How to Identify the Right Influencer for Your Brand in 2024

Introduction

The last decade has ignited a phenomenon called ‘The rise of the Indian influencers’. In this era of influencers, an ever-increasing number of brands collaborate with them for promotion. Influencer marketing is becoming a popular and profitable venture. This is because the modern audience or ‘the Gen-Z’ audience loves social media. They don’t just use it for chatting with their friends, sharing memes, or watching funny reels, they also use it to make choices in their day- to-day lives.

For example:
As avid social media users, my friends and I often explore social media reviews and suggestions from popular influencers to help us decide:

Which branded Baggy Jeans should I buy on my next shopping trip?
Which Masala should I get to make a dish of Paneer Butter Masala?
Which site should I use to get my travel plans into action?

Influencers today have the power to impact buyers' smallest decisions in terms of brands. This is why, more and more brands are leading their promotional activities with influencer marketing.

According to a report by EY and Collective Artists Network’s Big Bang Social, India’s influencer marketing industry is expected to reach INR 3,375 crore by 2026. It is a marketing strategy that involves partnering with an influencer to elevate your brand’s presence and awareness.

Influencers are everywhere. They are social media users with a large number of followers. These followers may regularly view their posts and trust their advice, knowledge, and insights on a specific topic or subject. The goal is to use a famous social media influencer’s popularity, credibility, and audience to leverage the brand’s growth.

An influencer marketing campaign is a powerful tool for your brand. Yet this power depends on the influencer you choose to represent your brand’s message. Have you decided to tap into the incredible potential of influencer marketing to help you boost your brand’s growth? Take the first step by choosing the right influencer for your brand. As a marketing agency that has worked with several influencers over the years, we are here to help you understand what you should look for while finding and choosing an influencer to promote your brand.

Steps to Identify the Right Influencer for Your Campaign

1. Identify Your Goals/ Expectations:

   Before you begin planning your influencer marketing strategy, it’s crucial to ask yourself this question.

   What do I wish to achieve from my influencer marketing campaign?

   Identifying your goals helps you measure your expectations, understand, and convey them to the influencer and work together to achieve your goals. Look at both qualitative and quantitative objectives.

   • Are you looking to create brand awareness by making your brand visible to more people through influencers?

   • Are you looking for a brand influencer who could act as the face of your brand for the long term?

   • Are you looking to generate sales and convert leads? What is your target?

   • Are you looking to increase your followers on social media? How many followers are you looking to gain?

   Once you have identified your brand needs, it’s time to identify what the audience needs.

2. Understand Your Audience

   Understanding your core audience is an irreplaceable step in your influencer marketing strategy. Analyze your audience, your customers, how much time they spend on social media, which platforms they use, what kind of content makes them tick, creators and influencers they trust, the influencers they usually follow, their demographics, location, and the industries or niches they most frequently like or search for. Find similarities and differences in their behavior on social media. Once you gain a deeper understanding of your audience, you can turn the game mode on!

3. Choose a Category of Influencers

   Once you have understood what and who your audience likes, it's time to decide which category of influencer to choose based on the questions you asked yourself before. Be sure to choose wisely because many things matter here, like the budget you are willing to set and the extent of the audience you would like to reach. Influencers are most often categorized according to the number of followers on social media platforms. Influencers with a higher number of followers charge more for promotional activities. For example, collaborating with influencers with 50,000 followers can be cheaper than with influencers having a million followers. The follower base of an influencer is surely an important factor to consider, as it provides an opportunity for brands to convey their message to a wider audience.

   However, you need to understand that a large following does not guarantee success. It also depends on your planning and execution among other factors.

   Four types of Influencers are:

   
   

   Sr.No	Types	Followers Count	Influencer Name
   1	Mega Influencers	Over 1 million	Bhuvan Bam, Nikhil Sharma, Naman Mathur
   2	Macro Influencers	Between 1,00,000 to 1 million	Srishti Dixit, Irene Khan
   3	Micro Influencers	Between 10,000 to 1,00,000	Roobina Mongia, Ishika Sahni, Sid Bhawsar
   4	Nano Influencers	Less than 10,000	Abhinav Singhai, My Kisan Dost, Nitin Sharma

4. Try Influencer Marketing Platforms

   Want to make the process easier? No worries, influencer marketing platforms are readily available for you. Several influencer marketing platforms and tools provide automated services to help you search and choose a suitable influencer for a price. Right from analyzing industry trends, social media content, posts, and profile data, these platforms can automate the whole process and create an entire strategy that matches your brand’s requirements.

   Influencer marketing platforms also offer to facilitate influencer management by helping you effortlessly collaborate with teams and manage every stage of your influencer campaign.

5. Search on Social Media Platforms

   Not a big fan of automation? You can do a manual search for influencers on your preferred social media platforms. Start by searching for trending posts in your relevant industry. Check which post has gone viral or has a high number of likes. Then, check out the account through which the post was published.

   Go deeper, and do a specific search by using popular hashtags in your relevant industry.

   Refine your search to influencer-specific posts by using hashtags like #influencer, #creator, #vlogger, #blogger, and more combined with the relevant hashtags from your industry.

   For example, if you are a food or beverage company, search with #food,#foodblogger, and #foodies as some examples. If you are a travel company, try #travel and #vlog. Hashtags can help you reach a popular account related to the hashtag. You can refine your searches further by using location-specific hashtags in your search.

6. Visit Influencer/Industry Events, Conferences and Meetups

   Attending industry events where influencers are invited or influencer meetups, shows and interviews can be a great way to meet influencers and get them on board your brand campaign. You can also find online events where you get a chance to interact with influencers across industries and genres.

7. Influencer Analysis

   Shortlisted a few influencers who fit your criteria? Great! Now it's time to filter through to find the perfect fit. Do an influencer analysis by looking at their engagement rates, frequency of posts published, and the influencer’s personality apart from their follower base. Looking at these factors, you can gain insight into your partnership and how well your brand will fare with a specific influencer.

   Here’s an extra tip for you - Don’t forget to check for the authenticity of the influencer. Some influencers use fake followers and tools to help their accounts stand out. Check if their followers are genuine accounts to make sure of their authenticity.