Do you want to know why your influencer campaigns aren’t converting?

The reality is that most brands are clueless when it comes to their influencer’s audiences. They choose their influencers based on their follower count or their pretty imagery, completely ignoring the most important factor of all.

The demographics.

If you don’t have a finger on the pulse when it comes to knowing who your influencer’s followers are and if they match your target audience, you’re just pouring money down the drain. It’s like trying to sell surfboards to someone living in the desert.

43% of Gen Z consumers prefer discovering products through influencers they follow. But if your chosen influencers don’t have the right demographics for your brand, you’re missing out.

Enter the essential influencer marketing tools. The right tools can help you sift through all that audience data and make informed decisions when it comes to choosing the right influencers.

What you’ll learn:

• The Role Demographics Play In Successful Campaigns
• The Key Demographic Factors That Matter
• How To Evaluate Audience Data Like A Pro
• A Breakdown Of Demographics By Platform
• Top Tools To Get You The Real Numbers

Why Demographics Make or Break Campaigns

Don’t you think that demographics matter? Hold up.

The thing they don’t tell you is this.

This is only possible when the demographics line up.

You can have the most engaging influencer in the world, but if their audience isn’t going to convert for you, you’ve just squandered your entire budget. It’s as simple as that.

Imagine for a second if you were selling skincare to 30-45 year-old women, partnering with a gaming influencer that’s majority 18-24 year-old males doesn’t make any sense. No matter how creative the execution is, the message simply isn’t going to resonate.

Demographics matter for the following reasons:

• Higher conversions thanks to better targeting
• Authentic engagement due to audience alignment
• Better ROI because you’re spending on the right people
• Natural product fit with matching interests

Brands that get this are the ones raking in the results. The ones that don’t are the ones wasting their entire marketing budget.

Key Demographic Factors That Actually Matter

Not all demographics are created equal. You need to be laser-focused on the metrics that actually affect your revenue.

Age is the biggest one.

Over 75% of Instagram influencers have audiences aged 25-34. This makes it the largest influencer audience by a mile. Lucky for us, if your product is targeting this audience, it’s a perfect fit. But what if you’re trying to target either Gen Z or the older millennials? You need to dig deeper.

Here’s what most smart marketers are looking at:

• Age brackets that most closely align with their customer profiles
• Gender split for products with a strong preference
• Geographic location for products with a regional or local element
• Income brackets for products that are either premium or budget
• Interest categories that correlate to their niche

Audience engagement patterns by demographic.

It’s not enough to just know that 60% of an influencer’s audience is female. You need to know whether or not those women are even engaging with the content. Are they liking, commenting, and sharing? Or are they just followers who never move the needle?

Take the example of TikTok. Nano-influencers see 10.3% engagement rates. Compare this to the 1.73% average for the same level of influencer for Instagram. But even this wildly fluctuates based on audience demographics and the content niche.

Platform-Specific Demographic Gold Mines

Every platform has a unique user demographic. Smart marketers play to this.

You might find some on Snapchat among their planet solar system, as we note on this page.

And Snapchat could be a fruitful opportunity for some.

But Instagram is the queen of influencer power for most.

61% of social users turn to Instagram to find their next purchase. The platform is skewing younger with a vast disposable income.

Take a look at the breakdown:

• 43.74% of the audience falls within the 25-34 age range
• 28.67% is within the 18-24 age bracket
• A measly 6.86% of the audience is over the age of 45

This is why Instagram is a fantastic platform for brands to target millennials and Gen Z who have a little spare change in their pockets.

TikTok owns the young audience market.

27% of Gen Z users engage with influencers on TikTok compared to just 15% across all social media.

But there’s a catch here.

Engagement plummets for those over the age of 45. If you’re trying to reach out to older demographics, TikTok might be burning through your ROI at a rapid rate. The platform is massively youth-centric. They have only a 1% user base of users over the age of 55.

YouTube breaks through different demographics.

70% of teenage YouTube subscribers reported feeling more relatable to YouTube creators rather than traditional celebrities. This means that this specific demographic has a deeper connection with brands they see on the platform.

YouTube also outperforms across a more extensive age range, so it’s great if your brand targets many different types of demographics.

How To Analyze Audience Data Like a Pro

Feeling pumped to crack the numbers?

According to InfluencerMarketingHub.com – 83.8% of marketers report getting better quality customers through influencer marketing as opposed to any other types of marketing. 

Here’s how to make sense of all the demographic data available to you.

Start with the Basics.

Look at the age, gender, and location data first. This will provide the foundation for seeing whether there is any potential for an audience overlap with your target market.

Don’t stop there.

Check to see what the engagement is like for different demographic segments.

The best influencer marketing tools provide data on not just who follows an influencer, but who engages with their content. This is gold.

Look for patterns such as:

• Which age groups comment most
• Regions with the highest engagement rates
• The gender split for likes vs. shares
• Interest overlaps with your brand’s categories

Red Flags to Look Out For.

High fake follower percentages (above 20% is bad), sharp spikes in followers without major content shifts, and low engagement in comparison to follower count are all signs that you’re dealing with a bad egg.

Influencer Marketing Tools That Give You the Real Numbers

You can’t optimize what you don’t measure. The right influencer marketing tools make demographic data easy.

Built-in Influencer Marketing tools.

These are your Instagram Insights and TikTok Pro. The tools built into the platforms to help you analyze your own audience – and you can our TikTok Story Viewer as well. They’re free and a great place to start.

Professional Influencer Marketing Tools

HypeAuditor, Modash, and Favikon are examples of professional-grade influencer marketing platforms that offer in-depth insights for influencers across several platforms. They provide features such as fake follower detection, cross-platform audience overlap, and robust demographic analysis.

The key is consistency.

Pick tools that allow you to consistently measure similar metrics across all of your campaigns. This will allow you to compare performance and optimize over time.

All of these aspects should be working hand-in-hand.

Audiences are real people that have the potential of becoming real customers. The winning formula is to combine the demographic data with an analysis of your influencer’s content depending on their posts, styles, emojis and more. Check out which type of posts are your target demographics engaging the most with and brief your influencers accordingly.

The goal isn’t just to reach people, but to reach the right people with the right message and the right timing.

Final Thoughts

Audience demographics analysis isn’t difficult, but it does take the right approach and tools.

Begin with a clear target audience in mind, then use demographic data to see if any influencers have followers who match that profile. Then brief content that speaks to those specific demographics.

The brands that master the art of audience demographics get higher engagement, better conversion rates, and stronger ROI from all their influencer partnerships. The ones that don’t know their audience are just throwing away their money and complaining that influencer marketing “doesn’t work” for them.

The tools are there. The data is there. The only thing is, are you willing to use them to your advantage?