If you happen to be in the business of selling products or services, you should be aware of how big of a role influencers have these days.
There are a lot of perks on hiring one yourself, especially if you are looking to launch a new product or want to expand your reach.
Those who have not had an opportunity to work with an influencer before could be looking to get started right away. If you want to read about how to find influencers, this article is the perfect place to start.
Knowing What You Want
When you are looking for your first influencer, do not focus on finding absolutely everyone, relevant to your niche. Your goal here is to find only the best of the lot.
The right influencer is the one who can reach the right targeted audience and help you achieve personal goals.
It is always good to start with a plan. If this is your first time running an influencer marketing campaign, you will want to focus on the following parameters before compiling the list of potential candidates:
- Engagement rate.
- Lead generation.
- The number of sales.
- Loyalty.
- Potential to build backlinks.
- Trust and brand awareness.
Of course, some would say that this is just the tip of the iceberg and the real battle begins once you start to actually work with an influencer. But defining these things should broaden your horizon and help with making fewer mistakes.
Campaign Type
Some influencers might work better than others depending on which campaign type you prefer. After all, it is all about understanding the audience and figuring out what they want. You can choose from either of these options or combine them, and determine which influencer would be the most effective:
- Brand ambassadors regularly promote your products or services in exchange for various perks or discounts.
- Affiliate marketing allows influencers to gain a percentage from each client that they bring.
- A takeover is when influencers are in charge of your social media accounts and run it for a set period of time.
- Sponsored content: you pay them to share your posts or make them create something original, related to your brand.
- Guest posting lets you write on their blog for an agreed fee.
- Free stuff is when you gift something to an influencer and he or she mentions it in the next social media or blog post.
Relevancy
It might be appealing to hire someone with millions of followers but completely unrelated to your niche. You should get rid of this idea immediately and focus only on ones that are relevant to your industry. Even if they do not have a massive number of followers, that is perfectly fine.
There is more value in 10 users who might buy the product instead of 1000 who have no interest in what you offer.
Find Out Who is Promoting Your Competition
If someone is promoting your competition, chances are that this person will be more willing to work with you.
Enter some industry-related hashtags on various social media channels and look at the results. If you see an authority consistently sharing the content of your rivals, feel free to reach this influencer and offer him or her a partnership deal.
Influencer’s Authority
Before you jump in and contact them, look at their authority. It is crucial to determine whether an influencer will have an effect on your marketing campaign.
Add influencers to your list only if they post quality content, have a healthy engagement rate, understand the niche, are growing their channel naturally, and so on.
If the slightest thing seems off, like them potentially buying followers, likes, comments, do not waste your time and move on to the next thing.
Keep Track of Things
It is absolutely necessary to keep track of things and determine whether the current influencer marketing campaign is bearing any fruits. If you feel like results are not meeting your expectations, it might be better to start working with someone else.
Tools for Finding Influencers
Besides the aforementioned social media platforms, you have plenty of tools that focus entirely on finding your perfect influencer.
Some of those include BuzzSumo, Keyhole, Followerwonk, Grouphigh, Cision, TapInfluence, and Influencity. If you feel like there is not enough on social media, feel free to use these tools.
All in all, if you have no experience in finding an influencer for the next product you are about to launch or simply reaching a bigger audience, this article should answer most of the questions. Now all that is left for you is get started and find someone to work with.