Are you struggling to find the best influencers for your brand? Have you delayed the process because it feels too overwhelming?
You’re not alone. 61 percent of marketers agree that finding the best influencers for a campaign is a big challenge.
Despite the challenges, however, 80 percent of marketers say influencer marketing is an effective strategy.
So, if you want to use influencer marketing for your next campaign, then you need to discover the right influencers to capture the attention of your audience and get them to take the following steps–whether it’s a sale, a sign-up, or another conversion type.
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Here’s how to do it.
Know Your Audience
Before you go looking for influencers to help your brand, you first need to understand your audience so you can connect with the relevant one. What are their pain points? How do they consume information? Where is the best place to reach them?
Let’s say you are a cookbook author, and you want to increase sales by getting in front of people who are likely to buy your cookbook. You would want to know everything you can about those people, such as:
- What do they like to cook, and why would they need your cookbook?
- What are their challenges?
- Where do they spend their time—on social media or blogs?
If you find that your target audience doesn’t have a lot of time to cook but wants to prepare healthy meals for their family, and they get most of their inspiration from social media, then you want to try and connect with influencers on social media platforms who have a similar audience.
How do you find them? It takes a little research.
Do Some Digging
When you want to find the best influencers for your brand, you need to find out where your audience is hanging out. More than likely, similar audiences hang out there, too.
For example, are there other cookbook authors or food bloggers similar to you, who have social media pages or a blog? I’ll bet their audiences would be interested in your cookbook since they share similar interests, pain points, and challenges as your audience. These authors or bloggers could be potential influencers for your brand, but you still need to learn more about them, such as:
- Who is their audience? Does it seem like a good fit?
- What type of content are they publishing? How often do they publish?
- Does the content feel natural and authentic?
- What type of interaction and engagement does their content receive?
- Are they actively promoting other brands?
This type of research can be time-consuming, but it’s essential to get it right. After all, when you work with influencers, you want it to reflect positively on your brand.
You’ll also want to consider whether a well-known name or a micro-influencer works best for your brand. Micro-influencers typically have smaller audiences than larger ones, but they are very well-known in their area of interest and have very high engagement rates—thus, the reason many brands pursue them.
Case in point, this influential food blogger and author publishes content on Instagram about her friend’s soon-to-be-released book. The topic is of interest and value to her followers, so it gets a lot of engagement, and it also promotes her friend’s book to an audience who might not have known about it otherwise.
If you don’t have time to do the research on your own, there are a number of tools out there to help you do it, such as Hootsuite or Followerwonk.
How good are your key influencer marketing skills? Well try answering these Content Marketing Practice Test Questions and find out now!
Next Steps
Once you have a list of potential influencers for your brand, you’ll want to think about your goals for influencer marketing. Do you want to increase awareness, or do you want to boost sales? Do you want to increase registrations for a webinar, or have more eBook downloads?
If your “potentials” already promote for other brands, then check to see how they do with raising awareness or selling more products. Are they better at one or the other? Knowing this could help you narrow down your list to the best fits for your company.
Finally, if you want to get inspired, check out these examples of influencer marketing success to give you some ideas and consider enrolling in Simplilearn’s Advanced Social Media Certification Training now.