Narrowing down influencers that match your brands’ essence is the fundamental component before any collaboration.

Finding the right influencer can give your brand a jumpstart to succeed in a campaign. To find the right influencer, you need to keep a few things in mind:

The goal of your campaign The end result of your campaign can be anything from brand awareness to sales or even trust-building. The decision of choosing an influencer depends on your goals.

The nature of your campaign How do you wish to execute your campaign? Would you want to hire an influencer as a brand ambassador and the face of your brand or do you want to do a barter collaboration for awareness (posts in return for gifts)? Or would you like the influencer to take over your brand’s social media handles? When you define this, you get closer to the type of influencers that would agree to certain types of campaigns.

Find the influencers from the same industry as you. Finding influencers from the same industry means you will be reaching your target audience through the influencers and attracting potential consumers. In most cases, this is where you start but sometimes this comes later. For example, if the purpose of your campaign is to tap into a new set of audiences because of a new product launch, then you would want to explore influencers out of your niche if not outside of your industry.

Similar Audience Find influencers who have an audience that could be your potential consumers and are similar to your existing customers. Influencers from different industries can have similar audiences as your target audience. Study your target audience to see their interests and the sites/influencers they follow. This should give you an idea about the influencers you can approach even outside your industry.

The influence of your influencers By now you must have shortlisted some influencers, so this could be the deciding question. How much influence does an influencer have on his or her audience? You can analyse this by their follower count, the engagement on their content, and the knowledge they have about their niche.

This should help you in narrowing down the right influencer for your marketing campaigns.