What should you keep in mind when looking for the ideal influencer for your brand? Which one is ideal for my brand/product? Is more followers always better?
Many questions will come up when you start designing your influencer marketing strategy. We must be very clear about the profile the brand requires, since the influencer will be your brand ambassador, will give their opinion, and thousands of their followers (with similar interests) will receive the message.
First Things First: Define Your Goal
Before you start, you need to establish your goals, that is, what you want to achieve through this strategy.
- Do you want to increase awareness of your brand/product?
- Get more online sales?
- Increase traffic to your website?
- Increase your social media followers, etc.?
Start Your Research
Once you've defined your goal, it's time to start looking for influencers who fit your line of business and share the profile of your buyer persona (potential customer).
To make it easier, you can create a table with name, description, social media account, contact information, number of likes, number of followers and, most important of all, engagement.
When you start your research, it's important to consider a few things:
Niche: What market niche do they focus on? What kinds of topics do they cover, and what do they talk about most? What is their area of expertise?
Engagement vs. followers: While the number of followers is important, it's much more important to look at the engagement they have with their community.
Check their social media to see how often they post, how many people interact with them and how they respond.
The more they participate and the more genuine the engagement, the better.
Watch out! Don't rely only on the number of followers they have on their social media, since they may use free apps to gain followers or likes. That's why it's key to review the engagement they have with their followers, especially with their comments and conversations.
Audience: What kind of people make up their community? Do they match the characteristics of your buyer persona?
Is their community in the same geographic location where you operate (if applicable)?
Example: If you had to use a micro-influencer to promote an organic product for children, it wouldn't make much sense to use one who talks about nutrition and whose audience is adults.Even though they might cover the same topics, they target a very different audience.
You should look very carefully at the topics they usually cover and the niche they're in to make sure you have a very similar target audience.
Authenticity: How authentic is the influencer? We've already seen that people tend to trust authentic influencers much more, the ones who promote products organically.
If they're very aggressive in the way they push a product or a brand, most of the time their followers will notice and walk away.
Example: If you're a beauty brand and want to promote a new hair care product, you could use the inbound marketing methodology in some way. How? You can suggest that the influencer record a video about the best hair care tips and mention your product within the content. It's a less aggressive, more subtle way to promote the brand.
Don't wait any longer and start researching the influencer you're most interested in to get the most out of your digital marketing campaigns. Don't forget to subscribe to our blog and our YouTube channel!
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