Influencer Discovery Made Simple: How to Find the Right Creators at Scale

Influencer marketing isn’t just effective – it’s highly effective. Over 80% of marketers agree that influencer marketing drives results for their e-commerce and D2C campaigns! The key behind successful campaigns? Partnering with the right creators.

So, how do you find creators whose audiences align perfectly with your brand? Through effective influencer discovery. By using the right tools and strategies – like AI-powered filters, fake-follower detection, and audience analytics – you’ll see the exact type of creator that actually brings value – and not noise – to your campaign.

That’s what makes all the difference between wasted ad spend and a scalable, high-performing campaign that fuels both brand awareness and affiliate-driven sales. In this guide, we’ll show you how to get there.

Biggest Mistakes Around Influencer Discovery

From focusing too much on follower count to not knowing what type of influencer you need, these common mistakes can hijack any campaign regardless of how promising it looks.

Not Knowing Your Brand Goals

You can have all the tools and resources you need, but one thing is certain: If you’re not sure what you’re looking for, you’ll never find it.  

Influencer discovery is not only about finding creators with a “nice” profile and a big following. The reason for its effectiveness is that you find partners who actually help you achieve specific brand objectives. 

For example:

• If your goal is to increase brand awareness, then you’ll need influencers who have a strong reach and high impressions – even if their conversions aren’t that high. 
• If you need to increase your sales or sign-ups, then focusing on small influencers with niche audiences can help you consistently drive clicks and purchases. 
• If what you’re after is long-term brand advocacy, then creators who truly align with your values and have a history of having interactive communities are ideal.

Most brands fall into the trap of “spray and pray” in discovery, quickly onboarding creators who look great and have good content, but they don’t make sure to review their metrics. That’s why there are partnerships that don’t deliver ROI.

Focusing on Follower Count

At first glance, macro influencers tick all the boxes: High impressions, large followings, great content. The thing is, that prioritizing surface-level numbers like follower count or total likes doesn’t really measure an influencer’s performance.

An influencer with over 200K followers might seem impressive, but if they have an inactive audience or an audience that is not relevant to your niche, it will bring you zero results. On the other hand, if you partner with a micro influencer that, despite only having 8K followers, has 8% engagement and strong alignment with your target audience, here’s where you’ll see the difference. 

Nowadays, even big brands are partnering with smaller influencers because they know their value. Take Dyson, for example. When launching the Dyson Ball Animal 2 vacuum, they partnered with 5 micro influencers (one of them only had 2,500 followers!)

The results?

• 1 million views
• 115k likes
• 10% of engagement rate (5x industry average)

Overlooking Brand Alignment

Even if an influencer is authentic and has a strong, engaged following, the partnership can still fail if their personal brand doesn’t align with yours. Too many marketers stop at metrics – audience size, engagement rate, and demographics – but forget about the tone, values, and content style.

What makes influencer marketing successful is the trust factor. And here’s the kicker: users want to feel that the recommendations are real, not advertising. Which is why it’s key to ensure the influencer feels like a natural extension of your brand.

And if there’s a mismatch, audiences automatically tell. 

A great example of this is when Scott Disick promoted Bouteauk protein shake; none of their audience really bought the promotion. With the caption “Keeping up the summer workout routine with my @bouteauk protein shake,” most of his audience mocked him, as Scott is not someone you associate with health and fitness. 

Treating Discovery as a One-Off Task

Many brands treat influencer discovery like the first box to tick at the start of a campaign – build a list, run the partnership, and move on. But the reality is that influencer discovery is an ongoing process.

On top of that, you might have great creators that performed really well, but if you treat their partnerships as a one-time thing, you might lose the opportunity to build long-term relationships that actually bring great results. 

The strongest influencer and affiliate programs continually refresh their discovery pipeline, evaluating not only new influencers but also how existing partners are performing. 

Key Factors to Look for in the “Right” Creator

Analyzing content creators – beyond their followers – is what allows you to truly see if they’re the right fit for your brand and campaign needs. Here are four key factors to consider: 

Audience Fit

Does this influencer actually reach the people you’re trying to sell to? Look closely at demographics like age, gender, and location, but also take a close look at interests and behaviors. 

For example, if you’re a fitness brand targeting women in their 20s, an influencer with a 60% male following (regardless of whether they post about their gym workouts) won’t be the right fit – no matter how high their engagement looks. 

Authentic Engagement

A high like count is never a guarantee that an influencer has genuine engagement. What matters is if their audience is actively interacting with their content. Comments, shares, saves, and discussions will be great indicators of trust.

Make sure to check the quality of the comments. Influencers that tend to have hundreds of comments with emojis, or things like “nice” tend to be a red flag as these comments are often made by bots. Quality comments are those that actually have to do with the content they’re posting. 

The simplest way to measure this is by calculating the engagement rate:

Engagement Rate = ((Likes + Comments + Shares) / Total Followers) x 100 

As a benchmark, anything above 2-3% is generally considered good for larger creators, while micro influencers often reach 6-8%. 

Content Quality and Consistency

The creator’s content should reflect how you want to be associated as a brand. You can evaluate them by asking questions like: Does their style pair with your brand identity? Do they post consistently?

Let’s say you’re an organic granola brand – then probably you want to associate with influencers who promote a healthy and active lifestyle. Not those that, despite having good engagement, their content is only about muckbangs. 

Additionally, a consistent creator not only reflects reliability but also keeps their audience engaged – which directly benefits your campaigns. 

For this, you can start by reviewing their last 30 posts. This gives you a sense of whether their content quality holds steady over time and how they balance organic vs. sponsored posts. 

