How to Find Influencers to Promote Your Small Business in 2023 (Low Cost)

Those two facts make nano and micro influencers an ideal solution for any entrepreneur who wants to make a big impact with a smaller budget. Influencer marketing is becoming one of the best ways to Drive sales, with 49% of buyers relying on influencers for purchase decisions. But most businesses can't afford mega celebrity influencers. What if I told you you didn't need to? In this video, I'm going to show you how to find influencers, how to reach out, and how to best use them once you decide they're the person you want to work with. By the way, I'm going to do it all with tools that you can start using right now for free. Influencer marketing is a thriving type of social media marketing that uses endorsements and product mentions from influencers with varying followings. Big companies with huge budgets often choose to work with mega influencers. These are creators with follower counts in the millions. While those big expensive names come with large followings, they also often come with low engagement rates and are pumped up by a lot of fake accounts. Nano and micro influencers, on the other hand, tend to have much higher engagement rates due to their ability to authentically connect with their audience. These are creators who have followings between 1,000 to 10,000 and 10,000 to 100,000. They are relatively cheaper than working with bigger influencers with massive followings and with their higher reachability, the cost per impression and engagement is lower. Those two facts make nano and micro influencers an ideal solution for any entrepreneur who wants to make a big impact with a smaller budget. To find an influencer, you can try one of the two methods I'm going to show you now. First up, try searching hashtags on Instagram. You and TikTok search returns related to your industry and then click to see the top performing posts. Look through the profiles and find influencers with the following and engagement you like. Their engagement rate is going to tell you how active the influencer's audience is with their posts. If you don't have access to a tool that'll do this for you automatically, here's a great way that you can calculate any influencer's engagement rate per post on your own. So for a post that has 250 likes and 100 comments together, that equals 350 engagements. Divide that by the number of followers they have, multiply that number by 100 and there you have it, their engagement rate. Second up is a free 14 day trial that you can use from an influencer marketing platform called modash. Influencer marketing platforms help you centralize Each stage of the process, starting with discovery. What I really like about the site is that it lets you search for Instagram, TikTok and YouTube influencers, which tend to drive higher ROI in influencer campaigns. Once you've made an account and see your dashboard, it's time to search for this walkthrough. We're just going to focus on a few key filters. So let's say you're a small US based flower shop targeting 25 to 44 year old novice plant lovers and and you're looking for an influencer to promote your business. Let's put in United States. Remembering what I said earlier about Nano and Micro Influencer follower counts, let's go with between 1k and 100k here. We can really start to narrow it down by searching topics that match your business with your ideal influencer. Let's go with home decor, furniture and garden. This next filter is one we're very familiar with. Engagement Rate when it comes to defining what a good engagement rate is, you should know that the median engagement rate across all industries is 0.98%. But micro and Nano influencers aren't the average. They tout engagement rates closer to 4% and 7%. So let's bump this up to a 6% or above. With contact information, you can choose to only see influencers who have certain contact info available, making initial contact super easy. For account type, let's check off both regular and creator. I say do both because if you can find a regular account that has the numbers we're looking for, they're definitely worth talking to and may be more affordable than somebody who's a bit more established. There's nothing worse than realizing the person you're with isn't on the same page as you. With hashtags, once again, we can search terms that match your business with your ideal influencer. Think of it like a dating site and you're trying to find things that you have in common. The less clear you are, the more likely you are to end up with someone who isn't a very good fit for you. Trust me, I know from experience. So let's go with GardeningLife. The other great thing about this site is that you can edit filters for both your ideal influencer and their audience. This is where you can target your ideal audience based on typical demographics of your own customer base. So for our flower business, let's choose a US based audience and set an age preference for our targeted 25 to 44 year olds. Don't forget to add in relative interests. This fake Followers Filter is where you can start to protect yourself from being scammed by influencers with a bunch of fake accounts, making them look bigger than they actually are. Let's call this the no Catfish section. This will let you get a glimpse of how many fake followers they have. According to Modash, more than 25% is usually a sign of fraud. After setting all your filters, you can now see your matches. Save the ones that meet your criteria and they'll automatically be added to a list that you can download and use to contact them directly. Remember, make sure the influencers that make your list create content that align with your brand. Views and comments are great, but they don't mean much if they're not generating leads. Once you know who you want, it's time to reach out. Here's a great quick example of a DM you can send hi, I've been following your content and love your messaging surrounding gardening. I'd love to talk to you about a sponsored content campaign for us. Time to chat soon. I'm available at. Make sure to leave your email and contact info. You can find this and other email outreach and campaign success management templates in our free Ultimate Guide to Influencer Marketing. When it comes to thinking about what type of content Micro and Nano influencers create, options include guest blog posts, user generated content, YouTube videos, or sponsored posts. Sparkling water company Lacroix saw great success by working with a group of micro influencers who consistently posted Instagram content about the brand. The influencer in this post has 1,300 followers with an engagement rate of 9%. Lagroy also used hashtag based influencer campaigns where they'd send out free products to a collection of Micro and Nano influencers and get tons of traction on Instagram when they post about it to wrap up. By investing in influencer marketing, specifically Nano and Micro influencers, you're investing your growth into influencers with an authentic appeal. Authentic engagement and come at a relatively low cost. Who are some of your favorite Nano and Micro influencers related to your industry? Drop a comment and tag them below. I can't find this client info. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned. No out of sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot grow better.