Followers are more likely to share if they’re already fans of your brand or product, so start by building an audience with content marketing and social media posts. The easiest way is to do so organically is by consistently delivering valuable content through blog posts, Facebook live sessions, private groups, and email newsletters. Once you gain your audience’s trust, they will listen when it’s time for them to promote your message. It takes time to do that. Don’t start selling to them before your audience knows and trusts you.

The first step of any marketing campaign is to understand your audience. There are two ways to think about your audience: demographic and psychographic segmentation. Demographic segmentation focuses on who they are, while psychographic segmentation focuses on why they buy things.

Here’s what you can do:

Perform an audit of your existing audience and fans. Think about who buys from you and who engages with your brand online. Who is the most involved online? Who has the biggest social following? Your starting point for influencer marketing should be with this group of people. You might already have an influencer who is a raving fan.

Research what people love about your product/company/brand. Understand what motivates them to buy from you in the first place. Understand what pains your products solve for them. And recognize where else they spend their time online, so that you can start reaching out to them there too (e.g., Facebook groups).

While it might seem like choosing big-name celebrities is a no-brainer, such influencers might not always be the best choice for your brand or product. If you have a limited budget and can only afford to work with one or two influencers, would you rather work with someone with 200K followers who has little in common with your target audience? Or would you rather work with someone with 25K followers who is your ideal market? Follower numbers matter, but it’s most important to find an influencer with followers who are laser-focused on the niche your product covers and are highly engaged.

The best way to identify potential influencers is to look for people with a built-in audience that aligns with your target audience. A good number of followers is more than 50K on Instagram or 10K on Twitter. If they have fewer than that, they probably aren’t “influencers” yet. Still, engagement and interest in the niche you’re targeting are most important. For instance, if you are selling acoustic guitars, you will want to work with influencers interested in music and guitars. You can search for keywords or hashtags on social networks like Instagram or Twitter to find these people.

Additionally, use tools like Traackr and HypeAuditor to find relevant influencers based on their follower count and engagement rate. These tools also allow you to filter out fake accounts, so you don’t waste time contacting someone who won’t be a good fit. Be sure the influencer has more than just a pretty face and is active in the social media space.

Influencers can help you reach new audiences and promote your product authentically.

The process for finding influencers to sell your digital product depends on whom you want to target and where they hang out online. Your goal is to find influencers who share your values, have a large following, and can create content that promotes your product.

Create a game plan for selling a digital product using influencer marketing:

1. Research influencers and identify people who can help you sell your digital product
2. Reach out to potential influencers through email or social media direct messages
3. Offer free or discounted products in exchange for content creation or affiliate commissions
4. Provide relevant assets, such as product images and descriptions, to influencers

But there’s another question. How do you measure your results?

There are many ways to measure the results of influencer marketing. The most obvious place to start is to identify what you would like to get out of your campaign and then look for a metric that will help you measure success.

What are good metrics for measuring success?

Product sales: If you ask your influencers to provide a special discount code, sales will be easy to track.

Web traffic: If you ask influencers to use a specific URL to drive traffic, you can track visitors. Make sure the URL is unique and only gets used by the influencers who participate in the campaign.

Contest entries: If you host a contest and ask influencers to help promote it, you can ask them to use a special hashtag when they post about it on social media, so they are easily identifiable in relevant search results. You can also ask for email addresses as an entry method so that you can grow your mailing list.