Do you want to find YouTube influencers for your business? Discovering the right YouTube influencers for your brand can be a daunting task. It’s important to remember that influencers come in all shapes and sizes, so it’s best to take some time and do some research before making any decisions, especially if you do not want to waste your money on the wrong creators. As you can imagine, brands just love collaborating with influencers on YouTube.
For example, True Classic, a premium men’s clothing brand, sponsored Jeremy Jahn’s Black Adam movie review video. This video garnered over 800k views, 41k likes, and 4,000+ comments (as of this writing).
Similarly, Marvel collaborated with a YouTube influencer called “Typical Gamer” (13.8M subscribers) to promote their digital collectible card game. Their collaboration video garnered more than 1,000,000+ views, 7.6K likes, and more than 300 comments.
Just like yourself, your customers are likely spending countless hours each month watching videos from their favorite creators on YouTube. So why not use the potential these creators present to your company? These creators already have a well-engaged audience, and it makes sense for brands to tap into it, helping them get more exposure for their products and services.
But that doesn’t mean you should collaborate with the first influencer you see on YouTube. If you want to run profitable YouTube influencer marketing campaigns, it’s a no-brainer to work with influencers your audience also heavily engages with and looks up to for purchasing advice. By choosing a random creator, you run the risk of burning money.
But how do you find the right YouTube influencers to collaborate with? Throughout this blog post, we’ve put together five ways to find the right YouTube influencers for your brand. Let’s dive in!
To find the right influencers on YouTube, brands can tap into one of these five YouTube influencer discovery ways:
Table of Contents:
Working with the wrong influencers is like putting your money down the drain.
Suppose you run a fitness brand and want to run aninfluencer marketing campaign on YouTube for more exposure. In this case, it makes sense to collaborate with fitness influencers on YouTube. So, for example, let’s look up “youtube fitness influencers” on Google.
As you can see, in the screenshot above, the featured snippet listed a few popular YouTube fitness influencers or channels like Yoga with Adriene, Kayla Itsines, and Fitness Blender. If you run a fitness brand, you should definitely consider collaborating with these influencers.
But what if you’re an Austrian-based fitness brand looking to put your name in front of local people based in Austria? In this case, it’s better to collaborate with Austrian YouTube fitness influencers.
Let’s see if Google can help us find YouTube fitness influencers based in Austria. Here are the results we got:
As you can see, even though our query was “youtube fitness influencers in Austria,” the featured snippet gave us a list of Austria-based fitness influencers on INSTAGRAM. While some of these influencers may have a YouTube presence, most of the articles are dedicated to Instagram influencers.
We moved down a bit to see if we found any relevant articles matching our query. But nothing! Honestly, this is not what we were expecting.
What if you wanted to narrow down your search further – let’s say:
Google simply isn’t able to filter search results based on such specific criteria.
That’s why thousands of brands looking to collaborate with YouTube influencers use an influencer discovery platform like influData.
An influencer discovery platform has a rich influencer database with records of millions of influencers and helps you find the right fit for your brand based on one or multiple criteria like account type, country, city, subscriber count, video views, language, and many more. Let’s take the same two criteria we mentioned above and look at how well influData performs.
We applied the following filters:
The Results:
For this criteria, I applied the following filters:
From here, you can sort the results by:
You can also check every influencer’s quality rating under the “Quality Rating” column (when hovering over the profile picture). And a tool like influData doesn’t just help with the discovery. Its database comprises the email addresses of many creators – which you can find under the “Options” section. Hover over the email icon under “Options” and from there, you can copy the email.
Note – Not every influencer provides their email address. So, if you’re looking to remove the influencers without email addresses, you can just tick the “Must include emails” option in the filters section.
Also, influData has a rich database of YouTube influencers who specialize in YouTube Shorts. All you need to do is tick-mark “Shorts Creators Only” under Account Type to find the right fit.
When it comes to influencer discovery, an influencer search platform unlocks endless possibilities. Therefore, investing in one makes sense as it saves you from wasting money and time on the wrong influencers. It’s a small investment to avoid a significant loss.
Last but not least, an Influencer Discovery Tool like influData does not only help you FIND the perfect influencers, but also EVALUATE them – before, during and after the booking. As mentioned earlier, finding an influencer may be an easy task, but getting the right one is the ultimate challenge.
However, if you’re not yet ready to invest in an influencer discovery platform, you can tap into a few other ways listed below.
Another great way to find the right YouTube influencers is to reach out to your network or online communities.
If you have a rich network to tap into, you can post that you’re looking for YouTube influencers (with your exact requirements) to work with, for instance on LinkedIn or Twitter. Something like this:
I'm looking to collaborate with YouTube influencers based in Austria who specialize in YouTube Shorts.
I'm looking for creators with a good engagement rate.
I'd love to know if you have worked with any solid YouTube influencers and the results they have helped you achieve.
You can also post on relevant Reddit communities like r/NewTubers or r/YouTube.
But these are not all your options. You can also reach out to founders or executives like yourself – who are not your direct competitors and who have worked with influencers in your industry in the past.
