Not sure how to find the right influencers or content creators to promote your product-based business?

In today's episode, I'm sharing my favorite ways to identify quality partners that can authentically promote your brand and help you increase your sales.

Prefer to listen to this episode? Click here

Influencer marketing, though it has been around for a while, is still in its infancy when you think of the marketing industry as a whole. And in the last few years we’ve really seen a big shift in the market to not just influencers who shout out products they got for free, but true content creators who organically infuse products in their lifestyle content… the modern-day product placement if you will. 

And with the investments that social platforms like Instagram and TikTok are putting into the creator economy, it’s pretty safe to say that it’s not going anywhere. 

But tapping into this market as a business owner can feel overwhelming, especially if you don’t have a large budget. How do you find micro-influencers to work with?

That’s what we’re talking about today. 

Now, the unfortunate answer is, that the best and most authentic partnerships you are going to create with influencers and content creators are going to be the ones that you handpick to partner with. 

While it does take more work to research people and reach out to them directly vs. using a marketplace of influencers, starting with that narrower pool of people is going to provide you with more high-quality partners who really love your brand and what you do. 

When it comes to getting started with influencer marketing, I’d rather see you have fewer more in-depth partnerships vs. a bunch of one-off mentions on social media. 

And there are a couple of reasons why. One, consumers are a lot savvier these days and they can spot an insincere brand mention from an influencer from a mile away. 

And two, it takes multiple touches or exposures before a customer will take action on something they buying a product that someone they follow recommends. So just like you see better results when you repeat your messaging, the same will be true for those influencer partnerships. The more their followers see them talking about a specific product, the more likely that follower will be to actually go check it out. 

Yes, it’s going to take some time to find the right people, it’s definitely not a quick process. But in the end it, you essentially get what you pay for and the more aligned that partner is, the better results you’ll see. 

So the first place I would go is to the platform you want to get exposure on. Search keywords related to your industry and figure out who is talking about products like yours. 

The other place you can go to find influencers are from your existing customer base. Send out an email and post on social media letting people know you’re looking for influencers to work with. 

If you’ve got a decent amount of website traffic, you can even use a tool like Gatsby to collect people’s social media handles and then the Gatsby platform will aggregate their engagement data so you can pick and choose the best people to work with. I have a podcast episode with Brett, the founder of Gatsby where we talk through what the platform does and how it works if you want to learn more about that. It’s episode 84 if you want to take listen, I’ll put a link in the show notes. 

Another way to identify influencers is to look at complementary businesses, ones that sell a different product to the same customer as you. Who are they working with? You probably don’t want to reach out to someone who is promoting a direct competitor, but if they’re talking to the same audience then it’s probably a really good fit. 

Do your research and make a list of 10-20 potential partners and start reaching out to them. Know that not everyone is going to say yes, so you’ll want to make sure you have a good number of people on your list. 

And if you’re not sure how to start the outreach, I have two other podcast episodes to help you do that. The first is episode 103 with Harley Jordan. She is a content creator that works with brands and she’s giving us all the details on what she expects when working with brands and how she prefers them to reach out to her. And then the second one is episode 57, how to do influencer marketing the right way with Cody Wittick. Cody runs an influencer marketing agency and he talks us through his process for influencer seeding and building relationships.

Ultimately, influencer marketing and content creator partnerships have the potential to really grow your product-based business, but in this noisy digital world quality will take you a lot further than quantity… so make sure you’re willing to put iin the work to find the right partners.

Listen to the Episode

Episodes Mentioned

103. What to Expect When Working with Content Creators with Harley Jordan

57. How to Do Influencer Marketing the Right Way with Cody Wittick

84. How to Find Influencers from Your Existing Customer Base with Gatsby