How to hire an influencer: A guide for successful partnerships

As brands continue to rely on multiple social media accounts to reach audiences and grow, influencers have become a fundamental part of successful digital strategies. It’s not hard to see why—Influencer marketing can increase your brand’s reach, engagement and overall credibility.

But that’s only if marketers understand how to hire an influencer in the first place. The process of sourcing, contracting and managing influencer contracts plays a key role in the eventual success of any influencer campaign.

Read on to find out how to hire an influencer the right way, so you have a better chance of assuring success for your social marketing efforts.

Understand the process of hiring influencers

Marketers rarely stumble on the perfect influencer for their brand by chance. The hiring process needs to be treated as a dedicated strategy in its own right to establish strong working relationships with the right influencers from the get-go.

When you’re learning how to hire an influencer, consider the process as a type of recruitment, except you’re looking for independent contractors/freelancers instead of new employees. The typical influencer hiring process is made up of five key steps:

• Creating a shortlist of influencers
• Engaging in influencer outreach
• Negotiating and signing contracts
• Sharing a campaign brief, alongside objectives and expectations, and then managing the influencer campaign performance
• Maintaining a continued relationship with your freelancers

Influencer marketing tools, like Sprout Social Influencer Marketing (formerly Tagger), can help streamline this process. Below, we’ll go into detail on how to optimize each step.

Create an influencer shortlist to partner with

Learning how to hire an influencer successfully isn’t as simple as partnering with the biggest account you can find. A far more effective strategy is making sure you source influencers with the same target audience as your brand. Check out their profiles, posts and engagement rates.

Once you start finding an influencer make sure some, if not all, of the below metrics match with your business needs. When creating your influencer shortlist, consider using a data-driven solution like Sprout Influencer Marketing so you can easily track each influencer’s account performance. A dedicated platform like Sprout’s allows you to vet influencers, assess their alignment with your brand values and understand their audience demographics–without a bunch of manual research.

As you think about what influencers are right for your brand, watch our video on how to build the best influencer partnerships. These insights will provide a solid understanding that’ll also support you through the later stages of influencer marketing.

Tracking metrics is a smart, data-driven way to create an influencer shortlist of people who match well with your brand. To find your ideal influencer partner, make sure you’re tracking the following metrics:

Content health and performance benchmarks

Content health refers to how well an influencer’s content is performing compared to similar creators. This metric looks at specific content updates like individual reels to see how effective an influencer’s work is.

Performance benchmarks are similar, but they look specifically at an influencer’s standing among other influencers. Instead of honing in on individual content, these benchmarks show how an influencer’s overall account is performing.

These benchmarks are useful because they put a greater focus on an influencer’s tier or size. Several influencer marketing benchmarks are used to figure out an influencer’s content health and overall performance, though the most important is usually engagement rates.

Combining content health and performance benchmarks gives you a clear idea of how well an influencer’s overall account is doing.

Track these metrics across an influencer’s social media platforms because success on YouTube can look very different from success on TikTok, or X (formerly Twitter).

By tracking influencer performance benchmarks and content health on your platforms of choice, you’ll also get specific insight into their popularity across particular platforms. This will help you partner on more targeted and effective campaigns.

Brand and audience affinity

If you’re marketing a health product, it’d be counter-productive to partner with an influencer known for reviewing fast food. Tracking affinities makes sure you avoid situations like this and hire influencers within the same niche as your brand.

Brand affinity and audience affinity work slightly differently, but it’s worth factoring both into your influencer sourcing strategy.

Brand affinity refers to how much an influencer’s values and beliefs overlap with your brand. For example, if you’re an athleisure company, a fitness influencer will likely have a strong brand affinity with you.

Audience affinity refers to how much an influencer’s audience qualities and interests overlap with those of your brand’s audience. For example, if you’re in the gaming industry, a Twitch streamer should have a strong audience affinity with your brand’s audience.

Paying attention to both of these qualitative metrics will help you find the right influencers for your brand’s niche.

Audience demographics

Audience demographics help you identify an influencer’s audience. This demographic data can be diverse, but usually includes information like:

• Location
• Gender
• Language
• Age

Make sure an influencer’s audience demographics are similar to your brand’s target audience, so your campaign reaches the right people.

For example, Cadbury partnered with Xiensscran, a London-based food influencer with an audience of millennials and Gen Z. Because of these audience demographics, Cadbury knew what to expect when partnering with her and could create a campaign tailored to the target audience they wanted to reach–younger consumers.

Much like with performance metrics, audience demographics will also differ based on social platforms. As a general rule, TikTok audiences skew younger, while Facebook audiences are older. It’s worth tracking the different audience demographics for each influencer across all of their platforms.

Influencer authenticity

Authenticity on social media is a hot topic. According to our 2024 Influencer Marketing Report, 35% of Gen Z consumers rank authenticity as a top trait they care about when following influencers. So if it’s your first time learning how to hire an influencer, make sure the influencer you’re looking for is legitimate.

This means determining that their follower count and engagement rates are genuine. Otherwise, you risk working with an influencer who doesn’t have as active of an audience as it first appears.

In the below example, M&S Food partners with UK footballing legend Ian Wright. He’s a legitimate celebrity with his own influencer following, and they use his sporting background to help promote their healthy product range.