A simple and sweet template to reach out to them:
Hey [Name of Person],
Hope you're doing well.
I'm reaching out - as I saw that you worked with a couple of [industry] influencers in the past - who helped you achieve [results].
I'm currently interested in working with influencers myself.
Any solid leads?
Best Regards, [Your name]
Depending on your relationship with the person, you can tweak the message. You can also use platforms like Quora, online Slack communities, or relevant Discord servers.
Asking for recommendations is a good influencer discovery option. However, we’d advise against working with influencers who have engaged with your direct competitors, as this could lead to conflicts of interest and may negatively impact your brand’s reputation. Additionally, the influencer’s past performances may not necessarily translate to good results for your brand as well.
That’s why we advise you to at least get a thorough and up-to-date background check on the influencers you were recommended.
YouTube’s Trending tab under “Explore” is a great place to kickstart your influencer discovery. It’s where you can find what’s trending on YouTube – whether it’s videos or creators.
Here’s what the Trending section looks like:
Under the “Now” sub-section, you can find the creators and regular videos + Shorts trending at that particular moment. These results vary based on your region. People based in the US will see different results from people based in Austria or other countries.
You can also click on different categories in the Trending section, like Music, Gaming, and Movies, to find videos that are trending in those specific categories.
While this is an okay-ish way to find influencers, it’s not the best way. You’ll be able to see videos from influencers are gaining traction (which means these influencers have a good engagement rate), but if you want to narrow down your search – let’s say – you want to find influencers who have more than a 20 % English-speaking audience, there’s no way YouTube allows you to do that.
Also, it’s important to note that the creators you see as “Creator on the Rise” are subject to change. And they may not necessarily be the right fit for your brand. So, it’s important to thoroughly vet the creator before you get in touch with them.
Another great way to find the right YouTube influencers to work with is by reaching out to your customers for recommendations. Try to understand who they look up to on YouTube for purchasing advice related to the products you’re selling.
Brands that sell clothes should ask them questions like:
Similarly, brands that sell beauty products should ask questions like:
It’s likely that your existing and potential customers tune in to similar YouTube influencers for purchasing advice. By asking your customers who they look up to for purchasing advice, you can create a list of potential influencers you can collaborate with.
You don’t necessarily need to get on a call or text with these customers. You can gather responses using a Google Form or Typeform. And in return for their valuable input, you can offer them an incentive – like 10% OFF on their next purchase or something similar. Here’s a template you could use to reach out to customers:
Subject: Seeking Your Opinion on Your Favourite YouTube Influencers
Dear [Customer Name],
At [Brand Name], we strive to provide our customers with the best possible products and experiences. We understand that YouTube has become a popular platform for purchasing advice, and we would like to understand who you look up to on YouTube for recommendations related to products we sell.
We value your opinion and would like to ask you a few questions to help us identify potential YouTube and YouTube Shorts influencers to collaborate with. Your answers will help us tailor our marketing efforts to better meet your needs and preferences.
Please take a few minutes to fill out our survey using the following link:
[Insert survey link here]
As a thank you for your time and valuable input, we would like to offer you a [10% discount on your next purchase/special gift with your next purchase].
The discount/gift will be automatically applied to your account once you complete the survey.
We appreciate your support and look forward to hearing from you.
Best regards,
[Your Name]
Last but not least, you can choose to work with a reliable YouTube influencer marketing agency. But, if you choose to go down this road, make sure you’re working with a reliable agency. A few reasons why it makes sense to work with reliable YouTube influencer marketing agencies are:
If you don’t have a dedicated team in place to help you with all the aspects of influencer marketing, then it makes sense to outsource your operations to an influencer marketing agency. However, companies should thoroughly vet these agencies before engaging with them.
Countless YouTube influencer marketing agencies claim themselves to be the best. Many use terms like ‘results-driven’, ‘100% results guaranteed’, ‘premium’, etc. But don’t fall into their trap.
Prior to engaging with any YouTube influencer marketing agency, ask them questions like:
These are just a few questions you can ask them. Also, don’t be hesitant to request case studies of their past influencer marketing campaigns.
Last but not least it’s important to note that good influencer marketing agencies aren’t cheap. So, if you’re looking to run influencer marketing campaigns on scale and want creative control, it makes sense to build an in-house influencer marketing team.
YouTube is the second-biggest search engine in the world with more than two billion monthly logged-in users. Every day, billions of hours of video content is consumed, generating billions of views. On top of this, let’s not forget – YouTube is the go-to place for people looking for purchasing advice.
It’s likely your customers tune in to their favorite YouTube & YouTube Shorts creators for purchasing advice. And if you’re considering influencer marketing on YouTube, we highly recommend working with the right influencers.
If you don’t have the time and resources to run influencer marketing campaigns on your own, you can choose to work with a reliable influencer marketing agency. On the other hand, if you want to be in charge of the end-to-end process, you can choose to reach out to your network or customers for YouTube and YouTube Shorts influencer recommendations. If you want to cut down the time and effort it takes to find the right influencers for your brand, you can use an influencer discovery platform like influData.
Click here to learn more about influData.