Having a start-up business may be tough at first, because it is not about your brand or products, but it is about gaining audience. After all, your business exists because you have people that buy your products, right? The problem is; attracting those people may be challenging at first. First, you have to find them. Second, they need to find you. Third, they need to stay interested in what your business is offering to them. Fourth, they have to make sure you are reliable. Well, thanks to the rise of technology improvements and inventions, today’s marketing strategy is made simpler if not easier. Now you can attract people using the power of the internet without having to go door-to-door or meeting people to tell them about your products. Using websites and social media, you can reach your audience in a more effective way straight from your place. However, it is not that simple. It is not as simple as “Oh let me create an Instagram account, post a photo of my product and boom – goes the customer buying my products.” No, it does not work like that. The obstacle you need to pay attention to is the fact that it is difficult to find your target audience – the people who might need your products. While using hashtags is a good first step to maintain social media efforts, sometimes it can only attract, as I would like to call it, “the opportunists”, to post their own ads or promote their own business on your social media page. That being said, there is another way you can do to promote your business that can directly give good impact on your business. It is called influencer marketing. I’m sure most of you already know what this is about because well, we have seen enough influencers sharing “reviews” on their social media accounts for their followers to see. Again, some people thought it was simple. Just hire an influencer and pay them to promote your business. The truth is; it also needs a great deal of calculation and consideration before even hiring the right influencer. How do we do that then? Keep reading this article to find out!

Do your research

Yes, I know I keep saying this already, but it’s true. Conducting a research first before taking actions is a very wise step to take. You have to explore social media and find the right influencers for your business. If you don’t know how to start, do these first:

• Gather the names of social media influencers that you are familiar with
• Identify their niches and filter which one is suitable for your business
• Observe their daily shared activities on social media; do they behave well? Are they controversial? Are they trustworthy?
• Observe the way they endorse stuff and how they talk about it
• Observe how well they are interacting with their followers

Once you have gathered enough information, choose the right one for you that will make the best representation of your business products.

Communicate with the influencer first

Yes, even after you decided which influencer is perfect for your business, you still need to contact them first. Choosing an influencer doesn’t mean reaching an agreement already. You never know if somehow you don’t get along well with the influencer and choose to find someone else for the job, right? A friend of mine who has a skincare business once told me that these are how she knows the influencer is the right one for her business:

• The influencers will never ask “What should I say to my followers about this product?” They are the influencer; they should know how to influence their followers with the products
• The right influencer is the one who will never just accept any offer for endorsement. They will always ask about the product in more details because they don’t just want money, but they care about their followers and their content as well
• The best influencers will reject certain types of endorsement products that involve illegal drugs, gambling, illegal products or even food especially those without FDA approvals, and even products with false claims such as “eliminate eye minus” or “body enhancement products”. Dude, that will never happen.

Of course, you should communicate with them more clearly and try to get along well with them because a happy collaboration will result in a happy business, right?

Final thought

There is another thing that you should consider; niche. Although there are so many famous social media influencers out there and you might want to choose the most popular ones. However, let me just say this; a 10k follower influencer with the same niche as yours is better than a 100k follower influencer without a niche. There are influencers who have no niche and followed by 100k-200k people simply because of good photos, but there are influencers who have their own specific niche that will lead you to your real target audience – the ones who need your products that are most likely possible to buy your products. For example, if you are a business owner selling make-up products, then your ideal influencers should be those inspiring people about makeups like makeup artists, beauty bloggers or beauty vloggers. Believe it or not, they will be the one connecting you to your real target audience, not just some random people who probably don’t have any idea about makeup or cosmetics out there.