You have decided to step up your marketing goals and consider working with influencers to do so. With 200 million Instagram users visiting at least one business account every day, it’s no wonder that Instagram influencers have become so popular with brands. So, keep reading to learn about finding the right influencer for your next marketing campaign.
What are your goals?
Before you begin searching for influencers, you need to define the goals of your campaign to understand what you’re looking for. Choosing the right influencer is a step-by-step process, which starts by considering these three points:
Target Audience
Determining your target audience is essential to be able to find an influencer who matches this. Do your research to understand the age range, gender, and interests of the audience that your product or brand usually attracts and hopes to attract with this campaign. You will want to find an influencer with followers that align with this. But remember, even if the influencer is 35, the majority of their followers could easily be 25, so you need to stay flexible.
Budget
Deciding on a budget for your campaign is one of the first steps before contacting influencers. Every type of influencer asks for different payments, whether monetary or product alone. You will also need to consider that some influencers have managers that charge higher fees, and depending on the media content you would like posted, prices will vary here too. By deciding on a budget within your goal planning process, you will be able to narrow down the type of influencer that you wish to work with.
Timing
Another important step to consider when defining your goals is the timeline of your campaign. You may have an urgent need to begin the campaign, which could rule out certain influencers that may take longer to respond to. You also might want to consider if your campaign would be most successful at a time of sale or discount, or festive date or season. This is important to consider so that you can gain the most success from your campaign, and also establish the availability of an influencer to meet your specific timeline.
Different types of influencers
Once your main campaign objectives have been established, choosing the right influencer requires understanding the different types available. This is when it is crucial to recognise that the more followers the influencer has, does not equate to a better campaign. Influencers tend to be divided into five categories, depending on their number of followers:
Nano influencers are those with the smallest number of followers. They have between 1K and 5K followers but, it’s important to remember that their followers can often be of higher value. These influencers usually have high engagement rates and will most likely take a non-monetary incentive, such as the product.
Micro influencers have more followers (between 5K and 50K) and tend to be more experienced within their area. Although they would have typically begun their account for fun, they may be more serious about pursuing their career as an influencer. Engagement rates are still high, and their followers have trust in them. Payment can be non-monetary or sometimes a fee, but usually very small.
Medium influencers have even more followers again, between 50K and 100K. This is where we often begin to see a change, with an expectation of monetary payment, and some may even have a manager that charges a fee. These influencers will be beginning to establish their account as a career and aiming to become more professional, although engagement rates are still fairly high.
Macro influencers have a large follower base with anywhere between 100K and 1M followers. They are full-time, professional influencers who are experts working on frequent brand collaborations. They will expect monetary incentives and charge a manager’s fee. Although their content will seem very experienced, it’s important to note that the engagement rate becomes much lower at this level.
Mega influencers are those with over 1M followers, typically being celebrities that have grown to fame for something out with social media, such as actors, singers, sports personalities, etc. They will most likely have a manager that professionally conducts their social media platforms. Fees are high, and engagement rates are low. Their followers can often believe promotional content to be unauthentic, too.
Analyzing profiles with an influencer marketing platform
So, we can now see how important it is to start by defining your goals to ensure that you are choosing the right category of influencers. Understanding the positives and negatives of each category can help you to avoid making the common mistake of believing the more famous the influencer, the better.
Even though the above definitions usually come with these influencer types, you could find yourself in a position working with a nano influencer with very low engagement rates, or a macro influencer with fake followers. To avoid this, you should consider working with an influencer marketing platform like Heepsy, to find influencers that you can trust will be suitable for your campaign.
Engagement Rates
One of the most important things to look out for is the engagement rate of the influencer’s account. The industry average varies depending on follower count, as of course, more followers are harder to manage. However, the better the engagement rate, the more connected the influencer is with their followers. No matter what your campaign goals are, you’ll want to reach followers who are fully invested in an influencer’s content, instead of followers who just scroll quickly on.
Audience insights
Heepsy lets you view a variety of insights about the influencer’s audience, such as age, gender, location, and interests. This is essential to ensuring that this audience aligns with that of your campaign’s target audience.
As well as this, investigating audience authenticity metrics will allow you to determine whether the influencer has real or fake followers.
Conclusion
By getting this far, you’re definitely heading in the right direction. As exciting as it may be to begin a new campaign, we can see how important it is that you truly understand different types of influencers and the pros and cons of working with each.
To find out more, check out Heepsy’s influencer marketing guide, that will direct you through each step of an influencer campaign.
