In today’s digital landscape, working with niche influencers can be the ultimate game-changer for small businesses seeking authentic engagement. These influencers often foster tight-knit communities that trust their recommendations, making them invaluable partners.
But with the wide array of options available, whom should you pick?
Let’s delve into how you can pick the right niche influencer to amplify your small business’ reach and impact. But first, the basics.
What Are Niche Influencers?
Niche influencers are individuals who have a sizable following–typically on social media—in a specific field. Because of their knowledge and authority, they have the power to influence their niche audience’s purchasing decisions.
Although niche influencers don’t have as many followers as mega-influencers, who have more than one million, they yield higher average engagement rates–up to 5.6%--than their upper-tier counterparts (at 1.97%). That’s because niche influencers boast closer and more authentic relationships with their audience.
Popular Niches for Influencers
Here are some niches where you can find these types of influencers who can help your brand:
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Travel and Food
This is the oldest and one of the most popular influencer niches, particularly on social media.
Travel and food niche influencers keep their audience abreast of culinary trends, the hottest travel destinations, and more. In the process, they can promote hotels, food products, and restaurants.
An example of a food influencer is Olga Shulpina (@kindelhome). She typically shares her recipes in her Instagram posts:
Source: Instagram
Travel influencers like Brooke Saward below (@worldwanderlust), meanwhile, are always on the go, visiting places and documenting their travel experiences on their social platforms:
Source: Instagram
There are also niche influencers who create engaging content on both food and travel.
Source: Facebook
For instance, Emily Cooper (above) is an epidemiologist-turned-niche influencer who posts about her food and travel experiences on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms.
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Health and Fitness
These niche influencers focus on improving their followers' physical and mental well-being. They may give tips on how to work out, offer sleep best practices, or advice on how to lose weight.
Health and fitness influencers can promote workout gear, supplements, and healthy food options.
Source: TikTok
Sirai Toni is an example. On her fitladybug TikTok and Instagram accounts, this niche influencer shares workout routines her audience can follow.
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Beauty and Fashion
Beauty and fashion influencers help their followers look their best. They may post about fashion trends, tutorials, and their shopping hauls.
They’re the best to partner with if your small business sells clothes, accessories like earrings and groomsmen cufflinks, cosmetics, and similar products.
Source: YouTube
Ashley Quiroz, for instance, regularly posts beauty tutorials on her YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok channels.
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Animals and Pets
This influencer niche is thriving, probably because of the “cuteness” factor many agree animals have.
How many is “many?” Well, a ManyPets survey found that two out of five people prefer to see pets in their social feed than people. That’s almost half.
Animal and pet influencers create a wide range of content, from pet care tips to random videos of their animal friends being themselves. They typically promote, well, pet products, of course.
Source: Instagram
Lauren Scorey is an example of this type of content creator. The niche influencer posts random content about her family and their seven dogs on their scoreyspack social media accounts.
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Parenting
A parenting niche influencer creates content for, you guessed it, parents. So, they may touch on topics like the best books to buy for toddlers and films to watch with teenagers on movie night, among others.
They can promote a wide array of products, from food to clothes and even hotels, for as long as they are for kids.
Source: Instagram
Ilana Wiles, for instance, posts about her adventures with her two daughters on her mommyshorts Instagram, TikTok, and X accounts.
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Decor
A decor niche influencer can be an interior designer, an architect, or any other professional in the home design industry. They document the process of making spaces visually appealing in their posts.
So, a decor niche influencer may promote everything from furniture to home paint and design tools.
Source: Instagram
Becki Owens is a Southern California-based interior designer who showcases her talent on Instagram.
How to Pick the Right Niche Influencer
Let’s say you're convinced working with niche influencers is the way to go. Great! Now it’s time to choose the one for your small business. Follow these tips for the best results:
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Check If Your Values Align
Don’t just ensure your niche influencer’s content aligns with the product you sell.
You should also make sure their values are the same as yours. If you constantly harp on the importance of animal-friendly fashion on your marketing channels, don’t ask a beauty and fashion influencer who regularly wears fur coats in their posts to promote your products.
