Skip to contentSkip to navigation
2018-02-27
Marketing

How to pick the right influencer for your next influencer marketing campaign?

More and more companies invest a large part of their marketing budget in influencer marketing.

"71% of marketers consider influential marketing strategically or very strategically and 83% of them see it as a top priority to identify and build individual relationships with key influencers in their industry.- Content Marketing Academy

Why is it relevant to your brand? Here is another article on the subject.

But an important question arises when you decide to develop an influencer marketing campaign: how to make sure the influencers you select are the right ones ?

Here's a handy 9-question guide to finding the right influencer for your brand.

By following these steps, you'd be sure to find the right content creators that will fit with both the campaign’s guideline and your brand DNA.

1. What words does the DNA of your brand represent?

First, it's important to do an effective brainstorm to identify your brand's DNA. This DNA will be at the center of both the design and the identification of influencers to ensure that the brand is consistently and strongly represented in the process.

The opposite exercise also helps to clarify some elements of your brand that may seem obvious at first glance : What do you really want to be associated with? What does not represent you at all?

"A simple way doing this is to build a definite list of keywords that symbolize the brand well in order to find people who are pretty much representing the same thing. - Jean-Philippe Shoiry

Develop a list of keywords that represent this DNA.

2. What is the creative concept of your campaign?

The creative concept will dictate which types of influencers should be prioritized so that there is a good complementarity between the idea and the people who will deliver it.

If, however, the influencers for your brand are already clear to you, it may be interesting to involve them in the creative process and give them some freedom to bring the concept of the campaign to another level.

3. Which market do we want to join?

Is the audience that your influencer joins the same audience that you want to join?

If your brand is acting on a local or provincial scene, the entire out-of-territory audience of the influencer will be of no use to you. Even worse, it will greatly diminish the relevant scope of your brand.

Thus, it is essential to make a first screening of the location of the fans of the influencer you want to approach. This is a question that is perfectly normal to ask, and the influencer should provide you with the geographical data of his/her audiences without any problem.

For example, Elisabeth Rioux is one of Quebec's most well-known influencers, and several Quebec companies would be willing to spend a small fortune for one publication from her. But is it really relevant to pay thousands of dollars for an influencer with an audience from around the world?

In such situations, working with micro-influencers who have a highly targeted audience may be the best option. To learn more about micro-influencers, check out this article.

4. On which platforms do you want to work?

Whether it be Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Linkedin or even on your own blog, the platforms where you want to present your message will be extremely important when selecting influencers.

Every influencer is more comfortable and more active on specific platforms. In addition, audiences can vary greatly on different social media despite the fact that it is the same creator of content.

For example, Marina Bastarache is very well known for her very inspiring and fashionable Instagram account where she mostly reaches an audience of 18-24-years-old. However, her YouTube channel, where she does challenges and very colourful entertainment videos, speaks much more to 13-17-year-olds.

5. Which criteria are important to you when selecting?

With the first 4 steps above, you should be able to build a list of identification criteria that will allow you to classify more objectively whether an influencer really fits your needs or not.

  • DNA keywords
  • Geographic market
  • Age of audience
  • Important platforms
  • Creative concept

Finally, do not forget that influencers are creative. A good majority of them will not want to work with you if your list of criteria and the guidelines of the campaign are too strict. Give way to some elements of creativity!

6. Have some influencers already shown interest in your brand?

Before starting a search on other platforms, start the search among your current fans. Which ones are already commenting on your publications and interacting with your brand? These influencers who have already demonstrated some brand love are those with whom it will be most natural to collaborate because their audience knows that they really like your brand and that it is not a strictly financial partnership.

For a Hennessy fan in Toronto, taking a picture with one of their bottles is trendy. If his audience is similar to what we are looking for, it is obvious to go to him to collaborate before choosing a person who has never mentioned the product on any of its platforms.

7. Why not use search tools for your identification process?

Several tools are available to search for influencers for your campaign. To name a few, Iconosquare, Sprout, Buzzsumo and TapInfluence are very effective platforms in order to get summary statistics from influencers.

On the other hand, with regard to these tools, the majority of them are not precise in terms of identification criteria and do not go beyond the figures that characterize the platforms of the influencers.

Finally, looking directly at the social media you are targeting is still the best way to find relevant influencers. For effective research, see the subscriptions of certain influencers in connection with what you do or do a hashtag search connected with your product or the message you want to deliver.

8. Have you contacted influencer agencies?

Another method available to you is to browse the catalogue of influencers agencies directly. The majority of influencers are represented by agencies that portray a profile of their creators on their website. In Quebec, the biggest influencer agencies are Le Slingshot, Goji Studios, Dulcedo Management and 66Agency. This is an effective method for understanding their primary interests, their statistics and the audience they join.

9. Are you sure you have gone beyond the obvious numbers?

When targeting influencers that fit well with your campaign, it's important to check their statistics. Simple questions you want to answer to make sure you have made an effective choice are:

  • Does the influencer have a much larger subscriber count than the number of subscriptions? If this is not the case, you can assume that it is simply a mutual subscription and not a situation where one influences the other.

  • Is the engagement of the audience by publication good?

"A good engagement rate is between 1.64% and 3.48%. An influencer with a good engagement rate expects to receive between 16.4 and 34.8 reactions per 1000 subscribers. - Scrunch

  • What are the reactions generated by his publications? If the majority of the comments below his publications does not seem related to it or is simply composed of emojis, it is probably because the influencer has a majority of fake subscribers or purchased subscribers.

At Republik, our specialty is delivering good content to your audience at all times, with the right influencers.

When all these steps are done, you can be certain that your influencer campaign will be effective and related to your brand image. By the same token, they will ensure you have pleasant and natural collaborations with influencers who work with you.

CONTACT US

About

Émilie is a Sherbrooke University marketing student and influencer. She joined Republik to work the flipside of her influencer world and improve on her long form writing skills.