Influencer marketing has never been an easy-peasy craft. The success of your influencer marketing campaign depends on how well you build business connections.
The right choice of niche-related influencers promises a few core benefits like:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Customer growth
In other words, influencers can help skyrocket your business tremendously.
But how can you find influencers within the niche?
In this guide, you will explore six solutions to this question.
Let’s get to it!
The importance of finding the right influencers
Influencers are experts within the niche who have armies of followers across social media channels. These followers must be real. Authentic. And relevant to your business.
Unfortunately, there are chances to stumble upon fake influencers with fake followers. Such “influencers” tend to buy tons of followers to mislead people for popularity. For example, they can buy Instagram followers.
Therefore, the first thing you need to do is to analyze the audience a potential influencer has. Otherwise, you might throw money away.
Six ways to find influencers for your business
Whenever you start an online business, it requires promotion. Influencers can help you out with this. Unlikely, you might not know how to find the right influencers that would be relevant to your business with the greatest possible intent.
Here are six actionable ways you should follow step-by-step:
Brainstorm the influencer marketing campaign objectives and goals
Campaign objectives and goals should go in line with the influencers you want to build a partnership with. Thus, you need to define goals and objectives beforehand.
Practice shows that businesses run influencer marketing campaigns to promote new products nowadays. Due to this fact, campaign goals vary as well. For example, getting more impressions, leads, sales, etc.
And also call tracking software is very crucial to maintain the list of customers otherwise you can lose the track and lose the potential leads.
Allocate your budget
When you are done with setting the campaign goals and objectives, you need to allocate the budget.
To allocate the budget for the campaign you should take into account the following factors:
- Influencer type you’re going to work with (nano, micro, macro, mega, celebrities)
- Number of influencers
- The niche you’re revolving
- Social media platforms to target
How to figure out the type of influencer?
The most straightforward way to identify influencer types is to analyze the audience size. Here is how types of influencers are divided into groups:
- Nano (1k – 10K)
- Micro (10K – 100K)
- Macro (100K – 500K)
- Mega (500K – 1M)
- Celebrities (over 1M)
Find the right influencers
To find the right influencers you will need to do research.
First of all, start with finding people who have created content on niche-related topics. The shortest way is to use Google or YouTube for this purpose.
However, the suggested way is time-consuming. Likely, you can play with one of the SEO tools called Content Explorer from Ahrefs. Type your topic and switch the search mode from “Everywhere” to “In title”:
Then, click the “Authors” tab and review all the authors that have covered the topic in question:
Now, you can filter the authors by the number of Twitter followers. It will help you find potential influencers for your campaign.
Run reverse competitor backlink research
Did you know that influencers tend to link back to a product page from their content using a direct URL?
To prove this, you can analyze the activity of Skillshare (one of the popular sponsors for YouTubers.) It has built over 3K backlinks to a simple sign-up page. And if you analyze these backlinks, you may face potential influencers.
This process requires some basic SEO knowledge. Thus, if you are far from SEO, you should hire freelancers who would have expertise in search engine optimization.
Anyway, it is impossible to do without an SEO tool called Site Explorer. Enter the URL and choose the “Exact URL” mode. Then click the “Backlinks” report.
Keep in mind that influencers place links for the product, sign-up, and homepages mostly.
Search for brand ambassadors
Influencers may have never heard of your product and never tested it before. Hence, they won’t be able to promote it productively. You will have to get them familiar with your brand and product to benefit from this cooperation in the future.
In contrast to this, brand ambassadors already understand the value of your product. And they can promote it actively.
How to find brand ambassadors?
There are three ways:
- Monitor social media channels (pay attention to people who give a shout-out to your product and send direct messages)
- Research reviews of your product or mentions in the form of written articles or YouTube videos
- Review newsletters and see if there are mentions of your brand
Use suggested ways in searching for brand ambassadors.
Ask your audience for recommendations
It is critically important to be in a tight connection with your audience. Especially, if you want to make your brand better by upskilling yourself as a niche expert. Plus, your subscribers can help you with advice on finding influencers.
The best way to do this is by writing a post across your social media channels. Provide your audience with the right information. It allows them to suggest influencers per your requirements.
One more thing, don’t forget to mention three things – budget, type of influencer you are interested in, and channels.
To Conclude
Your influencer marketing journey should be started with small steps. No need to chase for mega influencers right off the bat. Instead, focus on nano and micro influencers. Then, move forward.
Be smart and allocate your budget wisely. And remember that your success depends not only on money but on your personality.
If you think this post lacks more tips on finding niche influencers, feel free to share your tips in the comments.
