The influencer marketing market value is expected to reach $24B in 2024 so B2C brands and e-commerce stores heavily invest in influencer marketing or include it as part of their campaign.
However, many have difficulty finding the right influencer or establishing a connection with an influencer for a successful campaign. The problem is usually in the approach.
As a company that helped 1K+ companies find and partner with their ideal influencers, we are well familiar with all possible obstacles to influencer acquisition on all channels.
So, from finding influencers to reaching out to them, in this article, we share the 10 most effective influencer acquisition strategies.
How is Influencer Acquisition Beneficial?
Influencer acquisition is beneficial for all businesses in multiple aspects. More specifically, it can boost your strategy and optimize your businesses in terms of:
- Brand awareness: Partnering with influencers allows you to tap into their followers base and expand your audience. That way you ensure more people hear about your brand.
- Build trust and increase sales: About 69% of the consumers said they trust the recommendations of the influencers when new products or services. This proves that compared to traditional marketing, influencer marketing is better in terms of building trust and increasing sales.
- Improve your content strategies: The content created by influencers is informational and aesthetically pleasing. Integrating them into your content plan enhances your content as you have social proof.
- SEO Optimization: Influencers often tag their collaborators in their stories or posts which can improve your search engine rankings.
10 Ways to Do Effective Influencer Acquisition
In the past few years, got through every influencer acquisition challenge we faced. We understood how to find the right influencers and their emails, and how to approach and negotiate with them, and we now know how to acquire thousands of influencers from every niche.
Below we share our best practices on how to do influencer acquisition. We also share the approach we had when we onboarded 100K+ influencers in 7 months for Pearpop.
1. Use an influencer discovery platform
Best for Agencies that need to connect with influencers at scale, creator economy companies, and e-commerce brands
Influencer discovery platforms help you find influencers that align with your brand and values. They have large influencer databases and some of the platforms even have a built-in messaging option.
Our influencer discovery platform is specifically built for influencer acquisition. You can:
- Search through 200M+ influencers from Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, OnlyFans, Patreon, Twitch, Discord, and other creator platforms
- Get a verified email address for every influencer
- Do influencer email outreach directly from the platform (send up to 5M emails per month)
All you need to do is select and add filters, the rest is self-explanatory. Plus, you have our customer support team to help you choose the best filters for your needs. Once done, just click on Export List and you will have your list within a few minutes.
Drawbacks of this method: The subscription model is suitable only for finding influencers at scale. It’s not suitable for finding only a few influencers.
2. Hire an influencer acquisition agency
Best for: Creator economy companies, eCommerce, and influencer marketing agencies
Influencer acquisition agencies handle the entire influencer acquisition process. They are the ideal solution for all companies that don’t have time or resources to invest in an influencer acquisition team but still want to have a professionally managed strategy.
Unlike influencer marketing agencies that focus on managing influencer campaigns, strategy, and content creation, influencer acquisition agencies are focused on identifying and recruiting influencers for brands.
Also, this is the influencer acquisition approach Pearpop chose and scaled to 100K+ influencers in 7 months.
We at influencers.club have a team of 40+ influencer acquisition experts who are identifying and reaching out to the ideal influencers for every brand. We’ve worked with some of the biggest companies in the world, including Linktree, Bytedance, Discord, etc., and we can send 800K cold emails with a 36% reply rate per month.
Drawbacks of this method: Although there are agencies that can help you recruit only a few influencers, most influencer acquisition agencies only offer influencer acquisition at scale.
Hire a fully managed influencer acquisition agency
3. Use social media
Best for: Small and medium-sized businesses looking for free influencer acquisition ways, or collaboration with a few influencers.
Searching for influencers on social media is an alternative and free method. There are two ways you can do this.
One is to search by keyword on social media platforms. For example, if you need a fitness influencer, just go on social media and add “fitness” or “fitness influencer” and you should have thousands of creators using that hashtag.
The second way is to go to the influencer’s content you like and click on the icon next to “email address” or “Contact” to find similar influencers. Here’s how it looks:
Once you find the influencers that seem like a good fit, explore their profile to get to know them better, and reach out to them.
Drawback of this method: You may spend too much time filtering and finding the right influencer for your brand.
4. Do cold influencer email outreach
Best for Businesses of all sizes looking to start influencer marketing.
Another effective way for a successful influencer acquisition strategy is to send cold emails to influencers. You can use a platform to find influencers or find them yourself through social media.
When it comes to finding their email address, check the Instagram or TikTok bio, or About Us section on YouTube of the influencer you are targeting. Influencers that are open to collaborations, always have their email displayed on their profiles.
Or, if you need a list of email addresses of influencers per your criteria, try our influencer discovery platform with 80M+ influencers with verified emails, and get a list of emails per your criteria.
Next, make sure to follow these 2 steps:
- Research about the influencer: Open their social media profile, and see what are their interests, hobbies, or points of view. This will help personalize the message.
- Have clear expectations: You must have clear expectations of the campaign and the influencer. Therefore, make sure you go over your marketing goals and objectives and evaluate the experience of the influencer. See if they can meet your goals.
