What is an Influencer: Types of Influencers, Examples, and How Much do They Make?

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What is an influencer? Where have you lived the last ten years if you don't understand it? Influencers have revolutionized the way brands and customers use social media.

Most brands consider them part of a core marketing strategy. This strategy drives awareness, traffic and sales. Influencers have a lot of influence. Influencers can help you tap into a larger audience than your own.

This article will explain what an influencer looks like and how it works in influencer marketing. You'll learn how much to expect to spend, and where to start. Are you ready to expand your reach? Let's get started.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Simply put, an influencer can be any person who has the ability to influence others' behavior. Influencers in marketing are people who work with brands to promote their products and services to their customers.

Influencers are becoming more important than ever because word-of mouth recommendations and criticisms can spread faster through social media than fire in a dry area. They are often well-known and have large followings on social media.

Action is driven by true influence, not awareness.

Jay Baer

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing, a strategy for social media marketing, is where brands use the influencers' audience to increase awareness and drive sales. Influencers are paid to promote or endorse a product to their followers, who then buy it from the brand.

For years, influencer marketing has grown in popularity and will be a major marketing trend for 2022. In 2022, influencer marketing is expected to be used by almost three quarters (72.5%) of marketers.

Who uses Influencer Marketing?

Fashion ecommerce websites are targeting influencers like professionals, even though it appears that companies won't let go of outbound marketing. Many companies are reaching out to fashion bloggers to send them clothes and accessories to be reviewed. Bloggers then post photos and write about the garments, linking back to the website where the audience can purchase the products being reviewed.

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ModCloth, an online vintage clothing store, does a fantastic job at this. ModCloth is active on social media sharing the photos of their customers wearing ModCloth clothing. This makes them feel special and encourages them to post more about the clothing.

Many fashion websites have sent their products to influencers, who could then enter contests to win them. Sometimes, they'll send credit to active fashion bloggers, magazine writers, or social media users so that they can visit the site and pick out clothing. Then they can review the entire experience.

What are the 4 Types Of Influencers?

There are many types of influencers. Influencers could be famous people with millions of followers or a common person with only a few thousand followers. Based on the size of their followers, influencers will typically be divided into one of these four categories.

Nano-influencers

The nano-influencers are the most popular with 10,000 followers or less. These people could be experts in a specific area or just beginning their influencer journey. Although their audiences are small, they are extremely engaged.

Jen Lauren, a self-care and exercise Instagrammer based in NYC is an excellent example for a nano influencer. She is a niche influencer with a small, but engaged audience.

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Micro-influencers

Micro-influencers can have as many as 10,000 to 100,000 followers. These micro-influencers are usually niche experts with large, engaged audiences. These people are not celebrities and they would be hard to spot if you were walking by them on the street.

Miette Dierckx, a travel and lifestyle blogger, is a micro-influencer who has a carefully selected audience that follows her adventures around the globe. She has worked with many companies, including chocolate brand Cote D'or and sunscreen brand La Roche Posay.

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Macro-influencers

Macro-influencers can have audiences of 100,000 to 1 million. These influencers have the largest followings. These influencers are usually B-list or C-list celebrities, or online-natives who have worked hard and built a large following.

Amy Jackson, a fashion blogger, is a macro-influencer who works with many brands such as Celine and Cuyana.

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Mega-influencers

The biggest audience is found in mega influencers. To be considered a mega-influencer, an influencer must have more than 1 million followers.

These celebrities are often famous people who have achieved fame offline and turned it into online income — think Ryan Reynolds or The Jenners. However, some are social media and internet users natively. This is evident in people like MrBeast and Zoella.

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What Does Influencers Charge?

Successful influencer marketing campaigns do not come cheap. Brands will spend $15 billion in influencer marketing by 2022.

Although you might be able send products free of charge to some nano influencers expect to see a lot of traffic. Campaigns can reach five, six and seven figures quickly for influencers with large audiences.

There are many ways to pay influencers. Many will charge a flat rate for each post. Some people may ask for an affiliate commission rate, where they get a percentage of each sale.

The cost of influencers depends on many factors.

• Audience size
• Platform
• engagement levels
• niche

There are many rates. Fox Business reported that influential people with more than one million followers could charge over $100,000 per post. On the other hand, micro-influencers can charge as high as $100,000 per year and can charge as much up to a few thousand dollar per post.

Why Influencers Are Important for Your Brand?

Recommendations from third parties are more trusted than those from brands, especially if they're trustworthy and knowledgeable. This kind of third party is an influencer. Influencers can help you appear more credible by passing the trust they have with their audience.

This makes sense when you consider it from a personal perspective. You don't trust someone who brags about themselves and tells you fun facts about their personality to convince yourself to be friends. You often trust your mutual friend who will vouch for the person.

Influencers are the friend who connects your brand to your target customers.

Your brand's reach is significantly increased when you work with an influencer. An influencer can bring your brand's audience along with their network. An influencer can drive traffic to your website, increase your exposure on social media, and sell your product simply by sharing their story or recommendation.

Influencer marketing has become a powerful way to attract clients and customers. Traditional outbound marketing has fallen away. Modern consumers want to be independent and can research brands on their own or hear from trusted friends and family.

How can influencers help with inbound marketing? Influencers create content about your brand and recommend it to their followers. They also insert themselves in conversations around your brand. It can make a big difference in your company's success or failure.

Get Started with Influencer Marketing

It's a great way for your brand to grow on social media by working with influencers.

Set Your Goals

Are you looking to increase brand awareness and/or make more sales? These are the most common goals for influencer marketing campaigns. However, they require different strategies to achieve them.

