When working with influencers, brands automatically consider how many followers they have, what sort of engagement rate they have and their reach.

But often, the overlooked (crucial) detail falls to follower demographics. Audience demographic data tells you important details about the people who follow the influencer you want to work with.

With all things considered, this data is crucial.

If you’re working with an influencer to reach people in the UK, what use is it if a majority of their followers are based in the US?

In this post you’ll learn:

• Why audience demographic data is important when planning your campaigns
• What follower demographic analytics you should look out for
• How to use this data to improve your campaign performance
• A solution for when the audience doesn’t match who you’re looking to reach.

Whatever your objectives; lead generation; conversions or increased sales, you must dig deeper. The more you know about your influencers’ audience, the more strategic you can be with your partnership.

Influencer marketing centres around the audience. So whether or not an influencer’s followers match your brand’s target market is paramount. However as our influencer marketing report uncovered less than one third (29%) of influencers were asked by brands for any audience information at all –  with even fewer considering Google Analytics.

Download our 2020 report into influencer marketing 

With customer-(smart)-centric content being more effective than product-centric content. Your brand’s message will only be delivered to the right customers through the right influencer. Yet follower numbers are branded’ main concern. But reach is cheap. Focusing all marketing efforts on this, and this alone is a race to the bottom. Especially in today’s climate where bought followers can present an issue; follower numbers alone do not correlate with relevance, impact  and influence. Engagement rates are a much better indication of how influential (compelling) the influencer may be.  

Transparency of follower data is also really important. If you don’t have a technology and the only way to control for that  is by asking the influencers to provide you with the right information and statistics as a bare minimum. Consider requesting their audience demographics on each and every platform, as an influencer’s audience age, location and gender will vary from platform to platform. Look at their content and the brands they have worked with previously, as they may have also worked with some of your competitors. 

What follower demographic analytics you should look out for?

When it comes to follower demographics, you ideally want to look at the types of people who follow the influencers you currently (or want to) work with.

Within ZINE, you’re able to see the brand affinities the audience has. You can see if the audience has any affinities with your competitors, or even yourself. A high affinity percentage of brands in your industry is a good sign that the audience is aligned with the types of people you ideally want to target.

Further to seeing what brand affinities the influencer’s followers have, you should think about their interests. If you’re a dog brand and you see that their audience has a high interest in dogs or pets, it’s a good sign you’re reaching the right type of people.

You should also pay attention to demographics such as age, gender and location. If you’re targeting a specific age group, it’s useful to see that the followers fall in line with that. Equally, you’d want to see that the gender split works for your brand. If you’re a fashion brand targeting females, you probably don’t want to work with an influencer who’s audience is 90% male.

 

If your products are location-specific or you only work within certain countries, it’s crucial that the audience location matches too. County and city data is another way to verify and assess the follower quality – an influencer based in the UK with the majority of their audience in India and no tie to India, could indicate fake followers. But the main issue you’ll have is that you don’t plan to target that country anyway!

How to use this data to improve your campaign performance

Data is only useful if you can use it to improve the performance of your campaigns. With ZINE audience demographics data, asses the influencers you already work with to check the validity of the people they reach Utilise the data when making decisions about future influencers. If you’re torn between working with a number of influencers – this data can be the deciding factor to help you make the right choice for your brand.

Find out how to identify your ideal influencers  

The rise of paid social

As a brand it’s important to analyse an influencer’s following before deciding to work with them. However, as you’ll know all too well, the perfect match doesn’t exist. Finding the right influencer with a high concentration of the target audience is often tricky. When you do find that creator, it’s often the case that their content doesn’t fully resonate with your brand.

Many studies show influencer content outperforming brand-owned content on social platforms.  Recently, an increasing number of brands have started to consider boosting influencer content across social channels. This is largely due to a series of challenges faced by influencer marketing professionals.

Buying rights to influencer content to use within your brand’s own ads is another way to leverage the power of influencer’s content beyond the traditional sponsored post. It allows you to utilise creative assets while targeting key segments relevant to your business. Requesting additional assets alongside a live-post is increasingly common and provides a cost-effective and diverse source of content to fuel paid social ads.

In both cases, this shift in mindset positions influencers as content creators rather than paid sponsors. It means brands can put less emphasis on follower numbers and more on creative output and brand affinity.

Check out our case study on the impact of paid media on influencer content.

 

Tracking influencer’s audience demographics

You need a tool to verify and assess an influencer’s analytics, ZINE could be the ideal fit. ZINE goes straight to the source and provides you with real-time, in-depth analytics straight from each influencer’s social media channels. Exclusively ZINE’s analytics also incorporate data which the influencer themselves may not know, such as their audiences’ financial profile, brand affinities, likes and interests.

Kick start your influencer marketing strategy with ZINE