Did you know that influencer marketing was worth $13.8 billion in 2021? That’s according to Influencer Marketing Hub, which also reported that 59% of brands had a standalone budget for content marketing. Since 75% of those surveyed intended to dedicate a budget to influencer marketing, your company or brand may not be far behind.
Influencer marketing can tap into engaged audiences like no other. But as the number of influencers on social media grows, scouting them for marketing campaigns becomes more of a challenge. In this post, we’ll take a step-by-step look at how to find the best influencers for your brand.
Before you look at how to find influencers for your brand, you need to lay the groundwork for your campaign to succeed. Arm yourself with your brand’s current social media analytics and complete the following tasks to guide you in your influencer search….Continue reading…
By: Khalipha Ntloko
Source: How to Find Influencers to Partner with Your Brand
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Critics:
Influencer marketing (also known as influence marketing) is a form of social media marketing involving endorsements and product placement from influencers, people and organizations who have a purported expert level of knowledge or social influence in their field.
Influencers are someone (or something) with the power to affect the buying habits or quantifiable actions of others by uploading some form of original often sponsored content to social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok or other online channels.
Influencer marketing is when a brand enrolls influencers who have an established credibility and audience on social media platforms to discuss or mention the brand in a social media post. Influencer content may be framed as testimonial advertising. Most discussions of social influence focus on social persuasion and compliance.
In the context of influencer marketing, influence is less about arguing for a point of view or product than about loose interactions between parties in a community (often with the aim of encouraging purchasing or behavior). Although influence is often equated with advocacy, it may also be negative.
The two-step flow of communication model was introduced in The People’s Choice (Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet‘s 1940 study of voters’ decision-making processes), and developed in Personal Influence (Lazarsfeld, Elihu Katz 1955) and The Effects of Mass Communication (Joseph Klapper, 1960).
Influencer marketing is also important through social comparison theory. As psychologist Chae reports, influencers serve as a comparison tool. Consumers may compare influencer lifestyles with their imperfections. Meanwhile, followers may view influencers as people with perfect lifestyles, interests, and dressing style.
As such, the promoted products may serve as a shortcut towards a complete lifestyle. Chae’s study finds women with low self-esteem compare themselves to the influencers. As such, they elevate the status of influencers above themselves. When using an influencer, a brand may use consumer insecurities to its benefits. For this reason, influencer marketing may lead to faulty advertising.
There is a lack of consensus about what an influencer is. One writer defines them as “a range of third parties who exercise influence over the organization and its potential customers.” Another defines an influencer as a “third party who significantly shapes the customer’s purchasing decision but may never be accountable for it.” According to another, influencers are “well-connected, create an impact, have active minds, and are trendsetters”.
And just because an individual has many followers does not necessarily mean they have much influence over those individuals, only that they have many followers. A 1% increase in influencer marketing spending can lead to a 0.5% increase in audience engagement. Market-research techniques can be used to identify influencers, using predefined criteria to determine the extent and type of influence.
“Activists” get involved with organizations such as their communities, political movements, and charities. “Connected influencers” have large social networks. “Authoritative influencers” are trusted by others. “Active minds” have a diverse range of interests. “Trendsetters” are the early adopters (or leavers) of markets. According to Malcolm Gladwell, “The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts”.
He has identified three types of influencers who are responsible for the “generation, communication and adoption” of messages: Connectors network with a variety of people, have a wide reach, and are essential to word-of-mouth communication, Mavens use information, share it with others, and are insightful about trends, Salesmen are “charismatic persuaders”.Their influence is the tendency of others to imitate their behavior.
Influencers are categorized by the number of followers they have on social media. They include celebrity endorsements from those with large followings, to niche content creators with a loyal following on social-media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Their followers range in number from hundreds of millions to 1,000.
- Nano-influencers – These are influencers that have a following ranging from 1k to 10k.
- Micro-influencers – These are the influencers with followers in the range of 10K to 100k
- Macro-influencers – These are the influencers with followers from the range of 100K to 500k
- Mega/Celeb-influencers – These are the influencers with more than 500k followers
Businesses pursue people who aim to lessen their consumption of advertisements, and are willing to pay their influencers more. Targeting influencers is seen as increasing marketing’s reach, counteracting a growing tendency by prospective customers to ignore marketing. Marketing researchers Kapitan and Silvera find that influencer selection extends into product personality.
This product and benefit matching is key. For a shampoo, it should use an influencer with good hair. Likewise, a flashy product may use bold colors to convey its brand. If an influencer is not flashy, they will clash with the brand. Matching an influencer with the product’s purpose and mood is important.
Online activity can play a central role in offline decision-making, allowing consumers to research products. Social media have created new opportunities for marketers to expand their strategy beyond traditional mass-media channels. Many use influencers to increase the reach of their marketing messages. Online influencers who curate personal brands have become marketing assets because of their relationship with their followers.
Social-media influencers establish themselves as opinion-leaders with their followers and may have persuasive strengths such as attractiveness, likeability, niche expertise, and perceived good taste.The interactive and personal nature of social media allows parasocial relationships to form between influencers and their followers, which impacts purchase behavior. Influencer marketing on social media reaches consumers who use ad-blockers.
Critics of an online-intensive approach say that by researching exclusively online, consumers can overlook input from other influential individuals. Early-2000s research suggested that 80 to 92 percent of influential consumer exchanges occurred face-to-face with word-of-mouth (WOM), compared to seven to 10 percent in an online environment. Scholars and marketers distinguish WOM from electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM).
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