With more and more brands investing in influencer marketing, influencer discovery becomes more complicated and diversified. The growing market generates new influencer categories and new audiences over time. And brands should stay up-to-date to nail the most effective influencer marketing campaigns.

In 2020, 51% of marketers say influencer-created content is more effective than brand-created content. So, finding the right influencers is half of a successful influencer marketing strategy. The more influencer resonates with your brand, the more successful your campaign will be. But finding the fittest influencer is not as easy as it sounds. 

If you’ve already defined your campaign goals, the next step is to dive into influencer discovery. It’s in your best interest to find and reach out to relevant influencers in the shortest time. Today we’ll guide you through how to streamline influencer discovery and outreach via Keepface’s Influencer Discovery. 

Let’s get started!

Search and find influencers

After logging in to your account jump in Discovery – it’s just in the left corner. 

Click Discovery and you will be directed to Search bar automatically. Below the bar, you can see the latest registered influencers.

Use Filter to get concentrated results for your campaign. Filter button is designed to find out the most relevant influencers by their category, audience size, engagement, social platforms, price range, country, and gender. And with the Upgraded Plan, you can even go further by filtering influencers’ audience search on language, location, gender, interests category, and age groups. 

Click Show Results next to Filter to get the results according to your filter. 

Influencer names come with filtered results. In a few seconds, you will find your best fit influencers on the database. There are two view options, List and Grid view. You can choose how you want to see your results. 

Overview of each influencer’s profile

Click View details to quickly see the overview of influencer profiles. You will be able to see the latest and most engaging posts of influencers, as well as their category, global and country ranking score, total audience, and media value. So you get an in-depth view of influencers without leaving the platform.

Dive into their Audience Analyze to see whether that influencers’ audience matches with your target audience. By looking at the latest posts you will have an overview of their styles and engagement of the recent posts beforehand. These are all necessary stats that will help you to decide whether the influencer is relevant to your brand or not. 

Add influencers to your lists for later use 

On the right side of the section, you see Add to list. Lists are a great way to save your filtered results so you will save time while campaign planning. 

You can either add influencers to the list you created before or Create a new list. Influencer lists help you in your future campaigns where you just choose the list and submit the campaign.

Say, you need a list of “Fashion micro-influencers”. Adjust filters accordingly and select influencers who you think are the right fit by clicking the box in front of each name.  Click Add to List (red button below Search Bar), choose the List and all the selected influencers will be added to that list. Or you can add influencers individually, just clicking Add to List (blue button next to Influencer Profile) and selecting the list. 

Your list is ready

You can reach your lists anytime by clicking Lists on the drop-down menu under the Influencer Box (see on the screenshot).

Note that the number of lists depends on your Subscription Plan, so with a free plan, you can create only one influencer list. 

Creating lists before starting your campaign will save you a huge time, so when you create a campaign you’ll only need to add your brief, content types and add your list of influencers with a few clicks. That easy!

Difference between micro-influencers and celebrities

Why do companies prefer smaller influencers?

1. Cost-effective

2. Scepticism of the public over celebrity promotions

3. They seem more genuine

4. Smaller influencers have more specific content

5. It is easier to find genuine brand fans

6. They are better to work with

Typically, micro-influencers tend to be more engaging on a personal level, which makes it easier for businesses to establish personal connections to them.  

“A lot of the times, businesses claim that smaller influencers go above and beyond to satisfy the needs of their client, as they show their gratefulness towards the people that notice them and value their work. They also claim that it is easier to contact them and that they tend to be more open to explore the tasks they are given and provide out-of-the-box content,” says Hillary Ian, a blogger at State Of Writing and Oxessays.

