How to Find the Right Influencer for Your Brand
By: Stephanie Proft, Account and Content Strategist, Everywhere Agency
December 3, 2018
From DIYers to stylish toddlers, domestic divas to jet setters on a budget, influencers come in all shapes, sizes, and even species. It can be overwhelming to consider the vast variety of content creators and their dedicated audiences when you, as a brand, are honing in on who would make for an ideal collaborator. Is it best to work with someone who directly mirrors your target audience? Will your message be more memorable if you opt to go with a less traditional influencer – like a fashionable pug with 100,000 followers? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Influencer marketing is an incredibly versatile tactic that can be utilized to achieve a variety of quantifiable results. Ultimately, much of the success of a campaign rests on choosing the right influencers for your needs. Here are a few key questions consider as you outline what constitutes an influencer match made in heaven for your brand.
Stephanie Proft, account and content strategist, Everywhere Agency
WHAT’S YOUR END GAME?
Before you go looking through countless feeds to select the right influencer for your campaign, have a clear vision of what exactly you are expecting them to produce and why. If you’re aiming to inspire immediate sales, for example, you might want to leverage the irresistible power of Instagram and its powerful Shopping features.
If you need to educate your audience about a product or service, a lengthier blog post could be necessary. You might also consider leveraging influencer-produced video content. Regardless of what your ideal campaign deliverables look like, ensure that you’re enlisting influencers who have a proven track record of producing this type of content on the platforms that matter to you. At Everywhere Agency, we rely on Instascreener to vet the legitimacy of influencers’ audiences because it’s crucial to ensure that real people are seeing influencers’ posts. Otherwise, what’s the point?
IS THE RELATIONSHIP A NATURAL FIT?
Yes, you’ll likely be compensating the influencers you work with either monetarily or with product – or both. But a very practical barometer for whether or not an influencer is the right fit for your campaign is to ask yourself if they would use your product or writing about your brand even if they weren’t incentivized.
While you can’t always know the answer to this question, there are clues: Have they recently endorsed a competitor? You might want to steer clear. If they have an obvious need for what you’re offering – luggage for a frequent traveler, diapers for a mom with babies, etc. – you are probably barking up the right tree. It shouldn’t take a great deal of imagination to picture your brand making sense in the context of their usual content.
WHO IS THEIR AUDIENCE?
Once you’ve determined that an influencer aligns with your brand and has the storytelling chops to communicate your message in whatever medium is important to you, it’s essential to think about who their target audience is. Often the influencers’ followers will mirror their own demographics. There are, however, exceptions to this rule, and it’s best to avoid making assumptions.
Influencers should be able to provide you with verified insights about their audience, but you can also gauge who they appeal to simply by taking a look at who’s engaging with their content.
Influencer marketing came to be a staple in strategies for brands large and small because of its ability to convey messages authentically. Unfortunately, some influencers have fallen prey to the allure of increasing their reach by purchasing fake followers. So, again, make sure you use a screening tool that gives you insight into their network.
MACRO OR MICRO?
Another common dilemma marketers are faced with is evaluating the importance of an influencer’s digital footprint. Is it better to use two influencers with 500,000 followers each or 10 influencers with an audience size of 50,000?
The answer really depends on what you’re attempting to accomplish, but working with a wider range of micro-influencers will definitely result in a plethora of visual assets that you can ultimately repurpose on your own social channels and digital marketing efforts. It will also provide the opportunity to work with a more diverse range of individuals and to reach a broader audience. Lastly, micro-influencers reportedly boost interest by 70 percent and inspire double the sales of larger influencers.
That’s not to say that macro-influencers are never a good idea! If you are eager to associate your brand with a certain digital persona that embodies your values, these types of partnerships can be great for increasing awareness.
Asking yourself these questions as you’re planning your campaign will allow you to strategically select partners that most benefit your brand. There’s truly an influencer for every occasion. It’s only a matter of determining who is most appropriate for your particular goals.
Follow Stephanie: @Sprofty
