Social media is flooded with thousands of influencers. Influencers will create content that allows their audience to feel connected to them. They’ll take them shopping, decorate their house, ask for their opinion, or tell them a story as if they were on facetime together. This creates a bond for the audience member and this could be used for your advantage as a Social Media Practitioner.
Influencers can bring awareness and profit to your business, but determining which ones will do this best for you can be challenging. So, how can you find the influencers that will fit your needs?
We interviewed professional media managers in the influencer marketing field. Through our interviews with them, we were able to create four steps you can follow to find the influencer(s) that will benefit your company:
- Determine what level of influencer you need
- Set a budget for your influencers
- Align influencer niche to your brand
- Review influencer’s engagement rates
Let’s dive into each category and see what they had to say.
Determine what Level of Influencer you Need
There are three well known influencer categories: nano, micro, and macro influencers. Forbes classifies them as such:
● Nano-influencers: Fewer than 10,000 followers
● Micro-influencers: 10,000 to 100,000 followers
● Macro-influencers: More than 100,000 followers
Each category of influencer has its perks, but which one will give you the most engagement?
We asked Sami Pugmire, Social Media Manager for Love Olive Co, a local fashion brand, what influencers she has used and seen the most engagement from. This is her response:
“I would say it’s probably the micro-influencer that gives us the most views and the most sales… One of our biggest sales driving influencers [has] got about… 25,000 followers so she’s a micro-influencer. She’s got a decent following, but her following is very, very loyal. We always get sales with her.”
Here is a link to the full interview: Love Olive Co Transcript Love Olive Co Video
Influencers and managers need to work together in order to perform well. We interviewed John Dye to gain more insight on working with influencers. John Dye is an influencer marketing strategist who has worked with Mormon.org, DoTerra, and other marketing firms. He says:
“When I think of macro-influencers, they are traditionally good at getting word out about something. Sometimes they’re not the best to get people to take action. So for example, if you’re selling a product, they don’t always perform best. But if you want to get a message out, have people create content, use a hashtag, they’re excellent for that. I find that micro-influencers usually do better if you need somebody to take action. Meaning buying a product, or doing something tangible. Micro influencers are where I spend the majority of my money now because macro cost so much more and you just don’t get the tangible actions a lot of times. You get the awareness, but if you want people to actually do something, you need to find people at the lower levels. The nanos and the micros.”
Studies show that micro-influencers get 47% more engagement than macro-influencers. Micro-influencers are able to create more of a community and connection with their followers, which means more trust in what the influencer is saying.
A blog writer by the name of Jenna Romano, conducted research about the performance of micro-influencers she says, “Since a micro-influencer’s audience is manageable, the level of engagement with their following is high… micro influencers will have more trusted relationships with their followers, which means that they (ergo, you) will receive some recognition in return.
Based on the Information we gathered from Forbes, Macro-Influencers Vs. Micro-Influencers: The Great Social Media Debate , this chart shows the more followers an influencer has, the less engagement they gather from their followers.
After you have decided which type of influencer will best fit your goals, the next step is to set up a budget and determine whether you are going to hire an influencer to promote your brand through gifts or financial compensation.
Set Budget
Once you find influencers you are interested in working with, reach out to them and see what their prices are. They should give you an estimate or the ability to open up a discussion on what would work for both parties.
As far as compensating influencers goes, companies have different strategies. To learn more, we asked Lilliana Ramirez, the Social Media Manager from a local Rexburg restaurant, Crush- Artisanal Drinks. Crush uses influencers they refer to as ambassadors.
“Since Crush is a small business, we can’t compensate our ambassadors with money, but they do get free drinks and discounts for their friends and family. They also get professional photos with the photoshoots,” said Holiday.
Compensating through their products is mutually beneficial for both Crush and their ambassadors. And just like Crush, Love Olive Co. has ambassadors as well. Having ambassadors can be a great way to have influencers work with your brand without having the budget set aside for it. In return, they get gifted in whichever way you see fit.
“The way that we work is we actually only do gift-only collaborations,” says Pugmire. “At least right now because our product is kind of expensive and shipping stuff is kind of expensive, especially from a company that’s based in Rexburg. So currently we only do gifting… collaborations.”
Ambassador programs or gift-based compensation with influencers can help businesses who are on a tighter budget. But for companies with more money to spend, putting aside a budget for influencers can be worthwhile. John Dye agrees with this and is an advocate for hiring influencers when your budget allows.