7. Great for small businesses and startups

#1 Target untapped-niche segments

#2 Launch an initial campaign

#3 Measure and optimize your success

We’re here to help

An essential step in any influencer marketing campaign is appropriate and effective outreach. Influencer outreach is essential in running a successful campaign, so avoid the following common mistakes:

1. Reaching out through the wrong platform

It is important to reach out to potential influencer partners on the right channel – the best contact method is often simply through email. Though social media is the popular choice for other types of communication, email is more demanding of response and makes the conversation easier to track and reference later. Social media can be cluttered for this kind of business conversation, but useful for sending a message pre-pitch to ask how best to get in touch about your idea. It is also always safe to go through the business account, not personal accounts.

2. Not having clear campaign objectives

Establishing your campaign objectives is essential in building the foundation for the rest of the project. Depending on what you hope to gain specifically from this campaign, you will need to use the appropriate channel (i.e. social media platform) and at the same time the right influencer.

A social media influencer will have their own personal strengths, which you will need to be aware of and select them according to whether these things will help you in reaching your campaign goals. Communicate these goals with your influencers so everyone is on the same page and the campaign will be more successful.

3. Picking the wrong influencer

Having a clear list of criteria for finding the perfect influencer to head your campaign is vital, as well as knowing how these requirements are prioritized.

It is important to remember that an influencer’s number of followers isn’t everything – audience engagement is another influential factor to consider. Small, niche followings can be just as valuable as larger, mainstream audiences, even more so, if chosen and applied effectively. Daniel Hardison, a business writer at Ukwritings and Academized, says: “These things contribute to creating a presence that will drive sales and promote brand visibility.”

Thorough research and clear goals are both crucial in this stage of the process – you need to ensure your values align and that you have the same or at least overlapping audiences.

4. Writing a generic, long-winded, or just bad pitch

When it comes to writing your pitch, use personal details and specific connections between the brand and the influencer to make it more effective. Never use the same template for multiple pitches, or, even worse, send the same pitch as a mass email.

Also, remember that the pitch is just that – it isn’t your entire plan and doesn’t need to include every detail about your business, it is simply the hook. Be concise and try to get to the point quickly. Communicate the vital information clearly, the basics, and include the next step you would like to take.

Wayne Smith, a communication manager at Boomessays and Bigassignments, says: “Framing is everything: you want to pitch an offer to them, like you are doing something for them, rather than asking them to do something for you. Your pitch needs to sound like a unique opportunity that will benefit them as well as you.”

5. Taking things too personally

When it comes to getting turned down, it is important not to take things personally. The influencer could have any number of reasons for declining your offer, most of which have nothing to do with you, your brand, or even your campaign pitch. If their response is lacking in details or reasons, it may be reasonable to enquire as to why they chose to decline and whether they are giving you a hard no or just a ‘not right now’. Of course, this shouldn’t ever come across as a bitter plea, begging to know why they rejected you – instead, make sure you frame this line of questioning as constructive advice to help you with future pitches.

Finding the right influencer for your marketing campaign can make all the difference when it comes to building your brand image and audience and increasing sales. So, it is extremely important to ensure your outreach is perfect!

Although influencer marketing is a relatively young industry, 89% of marketers find it more profitable. Plus to its benefits, influencer marketing has challenges, as well. Lack of regulation in influencer marketing creates new challenges for marketers and brands who seek to use it on their marketing strategies. 

What are the challenges in influencer marketing?

According to the study conducted by Mediakix, one of the biggest challenges of the marketing industry is spotting fake followers and inauthentic engagement. This is followed by social algorithm changes that make content less visible and building an always-on strategy instead of one-off campaigns. Let’s look through those main challenges of the influencer marketing industry and what brands can do about them.

Fake influencer activities

The number one thread in influencer marketing is the growing number of inauthentic influencers with fake followers that increase brands’ concerns about finding the right influencers to work with. Fake bot followers are made to inflate follower numbers and engagement. The aim here is to deceive brands and followers as a trusty channel. Pretty much all social platforms are victims of these fake followers. 

