How to Find the Right Influencer for Your E-commerce Brand While many marketers look at the number of followers to select an influencer, it's only the tip of the iceberg.

There was a time when celebrity endorsements were the top choice for brands to promote a product or a service to the masses, but today influencers have taken over the advertisement industry by storm. By tapping into the right set of influencers, brands can use their audience to not only market the product but also build social media campaign that can boost awareness for business. With influencer marketing replacing traditional concepts, e-commerce firms are also turning to millions of influencers to drive growth.

However, finding the perfect influencer that aligns with your brand can be a tough task. Entrepreneur India spoke to a few experts to understand few factors that can help e-commerce brands find the right influencer:

Analyze Influencer Engagement Rate:

Finding influencers on Instagram or any social platform is easy-breezy, however, finding the "right' influencer is a lot more a scientific process. Why wouldn't it be, right? Every active social media user has the ability to influence, and then we have thousands of dedicated content creators & experts popping up everyday who come with their individual abilities, engagement rates, follower demographics,

While many marketers look at the number of followers to select an influencer, it's only the tip of the iceberg.

To find the perfect influencer profiles, that are relevant, Pranay Swarup, Founder and CEO, Chtrbox Technologies started analyzing social media public data of 3.5 lakh influencers in India to identify influencer engagement on the basis of key data points like, age, gender, geography, hashtags, keywords, ROI, and rank them into various categories ranging from lifestyle, travel, food, technology, fashion, etc.

"This activity helps our brands select only those influencers that fit the scope of the activity, and provide the best bang for buck," he said.

Today, relevant influencers for e-commerce brands come in different forms and sizes too. Chtrbox Technologies recently worked with India's leading homegrown e-commerce company to launch their flagship mobile phones, where their technology helped the brand to engage with relevant influencers & reviewers based on their past activity, engagement, and audience.

"For P&G (Procter & Gamble), our micro-influencers are being engaged & inspired to create clutter-breaking chatter on social media which further leads their fans to the e-commerce sites," he added.

Segment the Influencers:

According to Sanjay Vasudeva, Founder & Ceo, Buzzone, it's important to understand which segment the preferred social influencer represents.

"There is no point investing in an approach which will target the wrong audience resulting in no results. One requires an expertise in shortlisting the most relevant influencers for each brand. Secondly, it is necessary to measure the reach of a particular influencer by analyzing the audience engagement. A brand must know how to differ between qualitative approaches from a quantitative approach while opting for influencer marketing," shared Vasudeva.

Choose Quality Over Quantity:

Finding the right influencer for your e-commerce brand may not be as easy as it sounds. For, Ayushi Singh, PR & Community Architect, Vajor, it's not about narrowing down of an influencer only on the basis of their popularity, there are a number of factors one needs to look at, to get the right kind of engagement.

"First and the foremost, the brand and the influencer should share a similar ethos, in the sense that the influencer's personality should match or should be relatable by the target audience. Another factor one must consider in all cases is to pick the quality of content over the number of followers that influencer has. Quality over quantity, always," said Singh