According to a study by GlobalWebIndex, 54 percent of social media users use social media to research products and 71 percent are more likely to purchase products and services based on what social media influencers recommend. It’s essential to find the right influencers that align with your brand’s niche is key, so you can reach your target market.
With these five simple steps, you can find influencers for your niche:
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Learn all about influencer marketing, from picking the right influencers to creating partnerships, metrics, payment, and more.
Before you start thinking about long-term, sustainable relationships with influencers, it’s good to focus on the near-term with a focused set of tangible, measurable goals, such as:
Source: FIPP
Once you know your objectives, you can begin to look for the kind of influencer who may help you meet or exceed your goals.
With so many different campaign types in existence, you can’t approach influencers with a one-size-fits-all approach. Inevitably, different campaigns speak to different types of influencers.
Take factors like the audience, goals, and outcomes of your campaign into account and keep them in mind as you begin your search. Also, keep in mind how the influencers want to be paid, their creative skills, the kind of content they produce, and their reach and engagement.
The types of campaigns you may run:
Some influencers will be perfect for a gifting campaign, because they have a smaller but more targeted audience. Others may have a huge following to bring to your brand and may want to guest post. Whatever you need, start by looking at who understands your industry.
Searching and finding influencers who already know your industry is a matter of doing some basic social media research.
First, look and see what influencers may be working with your competition. You can get a better idea of what hashtags and search terms they use from their posts. If it feels like the right fit, you could reach out to them and see if they’d be open to working with you. Once you have a general understanding of the hashtags and search terms, you can find out who else is already talking about the problems your brand solves or the audience your brand serves.
Have you clearly identified your target audience? Do you understand their demographic and psychographic profile? Are they perhaps a young professional, suburban dwelling homeowner and pet owner that’s environmentally conscious?
The next step is to figure out which platforms they like the best, where and how they communicate, and look for influencers who create content about this subject
These influencers may be working with other brands, but that is not necessarily a no-go. If they meet all your criteria, keep them on your list. They already know how to reach your audience and your brand may fit in well with their followers.
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Having a massive follower count is a sign of only one thing: that an influencer has a lot of followers. It doesn’t necessarily make an influencer better than any other, worthy of a partnership, or a perfect fit for your campaign. In fact, brands often make the mistake of choosing celebrity or macro-influencers without taking a closer look at metrics that really matter.
So, for example, if you are a pet brand that sells natural products, you could work with the most popular pet influencers who have hundreds of thousands of followers but receive little engagement. Or you could find several influencer partners with smaller followings. For instance, you could recruit several local veterinarians who create content about natural pet care and receive high engagement from followers who match your audience.
Look for a broad range of influencers who:
Finally, you get to pick from the list of influencers you have created based on criteria that are the most relevant to your needs at this time. These influencers may become long-term partnerships or be perfect for one campaign. Either way, you’ve succeeded in finding the right influencers for your niche.
Take a final look at:
In 2020, the global value of influencer marketing was estimated at a whopping $9.7 billion, according to Influencer Marketing Hub. In a 2019 survey by Mediakix, 48 percent of marketers found influencer marketing return on investment (ROI) better than other channels while another 41 percent said the ROI was comparable. Meanwhile, 71 percent of respondents agreed that customer quality increases and traffic from influencer marketing performs better than other sources.
When it comes to compensating influencers, you’ll find a wide variety in payout structures. Although payment types may differ, the path to understanding how much influencers charge per post is simple to follow.
Learn all about influencer payment from start to finish.
Before you hand over your precious marketing spend, consider these variables:
Payment is often contingent on the size of an influencer’s following. With this in mind, social media influencers are often categorized by their audience size:
Source: Marina Sinnott, Director of Activate Studio by
A bigger audience doesn’t always yield better results. According to a recent influencer marketing article, micro-influencers have the best engagement rates even if their number of followers is smaller. Keep that in mind when you judge value based on followers.
At the end of the day, price points can only be fairly established on a case-by-case basis. It’s useful for any marketer considering utilizing influencers to see some benchmark figures. Below we’ll explore types of media and the costs associated with posts.
The second step to determining payment for influencers is truly understanding the social media platform on which they work. Payments vary by platform, as does customer interest. Influencers gravitate toward specific platforms so make sure you know which your target audience likes to use. More often than not, influencers are most active on these six social media platforms:
Influencer fees generally follow a range of costs per post — although these can vary drastically depending on the influencer niche, gender, engagement rate, location, etc. The following rates are the average costs of influencer marketing spend worldwide.
According to Insider Intelligence, US influencer marketing spend will reach approximately $4.14 billion in 2022. The following rates are the average influencer earnings per post in the US, based on the type of influencer and social media platform.
Instagram is the most widely leveraged social media platform. These are the average costs of an Instagram post in 2021 by type of influencer:
TikTok was the most downloaded app in 2021 with 656 million downloads. In the world of video content, TikTok is becoming an increasingly popular tool for influencers seeking to go viral.
TikTok tends to have high levels of engagement which makes pricing even more cost-effective, and well below YouTube pricing for video content.
TikTok pricing for influencers:
YouTube pricing is higher and more fragmented than other media because video content is more time-consuming and expensive to produce than image- or word-based posts.
YouTube sponsorships include integrated videos or dedicated videos. In an integrated video your brand, product or service features in a portion of the video. Dedicated videos, on the other hand, showcase your brand, product or service in the entire video.
While on the low end of the influencer marketing budget, Facebook still provides an important platform for influencers to reach followers.
Snapchat influencers typically charge by number of views, which is often contingent upon their follower count.
Snapchat influencer post rates by number of views:
Twitter influencers typically reach fewer impressions than on other social media platforms, but it may be the right channel to meet your audience where they are. Twitter rates tend to be lower, which can be very cost-effective for your brand. Often, content from other platforms can be syndicated to Twitter for an even lower cost.
When it comes to paying influencers, the path to payment comes from knowing all the factors: audience size, content type, social media platform type, the quality of the media you want, and the engagement rates for the influencers with whom you’d like to partner. Once you know those factors you can create fair and transparent pricing for all your influencer partnerships.
To get a handle on all the steps on the path to influencer payments, take a look at the Dynamic Payouts capability possible with
For a deeper dive into how influencers are paid now and will be in the future read
Free guide: Seven ways to pay influencers today and tomorrow
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Now that you’re ready to jump into the wide world of influencer marketing with the influencers who are right for you, schedule a demo to learn how
For the whole life cycle of influencer marketing take a look at the Ultimate guide to influencer marketing.
Learn all about influencer marketing, from picking the right influencers to creating partnerships, metrics, payment, and more.
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