Let me guess: You've been Googling "Influencer Marketing,” trying to grasp the nuts and bolts of the practice. After parsing through informational texts and podcasts, you're feeling well-informed but also skeptical about taking the leap.

Is marketing through influencers worth the dollars spent? Well, the jury’s been out for a while on this. For every $1 you invest in influencer marketing, as per the study by Tomoson, you’re getting ~$6.50 in revenue on average. That’s a 600% ROI. Yes, three digits.

Paid Ads with their ~1-2 ROAS certainly pale in comparison, especially since CACs have ballooned by 60% and cost brands an average of $29 per user ​​(SimplicityDX). The $200M success of Olipop, a probiotic soft drink, is a recent reminder of why influencer-powered brands are winning consistently.

This DTC brand ditched paid Ads in 2021 in favor of organic TikTok content and creator partnerships, leading to improved awareness and grew its revenue from $70M to $200M in roughly a year. It is expected to hit $500M in 2024.

Such a payoff, however, is only feasible when you cherry-pick the influencers you work with. This is lesson number one: Before starting your search, identify the type of influencers that align with your brand values and have the audience-product fit to seal the deal.

How exactly do you do that? We’ll cover the tactics in the article. Read on!

Types of influencers: Mega, macro, micro, and nano

Not every influencer is a content creator, but not every content creator is an influencer. Yep. As Jay Baer, a renowned business growth and customer experience expert, explains in his blog post:

“We tend to confuse audience with influence. Having a lot of followers or a “large” blog readership doesn’t inherently make a person influential in any way. It gives them an audience. True influence drives action, not just awareness.”

There's a fine line between the two, and the only way to make the distinction is to consider the metrics they can pull—followers, shares, leads, sales, and more. (Already well-versed in influencer marketing basics? Click here to skip to the methods for finding influencers.)

For the sake of simplicity, influencers are often bracketed into four categories based on their follower count:

But across niches and businesses, we can add four more to the list:

• Brand ambassadors: Brand-appointed content creators to exclusively promote the brand. They often get incentives like commissions, payments, and free products.

• Customer advocates: Loyal, raving fans who engage in community interactions and brand-sponsored activities. For example, Notion Creators.

• Key Opinion Leaders (KOL): Someone with the credentials to be known as an industry expert. For example, Meryl Streep in the film industry.

• Affiliates: Content creators who promote your products/services to their audience and earn a commission on sales they influence.

Surprisingly, data suggests that partnering with brand advocates and ambassadors drives higher conversions owing to a long-standing relationship.

This raises the question: Are we defining the term ‘influencer’ rather narrowly?

Not every creator reposted on Rihanna's Fenty Beauty Instagram account (they often amplify UGC on IG) is an "influencer." However, when the brand amplifies UGC and influencer-created content through reshares, they hold the power to influence because they serve as social proof.

Sohome, a furniture brand, knows this firsthand, so it prominently features shoppable UGC galleries on its webshop under the ‘Shop the Look’ section.

Each post features a customer-taken image of the product along with a review and a ‘Buy’ button. This helps improve the dwell time on their website, offer social proof, and drive sales. You can do the same with influencer-generated content.

How to pick the right influencer to promote your product?

You've found a list of influencers. How well does the shoe fit them? Here are three ways to tell:

• Define your ideal influencer profile

• Why do you want to collaborate with them

• Your ideal influencer profile

Who's your ideal influencer?

Like your ideal customer persona, build your ideal influencer persona to achieve the audience-influencer fit. This can be campaign-specific or product-specific. Ask and get answers to questions like:

Professional characteristics

• What's the creator's niche? Do they have one or multiple?

• When did they start posting content online?

• Do they create content full-time or work a day job?

• How often do they publish content? And on which channels?

• Which content formats are they known for?

Audience and engagement

• What's their engagement rate?

• What are the age groups, genders, interests, and pains of their audience?

• How does the audience engage with their posts?

• How do they respond to negative engagement?

• Are they active on more than one social media channel?

• How does the public perceive the influencer?

Brand connect

• Are they already your customer?

• Do they aspire to the same values as your brand?

• Have they mentioned your brand before?

• Have they promoted or shown a competitor's product?

You can seek answers to the above questions as and when you're vetting influencers.

Why do you want to collaborate with influencers?

This is a vital question to consider before reaching out to influencers, as your answer will dictate the entirety of the process, from selecting influencers to how you co-create content.

To identify your goals early on, DemandCurve’s Influencer (Creator) Marketing playbook recommends these questions:

• Is growing impressions and awareness a priority?
• Do you want a high return on ad spend (ROAS)?
• Are you building a community?
• Do you want a change of content production to spruce up your marketing?

