A Majority of Marketers Realize:
Influencer marketing has come to stay.
More than 7 out of 10 marketing professionals use influencer marketing. This usage corroborates how important this marketing field has become to multiple industries such as fashion, lifestyle, beauty, and many more.
Especially Instagram is of utmost importance for most marketers. According to a study by Linqia, 93% of marketers believe that Instagram is the most essential channel for influencer marketing campaigns.
Companies make 6.5$ in revenue on average for every dollar spent on influencer marketing.
Most companies recognize by now that influencer marketing can be a tremendous revenue generator. However, it is still a challenge for them to find suitable niche influencers.
What Are Niche Influencers?
Vacationing in Hawaii, chartering a yacht, or learning soccer tips: Niche influencers post content on a specific subject. They are experts in their particular fields and distinguish themselves by their close bond with their followers.
Most people have heard of nano-, micro-, and macro-influencers. Niche influencers fall mainly into the categories of nano- and micro-influencers.
Nano influencers are social media users below 10,000 followers. Micro-influencers have up to 50,000 followers. At Growth Hackers, we’ve worked with dozens of niche influencers (Fashion, beauty, tech, finance…), and campaigns leveraging their trusted connections see 76% higher engagement compared to broad-reach influencers.
The small size of these influencers is an enormous advantage. Most niche influencers are connectors who got to know their audience personally or over a long time online. This communication effort increases the trust between the audience and the influencer.
Niche Influencers: A few Benefits for Your Company
Working with niche influencers may have an enormous impact on your enterprise. There are a variety of advantages, such as:
- higher brand recognition
- increased trust factor
- additional sales opportunities
- and reaching new target groups
Particularly, niche influencers can help you with forging a stronger bond with followers. Users have a special relationship with niche influencers. A variety of studies confirm that micro and nano influencers have higher engagement rates than users with millions of followers.
This is the reason why followers are more likely to purchase a product, interact with influencers’ content and recommend it to their friends.
For companies, it might be interesting to open up new target groups by working with influencers. Let’s say you are the managing director of a hotel in New Jersey. From January to June, many professionals spend their time at your hotel. In July and August, it is nearly empty.
Then, it could be lucrative to target families with children to visit your hotel. A cooperation with a family influencer would be promising. In fact, one of our hospitality clients struggled with low summer occupancy until Growth Hackers partnered them with family-focused niche influencers, and bookings surged by 64% in just 4 months.
Do you want to find reliable niche influencers to reach your target audience accurately?
Contact Growth Hackers
How to Find Niche Influencers: 5 Methods for Your Success
Experienced marketing professionals acknowledge:
Finding suitable, high-quality influencers is sometimes like locating a needle in a haystack.
You must take influencers’ engagement rates into account. Without checking these rates, most influencer campaigns will fail. Engagement rates deliver a first clue on how well an influencer is going to perform. In this case, it does not matter whether you plan a story, feed, or reel cooperation. It applies to all kinds of campaigns.
Hence, it is an easy method to weed out fake influencers. You can focus on cooperations with suitable influencers that push your brand forward.
1. Hashtags and Keywords
One option is to check fitting hashtags and keywords. If you know the proper topics your brand is interested in; you can detect influencers in this manner. This tactic is worthwhile as a starting point for your influencer search.
Research appropriate social media stars by using tools like KWfinder and Google Trends.
Just type #fashionblog_usa into the Instagram search, and you will find US-American influencers who focus on fashion content. However, you should not spend too much time focusing on hashtags and keywords.
As soon as you find suitable influencers, visit their profile. Instagram will display similar influencers when you click on the blue button with a downwards arrow.
This tip is one of the easiest ways to find similar influencers in a specific niche.
2. Influencer Marketing Databases
Would you like to pass on the hassle of researching laboriously influencers? Another method is to purchase a subscription to an influencer marketing database.
Databases list influencers, their audience size, regularly used platforms, and contact details. Furthermore, the majority of these providers offer analytics services for a first evaluation of the influencers’ quality.
Nevertheless, my personal opinion is that these membership options do not make sense long-term.
You pay much money for information you can find out on your own. Especially for companies interested in working regularly with influencers, create your own influencer research documents. Even though, some information changes over time, you own the information yourself.
Additionally, some databases do not regularly update contact details. The chance increases for outdated information you can no longer use. Actually, one of our e-commerce clients spent thousands on influencer databases with outdated contacts until Growth Hackers helped them build their own influencer research documents, resulting in more accurate outreach and higher campaign success.
3. Your Followers
A majority of brands that are interested in influencer marketing have their own social media channels as well. Thus, checking their followers’ accounts might be beneficial for marketing purposes. After all, these users are already fans of your account.
Why would not they be flattered if you would inquire about a collaboration?