Previous Collaboration History

Most influencers, especially those with established audiences, work continuously with brands. But have they delivered results?

Past collaborations can help you understand how professional they are, whether they meet deadlines, and how their audience responds to branded content. You can review if their sponsor posts have an effort to look natural or if they’re too forced. 

Besides manually checking the quality of these types of posts, you can also evaluate them by asking directly for their performance metrics. Or, better yet, use an influencer marketing tool that allows you to review their past performance and results. 

How to Discover Creators at Scale

There are different ways to get started with influencer discovery, but it all boils down to two main methods: using a manual approach or exploring automated tools and systems. Let’s explore each of these. 

The Manual Approach

For small brands that don’t have the resources to invest in tools at the moment, using a manual approach allows them to carefully pick the right influencers. There are different ways you can do this.

Manually Searching for Influencers

Manual discovery involves identifying influencers directly on social media platforms or niche communities. Here are a few ways you can get started.

Hashtags

You can use hashtags across major social media platforms like Instagram or TikTok to find influencers from specific niches.

Let’s say you want to work with a mom influencer. By using hashtags like #mommyblogger or #momlife you can find great content creators:

Reddit and Online Communities

Reddit, Discord, and niche Facebook groups are powerful places to discover craters. These communities have gained more relevance as people use them, expecting real answers (not marketing or salesy pitches). 

On Reddit, for example, users frequently recommend their favorite YouTubers, TikTokers, or Instagram creators in niche subreddits.

These communities work like an organic filter: when someone keeps getting recommended and discussed, it’s a clear sign they already hold influence and trust in that niche.

Google

By searching things like “top food influencers in NY,” or “Best Instagram US influencers”, Google can provide you with curated lists of influencers. These lists are often made by agencies, industry publications, or again in sites like Reddit or Quora.

These lists can give you a head start in building your shortlist. Many niche blogs will also spotlight up-and-coming creators, which is valuable if you want to catch influencers before they blog up, and become expensive. 

Competitor Analysis

Another effective manual method to find influencers is to analyze who your competitors (or companies similar to yours) are working with. Scan their social feeds, PR mentions, and tagged posts to identify recurring creators.

But this strategy is not to copy them. It is useful to understand why those partnerships work. If you see that a competitor engages with nano or micro influencers in your niche, it can indicate where they’re finding ROI.

You can use this as inspiration, not a blueprint. 

The Automated Approach

Manual search may work perfectly when you’re collaborating with a few creators and can have everything in one sheet. The thing is, if you want to scale, influencer discovery becomes almost impossible as it’s too time-consuming. This is why, to make the process faster and scalable, automated tools come in handy. 

Influencer Databases

Influencer discovery platforms like Influencer Hero have databases with millions of content creators. So you can look for exactly the type of influencer you need within seconds. Most of these platforms allow YouTube to apply filters to make your search even more accurate:

• Niche/Category (e.g, beauty, fitness, tech)
• Audience Demographics (age, location, interests)
• Engagement Rate
• Platform (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube)

Influencer Hero, for example, is an all-in-one influencer marketing software with a powerful influencer finder feature that has more than 20+ filters that go beyond the basic ones, going a step further with look alikes filter, past performance and sponsored posts, and even a “Search with AI” option that allows users to use specific search terms like “Mom cooking influencers in the US” for accurate results. 

AI For Smarter Recommendations

According to the Influencer Marketing Hub, 73% of marketers believe influencer marketing can be largely automated by AI. 

With AI-driven discovery, brands no longer need to search filter by filter. AI analyzes patterns, like content themes or past brand partnerships, recommending the type of content creators that will perform well for your campaign.

This can also include:

• Predictive Performance: Estimating how likely a creator is to drive clicks or conversions
• Lookalike Recommendations: Suggesting influencers similar to the ones you’ve really had success with.
• Fraud Detection: Spotting engagement pods, bot activity, or inconsistent audience growth. 

Automated tools don’t replace human judgment, but they reduce the heavy lifting – especially if you need to scale your influencer marketing campaigns. Many brands choose to go with a hybrid approach where they use automation to build a wide pool of candidates, then apply manual vetting to confirm authenticity and brand fit. 

Integrating Influencer Discovery into Broader Growth Programs

Discovery isn’t the end of the process – it’s the foundation. If you find creators that perform well, here’s where you can start scaling your campaigns, bringing better results. Rather than just working with them one time, consider building long-term opportunities.

How can you do this? Through influencer, affiliate, or referral programs. When you blend discovery with a growth strategy, influencers are no longer just content partners – they can also help you generate revenue.

From Influencers to Affiliates

One of the most organic ways to extend discovery is by inviting top-performing influencers into your affiliate program. These are the creators who’ve already proven they can drive clicks, sales, or sign-ups. 

By offering them a performance-based incentive structure, they’ll be more motivated to keep spreading the word about your brand.

Benefits of This Integration

• Measurable ROI: Affiliate tracking makes it clear which influencers are driving conversions.
• Scalability: Once you’ve identified creators who convert, you can reinvest and scale their role in your program.
• Loyalty: Affiliates are more likely to maintain an ongoing relationship, creating consistent visibility for your brand.

Conclusion

Influencer marketing has become one of the most effective ways for brands to reach their target audience in an organic and authentic way. Through influencer discovery, brands ensure they set themselves up for success by choosing partners that align with their objectives.

And discovery shouldn’t stop at the campaign level. When integrated into broader programs, like affiliate or referral, influencer partnerships evolve to more long-term revenue-focused collaborations.