Unfortunately, influencer fraud costs millions of dollars to brands. According to the 2018 report by Points North Group, of the $744 million that brands spent on influencer marketing, $102 million was wasted on fake followers, including Unilever’s brand Dove. Yet no brand was as seriously affected as Raw Sugar Living. The same report showed that 46% of the brand’s influencer marketing budget was eaten into bots and paid followers.

Fake followers are not only a challenge in the influencer marketing industry, but many marketing agencies also suffer from the same fraudulent activities with their digital ads such as fake impressions. 

Luckily, as we already mentioned in our previous blog, there are several methods to spot fake followers like checking influencer growth rate, reading post comments, communication between influencer and followers, and using influencer analytics tools to analyze influencers’ profiles.

Rising influencer marketing costs

The next challenge ahead of brands is the rising cost of influencers. As the demand and industry grow it gets more complicated, more efforts and tools are required to leverage.

How much does the influencer marketing cost? It is a partnership fee that you pay, comprising the type of the content, the influencers’ creativity, campaign duration, influencer engagement, or agency fee. Rising influencer cost is also associated with the bot followers which are used for pretending big influencer profiles in brands’ minds. But does paying more to influencers raise your ROI? Brands need to effectively measure relevant metrics and ROI. 

What to do?

Seemingly low-cost marketing channel in influencer marketing is micro-influencers. Individuals with a small but very active number of followers have more engagement rates and trusty profiles. Micro-influencers are approachable, credible, and generate more engagement rate, 22.2 times higher conversions than the other influencer types.

Changing algorithms

Algorithm is pretty much how the social media platforms operate. First of all, changing algorithms might change engagement rates and your posts’ visibility. From the positive side platforms change algorithms for supporting quality content, and users who post authentically and frequently.

Facebook’s new algorithm for example, amplifies personal accounts’ posts rather than business accounts. So, it allows brands to leverage influencer marketing easily on Facebook or think of Instagram’s no like change. The new model helps brands not to be deceived by bot likes, to work with authentic influencers, and to support paid posts on Instagram. 

Brands have to set their marketing plans based on the existing algorithms. As these algorithms change regularly, brands should adopt new marketing strategies and optimize them according to the changes. These changes put influencers forward who are authentic and have higher engagements, so that brands can easily work with credible influencers. 

In-house team, agency or influencer marketing platform? 

The following challenge to overcome is deciding on in-house team or agency to run influencer campaigns. Considering third party costs on one side, and time spent on influencer search and campaign management on the other side. 

After working on influencer market brands move their influencer marketing management to the internal team. Getting accustomed to the market aspect motivates brands to work solely instead of partnering with influencer marketing agencies or platforms. Despite specialized agencies, database tools, the high budget, and needed experience, marketers committed to run influencer campaigns with an in-house team. 

Influencer marketing agencies work on the campaigns from the influencer finding to the campaign management. They built reputation and trust in brands and influencers’ eyes have expertise. By maintaining relations with influencers and brands, agencies get to know the market well. 

Influencer marketing platforms give brands influencer accounts with relevant metrics and post statistics. On influencer marketing platforms, companies can easily register their brands, filter influencers by different categories, create campaigns and get reports at the end. Along with influencer marketing software, employee advocacy, and influencer analytics tools, Keepface offers influencer lists on different niches. AI-powered products have influencer profiles, performance data, audience analytics, and different other features.

Following trends

As long as brands expand their influencer marketing they should go along with changing trends and reshape their strategies. Here includes responding to on-going trends in a creative way, the emergence of new influencers, allowing UGC, building long-term relations with influencers.

Employee advocacy

While influencers act as trusted agents on behalf of your brand, your employees are even more credible party to promote your brand. Employee advocacy is a smart way of promoting your brand without spending extra money and time. The practical knowledge of these people helps to increase trust and deliver your message even more clearly. The issue with employee advocacy is empowering low-reach people to spread your brand awareness. But if effectively run, employee advocacy can turn followers into real customers. 

