Influencer Search: Picking the Right People to Promote Your Product Online
Bet you’ve heard about how good influencer marketing is, and how it is profitable for your business to attract several thought leaders. Perhaps, you even considered including influencer marketing in your marketing strategy. So, how do you find the right people, and how do you get the most out of influencer marketing?
There are plenty of reasons for you to seek influencers to promote your goods, services, or products. After all, good old tricks like paid ads stop working as well as they worked five years ago.
Lucky for you we’ve taken care of the minor issues and did some homework. Consider it a brief yet comprehensive guide on how
to define what sort of influencer you need, how to look for one, and
what to do to make sure that a particular person will double your sales
rate. Here we go!
Contents
Who is an influencer?
An influencer is a media person who has a platform where his or her media presence is carried out.
Moreover, your influencer has to have an active audience that shows a high engagement rate. Of course, it is better if that audience is wide enough – starting from 1,000 users and more.
And remember that 500K+ influencers do not always guarantee the result. As we mentioned before - check the engagement level first and make a good mixture of followship & engagement rates.
Your perfect influencer could be:
- A blogger running some niche online journal (we can help you reach lots of them);
- The Instagram influencer with a vast audience and an agenda;
- Industry expert – official or self-proclaimed;
- Independent journalist, running a column in a profile media;
- Traveler or photographer, who attracts people by showing some enviable lifestyle.
But you know what? Your specific influencer can be anyone. The only things that matter are the number of subscribers and at least some level of expertise in your field. And of course, that person should have the intention of cooperating with you.
Oh, one more thing – there are “macro-influencers,” usually working with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and “micro-influencers” who have from 1,000 to 100,000 subscribers.
Also, there's an essential thing to remember - people prefer to listen to the opinions of other people, rather than trusting your best advertisement slogans.
According to several polls, 43% of Gen Z trust influencer reviews and recommendations when it comes to discovering brands. Moreover, 60% of marketers report that influencer-generated content performs better and drives more engagement compared to branded posts.
Influencer marketing impacts not only your brand awareness. Also, it helps you reach new audiences (and might not even have considered these audiences before). It is really useful, indeed. However, picking a person who will promote your brand might be challenging.
What profits does influencer marketing bring?
Before we begin paving the way to your influencer search success, let’s figure out why you need an influencer at all. What profits can you get, attracting someone who will start to speak highly of your product? Why can’t you rely anymore on your old marketing department?
As mentioned before, people are fed up with the same advertising messages these days. They do not trust ads the way it was a decade ago.
Instead, your customers will seek some seemingly independent opinions from bloggers, YouTube reviews, comments, and social media. For instance, 56% of Gen Zers are more likely to try a good if their favorite influencer has recommended it.
Given that everyone today has instant access to the Internet, your advertisement has to fight for people’s opinions. It is proven that we trust relatives and authority figures. So, a review of a favorite blogger in lots of cases is way more important than the best-selling text.
The good point is that your influencer can aid you in coping with almost every problem a marketer can face. Using influence marketing, you can:
- Improve the brand’s awareness or build it from scratch;
- Get instant access to the already engaged audience;
- Dramatically increase your customer base;
- Build up people’s loyalty towards your product;
- Maintain the reputation of a trusted company.
And many many more. Analysts say influencer marketing will inevitably displace the usual forms of marketing in the next ten years. That might seem to be quite a bold idea but, nevertheless, it is a profitable and advantageous form of promotion of almost anything. Now let’s see what we can do to find you a perfect influencer!
Influencers: Getting started
There are several steps you should take before you find a person who can help you promote your products. Before starting, you should strictly define the goals of your campaign.
What do you want to achieve?
- Get subscribers.
- Expand your client base.
- Become number one on a search results page.
Sort this kind of thing before you begin. Why do you need to understand your goals? Well, because you don’t need any influencer possible. Instead, you should look for the right influencer.
After that, you should understand what kind of influencer campaign you are ready to launch. More simply – how are you going to pay your influencer? There are dozens of ways to cooperate.
You can offer your products as a gift for direct or indirect promotion of your goods. You can ask for permission to write on their blog. Either provide them with sponsorship for some sort of contest, give a discount, or pay money for the promotion. Anyway, you have to be clear about what you are ready to invest in.
How to find an influencer
Now, that you’ve figured out all the things mentioned above, it is time to start looking for the right influencer.
1. Just open your Internet browser and get to the search engine page. Enter the keywords that are the most popular in your field and look for the bloggers writing about the products in your field.
2. Check not just the websites but the social media, forums, and blogging platforms like Quora or Medium. Look for the people, discussing your niche everywhere you can.
3. Moreover, get yourself an Instagram and start browsing the hashtags. It is a great way to find your influencer – to seek one through hashtags. No matter whom you will find at first – check random users, interested in your field, and see who they are subscribed to. Eventually, you’ll find the right person.
4. Another good idea is to check your competitors’ influencers and try to reach them too. You don’t have to be the only client of this influencer – in fact, it is even better if the influencer will survey your product as well as your competitor’s.
Customers, not celebrities
What you should keep in mind is that you are reaching for new customers through the influencer. That means the quality of the influencer's audience might be even more critical than the influencer themself.
Here is another hint: look for someone who does not necessarily directly fit your field of interest but has an engaged audience.
When selling surfboards, you don’t have to look for a surfer – you can attract a photographer or a traveler as well. Or even some pleasantly looking young lady with numerous beach pictures.
You have to find an engaged audience, and you’ll never know where it can be. Make sure you’ve made a thorough target audience analysis, and you’ll know where to find your customers.
Finally, before negotiating the terms, you have to make sure that the person is authoritative enough to promote your agenda. To find this out, take time and check some factors that are essential for your success. Make sure you are satisfied with the number of followers – and check whether they are real or bots. Look at the engagement rate of those followers – do they comment, share and repost?
Measure content marketing and ensure it is high-quality. Also, see how good influencer orients in your niche - are there any factual errors? Are there any lies or prejudices? Is that particular person competent enough to promote your product?
Conclusion
In conclusion, we can say that searches for influencers can be tricky but they are totally worth it. When you know the specifics of your product, you can easily define what message you want to spread. Make sure to check the results of your promo campaign and make proper adjustments based on them.
And don’t be shy and ask for help – you can always address Adsy, and we’ll take care of the rest. Good luck!
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