7 Ways to Find Influencers in Any Niche

Running an effective marketing strategy is at the core of every business on its growth path. Taking this step is necessary due to the extreme competitiveness in the modern market.

Luckily, the growth of the internet and social media networks has enabled businesses to create unique strategies.

One of the increasingly popular marketing methods is influencer marketing. It’s an effective way of getting your brand before a broad audience from various walks of life. You’ll find that you need to take several steps to find influencers in any niche. They usually include:

Create a budget and a strategy
Incorporate tools to save time
Explore hashtags
Trust social media suggestions
Examine your followers
Find top influencer lists
Analyze the influencer’s audience

Before we jump into explaining these ways of finding influences, let’s first explore who they are and why working with them is beneficial.

Who Is an Influencer?

An influencer is an individual with a considerable following. When someone mentions the word influencer, every one envisions people on social media networks. However, various types of individuals receive a lot of following online.

An influencer can be a:

An industry expert
Corporation leader
Celebrity
Blogger
Social media content creator
A Brand

You’ll find numerous types of influencers online, but one common thing is their community. Influencers honestly communicate with a community of people around them, which creates a certain degree of trust.

Depending on the follower numbers, as Mark Schaefer states in Marketing Rebellion, you’ll find nano-influencers, micro-influencers, professionals, macro-influencers, and celebrities. The rule of thumb is that the smaller the number of followers, the higher the degree of trust.

Why Should You Work With Them?

Working with influencers has several significant benefits for businesses.

It is an affordable form of advertising.
You get to reach out to various audiences.
Get better conversion rates by leveraging the trust between influencers and their audience.

Since approaching a celebrity with millions of followers comes with huge costs, you can always turn to smaller creators. They’re more affordable yet still effective as they have closer relationships with their audience.

You might be looking at influencers in the same industry, but that doesn’t mean they have the same audiences. Working with several influencers will allow you to advertise your product or service to various audiences.

Getting higher conversion rates will require you to think of an intelligent strategy, but doing it is possible. The critical factor is to leave it to the influencer to introduce your product or service naturally. They know their audiences best and what’s going to work best.

1. Create a Budget and a Strategy

Starting your influencer marketing campaign without a detailed plan and a set goal is not optimal to promote your business. So the first thing you need to do is make your budget.

Taking this step will impact whether you’ll be using the best influencer search tools, which influencers you’ll be working with, and how many team members will search for them. After setting a budget, it’s time to set a goal and create a step-by-step strategy.

Figure out the purpose of your campaign.

Are you planning to increase sales?
Do you want better brand awareness?
Is your follower count something you’d like to change?

Answer all these questions so you can create a strategy that will deliver the desired results.

2. Incorporate Tools to Save Time

Once you’ve set a budget, established your goals, and created a strategy, it’s time to pick the tools that’ll help you keep your team effective. Before you decide which one to choose, there are several essential things to consider.

Pricing — The first step to consider is the tool’s price. Given how competitive the automation software market is, you’ll likely be able to find a tool that brings the best value for your needs.
Supported platforms — Not all tools support the platforms where you’re looking for influencers. See which tools work with the social media network you’ll need, and opt for it.
Available features — What are the features on offer? Choose a tool that comes with a rich account database. It’ll make it easier for you to find the influencer and reach out to them.

For example, some of the tools that you could consider are

Wishpond — Partially automating the whole process is a great way to save time. Wishpond is a great choice to streamline your digital marketing efforts.
trendHERO — You can find plenty of information about Instagram followers with this tool. It displays account quality for millions of Instagram profiles.
Awario — Awario is unique because it lets you detect your brand mentions on social media channels. Explore who’s talking about your product. One of those mentions might be coming from an influencer.
Traackr — This tool comes with its database of influencers, but more importantly, you can use it to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Upfluence — Besides offering influencer search functionalities, Upfluence supports numerous integrations. Use it in combination with your other software tools.

Instead of doing everything manually, use them to see who are great influencers in the industry of your interest.

