• by Isabel Rafferty , September 19, 2019

Finding influencers who will be the right fit for your brand is always a difficult process. Not only do you have to make sure that what they post is appropriate for your brand, you also need to make sure that the audience they reach is the same one that you want to reach.

This is especially difficult if you’re trying to reach a specific group of people, people who may be suspicious of your attempts and highly attuned to marketing speak. For brands looking to target specific demographics, it becomes even more important to find trusted partners who will be able to produce the desired results. 

For example, if you’re a brand that’s looking to market specifically to the U.S. Hispanic audience, the selection process becomes much more difficult, because it’s a challenge to find Latinx influencers in the U.S. who also have a U.S.-centric audience.  Consequently, brands must make sure to drill down deeply into an influencer’s metrics, paying special attention to the types of people that they attract. 

Brands must also remember that Hispanics are not a homogenous group. I myself am originally from Mexico, and even I experienced culture shock when encountering various Latino communities in the United States.

There is a popular perception that people who originate from a Spanish-speaking country or live in a predominately Spanish-speaking community share the same cultural affinities, no matter where they or their family came from. That attitude completely papers over the significant differences between people who are first or second-generation Latinos, which then prevents marketers from being able to effectively reach Hispanics.

It’s important for brands to understand the differences, because then they will be able to discern who exactly is using their product -- or is likely to use their product ---and where the growth is. It also allows them to better tailor their message to the audience, and find the right influencers to partner with. For example, a brand that wants to attract millennial second-generation Hispanics will necessarily have to use different imagery, copy, etc. than they would if they were trying to attract first-generation, Spanish-dominant Hispanics. As Natalie Boden, the president and managing director for BodenPR, points out, Hispanics can “catch when someone is trying to sell to them immediately,” which is why it’s necessary to “create that content that is transparent, real, and culturally relevant in a way that doesn’t look overly produced.”

Another important factor to consider is what language  to advertise in. This (again) requires knowledge as to how various demographic subgroups prefer to communicate. To return to the previous example, a brand looking to reach millennial second-generation Hispanics would be better off using English as the dominant language in posts, but whichever influencer they choose to work with should also feel comfortable posting (and responding to followers) in Spanish.

Brands would also do well to remember that multicultural audiences are becoming the norm, not the exception, with 42% of millennials identifying as multicultural, (a Nielsen stat) compared to 48%  of Gen-Zers, according to a Pew Research Center report. And, Nielsen notes, multicultural millennials “are also fully ambicultural, effortlessly bridging the gaps between their birth culture and other cultures.” Given the importance that consumers place on authenticity nowadays, it’s important for brands to recognize and acknowledge cultural nuances, and find influencer partners who are similarly attuned.

As always, brands should only partner with those influencers that they feel to be a natural extension of their own voice and values, and whose audiences have shown an interest in similar types of products.

Finally, the only way that brands could even hope to find the right influencers is by fully understanding the audience they’re attempting to reach. Without this necessary information, any influencer campaign is just a shot in the dark. Figure out your audience first, and the rest will follow.