The Definitive Guide to Influencer Marketing

Chapter 2: Campaign Setup

Now that you’ve outlined the goals and guidelines of your campaign, it’s time to start putting the pieces in motion. And for influencer marketing campaigns, the most important piece is probably the influencer! Finding influencers can feel overwhelming, but Heepsy makes it easy. We’ll walk you through everything you need to know when searching for and selecting influencers.

Influencer Marketing Guide > Campaign Setup> 2.1. Finding the right influencers

GUIDE NAVIGATOR

0. Introduction
1. Campaign Definition
2. Campaign Setup
3. Campaign Launch
4. Campaign Monitoring
- 4.1. Detecting & collecting published media
- 4.2. Tips & tricks for following up
5. Campaign Analysis
- 5.1. Analyzing a campaign's results
- 5.2. Expectations vs. reality: the report
Glossary

2.1. Finding the right influencers

First off, when it comes to nano or micro influencers, a majority of their audience tends to be from the same country or even the same region as the influencer. Macro and mega influencers, however, usually have audiences spread across the country, or even across the world.

Nano/micro influencers also tend to be more prone to accept collaborations based on products or experiences, while higher tier influencers will likely only work for a fee. It’s critical to understand what you’re prepared to offer before starting your influencer search, as it will help narrow down your parameters before you even get online.

Furthermore, if you want to launch a national campaign, try to make an impact across different categories of social media, and use different influencers to help you accomplish that. For example, for a national sports campaign, you might want to contract influencers who focus on various sports, as well as fitness, health, crossfit, etc...

Searching on Instagram

Here’s another checklist, this time with questions you should ask yourself while looking for influencers directly on Instagram:

Do you have any influencers who are already fans? 

Analyze your own brand’s followers. If you find an influencer among them, chances are they’ll want to work with you.

Have you been mentioned?

Look through all the instances in which your brand has been mentioned on Instagram. If you find an influencer who already uses your products, they’d probably be down to collaborate.

Do they produce quality content?

Does the influencer take time to curate their content? Do they have a clear aesthetic? Check to see if their content aligns with your brand’s mission and aesthetic.

What’s the influencer’s follower/following ratio?

Remember that if the influencer has a ratio close to 1, they may be using the follow/unfollow strategy.

Is their engagement good for their industry?

Engagement rates vary based on how many followers an influencer has, and also based on their industry. (You can calculate this using Instagram, but it’s much easier using Heepsy).

How often do they post?

Depending on the goals of your campaign, you may want only one post, or you may want several. If so, make sure the influencer has the capacity to post at the rhythm you want.

Have they collaborated with other brands?

If you see that an influencer has worked on various other campaigns, look at what kind of content they created and the engagement of those posts, particularly for collaborations within your same industry. Check to see if they’ve worked with your competitors, as this could affect a collaboration with you.

Does the influencer’s audience align with your target audience?

Analyze the demographics of the influencer’s audience to see if they’d be interested in your brand. (Not to be too repetitive, but this is something that’s much easier with Heepsy).

Who follows your competitors?

Analyze your competitors’ followers to see what they’re interested in. You may be able to find new people to add to your target audience.

Searching on Heepsy

Heepsy was built to make your influencer searches seamless. The software uses data that comes directly from Instagram, so you can rest assured that the information you get is the real deal. Heepsy allows you to search according to various filters, and gives you immediate metrics about any influencers who you think may be suitable for your campaign.

How to search

When you log onto Heepsy, at the very top of the page, you can search for a specific handle, location or keyword. You can also choose if you want to search on Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok. And beneath that, you can choose from some common categories.

Once you select one of those criteria, you’ll see some results and at the left hand side, the other search filters.

Followers: This filter lets you set the number of followers you want a profile to have.

Publications: Search according to the number of posts or the most recent post.

Engagement: Look for influencers who have low/high engagement, or for an exact engagement rate.

Influencer Type: See only influencers who have been verified by the social network you're searching for.

Contact: See which influencers have public contact details available, or which have a presence on other social networks.

Audience: Check out an influencer’s audience, and its gender, age, location, language, and interests. Search using those parameters and the percentage of the audience that you want to fulfill them.

Authenticity: Sort influencers based on their authenticity (the overall quality score calculated by Heepsy), or their percentage of real followers.

Promotional Activity: Search according to cost estimate or percentage of branded posts.

Tips for optimizing your Heepsy search

Using Heepsy’s search filters is easy! But just in case you’re still a bit lost as to how to conduct a thorough search, we’ve laid out some additional tips to make the process easier:

Search categories independently of each other.

You’ll get more results if you search for your target categories separately. For example, search first for “Fashion, and then separately for Beauty. If you mix categories during the same search, you might miss out on some good results.

Don’t shut out certain categories.

If you’re a makeup brand, you’ll probably jump right into the Beauty or Make-Up category, which is a logical place to start. But, to make sure you’ve covered all your bases, why not try related keywords like cosmetics, or related categories like Lifestyle? You may find an influencer that better matches your objectives but who wasn’t in your original category.

Leave a margin on your search ranges.

If you’re interested in influencers who have between 10K-25K followers, search for 5K-30K. You may be pleasantly surprised by someone who didn’t fall into your initial range. And remember that influencers with relatively few followers aren’t useless; influencers with just 5K followers often have higher engagement rates. But, if you want to use Instagram’s Swipe-Up feature, keep in mind that the account must have at least 10K followers.

Use keywords for niches.

If you want to search for an influencer that falls into a very specific market, it’s best to not filter by any category and instead use a keyword search. Say you want to find travel influencers who live in their vans. Try keywords related to that: van, vanlife, roadlife. The results that appear will be from users who have used those keywords somewhere in their profile.

Use keywords for specific locations.

If you’re targeting a specific city and not getting enough search results, try searching for the place as a keyword. If you’re a restaurant looking for food influencers in San Francisco, and searching by location doesn’t bring up enough results, clear all the filters and try keywords: San Francisco and variations like SanFran or SF. This way you’ll get profiles who mention the city in some way in their bio.

Search for healthy engagement.

Avoid profiles with low engagement rates. Likewise, you should discard profiles with engagement above 20%, as this usually comes from purchased likes and comments. Normal, healthy profiles tend to hover between 3% and 10%, although there are always exceptions. Some nano or micro influencers may have higher engagement.

Use the audience filter.

Heepsy offers you the chance not only to analyze influencers, but also their audiences. This is an extremely useful tool, because you can’t assume that an influencer’s demographics mirrors their audience’s demographics 100%. While the two usually share common traits, you’ll sometimes run into surprises. Don’t forget to utilize the audience filter to make sure you’re hitting your target.