Finding influencers in your niche: 6 valuable tips

If you know how to find influencers with whom you can reach your target group, you are already one step ahead of other companies.

Influencer marketing can help you reach new people, drive traffic to your website, increase brand awareness and boost sales.

In this guide, we will show you 15 tips on how to find influencers who will implement your marketing strategies and how to proceed optimally.

What is an influencer?

An influencer is a content creator who cultivates fan communities on social media. The fan communities listen to the influencer and believe them. The followers are loyal and often base their opinions and interests on what the influencer thinks, uses and believes.

There are no specific criteria for an influencer when it comes to characteristics or reach. An influencer does not even necessarily have to have a very large audience to be considered an influencer. There are “macro-influencers” who have a large audience and a broad fan base, but also “micro-influencers” who have a small group of very engaged followers who share a specific interest.

What is influencer marketing?

In influencer marketing, a brand uses the reach and authority of an influencer to increase its visibility, spread its message and build brand awareness and loyalty.

Brands can engage influencers to:

• Share content, mention the brand or direct the community to the company website
• Use influencers as brand ambassadors and have them regularly create content about the brand
• Build trust through the influencer and form a stronger bond with the community

The advantages of influencer marketing

Whether you’re working with a celebrity macro-influencer like Kylie Jenner, who has 287 million Instagram followers, or a niche micro-influencer with 10,000 Instagram followers, you can only win.

Influencer marketing helps with this:

• Build brand awareness
• Reach ideal target groups
• Grow the fan base
• Build trust
• Acquire high quality backlinks
• Generate leads
• Increase sales

How to find influencers: 6 tips with a big impact

If you want to find influencers, you should follow these tips. These best practices will help you find suitable influencers and launch successful campaigns.

1. Know your goals before you start
2. Define the type of influencer campaign
3. Look for influencers that are related to your industry
4. Find influencers who promote your competitors
5. Find influencers who share your audience
6. Make the results measurable

1. Know your goals before you start

When learning to find influencers, you should not focus on influencers in general, but on the right influencers that fit your brand.

The right influencers are people, brands and accounts that can best help you reach your target audience and achieve your goals.

Start building your influencer marketing campaign by first defining your goals. Goals can be:

• Brand awareness
• Building a brand image
• Building a community
• engagement
• Lead generation
• Customer loyalty
• Link building

2. Define the type of influencer campaign

When planning the influencer campaign, consider which campaign form is most likely to be of interest to potential influencers.

Forms can be:

• Gifts: Influencer gifts in return for mentions, posts, etc.
• Guest posts: Writing guest posts for the influencer
• Sponsored content: Paying an influencer to share your content or create content for your brand.
• Giveaways: using giveaways as an incentive to get influencers to mention your brand
• Influencer takeover: giving your social media account to an influencer for a certain period of time
• Discount codes: Allow influencers to give out discount codes on your offers to the community
• Brand ambassador: Partnership with an influencer who regularly promotes your brand

3. Look for influencers who are related to your industry

You should start with well-known influencers from your industry. Industry influencers will help you communicate your message and build brand awareness in your target market.

To support this type of niche marketing, you should set up a Google alert service for industry-related terms to see who is regularly writing content about important topics in your industry.

You can also search forums to find out who regularly answers questions related to your industry.

4. Find influencers who advertise for your competitors

To find suitable influencers, you can research the competition. Competitors also think about finding suitable influencers. You can benefit from this.

You should make sure to look for influencers who are interested in your products or services. These influencers can identify better with your offer and automatically do better advertising. The right choice of influencer makes campaigns more successful and collaboration better.

5. Find influencers who share your audience

Influencers don’t necessarily have to be in your industry. Influencers who share your target audience can provide just as much value as those who work directly with your industry. If you work with influencers from an industry that overlaps with or complements your industry, you can even reach new customers.

It’s best to take the time to conduct a target group analysis to understand your ideal audience and their needs and interests. This will allow you to identify influencers from outside your industry that your target audience follows, but who still don’t belong to your niche. This strategy will help you approach your target group in a new way and convince them of your offer.

6. Make the results measurable

When launching campaigns, track the defined KPIs of your influencer marketing campaign to determine whether you are achieving your goals. After the campaign has ended, you can check whether the collaboration with the influencer was a success or whether your goals were missed.

Learn from the insights gained to drive future campaigns forward. For example, if a relationship with an influencer brings in the number of leads you hoped for, you should run a similar campaign. If you have not achieved your goals, either end the collaboration or at least adjust the collaboration so that you can achieve better results in the future.

Summary

A strategically planned influencer marketing campaign can lead to great success for your brand.

Now that you know how to find influencers in your niche, you can plan and implement effective campaigns that will increase your brand’s visibility, drive traffic, generate valuable leads and increase sales.

Use these tips, tools and providers to start planning your influencer marketing campaigns. If you need more help, get in touch with our influencer marketing agency.