“If you work with a content creator who’s also an influencer, you get the double bang for your buck if they create the content. They have the distribution channels, so they get it out there. You’re the third party that gets all of the good things that come from that. Even though it might cost a lot, depending on who you work with, you do get distribution and you get content creation out of it. So, it’s a good deal.”
According to Affable, “A survey reveals that influencer marketing offers 11 times higher returns than other marketing methods…” This shows what John Dye said, you really do get double bang for your buck. It might be beneficial for your business to move some of their budget from paid ads to influencer marketing.
Align Influencer Niche to your Brand
Each business has their target demographic and audience they are trying to reach. This grouping is where the most interest for your business comes from, so it’s important to find influencers who already share this audience with you. If you pick the right influencer, then when they promote your business, their audience will naturally gravitate to you.
According to Hubspot, 71% are more likely to purchase a product that is referred to them through a social media influencer. This works best though when the influencer is aligned with the product/business. A make-up influencer promoting Chevron would not be as beneficial as them promoting Fenty Beauty. You have to find influencers that reflect your brand.
Crush recently upgraded their ambassador program to better reflect the brand the owners envisioned.
“We [Lillian and the owner, Steve] sat down and had several meetings of what we wanted to do for the ambassador program. Some of the goals we had were [wanting] a diverse group of people. We wanted someone that our customers could relate to [within our ambassadors]. Whether it was someone who was internationally from another country, someone who was from a different race, someone who was culturally different, or even someone who was aesthetically different. Like someone who was more city or country. That was one of our goals. The other goal was to showcase that Crush is a place where young people can come and enjoy an environment that is safe, trendy and fun,” said Holliday.
Love Olive Co. wanted to find influencers that would help bring their mission statement to life and create a community.
“It kinda creates this…circle of like everybody starts talking about us,” Pugmire said. “People want to connect with us, and our mission statement is to create connection and happiness and that’s really what our big goal has been. And I’m totally seeing that as an outcome…we were seeing like so many new stories of that. We didn’t know how much people loved Love Olive co. or the way that it’s changed or affected them…”
Through John Dye’s experience with influencer marketing, he’s learned that authenticity is a key part of aligning the influencer and the brand.
“You have to make sure it’s not something that feels like, ‘Wow, this is a beauty influencer but they’ve never talked about essential oils before!’ If it feels like it’s fake or unauthentic, then it doesn’t work as well. So authenticity has to be high [and] they need to be a true believer in the service [or] product that you’re offering.”
A study done by Stackla shows that “86 percent of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding what brands they like and support.” A company’s audience can see right through content creation that isn’t true to the influencer or the brand. Authenticity is key.
Review Influencers’ Engagement Rates
The number of followers someone has is not the only thing you need to look at when choosing influencers for your business. Someone can have 20,000 followers, but a decent amount of them can be spam accounts or followers that were bought.
During our Interview with Sami Pugmire from Love Olive Co., we asked her what she looks for when choosing influencers for their brand. This is what she had to say:
“…Paying attention to their analytics and who their followers are. If they have real followers or if they have fake followers [is important.]”
You have to do more than just simply look at how many followers a person has on their page. You have to stalk that person’s media pages, and look into how many comments and likes they receive on average. Find out if new people are following them, or if the people that follow them already follow your media pages. Engagement is so important, because why spend money on something that could potentially give you no reward?
You can easily calculate someone’s engagement rate, it just takes a little bit of time and math. The Corporate Finance Institute recommends this simple equation:
Engagement Rate = (Total Engagement ÷ Total Followers) X 100
Once you have reviewed the influencer’s engagement rates and think they would be a good fit for your brand, you can feel satisfied hiring them to create content for your company.
Conclusion
Finding the right influencer for your business to work with can be challenging, but breaking it into these 4 steps can make it a bit easier for you.
- Determining what level of influencer you need
○ Whether it be Micro or Macro, each have their own benefits. Pick the level of influencer that will work best for you. - Setting a budget for your influencers
○ Determining your budget or how you would like to compensate will help you narrow down even more what influencers you will be able to afford. - Aligning influencer niches to your brand
○ Choose an influencer that is authentic and likes your brand. This makes it easier for their followers to become your customers. - Reviewing influencer engagement rates
○ Make sure you do your homework on the influencer’s engagement rate. This will give you more of an idea of the return you will get from working with that influencer.
These four steps are vitally important when deciding what type of influence you want to work with and how you work with them. Put these four steps to the test and you will eventually see the difference influencers can make for your company!
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