4 Tools That Can Help You Find Instagram Influencers for Your Campaign

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Collaborating with an Instagram influencer in your niche is a great way to reach members of your target audience.

Brands like Fashion Nova, Flat Tummy Tea, and Glossier have achieved amazing ROIs by creating brilliant Instagram influencer marketing campaigns.

Before you create your own influencer marketing campaign, it’s important to understand how to choose the right influencers to deliver your message.

If you’re interested in learning how to find Instagram influencers to boost your brand’s awareness and engagement, keep reading! I’ll fill you in on everything you need to know to create an effective influencer marketing campaign.

We’ll also take a look at a few tools and techniques that you can use to find influencers and create awesome campaigns!

What Is Influencer Marketing?

Before we dive into the details of how to find Instagram influencers and create campaigns, it’s important to understand the concept of influencer marketing.

Although pursuing a career as an Instagram influencer is a recent phenomenon, this type of marketing isn’t new.

Influencer marketing combines the concepts of celebrity endorsements and word of mouth marketing to authentically introduce your brand to new audiences.

Influencers have large audiences that regularly engage with their online content which offers a great value to brands. This works particularly well when you choose to collaborate with influencers within your niche.

Currently, over two-thirds of North American businesses use influencer marketing. This number is expected to increase over the coming years.

A recent Hubspot report predicted that influencer marketing will grow into an $8 billion industry by the year 2020.

Overall, collaborating with influencers is one of the best ways to increase your brand’s reach and expand your audience in 2019.

How Do You Choose an Instagram Influencer for Your Campaign?

Although influencer marketing works well for many brands, there’s no guarantee that an influencer’s audience will engage with your brand.

For this reason, it’s very important to choose wisely when selecting influencers to speak on behalf of your brand.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when choosing Instagram influencers:

1. Understand Their Niche

It’s important to understand an influencer’s niche before approaching them to promote your brand.

If you’re completely new to the world of influencer marketing, then you may be tempted to seek out the influencers with the largest followings.

One thing you should keep in mind is that choosing influencers based only on the number of followers they have will likely lead to a low return on your investment.

I suggest beginning your search by finding Instagram influencers within your niche.

For example, if you’re a fitness brand, you’ll want to find Instagram influencers who produce content that revolve around fitness.

A fitness influencer will most likely have an audience that is similar to your target audience. They will also have some credibility (or “clout”) as a fitness expert which means that their audience will be more likely to trust their endorsements.

2. Check Their Engagement Rate

When it comes to choosing Instagram influencers, it’s important to look beyond the number of followers they have.

An influencer with a large following and a low engagement rate will not yield a very high ROI for your influencer marketing campaign.

There are quite a few reasons why an influencer might have a low engagement rate.

They may have trouble capturing their audience’s interest. This is a sign that you won’t reach much of their audience by having them post about your brand or product.

A low engagement rate can also be a sign that the influencer has purchased followers.

In that case, many of the accounts that follow them are bots so they won’t be visiting your website or purchasing your products.

Influencers who purchase followers are also less authentic and may not be the best people to represent your brand.

Tools You Can Use to Find Instagram Influencers

Now that you’ve learned a bit more about what to look for when choosing influencers to promote your brand, you may be wondering where to find your ideal Instagram influencers.

Here are a few of the best tools that can help you find the right Instagram influencers for your campaign:

 

1. Social Media & Email

One of the simplest ways to connect with influencers is directly through their social media profiles.

You can perform a quick keyword or hashtag search to find influencers who create content that is related to your niche.

Most Instagram influencers list their business inquiry email address in their Instagram bio. You can also send them a direct message.

If an influencer consistently has a full inbox, then you may have to reach out multiple times if you go with this method.

2. Heepsy

If you’re looking for a more convenient way to connect with influencers, give Heepsy a try.

This platform gives you access to over 7 million influencers and connects you with real influencers in seconds.

The tool has been used and trusted by over 10,000 brands including Ikea, FOX, and New Balance.

heepsy-tool-for-finding-instagram-influencers

Heepsy only connects you with influencers that have over 5,000 followers. You can search for influencers using a variety of filters including:

  • Category/Niche
  • Location
  • Following and Engagement Rate
  • Post cost and frequency
  • Verified Status
heepsy-tool-for-finding-instagram-influencers
Photo Courtesy of ProductHunt

Heepsy also helps you improve your influencer marketing ROI by giving you access to advanced reports.

You can check out an influencer’s audience quality, authenticity score, engagement analysis, and cost estimate before contacting them for a collaboration.

This reduces the chances of collaborating with influencers with low engagement rates, high costs, and bot followers.

Heepsy offers cumulative features and you can change or cancel your plan at any time. This platform offers a free trial that allows you to test out all of its paid features.

Once you complete the free trial, you can choose one of Heepsy’s four plans:

Heepsy’s Free Plan

You can browse and choose from Heepsy’s 7 million influencers for free. This plan also allows you to search for influencers through a keyword search.

Heepsy’s Starter Plan

For $49 a month, you can access all of Heepsy’s free features as well as a few additional perks. With the Starter Plan, you can search for influencers based on their category/niche, location, and the number of followers that they have.