You’ll only confuse your target audience (a.k.a. potential customers) if you insist on working with a niche influencer who contradicts or even explicitly opposes what you stand for.
You can use social media listening tools to check for influencer posts related to specific topics that are close to your heart. Just input a keyword–say, sustainable fashion–and you’ll find the niche influencer’s relevant posts. Then, analyze the content of those posts, bearing in mind your own business’ core values to make the right choice.
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Check for Quality Content
The content niche influencers create is just as important. By content, I mean everything from the text to the visuals and audio, if applicable.
Remember, the niche influencer you choose will promote your own products.
If they post material that’s mediocre now, what will stop them from posting just as mediocre material for your brand once you partner with them? And if potential customers see that mediocre content, they’ll likely shun your brand instead of supporting it.
Some influencers have a website where they post a media kit (essentially their portfolio) for brands.
All you need to do is check out their work. If they don’t have a website, you can perform a manual check of each influencer’s content on their platform/s instead.
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Check Engagement and Following
Don’t forget to check the niche influencer’s following. It’s true you shouldn’t expect much when it comes to the number of followers of a niche influencer.
As I said, they’re not as many as the millions of followers a mega-influencer has.
That doesn’t mean that you can settle for any number. Your chosen niche influencer should still meet your required minimum following. After all, the goal of your influencer campaign is still to increase brand awareness and ultimately boost sales for your small business.
Look at their engagement as well. A huge following doesn’t necessarily translate to high engagement rates. Some people may have just clicked the Follow button but don’t necessarily see the niche influencer’s posts. Or they may just be follower bots.
Meanwhile, an actual like, a comment, or a share is, in theory, proof that the person who performed the action really saw that influencer’s post.
Source: CDN
You can use influencer databases like Modash (see above) to check existing niche influencer engagement and following data. Tools such as these can even tell you whether an influencer has potentially fake followers.
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Select and Approach
Let’s say you’ve done all your research. Analyze your findings. At this point, you just need to ask yourself: Who among all these potential influencers for your brand meets all the criteria I’m looking for?
Once you have your answer, you can start crafting your pitch for a potential collaboration. Introduce yourself first. Then, you can break the ice by commending them for their work. Check out this excellent example:
Source: Wishpond
Make sure you highlight how the niche influencer can benefit from being a part of your influencer marketing campaign. Then, specify the clear steps the niche influencer should take to move the collaboration forward. You can use a conclusion generator to help you save time.
You can use good old email to send your pitch. It might not be a good idea to send your message using your chosen niche influencer’s social media platforms.
Since their fans follow them on those channels, they receive hundreds if not thousands of private messages there, too. Your pitch might just end up getting lost in that sea of messages.
You can easily get your chosen niche influencer’s email address from influencer campaign tools such as Modash.
FAQ
1. What is a niche influencer?
A niche influencer is an individual who can influence the opinions of their thousands of followers because of their authority and expertise. Niche influencers are common on social media, although they may also leverage other platforms.
2. Can anyone be a niche influencer?
Anyone can be a niche influencer since anyone can technically build a following around a specific interest. However, building this kind of following isn’t easy.
3. What is a niche example for influencers?
Examples of niches for influencers include travel and food, health and fitness, beauty and fashion, animals and pets, parenting, and decor.
Conclusion
Niche influencers can significantly enhance your brand’s visibility and credibility. Ultimately, they can help you boost sales.
However, you must still choose the right niche influencer to reach your target market and reap these results.
You learned how to do that with this article. Just check if your values align, see if they post high-quality content, and look at their engagement and following.
Once you’ve made your final choice based on those criteria, send them your pitch. With the right influencer by your side, you can now unlock new avenues for growth for your small business. Good luck!
Author Bio
With a keen eye for detail and a knack for storytelling, Samuel brings a unique perspective to his work at Groomsday. He specializes in curating unique and personalized presents for grooms to express their appreciation for their groomsmen. Off the clock, Samuel enjoys the tranquility of nature, often embarking on hiking adventures.
