Influencer marketing has become commonplace in the past few years. The Business Insider predicts the investments increase in this type of marketing: by the end of 2022, it is expected to reach $15 billion. Businesses are not afraid to spend money on influencers. The survey shows that 89% of marketers who already tried cooperating with influencers admit that ROI from this marketing type is comparable or better than other channels. You can find a lot of information on influencer marketing on the Internet, but the specific instructions on working with them are still lacking. In our article, we will overview the existing types of influencers and discover where to find them.
Who Are Influencers?
Let's start with the basics - who do we call influencers and what types of influencers exist?
An influencer is a collective term that brings together different opinion leaders: celebrities, bloggers, video bloggers. Many continue to refer to opinion leaders as bloggers. It is important to understand that not all celebrities and public figures are bloggers. Through social networks, they primarily talk about their life and work, as many people do. Bloggers, on the other hand, initially chose blogging as their job, and not as an addition to their professional activities or creativity. To choose an influencer who will profit your business, you need to know the types of influencers and the niches they occupy. Below we offer our classification.
Types of influencers
Influencers can be differentiated by
- Type of content;
- Audience size;
- Influencer status.
By the type of content, the influencers are divided into the following categories: 1. Bloggers All bloggers can be specified by niches and sites. Understanding what niche a blogger occupies is important for making the right choice and effective collaboration. If you are a beauty brand, then you are unlikely to go with an offer of cooperation to a gamer. We distinguish these types of bloggers by niche:
- Beauty bloggers;
- Fashion bloggers;
- Travel bloggers;
- Food bloggers;
- Fitness/sports/healthy lifestyle bloggers;
- Lifestyle bloggers;
- Gaming bloggers;
- Auto bloggers;
- Coaching bloggers;
- Movie bloggers and others.
Bloggers mainly use two platforms: YouTube and Instagram.
YouTube bloggers
- Reviewers. As a rule, reviewers talk about a niche topic, sharing their own opinions and assessments. Reviewers can talk about fashion, beauty, travel, cars, and so on;
- Gamers and streamers. They play popular video games online with screen sharing to the audience;
- Prankers. Prank videos usually include jokes and social experiments on strangers. The scenes are recorded on a hidden camera, and then published on YouTube;
- Show hosts. It is important to understand that many show hosts are originally journalists and use YouTube exclusively as a platform. They may not consider themselves as bloggers, but the chosen platform allows them to be classified as bloggers on formal grounds, especially since some of them receive YouTube Golden Buttons.
Instagram bloggers
- Photo bloggers. Their content consists of photos on a specific topic. They photograph people, cities, skyscrapers, cars, food, etc.;
- Niche bloggers. Occupy any of the niches. Sometimes they successfully combine several at once: beauty, lifestyle, fitness and others.
- Viners. They shoot very short videos called “vines” to share some life moments. You can also think of a vine as a sort of a video tweet.
2. Celebrities These are famous athletes, artists, musicians, designers, models, and so on. Celebrities can also be divided into several categories by the content they offer:
- Creators. Their content is closely related to what they perform: musicians, artists, fashion designers - they all create a specific tangible product;
- Reviewers. Journalists, models, stylists, TV presenters. In the case of celebrities, reviewers are more observers: they share their opinions and experiences on different topics;
- Computer Graphics Interface (CGI) influencers. A completely fictional character can also become an influencer. Such blogs are created by programmers and designers. Videos and photos that are posted on social networks are similar to real ones, but in fact, the characters do not exist - this is the work of artificial intelligence.
The concept of advertising through GGI influencers raises a lot of disputes. How can they promote products they can't try? Should companies and brands be transparent in the creation or use of virtual influencers? These are questions every business has to think over before starting an ad campaign with such an influencer.
By the audience size, we divide all influencers into three broad categories:
- Micro-influencers As the name suggests, these accounts have a relatively small number of followers, starting at a couple thousand. However, this group of accounts is becoming increasingly attractive for influencer marketing as it has a live audience. We are sure you are also subscribed to some niche account with several thousand subscribers.
- Macro influencers These medium-sized accounts have audiences ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of followers. Most often, brands work with such accounts, because they have a large reach, but at the same time retain their uniqueness.
- Mega influencers These people have millions of followers. For certain purposes, huge celebrity reach and the ability to generate viral content can be incredibly useful. At the same time, their services are the most expensive, and their content can seem insincere due to a large amount of advertising. And for successful influencer marketing, sincerity and live communication are essential.
Finally, by the status, the influencers can also be divided into three groups:
Brand ambassadors An ambassador is a person hired by a company to present a brand from a positive side and help increase brand awareness and sales. Do not confuse a brand ambassador with an advertising person - a person who is only a part of the company's advertising image.
Brand ambassadors can be external and internal:
- External ambassadors are invited from outside to spread a word about a company or brand;
- Internal ambassadors are usually the employees of a company, its management staff. Many companies strive to turn all of their employees into brand ambassadors. Many major brands are developing corporate ambassadorship.
Brand advocates A brand advocate is a specialist, expert, or speaker whose opinion has an impact in a critical moment for the brand. Oftentimes, brand advocates are satisfied and loyal customers whose experience with the brand has been positive in every aspect.