Once you learn more about the influencers you want to recruit, send an email and follow up in the next few weeks if you don’t get a reply. Influencers often overlook emails because their inboxes are flooded, especially bigger influencers. You can send up to 3 follow-up emails.
Drawback of this method: Writing a personalized email that will resonate with the influencers is easier said than done, so you might need help from email copywriting or influencer outreach experts.
5. Ask for referrals
Best for: Businesses of all sizes and across all industries.
Word of mouth is the most reliable source for influencer acquisition. However, you may have difficulty where to look for referrals or who to ask. There are several ways you can use it:
- Turn to your audience: Your best judge is your target audience. Reach out to them on social media and ask them to share the influencers they trust or admire and share their experience.
- Forums or other online communities: These are the best places to find and verify an influencer. Engage in the conversations, ask questions and you will get tons of recommendations and working experiences with that influencer.
- Consult with influencers: Ask influencers in your industry for referrals. They may know the perfect person who aligns with your audience and brand values.
Drawback of this method: The recommendations are usually high-value influencers that might be hard to reach.
6. Search on Google
Best for: Creator economy startups and eCommerce businesses that need only a few influencers
You can find a list of influencers through Google search if you search the word influencers and add the niche, location, or whatever your criteria. For example: if you search “Nashville influencers” you can find an article that has a list of the best influencers in Nashville.
Drawback of this method: You might find high-value influencers that are hard to reach. Also, there might not be results for some specific niches or less popular locations, or the lists can be outdated.
7. Attend industry events
Best for: Creator economy startups, eCommerce, influencer marketing agencies
Industry events are great opportunities to expand your networking and find influencers for collaboration. What makes these parties ideal for influencer acquisition is that both brands and creators get to know each other based on shared interests and values. This makes it the start of an excellent opportunity.
You can research the influencers, and see what they’ve been up to lately, so you can be more confident and know how to start a conversation. However, when talking to an influencer at a party be as brief as possible. You may start discussing business, but be respectful of their time. Ideally, prepare your speech in advance.
Drawback of this method: Although industry events make an excellent approach for networking and getting to know potential partners, it’s not that likely to happen. So, this method is excellent as an addition to a stronger and bolder influencer acquisition method.
8. Create a landing page
Best for eCommerce, Creator economy startups, influencer marketing agencies
Landing pages can be super effective in terms the acquisition because they help you redirect the interest of an influencer or creator to action.
The influencer acquisition landing page should have all the necessary information related to the role. That includes your expectations, campaign details, goals, and objectives. You can also add your interests and values to conceptualize your brand better.
Make sure to make your landing page readable and add a clear CTA. Break the text where needed, add bullet points, and ensure to point out the benefits of collaborating with you.
Once the page is done, promote it on your social media profiles and social media or Google Ads if you want to reach a wider audience.
Drawback of this method: You might get only less experienced influencers with a small audience.
9. Reach out to your customers
Best for: eCommerce, B2C Brands, and B2B companies
Another potential influencer acquisition strategy is to identify the influencers in your following lists. It’s common for brands to go for other influencers for collaboration instead of just reaching out to the ones that follow their brand. But, there are many benefits of prioritizing the influencers that are your followers instead of unknown influencers.
Influencers who follow your brand are already familiar with the business so you can save time introducing your brand and values. Also, they will be naturally more receptive to collaboration and you can easily negotiate because they often accept compensation partnerships.
You can use our influencer dashboard to easily find all influencers among your followers.
All you have to do is upload your list of usernames, or emails so we can match that with our data. In the end, you get a list of all influencers plus 40+ other data points for each one of them.
Drawback of this method: Businesses with less than 5K followers or subscribers might not be able to find any good influencers.
Find influencers among your followers
10. Run ads to attract influencers
Best for: Businesses of all sizes, across all industries
Ultimately, you can run social media and Google ads to attract influencers. You need a catchy design and a clear message that will capture the attention of your targeted audience.
Some social media platforms (Facebook and Instagram) allow you to upload a list and run custom audience ads. You can leverage that to make sure your ad reaches only influencers that are your ideal target audience.
Drawback of this method: Social media ads can be complex. They need frequent refreshing and constant monitoring to ensure they target the right audience.
Conclusion
There are many ways you can do Influencer acquisition. Which one is most effective depends on what you need. Whether you need to recruit hundreds or thousands of influencers or only a few. Whether you have a team that can reach out and manage the influencers, or not, etc.
Here at influencers.club we have a team of 40+ experts who specialize in influencer acquisition and can take the whole process off your hands.
Or, if you have a team that can handle the process, you can use our influencer outreach platform as a tool to discover influencers and send the emails directly from the platform.
FAQ
Brands prefer to recruit influencers that are present on multiple platforms. TikTok continues to evolve, while Instagram is still the most popular platform for influencers.
Clear communication, trust and respect, constructive feedback, and occasional check-ins are the best post-collab tips for a good relationship with an influencer.
When doing influencer acquisition businesses often make a mistake with mismatched audience targeting, poor vetting of influencers, bad content style and quality, inconsistent communication, failure to measure campaign performance, underestimating the importance of authenticity, and overlooking legal and compliance requirements.
