As is well known today, advertising campaigns can be created by simply hiring an influencer.
Reaching our target audience directly, thus generating interest through them, whether they talk about the product or try the product via a video post or a live.
However, there is a whole process before developing a strategy to work with an influencer, choosing one is a difficult task, which is why we bring you this small guide to help you choose the influencer that best suits your brand.
Benefits of Hiring an Influencer
The most important benefit of hiring an influencer is their community, as many of them establish themselves in a niche. This can be educational, product reviews, comparing product quality, comedy, trends, and many other categories you can imagine.
Their followers are your target audience, and the choice will depend on what your brand’s theme is and if the influencer fits to promote the benefits of your product or brand services.
Don’t focus on the number of followers.
Followers are not a credibility number because Instagram accounts with an already established community or followers can be bought.
In many cases, these followers are bots, and they don’t count because there is no interaction, and they won’t buy your products or services.
Focus on comments, shares, and saves.
The interaction of users when giving their opinion through comments is a good indicator of how active their community is. The clearest example is in an educational community where everyone shares opinions, technological advances, or tools that help with the learning process.
Shares reflect how useful their content is to their audience, for example, tips to help save money, which could be very useful to someone you know experiencing money-saving issues.
Finally, saves are unique content that is worth saving to view later; the most obvious example is saving a recipe to make later because it looked so delicious in the video.
It’s important to highlight that the algorithms of each platform take this interaction into account and evaluate how effective this content can be for you based on your preferences. So, this is the content you see when you scroll down or swipe left, depending on the app you are using.
Influencer Classification
Influencers are classified based on the number of followers they have, the classification is as follows:
- Mega or Giga: More than 1 million followers.
- Macro: 100,000 – 1 million followers.
- Micro: 10,000 – 100,000 followers.
- Nano: 10,000 followers or less.
Measure the Engagement of the Account
Engagement is a way to measure how feasible an influencer’s account is based on interaction and credibility. To get the engagement value, use the following formula:
Formula to measure engagement
(Likes+Comments+Shares+Saves)/EstimatedTotalPosts(Likes + Comments + Shares + Saves) / Estimated Total Posts x 100
It’s important to remember that this formula is a tool to help clarify if a particular profile is statistically useful to us, but we are the ones who decide if that profile works for us.
Don’t forget that likes and followers don’t define a good influencer. What defines them is the comments from their audience, how many people share their content for the value it provides, and finally, if their content is so useful that many people save it to watch later.
So, we would have a hierarchy to focus on:
- Saved
- Shared
- Comments
- Likes
- Followers
As mentioned earlier, followers can be purchased. To know if influencers have bought followers, you can analyze their accounts using Grin and check the engagement of the account and its credibility. Here’s an example.
If you find an influencer with very low credibility, their followers were likely purchased. Grin not only lets you analyze Instagram accounts but also allows you to analyze TikTok and YouTube accounts, and the best part is that it’s free.
By the way, you might be wondering why Kim Kardashian’s account has low engagement; well, here’s a great example of why the engagement statistic is a reference number and not a decisive factor.
And as we mentioned earlier, this is where we step in and decide if that influencer works for us and what type of strategy will work to leverage all the potential this influencer offers.
How to Find Influencers in My Country?
There are several ways to search for influencers, the first is to search manually, use a paid platform, or hire a digital marketing agency.
Search manually
You can search for influencers according to your business or brand theme. One way is by using hashtags and looking for accounts that fit your brand’s needs.
Another way is to start following many accounts and liking many posts in specific niches, then wait for the platform to recommend similar content.
Another point is that when you follow a new account, the platform will show related accounts below, where you can inspect the account that suits you best.
Lastly, you should be cautious, as not all influencers will adapt to your brand’s image, so be careful when choosing.
The easiest way to search is through a platform.
Yes, there are platforms such as:
The problem with these platforms is that they are all paid, and some are very expensive. However, this is because they are tools designed for digital marketing agencies, and if you only need to use them once, it’s worth considering.
Hire an influencer marketing agency
By hiring an agency that specializes in this, you are getting the full package as they will analyze your case, identify issues, and determine the most viable way to promote your brand through an influencer marketing strategy.
How much does an influencer charge for advertising? (Data from Ecuador)
Here are some small details of how much an influencer can charge for a post, stories, or video.
| Calidad vs Tamaño | Micro Influencer 1.000 a 50.000 seguidores | Macro Influencer 50.000 a 500.000 seguidores | Mega Influencer +500.000 seguidores |
|---|---|---|---|
| AltaCalidad | $200 x imagen $100 x historia $250 x video | $500 x foto $200 x historia $850 x video | $1200 x foto $600 x historia $2500 x video |
| MedianaCalidad | $100 x imagen $50 x 3 historias $50 x video | $300 x foto $100 x historia $500 x video | $800 x post $400 x historia $1200 x video |
| BajaCalidad | $50 x 3 post $20 x 6 historia $80 x video | $100 x foto $50 x historia $350 x video | $400 x post $200 x historia $800 x video |
Información recolectada por Sebastian Luzuriaga.
A lot of work? Leave it to the experts
If you’ve made it this far, you already know the entire process of finding influencers for your brand. Since this process is done for each influencer and depends a lot on how many influencers you’ll use in your campaign, it’s not an easy task and will take a lot of time if you are the only one searching.
So in this case, it’s definitely recommended to seek help or hire the services of an agency. If you choose this option, you’ll enjoy several benefits.
They analyze your problem
This is the first stage where they analyze your case and ask you what you want to achieve, such as: What is the goal of your brand? and why do you want to use influencers in your advertising campaign?
There may be cases where it’s not necessary to use this type of campaign, and your problem can be solved with another type of strategy. Once everything is analyzed, they proceed to the next step.
Defining the objective
Here, we start defining what you want to achieve through this advertising campaign. Generally, most of the objectives tend to be sales. So here is where they analyze which strategy suits best and how the influencers will participate.
Influencer database (They find the profile that best fits your brand)
Then they proceed to search in the database to see if there’s an influencer that fits the campaign needs or if they find the one that fits best with the advertising campaign.
Negotiation
The agency handles contacting the influencer, checking their availability. There are cases where influencers sign agreements or contracts with brands, keeping them exclusive for 3, 6 months, or even a year. If that’s the case, no negotiations can be made with them.
If there’s no issue, they proceed to explain the legal processes, if any, and what they must do.
Then, they proceed to execute the campaign.
Results analysis
At the end of the campaign, they conduct an analysis of the campaign, the positive and negative points, and, most importantly, check if the desired results were achieved.
Conclusion
Finding influencers is a complicated task, but with well-chosen influencers and a good marketing strategy, the results can be more than satisfactory.
As we know, influencers reach a large audience, and by being segmented into specific public niches, there’s a high probability of reaching these people and making a positive impact on them so they remember your brand or buy a product.
But if you want better results, don’t hesitate to contact a specialized marketing agency.