by Google
Influencer marketing is one of the fastest growing online marketing approaches and we believe that every company has a form of cooperation with influencers that will greatly benefit their business. This is also confirmed by the findings of the Digital Marketing Institute, which claims that 74% of people trust social networks and that they influence their purchasing decisions. Influencer marketing does not have to be only for large companies or corporations that have contracted marketing agencies. If you are considering investing in influencer marketing on your own, we have a few tips to help you find an influencer for your brand.
• Macro or micro influencer? Who to choose?
• Check if influencers work with competitors
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Start following influencers
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influencers with the same values as your company?• Where can you find a suitable influencer?
SET YOUR CAMPAIGN GOAL
Before you start searching for and reaching out to influencers, it is very important to outline your goals. What do you want to achieve by launching a campaign? What metrics will you choose to evaluate the campaign? Influencer marketing offers different approaches depending on the goals you want to achieve. You can focus, for example, on:
1. Brand Awareness
2. Content Creation
3. App Sales or Downloads
4. Social Media Followers
Depending on what you are trying to achieve with your campaign, you can choose how to work with influencers. For example, if your goal is to sell cosmetics, you should focus on influencers who have experience in the industry and can authentically present your product to a potential customer.
IDENTIFY YOUR TARGET GROUP
It is important to know your target group for every advertising campaign, and influencer marketing is no different. Once you have determined the target group you want to reach with your campaign, it is important to check whether your target group matches the influencer's audience. If you are trying to reach adults, working people aged 40+, you will have a hard time doing so if you work with influencers on TikTok, where the younger generation is mainly present. A poor choice of influencer will significantly affect the results of your campaign and may give the impression that influencer marketing is not working. Therefore, always make sure that your target group matches the audience of the influencer you are working with.
MACRO OR MICRO INFLUENCER? WHO TO CHOOSE?
Another important point when choosing, which needs to be considered, is the "size" of the influencer, or rather the size of his audience and influence. Does one macro influencer with a large audience or several micro influencers fit into your campaign strategy? To make your decision easier, we have listed the advantages and disadvantages of both options for you.
CHECK OUT IF INFLUENCERS WORK WITH THE COMPETITION
Before you agree to cooperate with an influencer, check whether he has currently or in the very recent past cooperated with the competition. Promoting two directly competing brands at once would not only damage the influencer's name, but also your brand's name.
When choosing the right influencer, also look at their current collaborations. How does they approach their communication? How many collaborations do you see on their profile? Does they mark paid collaborations correctly? If you notice that an influencer is unsystematically promoting many different products or services without marking paid collaborations, they are probably not the right one for you. Such an influencer's approach appears untrustworthy to followers and can reduce campaign performance or damage the brand's name.
START FOLLOWING INFLUENCERS
Get to know the influencers you want to collaborate with. Of course, numbers are important in influencer marketing, as in other marketing activities. Numbers like reach or number of followers are important, but don't let them blind you. An influencer is not a billboard or a banner on Facebook, so we can't just look at numbers when choosing. Prepare a short list of suitable influencers for your campaign and follow them. Watch what they create, how they communicate with the audience, how they approach ongoing collaborations, and get to know them more personally, humanly.
DO INFLUENCERS SHARE THE SAME VALUES AS YOUR COMPANY?
By following influencers on their platform, you can find out what their values are. What they value, what they promote, and what they fight against. Why is this important? Imagine a situation where you offer to collaborate with an influencer who has long been against animal testing to promote a new line of cosmetics that is tested on animals. In addition to the fact that this collaboration will not even start, the influencer may mention you as a negative example within his initiative against animal testing and your brand will be exposed to negative PR. You can uncover the values and beliefs of influencers precisely by getting to know them. That is why it is important not to skip the above step and start following the influencers you are interested in collaborating with.
WHERE CAN YOU FIND A SUITABLE INFLUENCER?
The answer to this question is simple, the internet. Search for influencers on platforms where they create content, google various articles and rankings about them, or search for agencies.
1. GOOGLE
Google can be a great help when discovering suitable influencers for your marketing campaign. All you need to do is enter relevant keywords for your campaign into the search. Let's say you are looking for the biggest Slovak influencers for your awareness campaign Alcohol does not belong behind the wheel. Your goal is to create brand awareness and ensure the greatest possible reach. In this case, you choose to cooperate with big influencers and to find them on Google, you can use keywords such as “top influencers 2021” or “top influencers in Slovakia”. By entering the right keywords, you will come across several articles and lists of successful Slovak influencers, from which you can then choose whom to approach with an offer of cooperation.
You can also find many different tools and platforms on the Internet that give you the opportunity to choose from a selection of influencers who are registered on the platform. This type of site can help you broaden your horizons and meet new influencers.
2. SEARCH ON PLATFORMS WHERE THEY CREATE
Is their dominant platform YouTube, Instagram or Tik Tok? First of all, it is important that you decide on which platform you will launch your marketing campaign. If you have chosen Instagram for your campaign, for example, you can search for influencers using hashtags. If you are looking for a suitable influencer to promote fitness centers, search for hashtags from the fitness category such as #fitnesssk or #fitnessslovakia. Searching for influencers on Instagram using hashtags works very similarly to searching on Google, you need to find relevant keywords.
3. REACH OUT TO AGENCIES
If you plan to invest more money in influencer marketing, want to be on the safe side and make sure that you choose the most suitable influencer for your brand, then a great option is to reach out to agencies that specialize in influencer marketing. Since they have long-term experience with influencer marketing, know a large number of influencers, and maintain good long-term relationships with them, they can easily recommend the most suitable influencer for your brand. We highly recommend working with agencies, especially if you are interested in including multiple influencers in your campaign, as they can cover effective communication with several influencers for you and save you time. Influencer marketing is growing every year and it is up to you whether you translate its benefits into your marketing strategy. We believe that we have clarified and facilitated the process of finding an influencer with this blog post, and if you have any questions or are interested in cooperation, do not hesitate to contact us.
