Many brands that aren’t familiar with Influencer Marketing are skeptical of allocating their limited marketing budgets into this unchartered territory. Some would rather opt to funnel those funds into Facebook Ads where they can target specific audiences based on retargeting and interests. Similar to how Facebook Ads can get granular with their targeting, Influencer Marketing can provide similar targeting options with the chance of converting sales from audiences you didn’t expect.Although we’re reaching out to influencers, we’re able to target their audiences through them. For example, if a YouTube star is always posting makeup tutorials, you’d imagine that their audience is comprised of people interested in the Beauty category. The only tricky part to this would be influencers that consider themselves in the "lifestyle" category.Below is a list of some ways we can identify influencers which would assuredly have audiences that share similar interests:

Keywords / Topics

• Every brand’s products/services can be placed into certain categories (e.g. Fashion, Beauty, Tech, Health, Travel, Apps, Finance, etc.), and you can be certain some influencers share those topics with their audience. For one of our tech clients, we already knew the broad segment (Outdoor/Tech), but we were able to go even further into specific interests by using a variety of tools. Rather than just targeting that general segment, we were able to target "preppers," people that believe the world is going to end from some catastrophe (quite interesting people to collaborate with). By partnering with influencers from this niche segment, we were able to see a high rate of conversion and, in turn, were able to apply these learnings and create ads to target this group.

Gender

• Is your product/service intended mainly for men or women? Influencers have an audience comprised of both genders; however, they usually lean toward one end of the spectrum - it’s rare to see a 50/50 split. It’s not always the case that an influencer has an audience that is predominantly the same sex as them. For example, female models on Instagram might have a larger male audience and vice versa.While our tools allow us to find influencers based on their gender, we take the time to go through the comments to gain insight into their audience. This makes it possible to see the relationship that influencers have with their audience (for example, do they respond to their audience’s questions?).

Location

• Most of our clients are based in the U.S. and don’t ship internationally. Although some influencers have audiences globally, we try to target influencers within the U.S. so that our marketing efforts are concentrated in places where we expect to see conversions (not to say that we can’t target influencers globally).Targeting influencers by location can be imperative when our clients are only offering products in a limited geographic region. For example, we’ve worked with brands that only offered their products/services in the West Los Angeles area. Rather than wasting our time looking for influencers in other regions, we were able to target influencers in Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Venice, and Culver City.

Total Reach

• Certain clients have specific parameters to the influencers that they wish to collaborate with one being the total reach. While I don’t believe this is the most important factor (engagement is number one!), it’s one that should be taken into consideration.When we work with brands, we determine what their budget is for influencer compensation before we get started. If their budget is relatively high, we can target influencers with a larger reach, and if their budget is small, the majority of influencers we target would have a lower reach, but we would still be able to get a few high-tier influencers. Our tools allow us to find influencers with a minimum or maximum number of followers on their various platforms.

Previous collaborations

• We’re able to determine the different brands that an influencer has worked with by picking up on their backlinks (the links they include in their posts). This is important since it allows us to see the price range of products the influencer regularly promotes to their audience. For example, an influencer that talks about thrifty goods wouldn’t be the correct person to collaborate with to promote a high-end good.Working with influencers that have promoted competitors’ products doesn’t necessarily mean they should be marked off as a potential candidate. Their audience may only be aware of that one product, but by having the influencer promote your product, their audience will be introduced to another product.

As you can see from the list above, Influencer Marketing isn’t just shooting darts in the dark; it’s highly targeted. Once we activate an influencer, we’ll continue to monitor their audience’s engagement with the post to determine which influencers to activate for a second collaboration. While there are a variety of methods to market your brand, Influencer Marketing should be considered one of the cornerstones of your marketing strategy.