In recent years, aware of the volume and power of classic advertising and the huge budgets that are allocated for it, people are less and less trusting this type of marketing activities. Today, they pay much more attention to the “Word of Mouth”, first-hand recommendations and advice, as well as experiences from family, friends and people in close environment.
With the growing importance of online marketing, a large number of people have gained popularity and trust on social networks, where they have gathered an impressive number of followers of different ages and profiles around their accounts, creating kind of a small digital community.
Influencers play a huge part in today’s digital world. Well, they could, if their potential is recognized and adequately used.
Some of the main goals that can be successfully achieved through cooperation with a good choice of influencers are:
- creating unique content,
- raising brand awareness and its successful positioning,
- introducing the audience to the brand and its products / services,
- attracting a new target group,
- initiating a discussion about the brand and giving specific feedback,
- and finally, increasing conversions and sales.
However, the question arises – in the “sea” of influencers, how to choose the best person for cooperation with your brand?
One of the key points when choosing an influencer is to determine the topic(s) that they deal with and who their target audience is, what their values are and the lifestyle they nurture. Connect the influencer with the uniqueness of your brand and the key messages you want to convey. Synchronize the language and mode of communication, with internal jokes that are typical for the target audience you wish to address.
We believe that you already have a long list of influencers that suits your needs, but we all need help sometimes 🙂 We were working on a extensive campaign for a client, and we stumbled upon a wall – we couldn’t come up with a medium-sized list of influencers for that particular product. And after hours, and hours of searching, asking everyone we know, we turned to our best friend for Research – Google.
And he surprised us – we stumbled upon great Influencer Research Tool which provided us with a wider overview of influencer market – Grin and ther Influencer Analytics tool. It gave us everything we need, and more. We ended up getting that pitch 🙂
Consider their experience and reputation, with a complete review of previous collaborations and brands they have represented so far. When choosing, keep in mind that for one influencer, but also for you, the worst thing that can happen is to “fade out” – that is, to accept so many collaborations (clearly, for financial reasons), so that their profile eventually becomes a flea market of diverse, unrelated brands and product categories. In this way, they lose trust and become irrelevant. You should avoid this type of influencer!
In order to avoid that (no brand wants “their” influencer to be “everyone’s” influencer, brands love credibility and we should provide them the influencer accordingly) we turned to our, now well-known friend, Grin tool. But now, our needs were a bit different – we needed influencers that suited brands needs in every aspect BUT (all capital) not so famous and with as little as possible brand collaborations. That is where Grin Influencer Finder Lookalike Tool enters the scene. It can find your favorite creator’s lookalike in a blink of an eye.
The fact that someone has a large number of followers does not necessarily mean that the effects of cooperation with that person will be adequate. Always check their average engagement rate. This one is really easy – we just opened Engagement Rate Calculator and we can go and enjoy a cup of well-deserved coffee, since it finished task that once took us a couple of hours, in a minutes. We strongly encourage you – go and check it out.
That is why, micro-influencers are becoming more and more attractive – people who have a smaller base of followers (usually less than 10k) and are focused on a specific niche or small, narrow part of the market. Specialized in a certain topic, they gain great trust and have a special, more personal connection with their followers. It is known that micro-influencers have a significantly higher engagement rate than classic influencers who sometimes gather millions of passive followers.
Without hesitation – go try Micro-Influencer Comparison tool – it will compare your Micro Influencer to a Macro Influencer of your choice, so that you can be sure that you are considering the right Influencer for your campaign.
It is very important to develop a strategic approach when choosing a person for cooperation. However, it is an investment from which you expect concrete results.
When choosing an influencer, it is desirable to follow some defined steps and give answers to questions like:
Set cooperation goals – what effect you want to achieve in order to improve your business?
Define your target audience – which audience you want to reach and which customer profile to attract?
Set a budget – how much money do you have available for launching a new campaign and collaboration with influencers?
Make a list of influencers and contact them, request their Media Kit to get all the necessary information about their performance,
Shortlist the influencers – which ones best meet the requirements from the previous steps?
Once you have decided on one (or more) that you are willing to start working with, clearly define the essence of their engagement, as well as monetary fees – it’s time to work together on designing a campaign, coordinating each element in the way the target group expects you to (take care – this is not an advertisement, it’s a collaboration!) The influencer should address the audience in his own way, in his own words, and not just reproduce the message you have imagined.
The last and most important step – measure the results! Did you achieve the goals you initially defined and did the cooperation lead to the desired brand development?
Whether it’s celebrities, influencers on social media, bloggers, vloggers or opinion leaders, detailed analysis and a good plan are the beginning of every successful collaboration.
Today, influencers are a very hot topic among marketers who represent serious brands, as well as those less known, especially in Serbia, where there has been recorded a greater growth in the importance of this “activity” in relation to the countries of the region. There are certainly still some of us who think that influencers are just a current trend and a fictional profession, but we will agree – they are today’s reality.
But, this also has its negative sides – in a saturated influencer market, you can easily miss a fake. We don’t want to even think what would happen if we chose a fake influencer and its side effects, so you will just have to take our word for it. We already developed something like sixth sense when choosing influencers, but it doesn’t hurt to be sure – so we are using Fake Influencer Tool to double-check our choice. We don’t want to brag, but we were always right 🙂
How this profession will evolve and what will be the status and importance of influencers in the future, depends primarily on society and consumers themselves. Because after all, they are the ones who decide who to trust.
Tip for you: Hire a digital marketing agency! Be guided by testimonials or research the database of digital marketing agencies and find the offer that best suits your needs. Experts who work on brand promotion on a daily basis are familiar with the importance of influencers and can help you choose the best partner for cooperation. This is also one of the services that our digital team can provide you.
Perhaps, you want to have all ties together and in-house? Well, we’ve done research for you and put together a list of couple tools/platforms which can help you find suitable influencers for your project or business. Some of them are: Instajet, HypeAuditor, Upfluence, Storyclash, Post for Rent and as mentioned above Grin. We haven’t tried them all, if you do, feel free to share your thoughts with us.
