You don’t have to be a marketing mogul to see how influencers have taken the industry by storm. 

From the famous dog Jiffpom with 10.2 million followers, to Brené Brown with 4.9 million followers, the influencer market is diverse and full of opportunities! We know that it can be overwhelming to find these influencers, and Google alone doesn’t exactly give you all the information you need. 

So, we’re here to help! 

In this blog post, we’ll get the ball rolling by formulating a strategic plan to find these influencers that will help bring your brand to life. As Sean Gardner once said, “Social media is not just an activity; it is an investment of valuable time and resources.” 

Let’s get the ball rolling, shall we? 

Identifying your niche 

I know you want to get straight into the good stuff, but before we get ahead of ourselves, there are a few things we need to consider. 

Before you start looking for influencers, it’s important to clearly define your target audience. Understand their demographics, interests, and preferences. This will help you identify influencers who align with your audience’s values and passions. We will look at some examples on how you can do this shortly. 

Your niche is the group of people you want to target. Think of it as your customer personas – Your perfect, ideal customer. It needs to be as detailed as possible, including their interests, beliefs, location and pain-points. This is a crucial because it’ll help you look for that influencer that can aid you in setting up your brand for greater success. 

If you’re a make-up brand, you want to use make-up influencers. Just one problem – there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of make-up influencers. To find that perfect fit, research is a must! 

Look at your brand – what are you selling? 

What is your brand’s voice? 

Identify your brand’s uniqueness and how you want to be perceived by the target audience. This alone will shorten your list of influencers dramatically. In knowing yourself, you can find someone who will represent your ideals, voice and image. 

Example of a customer persona 

Let’s use a practical example. You’re a brand that uses minimalist designs to sell your products. You take pride in keeping it simple but appealing to the eye. Perhaps the customer persona may look something like this: 

• Women age 25 to 40.
• Interested in minimalist designs. 
• Income: medium to high.
• No children.
• Enjoys monotone colors, bright white tones and simplistic designs.
• Beliefs: Activist for animal free cruelty and environmental friendly products. 
• Iced coffee addict.
• Has a dog as a pet. 
• Loyal to brands that reflect similar beliefs. 
• Works remotely from 9am to 5pm.
• Located in California, USA.
• Goes on vacation at least once a year.
• Enjoys singing.
• Active in Social Media platforms: Facebook reels, Instagram and Tiktok. 
• Spends free time listening to podcasts and watching videos about mysteries.

Your customer persona doesn’t have to be based on guesswork alone. You can have a look at your existing customers and offer rewards for more information about them. This is definitely the easier and most accurate way of honing in on your target market. Look at a few of your best customers and base your future customers off of them. Your most loyal customers are the customers that you want to attract more of.

Now, if you are a minimalist make-up brand, based on this information we just provided… What influencer do you use? This is where it gets exciting!

Bailey Sarian is an influencer active on YouTube and Facebook. She does make-up tutorials while talking about crime stories. This influencer would be an ideal fit for this brand as her niche is very similar to our target audience. 

Setting up your marketing strategy for success 

Consider your marketing strategy as your blueprint to get to your goal.

What if I told you that simply stating what you wanted to achieve wasn’t good enough? You need to set up different points of your plan to reach at different times. This will help you look strategically at each step as a separate goal towards the desired end result. 

Set goals in place 

Your goals need to each have their own objectives. Each goal is unique and comes with different challenges that you need to overcome in order to reach the end result. 

SMART objectives

SMART objectives are a helpful guideline to ensure your goals are specific enough to reach. They divide your goal into 5 sections:

1. Specific 
2. Measurable
3. Achievable 
4. Realistic 
5. Time-bound

Using these 5 guidelines, you can create high quality goals for your strategy! You can then make more decisions based on data, brand identity, and measurable objectives.

Finding your influencer

Using social media

Start your search on social media platforms relevant to your niche market. Use hashtags related to your industry and explore accounts that consistently post relevant content. Look for influencers who already engage with your target audience and have a loyal following.

You can learn alot by studying how the target behaves – what they post about and how they interact with each other. For example, if you are a wellness brand, you can do research based on hashtags that include demographics and interests. This will help you look deeper into the target audience with more precision and understanding. It’s giving “stalker vibes”, we know… but it works! And you can adjust your campaigns in the future to suit their needs and wants better. 

Use influencer marketing platforms 

Here are a few tips when using influencer marketing platforms to find suitable influencers for your niche and brand:

• Check An Influencer’s Authenticity: It’s crucial to scrutinize an influencer’s audience to ensure it’s real and engaged. Look at the likes, comments, and shares on their posts. If you notice a lot of generic comments without responses, it could be a sign of fake followers.
• Evaluate Relevance and Reach:: The influencer should be relevant to your brand, and their content should align with your brand’s values. Also, consider their reach and engagement levels. 
• Track Past Brand Collaborations: Review the influencer’s previous brand collaborations to see how they’ve promoted products and services in the past. Pay attention to the content’s quality and the reactions and engagements from their followers.
• Request Data: Once you’ve shortlisted a few influencers, ask for their demographic data, including follower interests, age, gender, location, etc. This can help you determine if their audience matches your target market.

Remember, the most suitable influencer for your brand will not only have a substantial, authentic following, but also share your brand’s values and appeal to your target audience. They will be able to tell your brand’s story in a way that resonates with their followers and yours.

What influencer marketing platform to use: Lit.so 

Lit.so is a platform that enables influencers to set up spaces that you can rent out from them. Social Media data such as following, retention rates, as well as average viewing per video are all made available to you. If you like what you see, you can contact the influencer on the platform. This helps businesses and influencers maintain positive relationships while keeping it simple and easy to establish connections. You can also filter out your possible influencers by price, social media platform and content. 

Lit.so has revolutionized how you can do influencer marketing while including influencers of all types of industries, followers and locations. It’s a simple-to-use yet effective platform to help advertisers ensure the success for their campaigns. 

You can use this platform to find the influencer that you’re confident in, and that will be the best fit for your brand. It’s a surefire way for you to achieve your marketing objectives with ease, and all in one centralized location! 

Improve, improve, improve

You may find that communicating with your influencers can lead to improving your brand and products you develop. 

According to the University of Washington, the effectiveness of a message is found to be increased by influencer originality, follower number, and sponsor salience. Postings that promote new items are found to be less effective. There’s an increased risk of sharing products as their followers are less likely to repost product announcements. This means that influencers need to be selective of the products they advertise as it affects their personal brand. Your products need to be made for their niche. Remember, influencers know their followers and their interests best, so they have a powerful voice for your campaigns. 

Learn from your interactions with your influencers. Try and encourage them to give feedback on your products. You may find that your interactions with them will benefit you in the long run. 

Well that’s it folks 

According to Statista, the global influencer market was worth $13.8 billion by 2021, up from $1.7 billion in 2016. Influencer marketing is also anticipated to have a market value of about $21.1 billion by the end of 2023, a further 29% increase from the previous year. 

Keeping this in mind, the business world is competitive, and it’s important to ensure you maintain a good, long-term relationship with the influencers you choose to use.

Remember, if you plan your approach to the niche, you can plan your success in the market. 

Your products need to have the customers’ interests at the heart of it. Keeping this in mind, your influencers will serve as a reminder that the customer experience is everything. 

Just like flying, you need steps to take before take-off: 

• Customer persona 
• SMART goals 
• Finding your influencer 
• Improve 
• Success

It’s that simple!