3. Explore Hashtags

Hashtags are a great source of outstanding accounts on the majority of social media networks. While they became popular with Twitter, hashtags are equally helpful for Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, and many other social media networks.

They are helpful because the results you see for a particular hashtag are the most popular posts. It means that many people have interacted with that content, and it’s likely that you’ll find a popular account with some following.

After finding an account that suits your brand’s needs, you can directly reach out to the influencer. Another option is to create a spreadsheet where you’ll store all the user accounts you’ve found helpful alongside their contact details.

You can access the gathered information later and uniquely approach the influencer. For example, you can design a unique email signature to show how authentic you are. An intelligent email signature marketing approach will positively affect the number of replies you’ll get.

Doing this will establish trust from the moment an influencer sees your email.

Creating a list of all the relevant accounts will take some time, as there are numerous hashtags to explore. Turn the whole process into a daily routine and build that spreadsheet list. You’ll quickly have a list of influencers to contact.

4. Trust Social Media Suggestions

Social media platforms deploy various algorithms to make the best suggestions for you. Their goal is to keep you using the app. For example, when you head over to the Explore section of Instagram, you’ll see numerous images and videos.

Start exploring these suggestions. You’ll see that this content has high engagement. Similar to hashtags, you’ll notice that social media networks create suggestions from popular accounts for you. That’s another way to find an influencer who’s ready for collaboration.

Furthermore, if you continue searching for particular terms, you’ll receive the most relevant results that are at the same time popular.

Another great example is TikTok, which features a For You page from the moment you enter the app, showing you the most popular videos from various influencers.

5. Examine Your Followers

You can begin your influencer search by examining your followers. There’s a chance that you might come across a micro-influencer among your followers. But more importantly, it’s crucial to explore who your followers are following.

Is there an influencer they’re following, and who are they? Discovering this is an excellent way of finding an influencer who has a following that might be interested in what you have to offer.

No matter how small or big your follower count is, you should explore it and find relevant accounts that would be great partners for promoting your business.

6. Find Top Influencer Lists

There are plenty of free platforms that list the most popular influencers by category. You have to do your search and pick the possible influencers that suit your collaboration needs. Head over to the search engine of your choice and start searching for influencers lists.

You’ll quickly find countless sources showcasing accounts with thousands and millions of followers.

If you’re interested in specific niches, add them to your search queries to get more relevant details.

7. Analyze Influencer’s Audience

Searching for influencers is one thing, but deciding who you’re going to work with is another. There are several crucial elements to consider before making the final choice. They are:

The number of followers — Keep in mind that a higher follower count will mean a higher price. However, it’s not necessarily the best choice for your brand. Therefore, find an influencer with a follower number that is within your budget.
Who is the audience? — It’s not just about the numbers. Who is following this influencer? Do they match your target audience? If they are followed primarily by teenagers and your product is for parents in their thirties, you won’t get any sales. These are all the things to keep in mind.
Audience engagement — What’s the number of interactions on every post? Higher engagement shows an active audience that pays attention to what the influencer is sharing.
Influencer’s location — If your business is offering services only locally, you’ll have to partner up with influencers who are nearby.
Niche — Is the influencer’s niche in any way related to your business? If yes, that’s a green light for collaboration. However, if that’s not the case, you should consider working with someone else.

You’ll be able to make an informed decision only after taking everything into account. Therefore, examine all the above points before you decide to reach out to the influencer.

Concluding Thoughts

Influencer marketing is popular for a good reason. As mentioned above, it’s a great way to get your service and product before millions of potential customers. It carries a lot of value, but finding the right partner is a process that takes time.

If you want to learn through the whole process, remember to track the metrics you’re planning to improve. See what works and what doesn’t so you can adjust your strategy for better results.

The best part is that you get to build friendships while growing your business!

Written by our guest writer Andrii, CMO at trendHERO

With 9+ years of experience in digital marketing. He started as an email marketing manager, moving on to copywriting – and for the last three years, has been focused on analytics and influencer discovery.

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