Influencers are powerful allies for brands looking to drive awareness and sales. In fact, 70% of US consumers are more likely to buy a product from a brand if they work with an influencer they know and trust.
Even better? Influencer partners can help marketers reach different types of audiences in an authentic way.
Below we walk you through three examples that illustrate how to find top influencers that are not only a good fit for your brand, but have the potential to help you reach new and engaged audiences.
3 Examples of How to Find and Partner with Top Influencers
Use data and a performance-driven mindset like BFGoodrich
BFGoodrich is an American brand founded 150 years ago that has always placed two values at the center of what they do: performance and passion. The brand sells both off-road and everyday consumer tires, but is actually best known in motorsports like rally raid (a type of off-road racing).
While the BFGoodrich is well known in motorsport, the brand wanted to broaden its brand awareness by reaching a younger and bolder audience.
To narrow their search, the team decided to look for influencers that embody its brand values of “performance and passion”, eventually deciding to focus on Red Bull athletes in non-automobile sports.
To select the specific influencers for its campaign, the brand combed through Red Bull athletes, identifying those in extreme sports that match the brand’s values. Then, they analyzed their social media profiles using Traackr to select and validate their choice partners based on performance metrics like:
- Audience credibility and quality - the team wanted to find influencers that had audiences of real, engaged people. Using Traackr, they were able to see whether potential partners had followers that are bots, spam accounts, or people who follow so many accounts that they’ll never see that influencer’s content
- Engagement rate over time - the team wanted top influencers that have a proven track record. Using Traackr, they looked for influencers that had high average engagement rates from months of content, thus ensuring they had consistent performance.
- Audience demographic data and affinities - the team wanted to top influencers that have audiences that are relevant to its brand and product. Using Traackr, they were able to search for influencers that have followers that are interested in sport and other brands in the industry.
- Historical content - the team wanted to ensure that its influencer partners would feel authentic to the brand. Using Traackr, they were able to search through past content in order to evaluate whether their messaging and tone are in line with the BFGoodrich’s image and values.
To find out the results of this strategy, read the full case study about BFGoodrich and finding top influencers.
Tap into real-life networks and employ a multi-tier strategy like hims & hers
hims & hers is a multi-specialty telehealth platform that enables access to treatments for a broad range of conditions, including those related to sexual health, hair loss, dermatology, mental health and primary care.
While the brand has found success with one-off partnerships, it wanted to shift towards an “always-on” strategy where influencers serve as ambassadors and voices for the brand.
In order to identify influencers that would make great long-term partners, the team got creative, relying on a combination of data analytics and smart strategic decisions. This included:
- Tapping into real-life networks. hims & hers supplemented its thorough influencer search (using data, audience demographics, and historical content) with real-life networking. After all, influencer marketing is all about relationships! The brand asked the agents, marketers, and others in its industry network if they knew any influencers who were passionate or interested in their mission/theme.
- Employing a multi-tier strategy. hims & hers knew it was important to not rely on one type of influencer, but instead aim for diversity. The team developed a multi-tiered approach, partnering with influencers who have big followings, and also including lower tiers (nanos, micros, mids) in their roster as well. Tip: this strategy is data proven! Traackr’s Influencer Marketing Impact Report showed that nano and micro influencers are posted more in 2022 with increasing results.
- Focusing on the tie between customer persona and influencer type. Diversity means much more than just having broad tier coverage. The hims & hers team knew that partnering with influencers from all different life stages, situations, and backgrounds was critical for inclusive representation, and for ensuring that influencer content would resonate with all types of customers.
“Influencers often directly relate to their followers, which opens up the door for brands to reach their entire customer base — not just one persona. There are many stories that tie into a product, so start with a holistic understanding of why a customer would care. Once you identify those elements you will discover just how many stories and perspectives there are to share.” — Bette Ann Fialkov, Influencer & Entertainment Marketing Consultant (hims & hers, Google, Lyft)
To learn more about this strategy, read the full story about hims & hers and finding top influencers.
Dig into brand values and voice like Beekman 1802
Beekman 1802 is a prestige goat milk-based skincare brand, known for its creative marketing, built on a strong brand of kindness and trust. As an indie brand it has its work cut out for it since it has a smaller team and less resources than some of its bigger competitors.
The brand wanted to find a creative way to access millennial audiences - not only elevating brand awareness, but building its authority in the skincare industry and driving in-store sales for two new product offerings at Ulta Beauty.
From the onset, the team decided to focus its energy on TikTok. Why? Because after conducting research they felt that TikTok had the greatest potential to help them quickly build brand awareness and adoption amongst millennials. In order to find top influencers, the team:
- Defined its brand voice on TikTok. Before the team even started looking for influencer partners, it decided it was key to understand what worked for the brand on TikTok. So, Beekman 1802’s diverse employee network spent a few months creating and testing content. They found that the content that resonated the most with audiences was authentic, unfiltered, and value-packed which gave them a sense of what to look for in potential partner’s content.
- Defined its brand values as it relates to influencer partners. The team also decided that it was important for influencer partners to be able to represent the brand’s playful and creative brand personality, and feature its core values - such as kindness and trust. As a result, the team developed an “Influencer Rubric” that was used in all partnership evaluations.
- Developed specific goals and categories for influencer partners. The team then defined four categories of content in order to determine which influencers they would partner with. The categories included: educational, entertaining, value-specific (featuring messaging around kindness), and sales driving. This led to the team selecting a mix of beauty and non-beauty influencers — some were new and up-and-coming (e.g. Katie Beth Miedenar) and some were well established in the beauty industry (e.g. Dr. Dustin Portela).
To find out the results of this strategy, read the full case study about Beekman 1802 and finding top influencers.
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