Personas in Influencer Marketing

Companies are increasingly investing budget in influencer marketing. How data-driven personas improves the latter and which decisions are important: An overview.

Data-based buyer personas are a central tool in marketing to better understand customers. In short, buyer personas are the basis for more customer centricity. When it comes to influencer marketing, on the other hand, a new persona comes on the scene: influencer personas provide new approaches that make campaigns more efficient and lead to sales more quickly.

In the following sections you will learn ...

• Why personas are needed for successful influencer marketing
• What distinguishes Influencer Personas from Buyer Personas
• What data is important
• How to use Influencer Personas in everyday operations

Why does successful influencer marketing need, data-driven personas?

To explore this question, we first look at current developments in the industry. While companies invested $1.7 billion worldwide in 2016, spending has continued to rise over the past few years. According to an estimate by IW Köln, spending will have reached an estimated $13.8 billion by 2021. No wonder: After all, companies reach a larger target group by using the right influencers. In Germany alone, for example, around 41% of all social media users follow influencers or accounts of topic experts. The share of the total budget that companies invest in influencer marketing is also impressive. According to the report The State of Influencer Marketing 2023, 23% of respondents plan to spend more than 40% of their marketing budget on influencer marketing. A high percentage, considering the additional importance companies place on SEO, PPC and other marketing measures. Figures like these show: Influencer marketing continues to gain in importance. But it is also a fact that the increasing number of influencers, niches and different networks makes influencer marketing more complex than ever. In order to differentiate themselves from the competition, companies need a strategy and must make abstract key figures measurable, analyze them and further optimize them. For example, around 75 percent of companies track the sales of their influencer campaigns and 71 percent measure ROI - another positive development compared to 2021. But despite all the efforts to measure and analyze key figures, the question remains how to succeed in selecting influencers and their communities in an even more targeted manner. The answer: Influencer personas based on scientific data.

What are Influencer Personas?

Personas are typical representatives of a specific group of people, such as customers (buyer personas) or suitable professionals for a job posting (candidate personas). Influencer personas, on the other hand, represent the follower(s) of specific topic segments. Thus, the influencer persona represents a group of people that an influencer or a company would like to win over. Compared to the target group, the persona provides a deeper insight into the respective user groups by summarizing psychographic data in a personality profile, among other things. In the case of an influencer persona, companies gain insights into the character, interests, and all the factors that followers use to decide for or against a purchase. Data-based personas can also be used to determine in detail the criteria according to which users follow influencers.

Influencer Personas: Which data is crucial?

An Influencer Persona is only successful if it is based on suitable data and has been aligned with the company's goals. Although the data is essentially no different from that of the buyer persona, it focuses on interests, psychographic data, and usage behavior in social media. Companies obtain representative data from their own surveys in social networks and beyond, from opinion research institutes and federal statistical offices. One disadvantage is that collecting, analyzing and evaluating the data takes time. It is quicker and more cost-effective to use appropriate service providers who create data-driven personas using interfaces to market research and intelligent algorithms.

This data is contained in the Influencer Persona:

• Age
• Gender
• Place of residence and housing situation
• Household size
• Net household income
• Occupation
• Training status
• Hobbies and interests
• Goals and values
• A look at the personal future
• Type of innovation
• Media usage behavior in general (print and digital)
• Usage behavior in social networks
• Favorite channels
• Attitude towards nutrition
• Mobility behaviour and attitudes towards mobility issues
• Travel behaviour

What distinguishes Influencer Personas from Buyer Personas?

The most important difference between Buyer and Influencer Persona: While the Buyer Persona represents a group of existing and potential buyers, the Influencer Persona represents a group of followers. This makes the Influencer Persona, unlike the Buyer Persona, interesting not only for companies but also for influencers - for example, to set trends before others do, to gain more followers and to generate engagement. Another difference is the focus on media usage behavior with regard to social networks. Unlike the Buyer Persona, which provides an overview of favorite channels and content, the Influencer Persona goes into more detail in this area.

How do Influencer Personas work in practice?

The time when a company selected influencers primarily based on the number of followers is over. Due to the high number of fake followers, bots and the like, genuine engagement and conversions are becoming more important. More and more companies are therefore relying on nano- and micro-influencers with active and authentic communities. Companies thus minimize wastage and can place niche products in a more targeted manner. Influencer personas then help to identify suitable accounts and develop campaigns that convince users. But how exactly do you select the right influencer with the help of the influencer persona? Let's take a look at two examples.

A manufacturer of sustainable and fairly produced yoga clothing for women is looking for a suitable match for a social media campaign. So he turns to female influencers who regularly post content about yoga and a sustainable lifestyle on their channels. The prerequisite: an active community in which the majority of members also practice yoga or related sports such as Pilates or barre fitness. If the influencer then repeatedly places the products in photos, reels, or recommends them in her stories, the likelihood is high that the community will become increasingly interested in the manufacturer. This example is relatively simple: using the data on the persona's interests, lifestyle, values, and net household income, the company sifts through corresponding accounts and their communities, narrows them down further, and then decides on three micro-influencers whose followers optimally reflect the desired target group. Thanks to the Candidate Persona, the company has precise reference points for determining suitable influencers for campaigns.

In the second example, the selection is more difficult. This is because products do not always correspond to the obvious interests of the persona. The search for suitable influencers can therefore be a challenge, especially for abstract and complex products. Examples of this are apps from fintech companies that make it easy to organize finances. On the one hand, such products are aimed at a broad target group, and on the other hand, they are not interest-based. This means that campaigns with an influencer who primarily speaks on financial topics will appeal to followers who are actively involved in finance - but who are too advanced to use a simple finance app. The company, on the other hand, wants to reach people who are not actively involved with their finances but want to keep track of them. This means either communities with lower incomes or high expenses and little time, such as families or people just starting out in their careers. This means that there are different personas for a product and thus influencers who are suitable for campaigns. Influencer personas are then particularly helpful.

The tasks of an Influencer Persona

Influencer personas help companies ...

• ... select suitable influencers for campaigns
• ... to design the campaign for topic-specific communities individually in each case
• ... improve the ROI
• ... increase conversion rate
• ... evaluate social media activities

You want to make your social media marketing more efficient, improve conversions and minimize wastage? We would be happy to help you and develop your data-based influencer persona with individual recommendations for action.