitness influencers is vital because their brand usually centers around a particular lifestyle. Audiences tend to prefer brands that naturally fit into the influencer’s everyday life, something they reasonably believe the influencer would use, and that the use of the product or service is not limited to the duration of the partnership. 

As the audiences of fitness influencers are often equally invested in the healthy lifestyle as the influencer, they need to see that the brands they promote or partner with are integral parts of their everyday life. 

Such a partnership makes them more likely to engage and use the product instead of one-off collaborations. Hence, if your brand promotes wellness, fitness, or exercise, you can consider sending many products to the content creator for review or use over time rather than a short-time partnership that may not benefit your company.

Brand partnerships like Athletic Greens, a micronutrient powder company that uses primarily mid to long-term partnerships for its influencer marketing campaigns. People trust that the influencer genuinely enjoys the product and are therefore more inclined to purchase it themselves. Always remember that people are buying into a lifestyle, not just the influencer.

3. Videos are usually better than stills

It is better to have the influencer produce videos for you than photos or blog posts because the audience can see the product or service in action. If you are marketing a blender, you will want to show how the blender works, its different modes, functions for different types of foods, noise level, and overall aesthetic value. These things are significantly more straightforward to do in video format than in still or written form. For this reason, videos are a better option when marketing to fitness influencers. 

Videos are often more engaging than photos or written words for people on the go, so this medium is much more enriching for the audience. If you are marketing a service, consider letting the influencer go to your massage parlor or have a session or two of physical therapy to give an honest, enriching review of their experience at your company.

4. Take advantage of global reach

One of the interesting things about fitness influencers is that their reach tends to expand past geographic lines. The wellness trend has seen a global increase, so the audiences of these influencers often tend to be from many different parts of the world—because of this, marketing your products through fitness influencers affords you a unique ability to increase both your domestic and international celebrity. 

You can consider having giveaways or partnerships with viewers in specific geographies. Maybe the influencer is based in the United States, but 35% of their audience watches from the Netherlands. You can try marketing your brand to the dutch audience in a concert with or independent from the American audience. This way, you can tap into a different market of people who may have different needs and lifestyles. Your brand has the potential to cross boundaries if you market it correctly and to the right influencers. 

relay.club has blog posts that go into more detail about how to find the right influencers for you. The information in those blog posts, along with this one, will help you form a more well-rounded, ecumenical influencer marketing strategy, particularly when it comes to working with fitness influencers.

Wrapping it all up

Overall, when thinking about how to partner with fitness influencers, do not overthink it! The process has its quirks, but it is similar to other forms of influencer marketing in that you want to be authentic to yourself and your brand, be honest with the influencer and have a genuine concern for their audience. As fitness influencers become increasingly popular, their reach will continue to increase, making them a great way to get your brand more well known and hopefully forge long-lasting relationships with influencers and their audiences.