How to identify the right influencers for your brand

Influencer marketing is a fairly new arena within marketing. As a result, it often seems like a huge challenge for brands to find the right people that fit their profile. There are millions of influencers available but only a few will be perfect for the message and campaign you have in mind. So how do you find the right influencers for your brand?

Tip #1: Quality over quantity

This is probably one of the most over-used phrases in the English language but that doesn't make it any less relevant. It is natural to think that the more followers someone has, the better value they are for your company. This isn't the case though. What matters more is the quality of audience engagement. 

For example, Kendall Jenner is an established celebrity with over 70 million followers on Instagram. But this massive following didn't convert to massive ticket sales for the now-infamous Fyre Festival, which Jenner was paid to promote. Why? Because millions of followers mean nothing if they don't feel a personal connection to the product or the person promoting it. Thankfully, there are plenty of influencers out there with followers who trust their recommendations and see them as authentic. These are the people you want to target in your influencer campaigns.

Targeting influencers with smaller, but more dedicated, followings will always give you more value than those with millions of followers but no engagement.

Tip #2: Take the time to understand their audience

If we haven't made it super obvious yet, audiences matter a whole lot. When we say you need to understand an influencer's audience, we mean that you should know if their audiences match up with the audiences your brand has already, or the audiences you want to target. Doing a little extra research in the beginning to be sure that your audiences align can save you from a lot of issues down the road and helps your campaign run smoothly.

Tip #3: Have an idea of what your goals are

Determining your marketing goals beforehand will go a long way to help you pinpoint which influencers to work with. If you are a new brand trying to build recognition in your industry, it may be a better fit for you to target the smaller content producers who can introduce you to their active followers. If you are a bigger brand looking to launch a new product, then perhaps a larger audience is what you need to make a bigger splash.

Tip #4: Target influencers who publish content regularly

It's one of the laws of the internet - creators who publish high quality content regularly have more engagement from their audiences. 

Looking at the frequency someone posts is valuable in determining how well they can fit into your campaign. The psychology behind this is simple; if followers know an influencer publishes awesome YouTube videos every week on a Wednesday, then they know to look for the content on a Wednesday. This helps build excitement within the audience and increases the chances for audiences to return again and again to that channel. This excitement helps create more valuable attention for your brand or product.