For a fuller understanding, we’ll add three more questions to the list:

• Are you looking to boost conversions? (More trial sign-ups, email subscribers, followers on socials, etc.)
• Perhaps you’d like to gain more customer data?
• Are you looking to improve local marketing?

What is their circle of influence?

Unfortunately, fake followers and engagement are common malpractices. Understanding how much clout the influencers have and thoroughly vetting the shortlisted ones will help you avoid a major misstep.

That said, having a big audience also doesn't equal a bigger influence.

In his newsletter, Digital Native, venture capitalist Rex Woodbury illustrated how micro influencers wield more power than mega celebs.

While a hypothetical example (Kim doesn't fit the Nike persona), it's still a good framework to understand influencer profiling, budgeting, and partnerships.

Think of it this way: You see a mega influencer promoting a coffee tumblr. It looks good, and you've been considering buying one. You check out the reviews, and while three reviews are 5 stars with little credibility, one customer has left 3 stars, a self-clicked photo of the cup, and a disappointed review. Do you still buy the cup? Probably not.

One person (influencer or not) can affect your purchase decision. That's why authenticity, relatability, accessibility, and relevance matter so much. As Shane Barker, Digital Strategist and Influencer Marketing Expert, emphasized in his conversation with Brafton, “The quality of content plays an integral role in the success or failure of an influencer marketing strategy. It doesn’t really matter if the influencer has massive reach if the quality of their content isn’t up to par.”

More on how to vet influencers later, but for now, let’s see successful ways to search for influencers.

8 ways to find the right social media influencers (from free to paid)

I contacted industry folks experienced in successfully running influencer marketing campaigns to ask how they search and vet influencers. Based on their suggestions, here are eight free and paid ways to do so.

1. Perform hashtag research

Hashtags are to social media what keywords are to search engines: A tool for discovery. You can use the native search capabilities of social media platforms to perform hashtag research and discover influential accounts.

​​Though, fair warning, this may (okay, will) need a fair amount of hawk-eyed investigation. But if you're up for some Nancy Drew exploration, there’s no better way. For example, on Instagram, you can type a keyword or related hashtag in the ‘Search’ option to discover creators.

Now, you can go broad and pick a generic keyword like #Skincare. But if you’re collaborating with influencers for a specific product—say a brand-new line of lip gloss for your cosmetic brand—you can go more specific than the broader “skincare” or “makeup” category and use #lipgloss to search.

You can parse through the top posts for the hashtag and further investigate a promising profile. In my case, it was a post from @naomimizrahi.

She has over 200k followers and regularly posts product reviews, which means she can help promote your new lip gloss line. On further investigation, I found she was already partnering with some big brands, had her own discount codes, and had a professional setup for sharing those.

This was sufficient evidence to add her to the consideration list. You can also use a similar hashtag research process for other platforms, such as YouTube.

With due diligence, I can review and shortlist influencers from the search results before I send a pitch for collaboration.

2. Search for influencer lookalikes

Borrowing from the #lipgloss example above, you can find lookalikes of your shortlisted influencer in the ‘suggested for you’ section on Instagram.

Alternatively, you can also look through their ‘following’ and ‘followers’ lists to find them. Many content creators follow and engage with other popular influencers in the same (or similar) niche to keep up with the trends and seek inspiration. In such a scenario, your best bets are the ‘followers’ list of macro and mega influencers with a wider reach.

3. Ask friends and peers for recommendations

Sometimes, finding the ideal audience-product fit influencer takes only a phone call, email, or a quick text to a trusted peer. You can tap into your network to get trusted recommendations and make the job easier.

Here’s a pitch you can use:

4. Look into brand mentions

Your ideal influencer partner could be sending you love signals (read: brand mentions and tagging) for a collaboration. And it’s your job to keep your eyes and ears open to receive them.

On X (formerly Twitter), for example, you can look up your brand name in the ‘Explore’ option to see who and how people are talking about your brand or products. I tried searching for BarkBox, a monthly subscription service offering products and services for dogs.

You can scroll through and check out profiles to find suitable content creators. Some might just be customers expressing satisfaction or leaving a review.

In any case, this practice will work well, especially if you’re looking for influencers or happy customers to send a gift or PR package as part of your marketing strategy.

Bonus Tip: You can embed brand mentions and reviews left by happy customers on your website or webshop. This simple method can help you establish and amplify a customer-centric, positive image among potential customers.

To do so, for example, OpusClip curates a ‘Wall of Love’ using Flockler, highlighting authentic customer stories.

5. Craft a landing page for creators

Imagine influencers knocking on your door instead of you knocking on theirs. You can create a process to engage, filter, and collaborate with niche-specific influencers with half the effort.

