How to Choose the Right Influencers for Your Brand Marketing?
Persuading the audience to invest their hard-earned money in your product or service is not easy. Especially now when the consumers are smarter and more skeptical than ever.
Just like traditional marketing, a recommendation from a trusted source makes more difference in online marketing than any other marketing method. Therefore, in the new social paradigm, influencer marketing is trumping every other strategy.
In the year 2020, influencer marketing grew by 57%. If you know how to choose the right influencers, your brand can develop an authentic relationship with the customers. On the other hand, an ill-fit can quickly become a PR nightmare. Thus, understanding how to choose the right influencers is crucial for your business marketing. However, identifying the ideal ones is not as simple as you think.
Global influencer marketing value 2016–2021 (in billion U.S. dollars) Source: Statista
Therefore, in this article, we will take you through all the factors necessary to guide you on how to choose the right influencers. Let’s begin!
Factors You Need to Know on How to Choose the Right Influencers
#1 Figure out the Relevance With the Influencer’s Niche
The first and the most basic factor while figuring out how to choose the right influencers for your brand is authenticity. Ensure that the influencer you choose adheres to your industry.
However, do not pick an influencer just based on the relevance of your industry with the influencer’s niche. Remember, the industry is a broad category. You need to narrow it down to the specific attributes of your brand.
For example, if you are an all-inclusive sports fashion brand looking to collaborate with an influencer, you could look for a fitness-fashion influencer that promotes self-love.
ModCloth, an indie and vintage-inspired women’s clothing online retailer, depicts how to choose the right influencers aptly. It aims to provide an all-inclusive shopping experience to its customers. Therefore, its influencer collaboration involves influencers like Lynley Eilers.
Source: Instagram
#2 Influencer Metrics
The foremost factor to compare influencers is follower count. The general notion is more the followers, better the influencer. However, it is not entirely correct.
Let’s take an example. To promote your women’s fashion clothing brand, you decide to invest in an influencer marketing campaign. You have two options:
A: an influencer with 50k+ followers whose major chunk of the audience is teenagers in an equal ratio of male and female.
B: an influencer with 10k+ followers that constitutes an 80% female audience in the age group of 20–40.
If you go by the follower count here, you will end up reaching a large base of audience that has no interest in your products. However, choosing the second influencer allows your brand to target less but the right audience.
Therefore, focusing on the influencer metrics other than the vanity metrics is one of the important lessons of how to choose the right influencers. Here are some of the performance-driven influencer metrics you need to consider to know how to choose the right influencers:
- Organic Follower Growth
More than the follower growth, how an influencer got those followers is important to know. When an influencer has organic follower growth, it is a sign that the audience is genuinely interested in the profile and the content. Whereas, if the influencer has accumulated a fake following, you would find the follower counts dipping up and down in uneven intervals.
- Engagement Rate
Engagement rate is one of the vital factors to know how to choose the right influencers. It defines the level of interaction between the influencer and its followers. The higher the engagement rate, the more the audience trusts the person.
To calculate the engagement rate on a post, add the number of likes and comments on that post. Divide the number by total followers and multiply it by 100. You can do this for several posts and find the average engagement rate of an influencer.
Source: Influencer Marketing Hub
- The Ratio of Followers to Following
Analyzing the followers to following ratio is necessary. Influencers may accumulate followers by first following random people, getting a follow back from them, and then by unfollowing them in a few days. In this case, the followers are not genuinely interested in what the influencer pursues. They are followers by the virtue of deceit.
- Audience Demographics
Before inviting an influencer to be on board with your marketing campaign, analyze their audience demographics. Ensure that their followers belong to the group you want to attract. Age, gender, location, language, and interests are the basic elements to measure.
#3 Analyze the Influencer’s Previous Marketing Campaigns
You may have taken interest in an influencer profile based on their recent collaboration post. However, assessing one marketing campaign is not enough. It is vital to check the previous collaborations and marketing campaigns of an influencer. You do not want to team up with someone who has worked with your competitor before. Moreover, you need to ensure that any of their collaborations do not go against your current values. Apart from that, their lifestyle, ethics, and values should be in sync with your brand’s voice.
