It’s not a secret that online influencers have become somewhat of a pillar when it comes to marketing, be it a product or service. But with the demand for influencers going up, so has the offering. So how to choose the RIGHT influencer for your business out of the endless pool of opportunities? We’ll walk you through a few simple steps that will make the process easier.
Know the aim of your campaign
Before getting ahead of yourself and browsing through the sea of influencers, make sure to narrow down the aim of your campaign. Do you want to reach a broad audience for brand awareness? Are you looking for specific product sales? Or maybe you are after testimonials and reviews. All these goals and more are an essential base for any influencer campaign. Similar to ads, you want to make sure you are targeting the right audience with the right tools. In this situation, the influencer is your targeting tool. Once you have narrowed down the aim, look for influencers who would be able to deliver specific content that would serve this aim.
Look for influencers with similar values to yours
Another critical factor, when looking for influencers, is to look out for aligning values. When you are trying to increase your growth through external effort, it comes across a lot more organic and authentic if you are sharing values with your collaborators. Consumers nowadays are astute and are harder to convince to buy, using influencers with shared values is likely also to impact their viewers who share similar opinions/values.
In addition to content being more relevant, you might also be able to negotiate the price a lot better due to the shared interest and opinions on a particular topic.
An example of where the values of the micro-influencer align with the brand really well, so their review is thorough, authentic and overall positive.
Figure out if you want to work with a few large influencers or larger amount of micro-influencers
It’s not always about size; there’s a lot of little factors to determine which influencers work best for you. Depending on your campaign goal, you might want to work with smaller (or so-called micro) influencers. For example, if you are looking for an increased amount of your product reviews and have a limited budget, you might want to look into working with smaller creators who would be interested in product exchanges for review content. Besides, it is common that these smaller creators come across more authentic and raw in their content. This way, people looking for the review might trust more someone with a smaller audience as more prominent creators are more likely to do paid product placement that might affect their opinion.
Know your budget, profit margins and target CPA
It is excellent when you can find someone with influence to test your product or service for free, but a lot of times, creators will ask for a payment when it comes to their collaboration. For this reason, it is essential to know your available budget for the campaign, what your profit margins are and your target price per referral/acquisition. Do not be afraid to ask the influencer to provide you with some insights into their past performance if they have worked with other brands. If you have agreed on content with a paid influencer, also consider using UTM links or different ways of result tracking to ensure the ROI.
Example of use of UTM link from the sponsor.
Look at their previous content, engagement, reach and authenticity
It should not come as a surprise, but it is important to assess the collaborators previous content. It is crucial to see how similar style of content has performed on their social channels, what the engagement was like, how many shares it had and so on. This will allow you to predict the results of your campaign and how much you should invest in scaling it. When looking at engagement, also make sure to assess the authentic interactions, the vibe of the conversation and more. Many creators have found ways to increase their audience, but forget about the lack of engagement, so taking a look at this will ensure your investment is worth it.
Discuss content ideas with the influencers you have chosen and reached out to – reaching out does not mean it’s a done deal!
Once you have reached out to your initial choices, and they’ve shown interest, make sure to pick their brain about the initial campaign ideas. The fact that you reached out and they are interested does not automatically mean you have to proceed with the campaign. It could be that they are interested in your offer, but do not share a similar vision for the content. That said, it does not mean to give them your chosen format cut in stone. It is important to listen to their ideas as well and assess in line with your objectives, as they know what their audience engages with the most. Finding the best creative approach will also allow you to agree on terms of delivery and fee a lot easier.
Hopefully, these six easy steps to choose the RIGHT influencer are helpful to you. If you are interested in starting or bettering your influencer marketing and are not sure where to begin, we would love to hear from you! Book a free consultation with us to see if we can help you with your next campaign.