AG1, a daily nutrition and wellness brand, for example, has a dedicated page to receive collaboration requests from content creators.

They open the doors to interested influencers across multiple industries (given how AG1 caters to a broad segment). But they’re also thorough with their two-step application/filtering process.

🗯️ Do note: Should you go ahead and create a landing page for creators, you’ll likely get applications from all sorts of influencers. This is one drawback of the method. So, ask for relevant information and lay out your selection process in finer detail.

• Your selection criteria

• Content creation process and quality expected

• Compensation/incentive models

• Ownership rights

• Or anything else that’s relevant to the collaboration

6. Start a brand ambassador program

If you’re uninformed, a brand ambassador program recruits and appoints customers and influencers as “ambassadors” to promote products, boost awareness, get social buzz, and drive sales in exchange for incentives.

It’s similar to an influencer making the first move and expressing interest in a collaboration. But with better, long-term benefits:

• Brand advocacy from happy customers carries more impact, especially on conversions

• Build long-standing relationships with customers and influencers

• Foster a sense of community with brand advocacy from loyal fans

Case in point: Lululemon, a lifestyle and athletic apparel brand, has a dedicated landing page for its ambassador program that explains the objective, expectations, and process to interested parties.

Once chosen as ambassadors, content creators start featuring prominently in their latest campaigns. Below is one of the many examples.

7. Invest in an influencer search tool

In my conversations with marketers, many recommended using an influencer marketing tool to simplify the process. Below are some of the tools (paid and free) they mentioned.

• Collabstr (free)

• Keyhole

• InfluenceGrid (free for up to five results)

• Modash

• Flookup

• BuzzSumo

• SEMrush’s Influencer Analytics

• SARAL

Many of the paid tools offer free trials. You can use those for a test drive.

8. Outsource to an agency

If you have a bigger budget to work with, you can even outsource influencer marketing to a third party. An agency specializing in influencer marketing can get your influencer program up and running quickly.

James Taylor, SEO strategist at Embryo, a digital marketing agency, for example, shared how they partner with other agencies to find influencers:

"The influencers we work with have been found using agencies (Tribe, Kairos etc) or by our in-house team searching the platforms to find suitable profiles. This would be based on certain criteria.

• Follower numbers and social media engagement

• Feed and content style

• whether they also have a blog that they could feature articles and include links on

• whether they are the right fit for the brand."

Finally, once you've shortlisted influencers, it's time to assess how well they fit your marketing needs.

How to shortlist and vet influencers for your brand?

The State of Influencer Marketing 2024, a benchmark report by Influencer Marketing Hub, has some interesting insights. Compared to 2023, more marketers are focusing on how influencers are directly affecting their bottom lines in 2024.

Hence, easily attributable factors like ‘sales’ are being increasingly used, while the use of broader metrics like ‘engagement’ and ‘impressions’ is being decreased, as illustrated below.

This seems to be a fairly common process in the industry. Tom Jauncey, Head Nerd at Nautilus Marketing told us.

Engagement rates usually differ from industry to industry. But almost universally, nano and micro influencers can achieve a 3-6% engagement rate. That's a good benchmark to filter out influencers.

Mohamed Abdelkhalek, Marketing Executive at Accessware, also shared a similar process—but with a keen focus on finding the audience-influencer fit.

This brings us to what comes after the vetting and selection process: Outreach. Your first contact with a creator will set the tone for the collaboration, so make sure to put your best foot forward. Lindi Mngaza, Founder & MD of Explode Social Media, shares some handy tips to do so:

• Once you’ve shortlisted relevant influencers, send them a really good outreach message saying something personal about their profile and what you like about them. It always works well.
   

• If they don’t respond, send a follow-up to explain how they’ll be a good fit for your brand and vice versa. I strongly suggest asking for their analytics before running a campaign with them so you know the best time to do so.
   

• Lastly, make sure to inform them if it’s a paid partnership or just a gifted campaign so as not to waste anybody’s time.

Wrapping up: A word on promoting influencer-created content

Identifying and vetting potential influencers are surely (read: painfully) time-consuming, but they're necessary to get the right fit, as we've demonstrated above.

But what happens once you've got a successful influencer collaboration on the table? More often than not, the influencer-created content remains underutilized.

Don't waste away your dollars when you can milk the content in multiple ways.

For example, a product review video can be reposted from your brand handles across social media and emailed to customers via newsletter. You can run white-labeled ads through their accounts and encourage sales by offering them discount codes or making their social media posts shoppable.

Best of all, you can use Flockler to display the video on your website, Shopify stores, and other digital platforms to boost traffic and conversions. Its built-in social media analytics also helps you collect social data and improve future campaigns.

Truly, a win-win.