Influencer marketing is known as one of the most effective marketing strategies to promote and sell your eCommerce products. According to studies brands that work with influencers earn $5.20 for every dollar spent.
To nail your influencer marketing campaigns you have to master the basics of working with influencers. You might wonder, how much do Instagram influencers cost? How do I find influencers? What’s the ROI I can expect from my influencer campaigns?
Luckily, influencer marketing is not rocket science, and any brand whether big or small can use this channel and benefit from it.
In this article, you will learn how to find, and pitch the right Instagram influencers for your brand based on the methods we used for over 600 of Shopify clients. So without any further adieu, this is our 101 guide on finding Instagram influencers for Shopify!
Free Download: A List of 150 Micro-Influencers in Every Niche
What is an Instagram Influencer?
An Instagram influencer is someone who has influence over a group of people (ideally your target audience). Influencers are typically seen as experts in their niches, and people listen and value their opinions. Influencers are a great marketing resource for brands because of their ability to influence consumer buying decisions.
According to GlobalWebIndex, 71% of social media users are more likely to purchase products based on social media referrals.
Get where I’m going? The goal is to get them to shine a bright light on your brand by reviewing, testing, using, and positively representing your products in front of their followers (your target audience).
Types of Instagram Influencers
There are four tiers of Instagram influencers, based on the size of their profile: nano influencers, micro-influencers, macro-influencers, and celebrity influencers. So what are the differences and which ones should you go with?
Nano Influencers (1-10K)
Nano influencers are tier 1 influencers. They are most often ordinary people or small content creators with a 1-10k follower count. Nano influencers are not well known nor do they hold big authority in their niches, but they have another amazing perk that’s exclusive to only them and micro-influencers.
They have a much higher level of trust with their followers, resulting in very high engagement rates. Being an influencer is also not a full-time thing to them, so they’re usually easy to negotiate with.
Micro-influencers (10-100K)
Micro-influencers have anywhere from 10 to 100k followers, and they make up ~47% of all Influencers on Instagram (according to HyperAuditor).
Brands are looking to collaborate with micro-influencers because they’re more experienced than nano influencers. Yet, also a bit more expensive. They also have the same personal and hands-on type of relationship with their followers.
Macro influencers (100K-1M)
Macro influencers are well-known figures in their niches. They can typically be found in broad niches and used to reach large, broad audiences. The benefits of collaborating with them are their authority and ability to spread brand awareness among your target audience.
Their weakness is (usually) their engagement rates.
Celebrity Influencers (1M+)
Celebrity, or mega influencers, are the top dogs in influencer marketing. They have millions of followers and can reach a very big, but also very broad audience. Great for brand giants who can afford them.
Their weakness is (usually) their engagement rates.
Influencer Pricing
Now that you know the types of influencers there are, let’s look at what they’ll cost you.
This data table represents the amount of money you can expect to pay per promotional post with each type of influencer.
Influencer Pricing
| Nano influencers | 10$-100$ / free products |
|---|---|
| Micro influencers | 100$-500$ |
| Macro influencers | 500$-1K$ |
| Celebrity influencers | 10K$+ |
It’s important to note that these prices are just average estimates. So take them with a grain of salt and just use them as a reference. You can also use an Instagram pricing calculator.
This calculator will estimate important metrics like reach potential, average engagement rate, and price per sponsored post/story. It’s a useful tool to have, but the same still applies. Use the tool as a reference not as a rulebook.
How to Find (Relevant) Instagram Influencers for Shopify
Finding Instagram influencers for Shopify is a delicate process and the first step is to create criteria that will serve as guidelines to ensure the influencers you find are the right ones for your brand.
- Relevance – you can’t sell fitness products with beauty influencers. You need to look for relevant influencers whose followers are your target audience.
- Content – make sure that the influencer’s content is on point, consistent, and constant (doesn’t shy away from niche, and follows the same style throughout their page).
- Audience – some influencers fake their following as a shortcut to brand deals. To check for fake followers, you can use SocialBlade. Look at their follower growth, and see if it’s had a linear increase (sudden huge spikes indicate fake followers).
But also keep in mind that sudden spikes can mean that a post of theirs went viral, so you might have to do a bit of digging. - Engagement Rate – a high engagement rate means a healthy page and loyal followers. To check the engagement rate of an influencer use this free engagement rate calculator.
Now that you’re fully equipped with the influencer discovery essentials, it’s time to get to finding!
I’ve selected the best methods for each use case:
- For small scale campaigns – hashtags and influencer discovery tools
- For large scale micro or nano influencer campaigns – get an influencer list per your criteria, from influencer data providers
To be more specific, a small-scale influencer campaign is one where you only need to find, contact and collaborate with a handful of influencers, or just one. Small-scale campaigns work best if you’re working with macro-influencers.