Keepface’s Employee Advocacy Tool is designed to amplify your social voice. The tool will help to enhance internal and external communication, keep control over brand voice on social media and report on which platform you perform best. All you need is to set up an employee advocacy campaign and manage it in a single place.

Enhancing content marketing

Content marketing is a modest way of presenting your brand on social media. The important part of building trust is expressing who you are with the help of quality content. However, creating quality content is the rising challenge of content marketing alone. Consistently writing content can lead to neglect quality. Highly experienced brands, pages with a relatively large number of publications sometimes can fail to deliver their messages, cause misunderstanding or just not get enough attention after all. 

What about combining content marketing with influencer marketing? 

Instead of writing long content to publicize your brand, prepare short texts that are plausible for the influencers you picked up. You cannot expect a high reputation from influencers without quality content. 

Simply, you can create content for giveaway campaigns, video, podcast or social media takeovers, branded posts and ask influencers to optimize it in their style or provide influencers with all the text to prevent extra efforts and misleading by influencers.

Increasing video content 

In a world where mobile phones are used as cameras, video content sharing became even more popular. As videos are eye-catching and they generate more engagement. Not surprisingly, algorithms in social platforms also support video content. According to the report, 72% of customers prefer to learn about products and services from videos. Preparing video content requires more time, efforts and in-depth information to share. 

Editing is an important part of video sharing. A clear, polished video is more likely to attract more viewers and brands. We have seen lots of influencers quit YouTube due to the long hours needed for making and editing videos. Also, for brands sponsoring video content is pricier in comparison to photo or story posts. 

Approaching video content as a challenge ahead, brands can sponsor video tutorials or invite influencers for product promotion videos. Preparing video content allows influencers to signify their creativity, share emotions and spur their audience for communicating.

Competition in existing social media platforms

Saturation of the influencer market leads marketers to look for new places. As the number of influencers increases, content becomes repetitive in existing platforms. Moving to new channels is challenging for marketers, in terms of brand compatibility with app features, finding the relevant influencers, getting accustomed to the app usage. The good thing is social platforms support easy communication, creativity, and attract the young generation.  

The increased number of users drives the marketability of platforms. Take the example of TikTok, from clothing to the gaming industry, global brands either enter solely or collaborate with influencers.

Another new channel to leverage influencer marketing is podcast. Authentic influencers with a dedicated audience allow running a cost-effective influencer marketing strategy. The rising popularity of the podcasts opens new doors for brands who are strong-minded on influencer marketing. 

Eventually, all these challenges are connected like a chain. Marketers need to clearly define the goals of influencer marketing strategies and apply them to overcome these.challenges. 

According to the study, 65% of brands plan to increase their budget on influencer marketing in 2020. As more brands start to use influencer marketing, the need for a data-driven approach is increasing. The aim of data-driven influencer marketing strategy is to measure the performance of influencers and how the campaign is going. Thus, data is driven by influencer profiles and used to grow the effectiveness of your investment and estimate the ROI later. In simple words, data-driven influencer marketing is estimating ROI based on the relevant statistics and data taken from the influencer discovery until the end of the project.

Data-driven marketing is for covering all the insecurities brands see and in turn, offer better solutions. Data-driven influencer marketing takes several steps such as influencers discovery, building relations, campaign management, and reporting. Before partnering with influencers, it is important to scan influencers’ profiles, analyze their demographics and branded posts.

Define your goals

All strategies start with defining your goals. Do you want to drive awareness or brand loyalty via influencer marketing? 

Identify what you want to achieve with this campaign and how you plan to manage it. Depending on your goals you decide on platforms, influencers, and content. If your goal is to increase brand awareness, you do not focus on the sales part but the brand mentions, product reviews. But if you want to generate more sales paying influencers is not enough, you need to give coupon codes, special discounts for influencers’ followers. 

Find influencers

After deciding on your goals, the next step is finding influencers. As the number of influencers increasing day by day this phase will take your time. You need the ones who are already in your target audience and have that audience. Successful influencers in your niche have more fame and more sponsored partnerships. At the beginning of influencer marketing, macro-influencers referred to as the best channel for high ROI while now micro-influencers with less than 50K generate more engagement rate and ROI.

