A January eMarketer/Insider Intelligence report showed that influencer marketing spend grew at 3.5x the rate of social advertising spend in 2023. In other words, while social advertising is growing, the intersection of influencer marketing and social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, etc., is taking off.

Today, especially as TikTok Shop gains traction and the combination of affiliate marketing and Amazon listings gathers momentum, influencer marketing is a critical component of growth strategy for eCommerce and B2C brands. And with a booming creator economy comes a huge pool of potential creators for brands to work with.

The creator proliferation means that the right creator(s) for your brand, your KPIs, and your influencer goals are absolutely out there, but it also means you need to be very strategic about how you’re sourcing them.

What goes into that strategy? A few factors:

• How authentically they’ll represent your brand
• How effectively they’ll engage their audience
• How well they’ll work within your brand guidelines
• Whether their strengths align with your influencer campaign goals

In this article, I’ll dig into how to assess each of these factors – and I’ll close with a few of my favorite ways to source creators for my clients.

How to find creators who will authentically represent your brand and products

This is not a new concept, but it’s the most important one to get right in influencer marketing: the perfect relationship between a brand and a creator is one that feels natural. It should make sense that this creator would want to use this product based on their content and demographic. For example, a creator focused on wellness and healthy recipes would not be the best fit for a beauty or apparel brand. A young creator with a Gen Z audience may not be the best fit to promote a brand geared towards older women. This can take some research through a creator’s page to determine. Don’t reach out to creators that don’t have children about baby brands or to a sober creator about an alcohol brand.

Keep this thought in the forefront of your mind when you look for the right creators: audiences are smart, and they can spot an ad from a mile away. At the end of the day, they know that their favorite creators are promoting brands and products and being paid or gifted in exchange – but they’ll be okay with that if they believe the creator feels an authentic connection with the product.

Effective creators do this by storytelling. One great technique is relating the product or service to a real-life challenge that followers may be familiar with or can easily grasp. For example, “You know I’ve always struggled with breakouts, which is why this product has helped me reach a new level of self-confidence.” Or, “I live on the 6th floor of a walk-up apartment building, and this pair of shoes saves my feet every time.”

Anyone can share a photo of a pair of shoes or a makeup product on their Instagram story – and if ads make up the majority of their content, that’s a sign you should keep looking – but if users understand exactly why a certain creator is promoting a specific product, the message is much more powerful.

Given all of that, your brand must make sure the product you’re looking to promote can carry value and/or utility to the creator in some way. Examples of this include a baby wrap for a creator that just gave birth, an Uber partnership for a city-based creator that hates taking the subway, and a workout set for a creator that includes workout classes in their daily routine videos.

As a brand marketer looking for the right creators, you should have an idea of why each creator you recruit is the right fit for your brand – and vice versa. Unless your brand is a highly aspirational lifestyle brand, look for creators who can make these connections in a way that feels like real life, not a stylized, glossy ideal.

How to find creators who effectively engage the right audience

To be effective partners, the creators you work with must appeal to your ideal audience – which means you need to make sure your ICP and the creator’s audience have lots of overlap. Social channels make it easy to see the size of a creator’s following, but it’s important to drill down into the demographics of the following as well. You can assess a creator’s audience by studying the current social media trends in their content, the types of brands they share, their voice/language, and their overall content themes. Ultimately, you need to make sure the creator’s content will get in front of the age range, gender expression, geo, etc., that’s most likely to take your desired action.

The last piece, if the audience size and composition is aligned with your brand’s goals, is whether the creator in question can be successful in truly engaging that audience.

Creators do this in a few ways:

• Opening up about their life, struggles, etc.
• Showcasing their real daily routines, which their audience will find relatable
• Curating the brands and products they promote so that they’re only highlighting what they actually use and appreciate
  
• Responding to audience comments and questions
• Mixing in lots of organic content with their promotional content

Ultimately, consumers who truly trust the creators they follow are more likely to shop a brand or product those creators are promoting. Building up this trust takes time, and your brand or product must complement the reputation the creator has built in order for the partnership to work for both parties.

How to find creators who will work effectively within your brand guidelines

If you’ve done the research to make sure the first two factors above are considered, you’re on the right track for maintaining brand safety. Moreover, paid collaborations almost always come with some brand guidelines for the creator to incorporate, whether that’s competitor names or subject matter to avoid in their content.

That said, brands should be wary of being too rigid – it’s not a good idea to require creators to read from a script. Instead, ask the creator to touch on keywords and/or concepts and to include these requirements in their content in a fun, engaging, aesthetically pleasing way.

If you need the creator to be extra-attentive to brand guidelines, know that you’ll have more ability to ask for this if you’re willing to pay the creator, not just send them a free product. Creators get approached with gifts and free products all the time, and they’re much more likely to promote your freebie if they have creative control. If that carries too much risk for your brand, consider that in your compensation strategy.

How to find the right creators for your KPIs

There’s a range of goals your brand might have for your influencer campaigns. For each, there are hallmarks for creators who will be more effective in helping you achieve those goals.

Brand Awareness goals are best achieved by working with creators who generally post frequently, create stylized content, and will post about a brand several times rather than just creating a one-off story. Note that brands that are just looking for brand awareness can cast a wider net and work with a larger number of creators.

Sales-based KPIs are best approached through creators with high engagement who interact with their audience and are familiar with affiliate linking. Check to see if a creator has a built-out bio and whether they properly use affiliate links. Bonus tip: ask creators whether they can provide data on their average conversion rate.

Brand looking to leverage UGC can consider creators who don’t necessarily have a large following or engagement rate but excel at creating beautiful photo or video content.

How to search for creators

Now that you know how to make informed choices about your creator partners, how do you find them?

My favorite resources fall into three categories:

Social listening: Researching which creators are creating content that aligns with viral trends/audios and leaning into big moments on social.

Keyword and topics searches: Which creators are creating content that becomes visible for specific keywords and topics? Are they utilizing key terms and words through SEO? On platforms like TikTok, has the search algorithm determined that certain creators are relevant to specific topics?

Engagement measurement tools: Do your research to find browser extensions, martech platforms, and/or engagement rate calculators that will give you valuable data about your potential partners’ engagement KPIs.

Closing thoughts

The last thing that could make or break the results of your influencer campaigns is clear communication. Make sure all parties are aligned on what success looks like, and don’t tackle more than one goal with each campaign – if you’re trying to achieve more than one, you’re likely to achieve none.

As with all marketing campaigns, be prepared to pivot and iterate as the data comes in. Don’t aim for perfection; just make sure you’re getting familiar with the levers and landscape of influencer marketing as quickly as possible to put your brand in position to ride the wave.