For example, if you are looking to increase sales, you might choose to work with micro-influencers that have smaller but engaged audiences. It is better to work with only a few macro and mega influencers if you are serious about increasing brand awareness.

Think about Your Audience

Marketers already know who your target audience is. You need to think about what topics, blogs, and Twitter handles your ideal influencer would be following in order to find them.

My company uses a blogger outreach tool. The influencers I target are PR and marketing blogs who focus on content and influencer-marketing. These blogs are often followed by PR professionals and marketers who want the most recent technology and trends in their fields.

They will find my company relevant if a blogger recommends it to them. But if I had gone after bloggers who write on finance, even though one blogger may like my software. Their audience would probably not care.

Find the Right Influencer to Your Brand

Once you have established your goals and target audience, you can begin to search for influencers that are a good fit for your brand. When choosing influencers, there are three things I recommend.

Context: Is your influencer a contextual fit? This is the most important attribute when targeting influencers that fit your brand's needs. Justin Bieber, for example, is a well-known social media user with 37+ million followers. But, would his tweet about your software actually bring in sales? It's unlikely, as Justin and the tech software target audience are different. His endorsement is not really relevant.

Reach: You want an influencer in your field to also have reach. This allows them to share your awesome content and positive recommendations with as many people as possible. Your online business could sell clothes for "tweens" if it was successful.

Actionability This refers to the ability of an influencer to get their audience to act. This characteristic is natural when you target people who are in the right context for your brand and have enough reach.

Influencers aren't forced upon their audience. They are an "opt in" network. Their followers choose to follow them on Twitter or their blog. Their audience is thus engaged and eager to hear more about the topic. This is why contextual matching is so important.

It is important to mention that market research has been done extensively on mid-level influencers. These influencers have a good reach, but not enough to build relationships and foster loyalty. Loyal audiences absorb recommendations like a sponge. These are the influencers to look for if you're unsure.

Where to Find Your Ideal Influencer

Finding influencers that meet the criteria above is the final step to get started in influencer marketing. These are my top methods of finding them.

Social Media Monitoring

Your brand's most influential advocates will be your brand's brand advocates. Their audience follows them because they share the same brand values as you, and they talk loudly about how much they love your company. You will discover influencers and advocates that you didn't know you had by listening to the posts and social media mentions about your brand.

Social media monitoring can also help you find influencers that advocate for the niche or genre you have defined in step 1. You might see someone tweeting a lot about yoga gear, but not mention your site as a great place to purchase equipment or apparel. This is the person you want to connect with and expose to your brand.

Research Hashtags

Find the hashtags your target influencers use. #bloggeroutreach is the hashtag I use for my company. Listening to the conversations around these hashtags has allowed me to identify active talkers and blog topics I can write to appeal to them.

I recommend creating a Twitter list to help you organize and follow influencers who seem like a good fit. HootSuite is what I use to organize my Twitter stream. Here are my hashtags in the platform.

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Google Alerts

To identify bloggers who are interested in topics related to your brand, set up alerts for keywords. Also, you should consider creating alternative names for your brand in order to find articles and posts that contain your mentions. This will allow you to identify advocates who are already in place.

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Mention

Mention allows users to enter the name of their company to find mentions on various outlets, such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

Blogger Outreach

Bloggers are undoubtedly the most influential people in the world of influencers. Bloggers are almost always active on multiple social media platforms, which is one of the benefits of targeting them.

To find influential bloggers for your brand, search for blogs within your niche and then read through their posts to see if they are writing about the same topics. Once you have a list of relevant bloggers, it is time to search their SEO stats as well as social media information in order to find the ones with the greatest reach for your brand.

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It can take time to manually sort through blogs and find all the criteria you specified when you gave an image to your influencer. There are many great tools for blogger outreach that can make this process much easier. There's a tool for every aspect of the spectrum.

Influencer Markets

Famebit and AspireIQ are two examples of influencer marketplaces that connect brands with industry leaders. They can help you track ROI, track engagement metrics, and manage payments. However, they do take a cut so ensure it's the right fit for your campaign.

Examples Of Influencer Marketing Matches

Callum Snape, Sun Peaks Resort

Callum Snape, a Macro influencer from Canada, is one of Canada's most well-known wilderness and travel photographer. Sun Peaks Resort in British Columbia, was a natural partner for him. His amazing images and videos generated hundreds of thousands of views, and helped drive massive awareness for the resort.

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Chrissy Teigen and BECCA Cosmetics

A new product launch with a celebrity can lead to a significant increase in awareness. This was the case with BECCA Cosmetics, which launched its Be a Light palette alongside Chrissy Teigen. Her promotional video was viewed 2.7 million times, making it an extremely profitable product line.

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Gymshark & Multiple Influencers

Gymshark built a multi-billion dollar business by leveraging the influencers. The brand's recent challenge of 66 days is an excellent example of how multiple influencers can increase brand awareness and engage on a large scale by working together across multiple channels. Gymshark was able to reach 241.3 million people on TikTok, and 750,000 on Instagram by partnering with influentialrs Melanie Walking and Laurie Elle.

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FAQs

Conclusion

While influencer marketing has changed since its inception as a digital marketing strategy for businesses, it is still a successful technique for many brands.

Your first influencer marketing campaign can be a disaster. Our agency can assist you in creating an influencer marketing campaign for your company.

What are your recommendations for finding influencers to promote your brand's products? Let's have a great discussion below!

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By: Neil Patel
Title: What is an Influencer: Types, Examples, & How Much They Make
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/guide-to-influencer-targeting/
Published Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2022 19:00:00 +0000