From your local juice bar to multinational consumer brands, most of today’s businesses are on the internet. While great for consumers, the shift to digital commerce means more competition is the new normal of running a business today.
To stand out, brands have been working with influencers as a way to increase their brand’s awareness and popularity. With influencer marketing, businesses can leverage an influencer to promote their products to an established audience who already trusts the influencer.
However, influencer marketing isn’t new and it’s not as easy as reaching out to an influencer and saying, “Hey want free stuff in exchange for posts?” Today, influencer marketing can be expensive, it can be difficult to find creators who complement your business, and it can be challenging to ensure they deliver real results.
To help you launch a highly successful influencer marketing program, I’m going to break down how to find the right influencers for you and how to leverage influencer marketing on Facebook. My name is Varsenik Mirzoyan and I’m the Growth Marketing Lead at Insense, a tool we created to streamline influencer marketing on Facebook and other platforms.
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Before beginning your search for influencers, you should have a good understanding of what a real influencer is. More importantly, you should also know what an influencer isn’t.
Simply put, an influencer is someone who influences. In other words, influencers are people whose opinions and experiences are valued by their audiences so much so that they will do (and buy) what the influencer does. This value comes from the trust and credibility that influencers developed with their audiences as the result of creating and sharing value-driven content for an extended period of time.
Here’s a few examples of what an influencer can be:
Industry experts
Thought leaders
Bloggers
Brand or company representatives
Lifestyle brands
Social media personalities
However different the positions of people can be in to be an influencer, one thing they all have in common is an established audience, of which there are two categories. The first is celebrity influencers, also called macro-influencers. These are individuals like Kylie Jenner, Cameron Dallas, and other high-profile names with millions (or tens of millions) of followers. Although any brand would love to have a celebrity influencer on its side, celebrity influencers aren’t necessarily the most effective type of influencer.
The second group is micro-influencers. These are creators who have smaller and more intimate audiences, often less than 100,000 followers or even as little as 1,000 followers. On paper, a small audience might seem like a weakness, but the benefit of a small audience is higher rates of engagement. After all, how many of Kylie Jenner’s 34.2 million Twitter followers have had actual direct interactions with her? (The answer is only 0.17%)
The bottom line: Unless raising brand awareness is the primary objective, you’ll often get a bigger return on your influencer marketing spend if you partner primarily with micro-influencers.
Benefits of Facebook influencer marketing
If you haven’t tried influencer marketing before, then it may seem like an advertising strategy with low potential. However, there are actually some notable benefits to using influencer marketing for growing a brand.
My favorite part of influencer marketing on Facebook is the cost savings from not having to produce original creatives for Facebook ads. By partnering with an influencer who is a content creator, you can often end up with unique yet relatable content at a fraction of the cost.
We all know how effective user-generated content (UGC) is for campaigns, and they’re even more effective when it’s an influencer who is producing that UGC for you. As professional content creators, influencers bring together your product or message with their own creative ideas and skills. Influencer marketing on Facebook brings the potential to deploy a marketing campaign that will really make your audience stop scrolling and take notice.
But before you go reaching out to influencers…
You need to understand a couple of important things before reaching out to influencers: You need to completely understand your objective with Facebook influencer marketing and you also need to have a firm understanding of your audience.
1. Set your objective for influencer marketing
First and foremost, you need to establish what you’re hoping to accomplish with influencer marketing. What you aim to achieve will guide many of the decisions you make as you find industry influencers and begin collaborating on content.
There are three common objectives with Facebook influencer marketing:
Increase sales
Improve brand awareness
Generate unique UGC-style creatives
Ultimately, your goals will inform things like the type of influencer(s) you partner with to the kinds of content that your influencer(s) will create.
2. Determine who you’re trying to influence
In most cases, the audience you want to influence is the same as the target audience for your brand’s product or service. But this an important question to consider when you’re searching for industry influencers because the demographics of your target audience can influence how (and where) to find influencers.
Take the time to get a deep understanding of your audience. You can learn quite a lot just by viewing your own social media metrics and by using Revealbot’s guide Facebook Audience Insights. Once you have a better understanding of who you’re trying to influence, you can tailor your influencer search accordingly.
Here’s the two things you need to understand about your audience:
the platforms your target audience use
the influencers who create the type of content that your audience loves
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If micro-influencers are the “secret sauce” of influencer marketing, then the next obvious question is how do you find the right influencers for your industry and business? First you need to identify the type of influencers that can work for your brand.
Typically, people gravitate toward influencers who they view as peers, whether because they are considered to be similar physically, socially, or by some other demographic. So once you have a strong understanding of your audience, there’s a good chance those same qualities can be used to inform your search for influencers. Then you’ll have a strong enough foundation to start searching for potential influencers and through this process you’ll inevitably get a better understanding of what traits you’re looking for.