A large-scale campaign is one where you need to find, contact and collaborate with a large volume of influencers, tens or even hundreds. Large-scale campaigns work best if you’re working with nano or micro-influencers.
How to Find Influencers Using Hashtags
Hashtags are a great source to find relevant influencers (for free). This is what you need to do:
- Build a list of the 10 most relevant, and niche-specific hashtags for your brand
- Go to the top posts of each hashtag, and look for influencers
- Once you find an influencer you like, save their information and email in this free spreadsheet (a gift from Influencers Club).
- After you build a list of influencers you’re happy with, go through the prospects and handpick the ones that match the criteria we set up earlier
Then all that’s left is to do outreach, and rinse and repeat.
Influencer Discovery Tools & Platforms
Influencer platforms and discovery tools are another great way to find Instagram influencers. They cut out most of the manual work, and all you have to do is set up your targeting.
- Findcreators.io – one of few free influencer discovery tools out there, and the only one that allows you to do keyword-based targeting.
With findcreators.io you can search for influencers based on keywords they have in their bio and number of followers. This feature is extremely powerful, especially for sub-niche Shopify stores that are looking for specific types of influencers.
Sure you search “fitness” to find fitness-related influencers, but why not go deeper?
You can also try super niche keywords to narrow your search. For this example, you could use “IFBB” if you’re looking for pro bodybuilders.
Or if you’re selling supplements or gym accessories you can take it one step further and find all the influencers that are sponsoring your competitors by searching for their brand names – since influencers usually place their brand affiliations in their bio.
Other creator platforms and tools include:
- BuzzStream
- BuzzSumo
- Pitchbox
- Embold
- HyperAuditor
How to Find (Targeted) Influencers at Scale
All of the methods mentioned up until now will help you find Instagram influencers to promote your Shopify products- but there’s a limit to the number of influencers you can find.
If you want to scale your approach and work with a large volume of influencers, this method will allow you to do exactly that.
You’re reading an article by Influencers Club. We own the biggest database of social media influencers on the planet and we can easily find the perfect influencers for your brand.
Along with their emails, we also provide 28 additional data points that can be used to filter through our massive database. So you get an extremely targeted list of influencer emails.
Some of the data points include:
- Interests
- Location
- Gender
- Age
- Ethnicity
- Number of followers
- Engagement rate
- Keywords (in bio)
Here are some examples of queries brands used to get targeted influencer emails:
- Female fashion influencers with 5,000–10,000 followers, from the US, with an engagement rate of over 4%
- Men under 30 that have “IFBB” in their bio, have between 50,000–100,000 followers and post at least three times a week
- All users that have crossfit hashtags or keywords in their bio, link to a YouTube channel, and fall within the “fitness trainer” category
And the targeting features are just the tip of the iceberg.
The other reason why this data is so powerful is not only because you can use it to get a seriously targeted influencer email list, but also because you can use it for mass email personalization. Which is the final piece of the influencer marketing puzzle.
To get in touch, book a free strategy call, or fill out the form below!
How to Pitch Influencers (Personalized Outreach)
We know why you’re here, you want a free email template you can spam send to every influencer you found right?
Many brands go through the whole process to find the best possible influencers, all to fail at this final step. Brands need to understand that influencers are humans and not Instagram pages.
To connect with a human, you need to approach them on a personal level, as another human. What does this mean exactly?
Dump the premade templates, and take the time to create meaningful messages that stand out from the other 58 identical emails they got this week.
Here are some tips for sending your outreach messages:
- Personalize the first sentence the most. Go through their profile and include things that only their followers would know. Address a post they did, something that happened, or their general aesthetic – and be concise about it.
- Keep your emails short and sweet. Tell them why you picked them, your offer, and most importantly how they can benefit from the collaboration.
- Multi-channel approach. After you send them an email, follow up with an Instagram DM if they don’t respond.
- Include a very low effort and simple call to action “Can I send you a free sample? Let me know” or just “Can I send you more info?”.
Key Takeaways
Instagram influencers have spent years building and nurturing their audience. They have trusting engaged followers that they can bring to your brand.
They can create amazing content, and present you with real authenticity in front of their followers. Something you can’t achieve with other marketing channels.
Influencers are probably the single most powerful tool for Shopify and eCommerce brands to establish their brand among their target audience, and more importantly, make sales and long-lasting customers.
We hope that you now know how to pick, find, and pitch the right Instagram influencers to promote your Shopify products.
FIND THE PERFECT INFLUENCERS
Scale your outreach and pick the perfect influencers for your brand using our influencer database searchable by 30+ smart filters
