It’s important for an influencer—and the brand—to collaborate and find their niche. Map your influencer search to bestselling author Andrew Davis (“Brandscaping”) keynote on how to make it pay off. Watch his keynote here and then read our commentary below on how to find your niche with influencer marketing.

COMMENTARY: FINDING YOUR NICHE WITH INFLUENCER MARKETING

by Cynthia Liebermam

It’s important for an influencer—and the brand—to collaborate and find their niche. Map your influencer search to bestselling author Andrew Davis (“Brandscaping”) keynote on how to make it pay off.

Bestselling author Andrew Davis (“Brandscaping”) points out in his popular keynote, What is a niche market? Get rich! Target a niche!, “when we market to everyone, we reach no one.”

It used to be that the only way brands could potentially reach a customer was to spend a lot of advertising dollars for a particular product and hope and pray it actually hit their target audience. Fortunately, savvy marketers have discovered more precise ways to cut through the clutter and reach the ideal targeted persona through the application of niche “fractal marketing,” which is breaking your audience down into smaller and smaller segments until you find a niche that’s not currently being served. Once done, you can dominate that market segment.

Amusingly, Davis offers sage advice on on how even an organization like chicken farming can take an “audience-first” approach using fractal methods to reach a niche audience.

Fractal marketing starts by breaking down and dividing and subdividing your customer base until you find a valuable audience worth going after. Then start showing up and building a close relationship with them right where they work, live and play–online and off..

This  approach effectively carries over to influencer marketing when it comes to determining just who and what kind of influencer would be best suited to represent your brand!

First, you need to identify exactly who your niche audience is and what they are most interested in. Start following and engaging with any influencers you think are best relating with your target audience. What other brands are they integrating into their messaging and does it align with your brand objectives and goals? Does their language, style and engagement match well with the wants and needs of your ideal customer persona?

Let’s say you are the marketer of an orange juice brand and want to reach moms, so you start looking for a good mommy influencer to partner with. Is the influencer you are looking at a stay-at-home mommy blogger of five kids who humorously  reflects on the relentless demands of family schedules, household upkeep, runny noses,homework, and pines for some “me time” or intimacy with her hubby? That’s a very different kind of influencer from the full-time executive, mother and wife (not always in that order) who empathizes with other working moms who are juggling travel, daycare, romantic getaways, and more, all while trying to stay healthy mentally and physically during the process.

Once you’ve narrowed down the exact niche of the mommy blogger you are after (i.e. stay-at-home moms vs. successful executive mom), you can start searching for specific influencers you think will be the best match. This means taking into consideration where the consumer journey starts, how it progresses and at what stage of the journey they are consulting with different influencers

Using social listening, also known as observation, to gain actionable insights from the selected influencer’s relationship with their followers to learn where and how their audience like to work and play, who they hang out with and what matters to them most.

As Andrew Davis says, “As a company, make sure you know what appeals to your audience and start creating that kind of content.” Collaborate with your your influencer partner to define what kind value your brand can actually be adding to their follower’s lives.

Then start creating the right type of relatable content that is informative, inspiring and/or directly addresses the audiences needs and desires, or in some cases, is just plain fun. This builds brand loyalty creates greater trust, and trust ultimately results in revenue generation.

I’d love to hear about your successes–and your hardships–using fractal marketing tactics in your own influencer marketing efforts. How has it improved your marketing outreach, and has it helped you discover other new products you hadn’t thought of before? Please us know in the comment section below!

Cynthia Lieberman

You can watch Andrew’s keynote video below and order his NYT best seller, Brandscaping: Unleashing the Power of Partnerships, on Amazon. To learn more about Andrew, visit akaDrewDavis.com, or follow him on Twitter: @DrewDavisHere