One of the things that strikes me as strange in 2019 is the number of people still doing "spray and pray" influencer marketing wherein they do the following:

• Hire an influencer based on their persona;
• Ensure they post to their social networks;
• Hope the right audience sees the posts and takes the right action.

IT'S 2019! We can do better.

via GIPHY

The (Two) Right Ways to Target in Influencer Marketing

To do advanced targeting in influencer marketing, a brand needs to focus on two areas:

1. Influencer Audience Composition
2. High Performing Content Syndication

Influencer Audience Composition

Let's remember that we're not trying to influence the influencer, we're trying to influence the influencer's audience. Given that, it matters a lot less if the influencer matches your customer profile (other than for purposes of credibility) and it matters a lot more if their audience meets your customer profile.

In our system, the influencers have connected their social accounts, which allows us to parse their aggregated follower data. Given that, we can look at how the audience makeup indexes relative to the general population when it comes to:

• Where the audience lives
• Audience demographics
• Audience interests

By looking at this data, we can choose influencers based on what we call "The ABCs of Influencer Selection." We look first at Audience Fit, then Brand Fit (does the influencer fit your brand), then Content Fit (does the content they excel in fit the strategy).

This is the beginning of a process ensuring that our programs reach the right target audience.

High Performing Content Syndication

Once we have content shared by the influencers, we can focus on getting the best of it in front of the best people. How? By measuring the performance of every individual piece of content, we can surface the highest performing content.

Instead of using the influencers audience as the end game, instead they are the first audience serving as both prospects and a focus group.

We then take the highest performing content and syndicate it based on:

• Demographics
• Behavior
• Brand Affinities
• Interests
• Geography and Proximity; and even
• Custom Audiences

Now the very best content is reaching the very best prospects and the results can be impressive.

After all, everything else in digital marketing is using advanced targeting. It's well past time that influencer marketing did the same thing.

via GIPHY

If you'd like to learn more about this method of influencer marketing, or what a campaign could look like for your brand, contact us today!