Due to the rising popularity of Instagram as a platform for any influencers to promote their content, today influencers can easily generate authentic word-of-mouth engagement that turns their followers into loyal customers.

However, this job is not as easy as it might seem. You have to do your own research before deciding to partner with any influencers. 

These five pro tips will help you find suitable influencers for your brands’ promotional campaign.

Determine Your Business Goals: Why and How You Intend to Use Instagram Influencer Marketing Campaigns

The first thing to do before looking for the right influencers is determine and set your business goals. The primary goals should be increasing brand awareness, Instagram followers, and generating sales. These objectives will help you choose the suitable influencers for your brand campaigns.

As an illustration, if you want to gain more followers, you need to look for influencers that can encourage their followers to visit and follow your Instagram. 

Whereas, if you want to increase your product sales, you will need to use affiliate marketing and discount codes which you are partnering with the chosen influencer whose followers are likely to purchase your products.

Knowing Your Target Audience

Ensure your target audience matches with the influencer. This is important because you need to promote your products to relevant audiences.

For example, if you have a clothing line, in order to increase sales of your products, you need to choose to partner with a fashion blogger or Instagram influencer who is into fashion. But, how do you know if you have made the right selection?

You need to understand that not every fashion blogger or influencer has the same kind of target audience. Some may target millennials. Others may target moms or middle-aged women.

Check your chosen influencer's followers list, do they match with your target audience?

Get to Know The Influencers' Values: Whether They Match with Your Brand's or Product's You Want to Promote or Not

The influencers need to match with your brand’s value, or at least the products you want to promote. If there is no brand alignment, your campaigns will generate low return on investment (ROI). 

ROI compares how much you paid for an investment to how much you earned to evaluate its efficiency.

Having a clear idea of your influencer's image or identity is necessary before you decide to partner with them. It is important because your chosen influencer will closely reflect your brand. 

Your Instagram influencer is the one who represents your brand online, so it’s important that you have similar values to avoid confusion.

Pay Close Attention of What Other Brands The Influencer is Affiliated With

Find out if the Instagram influencers whom you want to partner with also have an affiliate marketing campaign with any other brands that are in the same industry as yours.

If the influencers have experience doing brand partnerships with another brand in the same industry, they might as well have experience speaking to your target audiences.

Evaluate The Chosen Influencers Using These Parameters

Instagram Reach

It is simply the total number of followers that your next campaign influencer has. You have to make sure that your next campaign influencer has a decent number of followers on the social media platforms l where you wish to run your campaign.

When you want to find influencers for your business, this is one of the most important things.

Genuine Instagram Engagement

The Instagram engagement rate is important for Instagram influencer marketing. This rate can be used as an indicator whether the chosen Instagram influencer will be effective or not. However, anyone can easily fake their Instagram engagement rate. The question is, how to find genuine engagement.

First thing you can do is to check and analyze the comments, look for relevant and conversational comments. Search for word-of-mouth, because real followers ask questions, make personal statements, and also tag their friends in comments. These are word-of-mouth reactions by genuine followers.

Instagram Influencer's Authenticity

Analyze how the influencer interacts with followers. How does the influencer promoting products (from the other existing brand partnership) sound authentic?

When an influencer’s recommendations sound authentic, only then will their followers trust and follow them. Manually check and analyze how the paid promotion content looks. Does it sound like a genuine recommendation?

In brief, the right influencers can lead your campaigns to success and reach your brand goals. You need to focus your efforts on finding the perfect match for your business campaign. Hopefully, these five tips will help you choose the best suitable influencers for your brand.