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:
- Determine your goals
- Set up your campaign
- Find influencers related to your industry
- Find influencers who share your audience
- Measure the power and reach of the influencers you pick
If you want to know the ins and outs of influencer marketing, check out our ebook:
Want this great info in ebook form? Download Ultimate guide to influencer marketing
Learn all about influencer marketing, from picking the right influencers to creating partnerships, metrics, payment, and more.
Finalize your goals before finding influencers for your niche
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:
- Brand awareness
- Brand identity
- Building an audience
- Increasing engagement
- Generating leads
- Making sales
- Creating customer loyalty
- List building
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.
Have a campaign in mind as you start looking for influencers in your niche
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:
- Gifting for mentions, posts, and other content
- Sponsored content that the influencer shares or creates for your brand
- Guest posting or takeovers where the influencer shares on your feed and theirs
- Contests, giveaways, and other incentives for the influencer’s followers
- Affiliate codes or discounts for them to share with followers
- Brand ambassadors who regularly support your brand and post about it
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.
Look for influencers who create content related to 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.
Find influencers who share your audience
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.
Use impact.com’s discovery tool to find your match
The partner discovery tool from impact.com makes it easy to find and recruit the right influencers, content creators, publishers, and more. The discovery tool offers powerful filters to identify the ideal influencer partners for your program. There are filters to search by criteria like their preferred social media platform, geography, audience stats, promotional methods, and more. And there are also tools to explore their content and data.
Measure the power and reach of the influencers for your niche
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:
- Have built trust with their followers
- Listen and respond to their followers
- Use the social channels you want to be on
- Have audiences that purchase products that they recommend
Now you get to choose the right influencers for your niche
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:
- Audience/niche: Who do they talk to? What do they specialize in?
- Relevance: What content resonates with their audience?
- Engagement: What level of engagement do they get?
- Geography: Is the location right for your brand?
- Quality: Is it consistent over time? Does it align with your brand standards?
- Channel: Are the channels they use (blog, Instagram, etc.) relevant for your brand?
- Authenticity and honesty: Do you see any signs of odd activity like purchased likes and comments?
How much do influencers charge per post?
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:
- Which audience you are trying to reach
- The type of influencer involved
- The media platform
- The quality of the media
- The desired level of engagement
- Creative mandates
- Production costs
- Timeline
- ROI
Cost based on influencer tier
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:
- Celebrities and “cewebrities” (1m+ followers): Famous beyond social media, i.e., movie, TV, music, or sports stars.
- Macro-influencers (250k–1m followers): Became popular by leveraging social media
- Mid-influencer (75k-250k): Their reach extends to an audience size that’s middle-of-the-road compared to the other influencer tiers.
- Micro-influencers (10k-75k followers): Everyday people with a decent following and influence.
- Nano-influencers (<10k followers): Everyday folks with smaller followings but not necessarily less influential.
Source: Marina Sinnott, Director of Activate Studio by impact.com
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.
Cost by social media platform
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:
- TikTok
- YouTube
- Snapchat
Pay-per-post globally
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.
- Instagram. This cost-effective channel has an average price of $10 per post, per 1,000 followers.
- TikTok. Influencers on the platform charge between $5 and $2,500 per post.
- YouTube. On average influencers charge $20 per video, per 1,000 subscribers.
- Facebook. Influencers on the platform charge an average of $25 per post, per 1,000 followers.
- Snapchat. Influencers on Snapchat charge $10 per post, per 1,000 followers.
- Twitter. At $2 per post, per 1,000 followers, Twitter offers the lowest influencer marketing prices.
- Blog. Influencers charge approximately $60 per post, per 1,000 unique visitors.
Pay-per-post in the US
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 posts
Instagram is the most widely leveraged social media platform. These are the average costs of an Instagram post in 2021 by type of influencer:
- Nano-influencer: $25–$200
- Micro-influencer: $200–$1000
- Mid-influencer: $1,000–$3,000
- Macro-influencer: $3,000–$15,000
- Celebrity: $20,000+
TikTok videos
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:
- Nano: $50–$300
- Micro: $300–$1,250
- Mid: $1,250–$3,500
- Macro: $3,500–$12,000
- Celebrity: $12,000
YouTube videos
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.
- Nano: $100–$500
- Micro: $500–$3.000
- Mid: $2,000–$5,000
- Macro: $3,000–$20,000
- Celebrity: $20,000+
Facebook posts
While on the low end of the influencer marketing budget, Facebook still provides an important platform for influencers to reach followers.
- Nano: $25–$100
- Micro: $100–$800
- Mid: $800–$2,500
- Macro: $2,500–$10,000
- Celebrity: $10,000+
Snapchat stories
Snapchat influencers typically charge by number of views, which is often contingent upon their follower count.
Snapchat influencer post rates by number of views:
- 1,000–4,999 views: $500
- 5,000–9,999 views: $1,000–$3,000
- 10,000–19,999 views: $3,000–$5,000
- 20,000–49,999 views: $5,000–$10,000
- 50,000–100,000 views: $10,000–$30,000
Twitter tweets
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.
- Nano: $10–$50
- Micro: $50–$350
- Mid: $350–$1,000
- Macro: $1,000–$4,000
- Celebrity: $4,000+
A final word on the cost of influencer marketing
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 impact.com. The feature enables marketers to set payouts based on more than 100 factors, such as customer status, margin, or the specific items in the order.
For a deeper dive into how influencers are paid now and will be in the future read impact.com’s ebook.
Free guide: Seven ways to pay influencers today and tomorrow
Learn all about influencer payment, ROI, and the cost of influencer marketing. Get my free guide.
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 impact.com’s platform can help your brand strategically manage influencer campaigns, and how it connects influencers and creators with the world’s leading brands.
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.
For more ideas and guidance on influencer partnership management, check out these other impact.com resources:
- Seven ways to pay influencers today and tomorrow [ebook]
- Different strokes for different influencer folks [ebook]
- Your influencer program is broken [ebook]
- Scaling influencer marketing globally [ebook]
Create lasting partnerships
Partnerships can be your company’s fastest engine of growth. They connect brands with consumers in the most effective and authentic way possible. Partner with impact.com and find out how.
With the Partnership Cloud, you can:
- Leverage partnerships to drive revenue
- Create new and improve existing revenue streams by establishing a robust partnership channel
- Engage with the right partners in the right way to achieve sustained, accelerated growth
- Scale partnerships efficiently
- Optimize your partnership investments by scaling with partnership automation
For more insights on creating sustainable partnerships, check out our insights page at https://impact.com/insights/
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