Fake influencer activity is another reason to leverage data for advanced influencer search. To deceive a large audience and high engagements influencers do not avoid buying bot followers and likes. This is why finding the right influencers takes beyond demographics, industry, and quality content of influencers. Marketers suggest working with the market experts, agencies and audience analytics tools like Keepface to reduce the time spent and money. 

Decide on the right platform 

Well investigated research allows picking the right platform in terms of content, project goals, region, and etc. Instagram is the number one platform for the number of sponsored posts and the most impactful channel among social media platforms. Keeping in mind that ⅔ of marketers will spend on Instagram for influencer marketing, it can direct brands to optimize their projects for Instagram. However, the saturation of existing markets helps brands to appear in the new platforms with new ideas. TikTok is the second most downloaded non-gaming app in 2019 after Facebook.

Drive data for the on-going projects

Now that you found the right influencers and released the campaign on the right platform, your goal is to reach the target customers at the highest possible rate. To optimize your marketing campaign, you can divide the project into parts and periodically evaluate the relevant metrics. AIDA – sales funnel model is a great way to measure performance. AIDA is an acronym that stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. In essence, the AIDA model proposes that in order to move the consumer through a series of important steps from brand awareness through to action marketing messages need to accomplish a number of tasks. Let’s see what are these tasks and how they can be applied for influencer campaigns.

Awareness

The awareness part is about introducing the product, grabbing your customers’ attention. The simple way to evaluate the project in this round is to check the campaign post, read comments, consider negative and positive views, and analyze how influencers are interacting with followers. This is the only time you can impact the campaign results, expand the reach.

Look at different metrics, like Engagement, Cost per Engagement, Cost per Impression. As the aim of data-driven influencer marketing is to create engagement, focus on authentic posts to reach maximum potential. Higher engagement lowers the cost per engagement. The low cost per engagement implies your every dollar spent smartly. Higher engagement also generates higher impression which in turn, means low Cost per Impression. 

Interest

In the Interest funnel, to keep track of the project add links to the posts to direct customers to your landing page or website and give URLs to influencers to know the best performers. Look at Click-Through Rate. again, higher the CTR means you are working with the right influencers. Following CTR, estimate cost per clicks.

Desire

Now that you the average number of people are eager to buy, increase the visibility of your product, and provide more information. Successful management of this part will lead to getting more customers to find your product a good fit for their desire or to see the solution for a specific problem they are experiencing.

Action

Following all the steps,  check the conversion rate to see which proportion of the visitors made a purchase from the campaign. A higher rate of conversion shows your influencer worked well to direct your potential customers to real buyers. Further, estimate cost per acquisition to see how much each customer action costs. In the end, all these metrics are considered to evaluate ROI. 

Keepface solution 

Because of the time and volume of data marketers recommend third party help. Marketing agencies and influencer marketing platforms know the touchpoints of the market and have the required expertise. Keepface has different tools such as Influencer Analytics, Influencer Marketing Software that provide a full-service influencer database to brands. The tool gives all the metrics and data about influencer and project performance, helps to monitor and optimize all active campaigns, and give reports at the end of all campaigns.

Storytelling is a proven method of transforming information into distinctive knowledge. Storytelling through videos is an even more powerful method to deliver your message, go viral and create social buzz. As more marketers move to video storytelling, the level of competition and the quality of content are rising. The reason why we prefer videos over articles is videos are explanatory and more persuasive to know a product. Video marketing helps to increase user understanding, web traffic, and leads. Including video links to email also increases the CTR rate.

Lock audience to the video

It is demanding to capture your audience’s attention in a competitive environment. Whether you start video marketing to tell your story or it’s part of your regular marketing strategy, your video content should stick people to your brand. How? 