Here’s how I approach putting together a list of ideal influencers for brands I work with.
1. Start with industry related hashtags
I always begin my search for influencers by looking up hashtags related to the brand’s industry on Instagram. From there, it’s easy to find the biggest accounts and people who are related to the brand’s industry and would resonate with the target audience.
Searching Instagram for "fashion"
2. Check out the influencers who promote competitors
Next I like to take advantage of the legwork my competitors have already done by searching for the product names of my biggest competitors as hashtags to see if there are influencers already posting about their product. There’s a good chance that a target audience is the same or similar to a competitor’s and oftentimes you can work with the same influencers or at the very least get an idea of the types of influencers in your industry.
3. Find and connect with industry experts
I love making connections with leaders in a brand’s industry, because that means I can start forming relationships with people who are recognized as authoritative experts who people already reference and look up to. These people could be, for example, established product reviewers, authors, speakers, etc. Sometimes these industry leaders can have a social following I can leverage, too.
3. Search all the major social platforms for micro-influencers
With multiple social platforms, it can be overwhelming to start from scratch. Luckily, many influencers have audiences (and oftentimes different audiences) on multiple social networks so I could work with one creator and still get reach on multiple platforms.
However there’s many cases where great influencers only have a strong following on one platform. So here’s a quick breakdown on how I find influencers on the biggest social platforms.
Instagram
There’s no better place to start than with a brand’s own followers. If you have an Instagram account, see who is following you. The best creators to work with are those who are already fans of your brand as they are already going to have some level of passion about your brand’s products or services.
Like I mentioned before, start searching hashtags for industry related topics. Start following the biggest accounts and soon you can take advantage of Instagram’s explore page which will automatically find popular accounts and posts related to the accounts you follow and posts you like. This strategy works best on a fresh account or an account dedicated to your brand.
Facebook
Facebook isn’t the best platform to find influencers just because of the way it works, especially after Facebook updated its algorithm which severely limited organic post reach. Most influencers have grown their following on Instagram or TikTok.
But what Facebook is great for is finding communities inside Facebook groups. There are Facebook groups for every topic and you can learn a lot about your industry and who the leaders are by joining those groups and looking at their conversations. You can even search groups for relevant keywords to find discussions on various topics, creators, or influencers in that group.
Searching Facebook Groups for "fashion"
YouTube
There are two ways I find the best accounts to work with on Youtube. First, I run Google searches for something like “[niche] YouTubers”, which can show lists of the top video creators in an industry.
Then I search YouTube itself for keywords around the brand’s industry and even check out the trending page if the brand I’m working on has general appeal. The great thing about YouTube is you can easily see how many subscribers and views a YouTuber has and determine if they have the following and average view count I’m looking for.
TikTok
The popularity of TikTok has exploded in the past year and there’s never been a better time to search for influencers on the platform. On TikTok, I start my search by using the discover page, which showcases trending creators. I also search trending hashtags which show some of the latest TikTok “themes” or “memes” that creators are doing spin-offs of.
If the brand I’m working with is very niche, I will take a similar approach to Instagram and search industry related hashtags to see if there are any creators on TikTok in the industry. And don’t forget that most creators on TikTok will have accounts on other social platforms, too, like YouTube and Instagram.
4. Find influencers and creators with Insense
My team and I created Insense, which is a tool to streamline the process of finding, connecting, and partnering up with creators on influencer marketing campaigns. With Insense, you can search for creators across all four of the above social platforms in one place and get influencers to come to you.
Insense gives you unparalleled search and filtering capabilities for finding micro-influencers in any industry. Using descriptors as hashtags, you can search our entire curated database of micro-influencers, which has over 19,000 influencers and counting. Whether you’re looking for #millennials, #moms, #fashion, or some other trait, you’ll always be able to find the exact types of influencers you need on Insense.
Searching Insense for "#food"
Another way Insense can help you find the right influencers for your next Facebook marketing campaign is by submitting a brief. When you submit a brief, creators can then apply to work with you, and you can select the best creators to work with.
Once you find influencers you’re interested in working with, you can direct message them on Insense to negotiate your promotion terms, payment, and more. Our database of influencers are curated by our team which means they know how to use the platform and you're guaranteed to get a quick response to your messages.
Use influencer content in Facebook ads
After securing collaborations with influencers and they post about your brand’s product or services on their channels, you can download the content and use it as Facebook ad creatives (make sure you get their permission). This is the best way to leverage influencer marketing on Facebook today.
