How to select influencers for your marketing campaigns

If you want to find the best influencer for your marketing campaign, you must first build your foundations properly. This will help you clarify what type of influencer (or influencers) you are really looking for.

The three steps below will help you lay a great foundation for your influencer marketing campaign:

1. Define exact objectives for your campaign

Not all campaigns should have the same objective. Each campaign can aim for different metrics and contribute to different stages of your brand’s funnel.

The main objectives that companies usually have in their influencer marketing efforts are:

• Improve the overall visibility of your brand and create awareness.
• Gain followers on social media and increase engagement.
• Generate leads for your business.
• Increase traffic to your company’s website and/or generate backlinks.
• Achieve conversions, such as email sign-ups.
• Improve your brand reputation.
• Generate revenue and boost social sales.

Defining your main objectives is a fundamental requirement before developing your campaign strategy. This will make it much easier to choose the influencers that best fit it.

2. Determine your target platforms and campaign formats

Defining objectives in step one will help you decide on which platforms it makes more sense for influencers to create content for your brand. This step will allow you to find the influencers most aligned with your campaign, since they naturally master the platform you will use.

Here is a quick breakdown of the type of audience you will find on each social network:

• TikTok: Particularly popular among Generation Z (although other age groups are on the rise).
• Instagram: A large percentage of millennials.
• Facebook: Excellent if you want to target Generation X, older and with greater purchasing power.

The right influencer for your campaign should already be successful on the platform you are choosing. If your brand appeals to a broader and more diverse audience, it may make sense to look for influencers who are active on several platforms, or hire a different one for each.

Also consider how you want to collaborate with the influencers you choose and how to incentivize them. There are multiple ways to work with them.

Some examples include:

• The influencer becomes an affiliate of your brand, usually by sharing discount codes with their followers.
• They organize giveaways of your products for their audience.
• They showcase products that you have provided to them for free.
• They make regular posts marked as “sponsored by” your brand.
• They take over your company’s account for a day.
• They sign a long-term contract and become ambassadors for your brand.

The right type of influencer will be able to adapt to the exact formats you choose.

3. Establish your messages and themes

Next, you must clearly define what type of messages you want to convey in your influencer campaign and under which themes they will be organized.

We divide these messages into four content pillars that will make your communication diverse and impactful:

• The Brand Pillar: your brand is the focus. This pillar includes content that revolves around it, whether in informative, fun, inspirational, or high-level posts.
• The Product Pillar: focuses on a specific product or an entire line, such as a seasonal collection from a fashion brand. It can be done through a tutorial, an interactive Q&A, etc.
• The Experience Pillar: shows people interacting with your brand, such as influencers shopping in your store or cooking with your utensils.
• The Moments Pillar: celebrates special dates, from birthdays to holidays and anniversaries. Example: organizing a virtual Easter egg hunt or showing influencers receiving personalized birthday packages.

You need someone capable of bringing these messages and themes to life in the way you want. Once you have this clear, it will be much easier to choose the right influencer for the job.

How to choose the most relevant influencers for your campaign

For this, it is useful to have previously created your “ideal influencer”: the perfect person who would best fit your audience and campaign.

They must:

• Be the right age to match your target audience.
• Have the right type and level of knowledge about your brand’s niche.
• Fit the size of your budget and the expected impact.
• Have the right personality and charisma to communicate what you want.
• Dress and behave consistently with your brand’s image.
• Create content that is already aligned with your brand’s values.

In short, they must represent your brand’s identity very well, as if they were a natural part of it.

How to ensure that you will find the best influencers

As important as the influencer’s relevance to your brand is the question: do they have authority? Both online and within your company’s niche.

If you choose someone with authority in their field, your campaign will have great impact. But if you don’t verify that level of authority beforehand, you may face many problems.

How to choose the most influential influencers with greater authority

By following these steps, you will be sure that you have made a good decision and that your campaign will be successful.

They have a quality audience

A quality audience is engaged with the creator: they actively participate in each post and take their content seriously. In addition, they are not people who are just there for entertainment without the intention of supporting the influencer financially; they are followers who are in a position to buy the products that he or she recommends, and they do so gladly.

They create quality content

Nowadays, on social media, it is not enough to post selfies accompanied by meaningless texts. A sponsored post should not be just a random mention of your brand or the placement of your product without context.

On the contrary: the best influencers constantly create captivating, creative, and authentic content.

What does this mean?

That they care enough about their audience to produce pieces of content and messages that truly connect. Their posts touch the dreams and desires of their followers, address topics that have been on their minds lately, and can even surprise, fascinate, and lift their audience out of boredom or sadness.

Creating creative content involves finding new connections, inventing different ways to convey a message, combining different media formats, and introducing novelty by collaborating with other people in their same niche.

Above all, they must remain authentic while doing it. Their loyal followers want to feel that the influencer is “one of them,” someone close and trustworthy. A good influencer achieves this by speaking in a common tone, keeping their content approachable, genuinely interacting with their community, and remaining humble despite their success, fame, and status.

How to verify all this?

1. Review their social media profiles and study the posts they have shared so far.
2. Check if they have a media kit available, where they show their best work and give you a clear idea of both the “style” and quality of their content.

Their influence is real

Fake followers are a real problem on social media. What good is it if the influencer you work with has 100,000 followers if most of them were bought from some dubious service? The truth is that it is of little use, beyond showing a large number on their profile.

Yes, social media platforms have taken measures to control this type of practice, but fake followers are still common across all of them.

Finding the right creators may seem like an overwhelming task; however, using the right tool is essential to streamline your campaign’s work.

Find the perfect influencer for your brand on Story Talent