How To Identify And Work With The Right Brand Influencers For Your Business

There is a huge emphasis on influencer marketing in today’s digital climate, so if this is something you have been considering, now is the time to act!

A good influencer marketing campaign can help to grow your credibility as a brand and also increase sales, whilst simultaneously reaching your audience niche and tapping into their interests. When your audience sees your products being shared by people whose opinions they know and trust, they’re more likely to buy.

You just need to look at the stats to see just how valuable influencer marketing is. For example, 71% of people are more likely to buy if it is recommended by an influencer they trust. Additionally, 82% of brand’s leads from influencer marketing are better quality than other campaign types.

This shows how important it is to invest in influencer marketing by prioritising and nurturing brand/influencer relationships. By building and maintaining these strong relationships, you will build a network of brand influencers who can represent your products and services for a long period of time, creating a sense of authenticity and building trust with consumers. 

Read on to find out our top tips for working with brand influencers effectively. 

HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT BRAND INFLUENCERS FOR YOUR BUSINESS

1. Define your target audience

An important first step in finding the right brand influencers is to determine your target audience. It is essential to narrow down your audience by demographics, location and interests. This will help you create an influencer marketing strategy which will resonate most with the consumers you wish to target. This will also ensure that the audience you target is similar to your brand influencers in order to inspire users to take action.

2. Search for relevant influencers

In order to find the right brand influencers for you, the first step is to see who is already engaged with the brand. You can do this by using social listening tools as well as conducting relevant hashtag searches. This will help you to narrow down influencers with industry-relevant content.

Another useful tip, once you have found an influencer who may resonate with your brand, is to find similar profiles on Instagram. You can do this by heading to the profile of an influencer you have your eye on and tap on the plus icon on the right of the follow button. This will present a list of suggested influencers with similar content.

3. Curate content that will resonate with your target audience

Finally, in order to find the right brand influencers for your business it is essential to align on your brand aesthetic and the message you wish to convey. 

A good way to do this is to assess how similar your influencers’ content is to your own messaging. It is also important to look at how engaged an influencer’s audience is with their content as this is an important indicator of how relevant this style of content is for consumers and which formats resonate most.

HOW TO REACH OUT TO BRAND INFLUENCERS TO WORK WITH THEM

Strategically reach out

Rather than cold calling or emailing influencers, there are a range of other ways to engage with them which may yield more successful results.

If you want an influencer’s attention, a good strategy is to make sure you follow and subscribe to their channels, and engage with their posts. Interacting with influencers’ channels will demonstrate your interest in them and show you appreciate their work.

Make real-life connections

Following on from the previous tip, rather than cold calling – making a real-world connection is far more favourable as it can make influencers more accessible. 

A great way of doing this is to start attending or even hosting influencer events which will be helpful in bringing influencers to you rather than trying to build relationships virtually.

Organise and monitor your outreach effectively

If you are mass outreaching to influencers it can be easy to lose track of who you have contacted. For this reason, it is important to keep on top of your outreach efforts – the last thing you want is to reach out to the same influencer multiple times with the exact same message!

It is also important to make sure that you respect influencers’ time by not being too clingy or pushy – ensure you give them enough time before following up.

Ensure relevance & diversity throughout

It is important to prioritise relevance over other factors such as number of followers. By making sure that your brand influencers’ content resonates with your target audience, you will be far more successful at increasing awareness and sales rather than prioritising influencer following sizes. This is because you will be targeting an audience niche who are likely to have an interest in your product.

Respect & trust your brand influencers

It is important to lay out clear expectations and rules with your brand influencers by setting out clear timelines and guidelines in contracts and briefs. However, it is still important to maintain an element of trust with your influencers – at the end of the day you have selected them for a reason.

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