You can use the content by itself directly as a Facebook ad, or splice it in slideshows or videos, and reuse it for months or years. This content is invaluable to your brand. For more strategies on how to use influencer and user-generated content in Facebook ads, check out Revealbot’s article on Facebook ads for ecommerce and scaling Facebook ads for Black Friday.
Here's an example from Letterfolk using influencer-generated-content to promote their product:
Credit: Letterfolk
If the influencer is super recognizable to your industry, you can mention their name in your Facebook ad creatives, or better yet run an ad coming from their account. We built Insense to streamline this process, which can take influencer content and run it as an ad for your brand while coming from their profile.
If you're unsure of which influencer content to use as ads, you can always post the content to your Facebook and Instagram pages as organic posts - really, you should do this anyway and tag the influencer you worked with.
Go beyond influencer marketing with influencer partnerships
You should never approach influencer marketing as if it’s a transaction and you’re simply buying content from a creator. Because the influencers you partner with aren’t employees, nor is the content they create or share merely a product. Rather, the best influencer marketing is the product of a mutually-beneficial partnership.
The key to creating strong influencer partnerships is to build actual relationships with your influencers. After all, influencers are more likely to promote a brand when he or she has a positive emotional connection to the brand and the people behind it.
And just like in any relationship, when an influencer doesn’t feel that their efforts are being reciprocated, you’ll have a very hard time maintaining that partnership or calling on that influencer for future collaborations.
Consider how you can give back to your influencers to bring more value to those relationships. Even a little public recognition or praise can go a long way. Additionally, you could ask if there’s anything your influencer needs to make creating content around your brand easier. During each exchange, always be as authentic and respectful as possible as if you’re building a new friendship.
Here’s a few things I do to elevate my relationships with influencers:
Talk about things other than our marketing partnership
Follow them on social media and leave comments on their posts
Introduce them to any of my contacts I think they’d find beneficial
Ask for their opinions on work behind-the-scenes for the brand
With this strategy, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get your Facebook influencer marketing program off to a strong start.
Key takeaways
Not just any influencer will work for your brand
Understanding your audience will help you search for the right influencers
Facebook isn't the best place to find influencers, but it's the best place to use influencer generated creative in your ads
Micro-influencers will give you a better return than macro-influencers and celebrities
FAQ
What is Facebook influencer marketing?
Facebook influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing where brands partner with individuals who have a large and engaged following on Facebook to promote their products or services.
Influencers can help brands to reach a new audience, build trust and credibility, and drive sales.
Why is Facebook a good platform for influencer marketing?
Facebook is one of the largest social media platforms in the world, with over 2.9 billion active users. This gives brands the opportunity to reach a large and diverse audience through influencer marketing.
Additionally, Facebook offers a variety of tools and features that can help brands to find and partner with the right influencers, track the performance of their campaigns, and measure their results.
What are the different types of influencer marketing campaigns?
There are a variety of different influencer marketing campaigns that you can run on Facebook. Some common types of campaigns include:
Product placement: This type of campaign involves having the influencer feature your product in their posts.
Sponsored posts: This type of campaign involves having the influencer create a dedicated post about your product or service.
Giveaways: This type of campaign involves having the influencer give away one or more of your products or services to their followers.
Brand ambassadorships: This type of campaign involves having the influencer represent your brand over a longer period of time.
How much do influencers charge?
How much influencers charge varies depending on a number of factors, such as their follower count, engagement rate, and niche. Generally speaking, micro-influencers (with 10,000-50,000 followers) tend to charge less than macro-influencers (with 50,000-1 million followers) and mega-influencers (with over 1 million followers).
How can I find the right influencers for my industry and business?
Search for industry-related hashtags on Instagram.
Check influencers who promote your competitors.
Connect with industry experts.
Search for micro-influencers on various social platforms.
Utilize Insense for streamlined influencer discovery.
How can I get started with Facebook influencer marketing?
Define your goals. What do you want to achieve with your influencer marketing campaign? Do you want to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, or generate sales? Once you know your goals, you can start to develop a campaign strategy.
Identify your target audience. Who are you trying to reach with your influencer marketing campaign? Once you know your target audience, you can start to identify influencers who have a following that matches your target audience.
Find the right influencers. There are a number of different ways to find the right influencers for your brand. You can use a dedicated influencer marketing platform, search for influencers manually on Facebook, or ask your existing customers for recommendations.
Reach out to influencers. Once you've found a few influencers that you're interested in working with, reach out to them and introduce yourself. Be clear about your campaign goals and what you're looking for in an influencer partner.
Measure your results. Once you've launched your influencer marketing campaign, it's important to track your results so that you can see what's working and what's not. There are a number of different ways to measure the success of your campaign, such as by tracking reach, engagement, website traffic, and sales.
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