For a compelling video start with an eye-catching beginning. For example, you can start by asking a question to make your audience focus on the central point and look for the answer through the video. Or, provide your real case examples during the interviews or how-to videos.

Optimize videos for the platforms 

After creating content, readjusting your video for the relevant platforms is the next important step. Video concepts include tutorials, product videos, behind-the-scenes, interviews, and many more. Depending on the needs you can focus on different types of video posts, such as stories, live streams, and IG TV.

Create an Instagram account 

Whether you are a fashion brand or a financial institute, Instagram will ease communication with your audience and drive awareness. Instagram story is a nice way to daily interact with your audience. Story content can be introducing your brand, releasing teasers of your new products, highlighting the FAQs, reposting from your customers and employees’ posts.

The following video type is an Instagram feed video that lasts up to 59 seconds. To grab the audience’s attention, you need to make more glassy feed videos. It can be quick tutorials of your products, explaining some key terms, teasers of your YouTube videos, behind-the-scenes,  maybe introducing your employees or sharing your New Year office party. 

Do not forget Live Steaming

The live streaming can be used for Q&As, expert interviews, broadcasting your conferences. It is good to see your engaged audience in real-time. According to Google ad research, longer videos create more emotional ties between people. Long videos allow delivering your message in more in-depth ways. 

Create special videos for IGTV

You can use IGTV for a variety of purposes such as posting interviews with your brand experts covering most requested questions, social ads, create fun content such as showing a day in your office, video tutorial of your products or testing of new products. It is not recommended to create long videos at the beginning. Keep in mind, your IGTV video should differ from your feed videos or stories. 

Videos reflect your company values

Similar to the other platforms, you need to define your goals for YouTube marketing. Besides creating a better understanding of your brand, videos are also to share your values. Good advertising videos always have an emotional touch to viewers.

The global brand Coco-Cola launched an emotional campaign for Christmas called Coco-Cola: The Last Customer. The campaign aimed at gifting people who work at Christmas season overtime at restaurants, shopping malls, markets and do not have enough time to spend the holiday with their families. The last customers were the employees the stores, restaurants and who rewarded with the presents for their hard work. The brand’s commitment was to show their courtesy to their customers and give love in the season of love. 

Design is important 

Once you created content and made a video, the next comes presenting your video to the people. For compelling video let’s look at some of the key steps.

• Pick a title that is relevant to your topic and keep it simple. 
• The quality thumbnail is another required step for a convincing channel.
• Write in the description box about a quick intro or overview of the topic and link your website, social media accounts or email address and relevant hashtags to ease reaching out to you.
• As we already know, SEO is an inseparable part of digital marketing. 
• Use the required tools to boost your videos. 

See your rivals 

Besides, updating your content and channel, always keep your eyes on your competitors’ video marketing practice. Watch their videos, analyze marketing techniques, the messages they are giving and read comments to see what customers expect from them

Can TikTok be your marketing channel?

Once you have set up your channels in old platforms do not be afraid to go to new apps. With over 500 million monthly active users TikTok is one of the most used social platforms. If you are thinking about using TikTok as your next marketing tool just consider your target audience, their demographics, age, and interest. Content that is fun, challenging and sharable will capture your audience’s attention. Brands can create challenges with the relevant hashtags for holding their audience. Either by launch a hashtag or search for the hashtags and generate shareable and funny content. For being professional, place your brand hashtags on the discovery page.

You can also work with TikTok influencers to show your presence on different social channels. As the young generation is a huge part of TikTok users and video gamers, video gaming company EA Sports made the influencer marketing campaign with Brent Rivera. The comedy influencer posted the video of him playing the game Apex Legends. The other video was partnered with Gil Croes where he was playing Plants vs. Zombies and got over 500K likes. Apart from working with big influencers, EA Sports marketing strategy covers influencers from different backgrounds and audience size. The brand collaborated with freestyler Indi Cowie. The footballer was shooting her freestyling in public for FIFA 2020.