How To Find Influencers for Your Brand
Influencer marketing is quickly becoming one of the most effective strategies for brands to reach wider audiences, build trust, and drive sales.
But, just like any marketing strategy, its success hinges on making the right choices and selecting the right influencers for your brand.
Understanding the Basics of Influencer Marketing
Before we dive into selecting influencers, we need to take a few foundational steps to ensure you’re set up for success with your next influencer marketing campaign.
What is an Influencer?
An influencer is someone who has a considerable following on social media platforms and can sway their audience's opinions or behaviors. Depending on their reach, influencers can be categorized as mega, macro, micro, or nano.
Why Influencer Marketing Works.
Brands collaborate with influencers because they offer trust, authenticity, and niche targeting. Shopify found that influencer marketing provides 11 times greater ROI than banner ads!
Defining Your Brand Goals
Before determining how to find influencers for your brand, outline what you hope to achieve. Do you aim for brand awareness or increased direct product sales? Are you looking for a short-term engagement or a long-term partnership?
Defining your goals clearly will help structure your campaign, and help you decide which influencers are right for your brand.
Identifying Your Target Audience
Every brand has a target demographic.
Knowing yours inside and out is crucial when considering how to find influencers for your brand. This ensures that the influencer's follower demographics will align with your potential customers.
Finding the Right Influencer: Key Strategies
1. Platform Relevance
Determine where your target audience spends most of their time. If they're young adults, perhaps TikTok or Instagram is more suitable. However, for B2B brands, LinkedIn or Facebook might be a better choice.
2. Engagement Rate Over Follower Count
While large followings are impressive, engagement rates matter more. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, a good engagement rate on Instagram, for instance, lies between 1% and 3.5%.
3. Niche Relevance and Authenticity
When figuring out how to find influencers for your brand, alignment is key. Ensure the influencer genuinely connects with your brand's niche and values.
4. Check Past Collaborations and Content
Review their previous brand collaborations to gauge if their content style and partnerships resonate with your brand's values.
5. Utilize Influencer Marketing Platforms and Agencies
Influencer platforms offer fast filtering options and direct communication with influencers of a certain caliber. If you’re a larger brand, we’d recommend you work alongside an experienced influencer marketing agency for your campaigns.
6. Network and Ask for Recommendations
Sometimes, the best partnerships come from word-of-mouth recommendations from other brands or industry contacts. An easy way to determine the best route for your brand is to look at competing brands and what they’ve done and who they’ve worked with.
Reaching Out to Influencers
Once you've found your influencers, it's time to reach out. Personalize your pitch, clearly define deliverables, and ensure both parties understand the compensation. When formalizing collaborations, remember to consider the legalities and ethics of influencer marketing.
One of the biggest benefits offered by influencer marketing agencies is organization and communication. Most brands don’t realize how much communication it takes to work with influencers effectively until they’re already in the trenches.
Evaluating the Campaign's Success
Monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like engagement, conversion rates, reach, and ROI is essential. Using tools like Google Analytics can help measure the campaign's direct impact on your website traffic and conversions.
Influencer marketing agencies often have expensive software to streamline this process.
Mistakes to Avoid
Not Setting Clear Expectations: Clearly communicate goals and desired outcomes.
Overlooking Micro-Influencers: Sometimes, smaller influencers can offer more authentic engagement than celebrity influencers.
Not Diversifying Influencer Partnerships: Don't place all your hopes on one influencer. Diversify your influencer collaborations to reach different segments of your audience.
Ignoring Authenticity: Collaborations should feel genuine, not forced. Audiences recognize and appreciate authenticity.
How To Find Influencers for Your Brand: Conclusion
With the right strategy, tools, and insights, brands can maximize their influencer marketing ROI and build lasting, fruitful relationships.
Influencers need to be vetted using a little bit of common sense, but if you’re wanting a high-performing campaign you’ll want to have an experience influencer marketing expert by your side.
No matter how you go about selecting an influencer for your brand, avoid the pitfalls we’ve outlined and take your time in the campaign set-up and planning processes.
If you follow these steps, you should have a recipe for a successful influencer marketing campaign.