Brand evangelists An evangelist is a loyal brand user who is ready to defend its interests and spread the good word about the brand. These are brand advocates who volunteer to speak on behalf of the brand. Marketing evangelism is a more advanced and sophisticated form of word of mouth. The companies develop such a strong belief in a product or service in their customers that customers naturally start recommending the product or services to others. Companies’ founders often become brand evangelists, since no one else knows about the product so well. One of the most prominent evangelists of his brand was Steve Jobs. Regardless of the category, all influencers have something in common - high-quality content and an engaged audience. And this could be the basis for successful partnerships between brands and influencers. Finding the right influencer can become a challenge though. In 2019, the international agency Mediakix surveyed marketers and found out that 61% of respondentsconsider finding relevant influencers for an ad campaign difficult. How To Find Influencers? Influencer marketing is a relatively new method of promotion on social media, but it is rapidly gaining ground. In two years, the industry has doubled, from $ 6.5 billion in 2019 to $ 13.8 billion in 2021:
Influencers play an important role in closing the distance between consumers and brands. They win over people. People follow influencers because they trust their opinion and want to emulate their lifestyles. As a result, they listen to their recommendations. For buyers, trust when making a purchase decision is as important as the price. Below we consider 7 ways to find influencers for successful collaborations.
Partnership programs
This way turns the search process around, as these are influencers to find you! As brand ambassadors, influencers receive free merchandise or exclusive offers in exchange for sponsored posts for a certain period. Partnership programs are more formalized and allow influencers to earn a commission from the sales of the products they are promoting for your brand by telling their followers about them. This is usually recorded using unique referral codes that are assigned to each influencer and allow you to track the frequency of their activation. The more attractive the program is, the more interest it will generate. The number of applications from influencers will depend on the commission you offer. Rumours spread quickly and you will start receiving requests from influencers willing to collaborate with you.
Industry-related forums
Each industry has its specialized forums where everyone involved in the topic can share opinions, ideas, and recommendations. Some influencers write their expert articles, leave commentaries, and answer questions under such publications. If you are familiar with the forums that are popular among your target audience, you can try searching for an influencer there by scrolling through the posts and looking for those mostly supported by the users. Most authors have bio pages with links to their social media profiles, so you can quickly find out if they have followers. If you succeed, then you can proceed with a direct message and collaboration offer.
Conferences
In some industries, such as marketing, for example, influencers are frequent guests at conferences, webinars, and other events. Popular event sites in your niche are a good source for finding bloggers to collaborate with. The easiest way is to find conference sites that are popular in your niche and browse their speaker listings.
Existing customers
Don’t underestimate your existing client database. You can find micro-influencers among your customers. Open your clients’ social media pages, analyze what they talk about and how they interact with the audience. You can use the content created by the user you already know personally to promote your brand. We also recommend looking through the clients’ followers. You will see the influencers your clients trust. Perhaps among them, you will find the right person to collaborate with.
Social media marketing
The market is huge. Instagram alone has more than 500,000 influencers. It means that each brand has the opportunity to find “their” bloggers and get a good return from the collaboration. But first of all, you need to know how to recognize them. Use the RRR rule: Relevance: the influencer shares content that is relevant to your business and industry in general. If so, then the target audience already matches yours. Reach: the number of blogger subscribers, the average coverage of the publications and the activity of followers. Resonance: the potential level of engagement an influencer can bring to your brand. Remember that “more” doesn’t always mean “better”. It makes no sense to have a huge number of subscribers if the advertisement doesn’t resonate with the target audience. It will be a waste of money. On the other hand, the return on integration with micro-influencers can be many times greater, since they have a more niche and engaged audience.
Agencies
Agencies specializing in launching ad campaigns with influencers on certain sites usually have their established base of proven opinion leaders. Remember that many of such influencers work on an exclusive basis. For example, some bloggers cooperate with a certain agency. Together they have already implemented several advertising campaigns. This allows such an agency to accurately predict the reach of every ad post for each blogger and launch an ad campaign for you as soon as possible.
Dedicated solutions
Influencer marketing is evolving very quickly. Therefore, special solutions have already been created to help brands select the right influencers to cooperate with, like the one from BuzzGuru. They provide you with the opportunity to filter the influencers by location, age, number of subscribers, likes, engagement, and so on. Other useful options include creating your influencers lists, choosing the social network to cooperate with, and more. By clicking on a name from the list, you can view the influencer profile and decide if this person can help you with your ad campaign. Solutions like the one offered by BuzzGuru influencer search and discovery intelligence significantly reduce the time spent on the manual search for influencers in social networks. Monotonous work on finding the influencers ready to cooperate is already done. You only have to start using the tool!
Summing Up
Influencer marketing is not the future, but the present. Using this promotion method, active brands rise to the top positions in their industry, and companies that do not take into account the benefits of influencer marketing lag behind and fade into the background. In case you have any difficulty in finding the “dream influencer” for your ad campaign, contact us - together we will resolve any issue and connect you with the right influencers.