You can combine this research with a marketing campaign on your own social media channels. For instance, you can present the fan of the week. It could always be a follower with a high number of subscribers.
4. Google Research
Google is your friend. The same principle applies to the search for influencers.
Why don’t you just search for the term “fashion influencers United States?”
There are many portals that interview influencers regularly. Use their research for your purposes. You do not only save time but you can discover websites to check regularly for new influencers as well.
5. Ask former collaboration partners
Your network counts, especially in the influencer marketing industry. Ask former collaboration partners for their recommendations. Particularly, if your experience was good with them, you can trust their judgment on other influencers.
The influencer’s network can also lead to reduced costs if a personal introduction occurs.
Tips to Convince Influencers to Collaborate
How do you get influencers to work with you? Let’s think about your past collaborations. A collaboration only makes sense when it is mutually beneficial. Thus, make the cooperation worthwhile for influencers.
In addition, it is always useful to demonstrate your knowledge of the influencer’s work. Pay a compliment regarding their latest post or something you liked about them personally. This creates a positive atmosphere.
Therefore, answer the following questions prior to writing influencers:
- What’s in it for influencers?
Besides monetary compensation, free products, and additional benefits can convince the influencer to cooperate with you. For instance, an interview on your company page might be interesting if you have droves of website visitors. Using additional benefits might aid in keeping your costs down to make each campaign more profitable. - Does the product fit the influencer’s brand?
A vegan influencer will not probably promote meat. Sharing the same values is, thus, crucial. - What are you willing to pay?
Consider your budget before writing specific influencers. An influencer with millions of followers will not agree to a campaign with a compensation of 200$. - Which requirements do you have for cooperation partners?
Persuading influencers to work with you is only the first step. Now, your focus should be on realizing your campaign aims. Thus, marketing managers and influencers should share a common, understandable vision.Conversing about conditions is a must. Would you like to collaborate on a story, feed post, or reel video? Does the influencer have to link to your website?Set clear expectations of what you want to achieve. Otherwise, you risk misunderstandings.
Before Growth Hackers applied our influencer collaboration strategy for one of our Fintech clients, pitches often went unanswered; after aligning incentives, values, and clear expectations, 24% of outreach efforts resulted in active partnerships.
How to Contact Niche Influencers
Niche influencer does not equal niche influencer. This sentence already illustrates the procedure for successfully making contact:
You need to be personable. While contacting influencers, ensure you write a persuasive message. One of our healthcare clients struggled to get replies from micro-influencers until Growth Hackers guided them to send thoughtful, targeted emails, and within weeks (Not months), meaningful collaborations were secured.
You have several ways of contacting influencers. Either you contact them via email, personal message on their social media profile or phone.
I personally believe that contacting them via email or telephone works best. You ensure that your message does not get drowned out. Popular influencers receive hundreds of personal messages on their social media channels. Therefore, the probability of the influencer reading your message is low.
Fair Prices for Both Sides: Determine an Appropriate Compensation
The price is right. Well, that should be the case if you want to profitably and regularly work with influencers. In the first step, you need to figure out your budget. It’s quite unnecessary to inquire about influencer cooperation with an audience size of 1,000,000 if you only have a budget of $500 per influencer.
Thus, ensure you think carefully about your financial leeway before inquiring. Some influencers demand a CPT (cost per thousand) of $150. You should absolutely avoid these high costs. A CPT of $20 to $50 is acceptable for most brands, depending on the type of cooperation.
In addition, it is recommendable to contact multiple influencers in one go. You can compare the prices and choose the influencer with the best price quality ratio. One of our skincare clients overspent on top-tier influencers until Growth Hackers helped them benchmark fair rates and compare options, resulting in profitable collaborations and higher campaign ROI.
Find and hire reliable niche influencers to boost your business!
Wrapping up: An Analysis to Reliable Niche Influencers
Niche influencers offer many benefits to companies. However, only some influencers move companies forward regarding their revenue goals. Firms should consider carefully who they intend to work with.
Influencer campaigns come along with medium to high costs. Some influencer cooperation’s’ cost more than 10,000 dollars. A careful research in advance is necessary to avoid unprofitable influencers.
So, get started right away. Identify your niche and find suitable influencers for your marketing aims.
Growth Hackers is a reputable influencer marketing agency helping businesses from all over the world grow. There is no fluff with Growth Hackers. We help entrepreneurs and business owners find reliable niche influencers to reach their target audience, increase their productivity, generate qualified leads, optimize their conversion rate, gather and analyze data analytics, acquire and retain users and increase sales.
We go further than brand awareness and exposure. We make sure that the strategies we implement move the needle so your business grow, strive and succeed. If you too want your business to reach new heights, contact Growth Hackers today so we can discuss about your brand and create a custom growth plan for you. You’re just one click away to skyrocket your business.
