How to find the right influencers with data

When it comes to influencer marketing, there are many important factors that come into play, but finding the right influencer is arguably the most important – and for a number of reasons. Choosing the right influencer has a huge impact on a campaign’s results. If an influencer is chosen based on criterion such as the number of followers instead of considering other more important data, there’s a much higher possibility that the campaign isn’t going to achieve the desired results.

Free Ebook: How to find and locate the right influencers for your brand

If we take a look at the current landscape of influencer marketing, we can see that these types of campaigns are on the rise, and for a very simple reason; they really work. Statistics such as the following confirm just that:

• 92% of consumers trust external brand ambassadors more than the actual company
• Three out of four companies who have collaborated with influencer, have seen an increase in sales

If your brand still hasn’t jumped on the influencer marketing bandwagon, you could be missing out on a big opportunity. Furthermore, you may even be squandering your marketing budget on actions that are nowhere near as profitable. In order to select the best influencers for your campaign, you need to be analysing data.

Precise research and selecting the right influencer is a recipe for campaign success.

Do you want to create a successful campaign? Or find out how to find the perfect influencers for your brand? Start by collecting the right data, analysing it and then making decisions based on your findings. More and more technologies are appearing on the market to do just that, such as Influencity’s software, which facilitates the search for collaborators and the efficient management of campaign actions.

Advice for finding influencers through data

After hearing some advice from people who know the ins and outs of influencer marketing, we imagine you’re no longer thinking about collaborating with Bruce Willis to promote your new anti-hair loss product? Great. Now, shall we start taking this a bit more seriously? A successful campaign is a combination of correct decisions and, amongst them, selecting the right influencers to be your brand’s advocates is one of the most important. You need to be sure that you’re not making a mistake by getting carried away with subjective feelings.

Data doesn’t lie.

So, what data is truly important? The following variables must be studied when trying to find the best influencers to promote your brand.

●           Number of followers

The number of followers isn’t the most important variable in influencer marketing, but it is, of course, data that needs to be taken into consideration. When making an investment, it’s important to know the audience you could potentially reach and, as you can probably imagine, the bigger the better. However, this data alone won’t provide you with much insight, or at least it won’t in most cases. It may help you discard certain candidates due to having smaller followings, but influencers with bigger audiences are not always the best choice. Keep reading and you’ll find out why.

●           Audience engagement rate

What good is an influencer with a big following, but a low engagement rate? Brands want profiles that can generate conversation amongst their public so that they get involved, share their opinions, share content and talk about the product.

Some influencers have very active followers, whilst others seem to have a legion of zombies behind them. Obviously, the former are more appealing, even if their following is smaller, since they’re the ones who are going to help you achieve your campaign objective; to make your product the centre of attention.

●           The type of content they share

It’s important to evaluate what kind of content influencers publish and determine whether or not it fits in with your brand or product. Content quality and values are two very important aspects to take into consideration.

Keep reading: 4 reasons why you should launch an influencer marketing campaign

How to choose influencers for you campaign

It’s time to ask the big question; how do I choose influencers for my campaign? Where do I begin? There is no single way to do so, in fact, quite the opposite – there are many different ways you can go about narrowing down the search for the perfect influencer. For example:

●           By sector

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that a well-known influencer within your sector is more likely to impact potential users for your product with their posts. Although this isn’t always the case, it’s a good starting point which will allow you to detect some interesting potential candidates.

●           By determining your target audience’s preferred social network

As we mentioned previously, influencer profiles on different social networks may vary considerably. If you’ve clearly defined your target audience, it’ll be easier to see which social network they’re more likely to use and therefore limit your search for the right influencer to said platform.

●           By analysing age groups

Each influencer’s fan base has a different demographic and age groups can be a key statistic to study when trying to find the perfect influencer for your brand. Why? Age is directly related to sales.

Related reading: Which is the best social network to achieve your objective?

Agility and impartiality; top tools for finding influencers

You may be thinking at this point that choosing the right influencer is tricky business and only a data scientist is capable of evaluating all of these variables. And to some extent, you’re not wrong. It’s for that very reason that brands have began to turn to tools to help them with the task of filtering and selecting target audiences, so that choosing influencers doesn’t become such a complex task. Nowadays there exist tools, such as Influencity, which provide brands with all relevant information regarding influencer profiles.

Influencity software features

Influencity is one of the best tools on the market when it comes to collecting and organising relevant data in order to make decisions for your campaign and the segmentation possibilities are nearly infinite:

• You can choose influencers based on the content they publish
• With more than 25 themes to choose from, it’s almost impossible for you not to find someone who publishes content related to your theme of choice.

This first step is pretty simple. The most complicated part is selecting influencers within your chosen theme who are the best match for your brand and who are going to make sure your campaign makes an impact and achieves the desired repercussion. To do just that, there are new tools that allow you to detect which influencers are more relevant for your brand by comparing their KPIs across different social networks and analysing their publication results, or even studying their followers’ profiles.

Managing your campaign is much more simple with Influencity, as you can control all of the different variables in one place and define the following with precision:

• Target audience
• The channels you wish to use
• Campaign objectives

Influencity’s software incorporates any relevant data you provide and, through the use of an algorithm, suggests the best influencers for your brand. Remember how we mentioned earlier that selecting the best influencer for your brand was key for achieving success? Influencity’s software does it for you by analysing data, so that you don’t have to.

Leave the inspiration to the artists. We’re marketers and what we like are numbers!

And with Influencity’s Analytics function, you have access to more data than you can shake a stick at!

You can measure interactions, engagement, earned media and social reach across different channels, evaluate your campaigns as well as the competition’s and see all KPIs in real time! You can even see how each publication is performing at any given moment and implement any changes you consider necessary.

And for control freaks, you have the option to pre-visualise the estimated results of your campaign. Design different campaigns, see the estimated results and launch the best one. Trial and error? Who wants to throw money down the drain?

Now you know how Influencity works, finding the best influencers for your campaigns will never be a problem again. If you’re still having doubts, you can download our free success case from the retail sector and see examples of real results that you can achieve from selecting, managing and analysing influencers with our software.