Not analyzing these details can land your brand in serious trouble. If your followers figure this out, they will find both your brand and the influencer inauthentic.
For example, if you are a brand that manufactures herbal cosmetics, do not choose an influencer who promotes chemical-based cosmetics.
#4 Avoid the Influencers that are Walking Advertisements
Let us continue the herbal cosmetic example. It is great if you found a beauty influencer who promotes just natural-based or herbal beauty products. However, their profile is oversaturated with brand promotions. They collaborate with at least one brand every week, and hence, every tenth post is about a new beauty product.
Working with such influencers is a disappointment. Their profile is like an ad carousel. Your collaboration with them will give your zero to no leads because their audience, no matter how huge, is bound to be confused. They cannot get convinced of every brand the influencer is promoting. Even if they do, they will not buy it. Hence, the influence of the influencer will amount to nothing.
Moreover, when you associate with an influencer, their reputation adds to your brand recognition value. In such cases, your brand can be easily mistaken for the other brand present on the influencer’s profile.
Mentionlytics Helping You With How to Choose the Right Influencers
Mentionlytics, a one-stop social monitoring and listening tool, can help you discover the method of how to choose the right influencers for your business in the most effective way. It is powered by AI technology that provides instant and easy-to-understand insights.
If you are wondering how to choose the right influencers for your business through Mentionlytics, here is a short step-by-step guide for you:
#1 Start With Determining the Keywords
After determining your target audience on the social platforms, you can begin with keyword research. Since Mentionlytics works on the algorithm of current posts and content of the influencers, you need to align your method with it.
First, think of the keywords that have high authority for your brand in your industry. Then move on to figuring out the keywords and phrases your potential collaborators may use. Find the common ones and divide them into categories for better understanding. You can create groups like these:
- Keywords related to your products or services
- Niche-specific keywords
- The high-authority keywords that your competitors use
- Your product or service name and your brand name
You can also follow the same approach to figure out the hashtags.
#2 Follow up By Monitoring the Keywords
Once you have a list of keywords, begin with the monitoring process. Mentionlytics, being a feature-rich tool, provides various filters to facilitate laser-focused monitoring. You can shortlist influencers based on their demographics such as location and language. Moreover, the tool also provides platform-wise distribution of your keyword research. Be it Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest, you can analyze the performance of influencers through keywords.
Source: Media Kix
#3 Analyze the Results
The process of monitoring will give you specific data of influencers as an output. You now need to comprehend this data to finalize your influencer search. There are two ways to do so. The first one is you can analyze every single social media post one by one. While it will give you a clear idea of your decision, it will be time-consuming. The second and the more effective way is to analyze the insights of the data.
Mentionlytics can provide you with a list of the influencers with their ranks determining their follower base, relevance to your niche, and other metrics. In this manner, you can have a comprehensive list of influencers that are best for you.
#4 Select the Best Fit
It is now the time to filter your comprehensive list of influencers and choose the right fit for your brand. Apart from the influencer metrics that we discussed above, you also need to know the public opinion about the shortlisted influencers.
With the help of Mentionlytics, you can create a search alert for every influencer in your list. This way, you can remain in touch with the third-party discussions of each influencer. According to the Influencer Marketing report 2021, influencer fraud is still a major concern for brands and marketers. Their public image will help you with a quick reputation analysis.
Final Word
For a long time, celebrities endorsed products and services and influenced the purchasing decision of the masses. However, expertise, audience engagement, and the practice of customized content creation have boosted the popularity of influencers.
The right influencers can improve your brand value and boost the success of your marketing campaigns. Moreover, you can form long-term relationships with influencers that provide great results to make them invested in your brand. If you haven’t started leveraging influencer marketing, you should do it right now. Influencer marketing is bound to grow even more in the coming years.
We hope you found our blog on how to choose the right influencers value-rich and informative. Keep following us to learn more about how to leverage online marketing strategies for your business.
Originally posted on Mentionlytics: https://www.mentionlytics.com/blog/how-to-choose-the-right-influencers-for-brand-marketing/
