Most guides to finding influencers end with a link to a platform that costs more per month than a small business spends on a campaign. You do not need one to get started. Instagram itself, a couple of free tools and an hour of care will produce a shortlist of ten creators who fit your business and your budget. Here is the method we use, in order.
Start with the customer, not the creator
Write down where your customers are and what they care about, in the words they would use. For a restaurant in Bristol that is “Bristol food”, “brunch Bristol” and the names of the neighbourhoods. For a skincare brand it is the routines and the problems, not the product names. Those words are what creators put in their names, bios and captions, and they are what every search below runs on.
Ten minutes of vetting removes the two or three accounts that would have wasted the whole budget.
Search Instagram the way a customer would
Type the words into Instagram’s search and open the Accounts tab. Then open the Places tab for your area and scroll the recent posts for creators who tag the location. Then check the hashtag pages under Recent rather than Top, because Top is dominated by large accounts you cannot afford. Save every account that looks right to a collection. Do not judge yet.
Want followers who become customers?
Sup Growth’s team grows Instagram accounts by 300 to 800 real, local followers a month. No bots. A person does the work from your account and sends every new follower a welcome DM.
Use a free search tool to widen the net
Our sister company Sup, which runs creator campaigns for brands, publishes a free influencer search tool. Type a keyword and it returns Instagram’s account results alongside the creators Sup already tracks, and the tracked ones come with real follower counts, engagement rates and average views on the card. Any result opens in a one-click profile analysis.
If your business is in one of the cities Sup covers, skip the search and go straight to the ranked lists. The creator directory has pages such as London food influencers and UK beauty creators, each with the numbers on every card and a home city that has been checked rather than guessed.
Look at who already works with brands like yours
The fastest shortlist comes from creators who have posted about a brand your customers also buy from. Sup’s brand library lists the creators who have tagged well-known brands in the last year, with example posts. If a creator has posted about a competitor, they have the audience you want and they are open to working with brands.
| Where to look | What you get | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Instagram search, Accounts tab | Creators who use your words in their name or bio | Free |
| Instagram Places and hashtag pages | Creators who post near you, under Recent | Free |
| Sup influencer search | Instagram results plus tracked creators with real numbers | Free |
| Sup creator directory | Ranked creators by city and niche, home city checked | Free |
| Sup brand library | Creators who already posted about brands like yours | Free |
| A paid platform | Audience age and country, at a monthly fee | From a few hundred a month |
Vet before you message
For every account on the shortlist, check four things: the engagement rate against accounts of the same size, the median Reel views, the share of fake followers, and how many of the last 12 posts are already sponsored. The free Instagram analytics tool shows all of it for any handle in one page, and the fake follower check on the same site opens the newest followers’ profiles to score them. Ten minutes of vetting removes the two or three accounts that would have wasted the budget.
What to pay
Work from views, not followers. Take the creator’s median Reel views in thousands and decide what a thousand views is worth to you, then compare it with what a paid ad costs per thousand impressions. A creator with a median of 20,000 views asking £150 is charging £7.50 per thousand, which is a fair price for a trusted recommendation. A creator asking £500 for a median of 8,000 views is not.
For small businesses the best deals are usually gifted or part-gifted with nano and micro creators, who have the highest engagement rates of any tier and audiences that know them. See influencer marketing campaigns for the campaign types, and if you are local, the Instagram location finder guide for finding people near you.
How to reach out
A short DM or email that names a specific post of theirs, says what you sell in one line, and makes a clear offer. Product plus a fee, or product alone, with the number of posts and the deadline. Creators reply to specific offers and ignore “let’s collaborate”.
When to hand it over
Finding ten creators by hand is a good afternoon. Finding a hundred, negotiating every fee, chasing contracts, tracking the posts and paying everyone is a job, and that is the point where a brand stops doing it in a spreadsheet. Sup runs that whole process for brands and charges only for posts that go live. In the meantime, while you build the audience the creators will send people to, Sup Growth grows the account itself with real, local followers.
Frequently asked questions
How many followers should an influencer have for a small business?
Between 2,000 and 30,000 is the sweet spot. Those accounts have the highest engagement, the most local audiences and the most reasonable prices, and they say yes to gifted work.
Are free influencer search tools any good?
For finding and vetting a shortlist, yes. What they cannot show is audience age and country, which only the creator can see in their own insights. Ask for a screenshot before you pay.
Should I pay influencers or gift them?
Gift first when the product is worth something on its own and the creator is small. Pay when you need a guaranteed post by a date, rights to reuse the content, or a creator over 30,000 followers.
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About the author: Matt Greenwell, founder of Sup Growth
Matt founded Sup Growth and has run its human-powered Instagram growth service for more than five years. The team has grown hundreds of business accounts by 300 to 800 real followers a month. About Sup Growth · LinkedIn