Ensuring authenticity also means reviewing parts of an influencer’s profile that are harder to track. For example, figuring out whether they’re genuinely passionate and knowledgeable in the topics they’re discussing, and understanding their audience’s overall sentiment toward them.

Reaching out to influencers

To create an influencer outreach strategy, find out how each of your shortlisted influencers prefers to be contacted. Do they want inquiries to go through their agent, or prefer an email over a DM. Using an influencer’s chosen communication channel is the first positive step toward a longer working relationship. You can usually find this information on their profile page.

In the example below, Nadir Nadhi shows that he prefers inquiries to go through a specific email address.

Then, create influencer outreach templates for your DMs and emails. Focus on making these templates clear, concise and respectful.

Personalize each outreach message based on the individual influencer you’re contacting. Let them know you’re familiar with their work, as this personalization can go a long way toward establishing a good first impression.

Finally, remember that working with an influencer is always a two-way street. Define a clear value proposition in your messages that shows how you’ll both benefit from the campaign.

Negotiating contracts before hiring an influencer

After your outreach messages are successful, you’ll enter the negotiation phase. Influencer compensation can work differently depending on who you’re working with.

Knowing what kind of influencer campaign you plan to create before you enter negotiations is helpful. A single sponsored post will cost far less than a week-long influencer takeover, for example.

Familiarize yourself with typical influencer pricing expectations for your chosen content type, so you know what kind of price to expect initially. Make sure to also factor in the size of the influencer you’re contacting and your industry, as these will also impact rates.

Before you start to negotiate, figure out any perks or alternative payment methods you can offer, like free products or affiliate commissions.

Once you have all this information, read up on how to negotiate influencer rates with your chosen influencer. Go into any negotiation with consideration and respect for the other person, and aim for a solution that benefits both of you. Whatever you decide, everything needs to be written into your influencer contract.

Your influencer contract should include the payment terms you’ve agreed to and influencer deliverables. It should also include further information like who owns any content produced, content usage rights and who’s responsible for content production costs.

An ideal influencer contract should fulfill two clear roles. It should first serve as a legally binding contract that protects your brand. It should also serve as an outline of expectations that an influencer can refer back to throughout your working relationship.

Campaign management and performance

After a contract has been signed, provide your influencer with a further campaign brief.

This document should clarify the goals of your campaign in more detail, including your expectations from your chosen influencer and any content guidelines. Send a few influencer marketing examples along with your guidelines, so the creator knows your expectations. The more detailed you can make this document, the more likely an influencer will create content you’re happy with.

Your onboarding might be more substantial than this one document, particularly if this is your first time working with a new influencer. Get further contact details from your influencer at this stage if you haven’t already, as you’ll need their address to ship any product samples.

In the example below, Airalo Global eSim partnered with the travel influencer Omar Nok. As part of their agreement, they provided him with one of their eSim products, which he used throughout his travel content journey.

To define expectations and deliverables that will support a campaign, hold a kickoff call. A kickoff call, where the influencer can ask you any questions before creating content, will help clarify your campaign goals with them directly.

Your goals should be aligned with influencer marketing KPIs. Some important KPIs include engagement rates, click-through rates and conversion rates. This will make it far easier to track a campaign’s performance against your expectations and change tactics accordingly if it’s a long-term campaign.

Tracking success can also be streamlined by using a campaign management tool like Sprout Social Influencer Marketing. A campaign management tool can centralize your campaign data and provide clear visualizations of how your campaign is doing against your KPIs.

You can also track financial data like the number of influencers you’ve partnered with and their rates against your chosen budget. Tracking this data regularly helps you avoid overspending on your influencer campaigns.

Maintaining long-term relationships with influencers

Influencer marketing is rarely, if ever, a one-and-done strategy. Even when you’re confident you know how to hire an influencer, you need to learn how to retain influencers. You may want to work with them again on new content, or an entirely different campaign.

This recurring part of influencer marketing pairs well with the importance of authenticity. If you continue to work with the same influencer on multiple campaigns, they’ll build further trust in your products with their audience.

Long-term relationships can also lead to a natural increase in brand advocacy. When combined with the right kind of content, it can also increase conversions and bring a stronger ROI.

If you’re really happy with a particular working relationship, you could further your influencer brand partnership by making them a brand ambassador.

Even if you’re not prepared to go this far, it’s worth nurturing your working relationship with your influencers. Keep in contact with them regularly, and make sure they’re kept in the loop on your wider marketing strategy.

The more you work together, the more familiar they’ll become with your brand. This can often lead to better content, which results in superior campaign results. As long as you continue to treat influencers with respect, you’ll both be able to reap the benefits of your continued work together.

Drive measurable results with influencer partnerships

We hope these tips and best practices have helped you understand how to hire an influencer who matches your brand and your upcoming campaign.

Treating your influencer outreach like its own strategy can lay the foundations for great influencer partnerships and multiple successful social campaigns. Especially because partnering with the right people enables you to create significant, measurable results for your brand that boost your growth.

If you’re looking for a tool that makes influencer marketing easier, consider Sprout Social. Reach out to get a personalized demo today.