Influencer marketing is a powerful way for companies to connect with audiences.
Businesses can expand their reach with a warm introduction to an engaged audience by partnering with a content creator, tapping their influence in their audience and community. Done well, an influence marketing partnership increases a brand’s visibility and perception and boosts sales. To get these results though, it’s important to team up with the right influencer.
At BENlabs, we use deep learning AI trained on decades of data and thousands of success stories to build smart partnerships between brands and creators. A smart partnership is symbiotic; one where the brand, the creator and the audience all win. Before the campaign even begins, Predictive Analytics let marketers see how their campaign will fare in the real world and delivers actionable insights at every step from start to finish.
If you’re looking to build a meaningful partnership with a content creator and influencer, increase your chances of success by looking for one who checks all these boxes:
Brand compatibility
Ensuring an influencer’s values and message are compatible with your company’s values is vital. Look for an influencer who will represent your brand honestly, whose values align with yours and who’s in it for the right reason. If you’re wondering, the right reason is “I think my community will like this.”
If your brand thing is wellness, you’ll be looking for an influencer that holds similar ideals and encourages a healthy lifestyle. By the same token, if you’re a fashion brand you’ll be looking for an influencer who is well-known for their sense of style and fashion.
Audience resonance
If an influencer aligns with your brand, the broad demography of their audience likely will too, but there’s more to an audience than demographics. Seek out and partner with influencers whose followers are most likely to love your stuff.
If your brand is about beauty and you want to reach young women, you’ll be looking for influencers who go deep on skincare and beauty. If your company sells home goods and you want to reach a more luxury-minded audience, you’ll be looking for an influencer who resonates with this group and who covers home design and décor.
That’s obvious. There’s nuance to consider. Think about where your ideal customer sits on scales like budget > billionaire, casual > deep and other such factors and look for an influencer who speaks that language.
Engagement and reach
It is also important to consider the influencer’s level of engagement and reach. You want to choose an influencer who has a strong following and is able to effectively engage with their audience. This can be measured by the influencer’s likes, comments, and shares on their social media posts.
Reach is the number of people that engage the content on average. Impressions are the number of people who could conceivably have seen content as they scrolled through their feed. Weigh reach most heavily in this balance.
Collaboration history
Look at an influencer’s previous collaborations. Have they already collaborated with any other brands? Were they competitors? If so, does that make it weird? How have followers reacted to past collaborations? How has the influencer represented brands in past partnerships? Does the influencer have a track record in generating revenue and brand awareness?
This is part of the smart marketer’s due diligence. Consider all of these factors and you’ve got a sense of how the influencer might represent your brand and what results you can expect from the engagement.
Authenticity
Choosing an influencer who is honest and authentic is crucial, too. Pick an influencer who will be honest in promoting your stuff to their followers in their own unique style.
The influencer’s collaboration history (above) offers some insight into their authenticity. Do endorsements ring true? Will they partner with just anybody? Do you want to be another “just anybody?”
Go for it
The best influencer engagements are a partnership between the brand and the content creator founded on mutual admiration and respect. Take all of the above into account when looking for your ideal influencer.
And remember, like all relationships, this one will involve some trust. Set some guidelines to follow but don’t force the content creator into a box. The goal here is a warm intro to their audience, not a talking head parroting your messages.
BENlabs can help
No need to go it alone. Take the guesswork out of influencer partnerships. Get matched with the perfect influencer content creators and see results before your campaign even begins with BENlabs AI-driven Smart Partnering and Predictive Analytics.
