Finding the Right Social Influencer for Your Campaigns

Influencer 101

Word of mouth marketing—that recommendation from a friend, family member or colleague—is the most valuable marketing strategy a company can benefit from. Compared to television ads that can be skipped and magazine ads that can be flipped, a word of mouth endorsement holds authority and authenticity. In fact, research shows that 20 to 50 percent of purchases are motivated by word of mouth recommendations.

As consumers, we’re constantly exposed to advertising and marketing messages every day. Billboards lining highways, ads on the subway, television and radio sponsored slots, not to mention the pop-up ads that appear in your Facebook feed. Increasingly, these ads are failing to resonate with consumers, with most tuning it out and going about their day. This is where word of mouth differs: it has a domino effect that spreads quickly and can be extremely effective.

Cue social media influencers: these thought-leaders have paved the way for brands to utilize the word of mouth concept in digital form.

Niche influencers are considered experts in their field, and their recommendations are considered authentic and trustworthy by their devout, engaged followings. You can get even more close to a target audience with micro-influencers, or those with fewer than 100,000 followers.

The key to achieving tangible results? Partner with the right social media influencer. It sounds simple, but the right social media influencer can have a major impact on your brand, resulting in sales conversions and a new client base.

Searching and securing targeted social media influencers requires assessing their audience demographic data for the perfect pairing. Here are a few things you should consider before signing on the dotted line.

Choosing influencers: Relevance

This is critical when selecting an influencer. Prior to procuring, check that the social media influencer is sharing content that is closely related to your product in some way. When an influencer has a mammoth following but their social media content doesn’t align with your product, then those thousands of followers mean very little. You wouldn’t sell cosmetics at a car convention.

While there may be thousands of attendees, their interests don’t align with that of your target customer, making the chance of conversions very slim. The same applies to influencers. In this scenario, by partnering with a beauty influencer who is considered a thought-leader in the beauty space with a following that mirrors your target demographic, you’ll gain more traction and ROI for your product.

bibigoeschic social media influencer

Accessing analytical tools is essential for executing your influencer marketing campaign successfully. HYPR is the only platform in the world to offer search and discovery solutions based on in-depth audience demographic data, allowing customers to search social media influencers by name, as well as by data characteristics such as age, location, gender, interests, household income and other highly relevant criteria.

Evaluating Influencers: Reach

After you have secured the perfect social media influencer/s for your campaign, collaborate with them on promotional posts that will appeal to their engaged following. Their posts will increase awareness for your product, resulting in new brand loyalists from a previously untapped customer base.

Say for example, an up and coming U.S. women’s fashion brand wants to create hype around a new collection launch. As opposed to activating a macro-influencer with a mammoth following but low engagement levels, why not activate micro-influencer Jyotsna Shankar. She has an Instagram following of almost 100,000 followers, most of whom are women interested in fashion, with 78 percent residing in the U.S. Wouldn’t enlisting Jyotsna and several other influencers with similar audience demographics be a more effective strategy? Hint: It would.

cuppajyo social media influencer

Gauging Influencer Authenticity

What makes influencer marketing so successful is the honest opinions that influencers provide with each post. Because of their reputation as experts in their given field, consumers trust in these people and eventually trust your brand because of their endorsement.

Ensure the social media influencer you enlist actually likes your product—this makes the recommendation more genuine and authentic, and more likely to resonate with the audience. And work on building a long-lasting relationship with the Influencer—by developing a deeper affiliation with the Influencer that lasts beyond a single post, you’re also building a long-lasting connection with their audience.

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