You’ll also have access to ten influencer reports which include the influencer’s audience score, advanced metrics, cost estimate, and brand mentions.

Heepsy’s Plus Plan

Heepsy’s next tier, the Plus Plan, costs $99 a month. With this plan, you’ll enjoy all of the Starter Plan’s features and some extras.

The Plus Plan lets you access even more of Heepsy’s filters. You can search for influencers based on additional factors like their engagement rate, cost estimate, account type, post frequency, and their number of branded posts.

The Plus Plan also gives you access to 60 influencer reports.

Heepsy’s Pro Plan

At $199 a month, this plan is recommended for large influencer campaigns. With this plan, you’ll have access to all of the Plus Plan’s features.

You can also view influencers’ contact information and search for influencers based on the social channels they use.

This plan also lets you export data and create contact lists in Excel format. You can also access your account across multiple devices on the Pro Plan.

Additionally, Heepsy gives its Pro users the option to select how many influencer reports they’d like to download.

You can choose to download between 125 and 5000 influencer reports using the Pro Plan.

3. NinjaOutreach

Another option for finding Instagram influencers for your campaigns is NinjaOutreach.

Signing up for this platform gives you instant access to over 60 million Instagram influencers as well as over 19 million business emails. You’ll also have access to over 6 million bloggers and 7 million Twitter influencers.

tool-to-find-instagram-influencers

NinjaOutreach connects you with top influencers for a variety of collaborative marketing projects including:

  • Link Building
  • Guest Posts
  • Product Promotion
  • Content Promotion
  • Social Media Marketing
  • Expert Roundups
  • Sponsored Post Outreach
  • Podcast Interviews

It’s easy to connect with influencers using NinjaOutreach. All you have to do is search the database for keywords to discover millions of influencer profiles.

Once you’ve connected with your ideal influencers, you can schedule an unlimited number of campaigns. They also offer a free automated outreach and influencer marketing tool and a free trial.

Here are NinjaOutreach’s subscription options:

The Flex Plan

With NinjaOutreach’s Flex plan you can expand as you grow. This plan includes access to up to 1,000 contacts, unlimited searches, and data exporting.

You can use the Flex subscription for a variety of marketing needs including email, lead generation, and a CRM.

This affordable plan costs only $49 a month if you sign up for annual billing. If you prefer monthly billing then NinjaOutreach’s Flex Plan will cost you $120 a month.

The Pro Plan

With NinjaOutreach Pro, you can manage influencer marketing, lead generation, emailing, and CRM for large marketing teams and agencies.

This plan gives you access to over 4,000 contacts, unlimited searches, three seats, four emails, and data exporting.

If you opt for annual billing, then the Pro plan costs only $149 a month. You can also opt for monthly billing a pay $399 a month.

4. Socialbakers

Socialbakers is an AI-powered social media and digital marketing tool. You can use Socialbakers for a variety of marketing tasks including social listening, analytics, and online community growth. Socialbakers has delivered results for many top brands including Toyota Saudi Arabia, Orange, and Desigual.

Socialbaker uses AI to identify your target audiences’ buyer personas and connect you with the top influencers for their particular demographic.

With its AI capabilities, Socialbakers can help you choose influencers based on the size of their audience, their engagement rates, and your brand’s Instagram marketing budget.

This platform also includes a variety of content analytics tools that you can use to determine which types of messages resonate best with your audience.

You can also track the engagement of your influencer marketing campaigns to monitor the influencer’s effectiveness and ROI.

socialbakers-tool-for-finding-instagram-influencers
Photo Courtesy of SocialBakers

In addition to its feature-rich paid subscription options, Socialbakers offers a variety of free social media tools including a free Influencer Search Tool.

This tool allows you to find out more information about which influencers can provide the most value when it comes to reaching your target audience.

Each influencer profile on Socialbakers highlights the influencer’s interests, key audience demographics, follower count, and the number of posts they’ve shared.

Influencer profiles also include a score that shows you how well they’d fit as an ambassador for your brand.

Socialbakers’ Paid Subscriptions

After you test out the free Influencer Search Tool, you can check out some of Socialbaker’s paid subscription plans. They offer four plans that meet the needs of a variety of Instagram marketers.

However, only their Scale and Integrated 360 plans include access to more advanced influencer marketing features.

Each of these subscriptions gives you access to a variety of essential features like a content publishing calendar, social media publishing, and a content hub to streamline your marketing efforts.

The Scale and Integrated 360 subscriptions also allow you to find the best Instagram and YouTube influencers to represent your brand.

This feature uses artificial intelligence to find authentic influencers who can reach your brand’s target audience.

You can also use this feature to weed out fake influencers, track your ongoing influencer campaigns, and analyze your influencers’ performance.

A Final Word On Marketing With Instagram Influencers

Influencer marketing is a great way to reach your target audience and build your brand’s reputation.

Although finding the right influencers to represent your brand can seem like a challenging task, there are plenty of tools and techniques that can streamline this process.

Hopefully, the solutions mentioned in this article make your influencer marketing efforts easier and more effective.

While you can search for and contact Instagram influencers on your own, using a tool like the ones mentioned in this post can help you avoid problems like low engagement, flow conversion, and fake followers!

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