How to Find Influencers for Your Brand in Australia

Before you search for anyone, write down three things. They'll shape who you look for and make it much easier to say no to creators who look impressive but don't fit.

• The goal. Awareness in a new suburb or city, bookings for a new service, sales of a product, or content you can reuse on your own channels. Each points to a different kind of creator.
• The customer. Who you want to reach, where they live and what they already follow. A Brisbane café needs a Brisbane audience; an online store shipping nationally may not mind where followers are, as long as they're in Australia.
• The budget. Include the creator's fee, any product you're providing, shipping and your own time to brief and review. Our guide to what Australian influencers charge explains what drives a quote.

It's also worth deciding early whether you need an influencer at all. If what you mostly want is videos and photos to post on your own accounts or use in ads, a UGC creator may suit you better. We explain the difference in UGC vs influencer marketing.

Most businesses use a mix of the approaches below. The first two cost nothing but time, and often turn up the best-matched creators.

Look at who already talks about you

Check your tagged posts, mentions and reviews. Customers who already create content and have mentioned you unprompted are some of the most credible people you can work with, because their audience has seen them use your product before any payment was involved.

Search the platforms your customers use

Use each platform's search the way a customer would. Search for your category plus a place (“Perth brunch”, “Gold Coast fitness”, “Melbourne vintage fashion”), browse location tags for your suburb or city, and look at the hashtags your customers use. On TikTok and YouTube, searching for the problem your product solves often surfaces creators who make genuinely useful content in your niche.

See who works with similar, non-competing businesses

Look at businesses that share your customers but don't compete with you. A local yoga studio might look at who works with nearby health-food cafés or activewear labels. Creators who have done good brand work in an adjacent category already understand the audience and the format.

Ask your network and your community

Other business owners, your staff and your customers often know local creators worth approaching. Local business groups and industry associations can be useful too.

Use a creator marketplace or agency

Marketplaces let you describe what you want and have interested creators come to you, rather than searching and messaging one account at a time. Talent agencies and management companies represent many larger creators; if a creator lists a manager in their bio, that's usually who to contact.

Collabify is a marketplace being built for exactly this, and it's currently in pre-launch. You can read how Collabify will work for businesses looking for creators.

Follower count is the easiest number to see and the least useful on its own. Spend ten minutes on each shortlisted creator and check the following.

Where their audience is

A large share of overseas followers is fine for some brands and useless for a local business. Creators can see their audience's location, age range and gender in their platform insights, and professional creators expect to be asked for them. A request for a recent screenshot is normal and reasonable.

How people engage with them

Engagement rate (interactions divided by followers or views) is a useful signal, but what counts as “good” varies a lot by platform, niche and account size, so be wary of any single benchmark. Read the comments instead. Real conversations, questions about products and replies from the creator are good signs. Lots of generic comments (“Nice!”, strings of emojis) from unrelated accounts, or sudden jumps in follower numbers, suggest the audience may not be what it seems.

Whether their content suits your brand

Would your product look natural in their feed? Consider tone, visual style, the quality of their video and audio, and whether they explain things well. Look at their last few months of posts, not just their most popular ones.

How they've handled brand work before

Scroll back to find previous sponsored posts. Do they feel genuine, or like read-out scripts? Did the audience respond? And did the creator clearly disclose the commercial relationship? In Australia, advertising must be clearly distinguishable as advertising under the AANA Code of Ethics, and it must not mislead consumers under the Australian Consumer Law. A creator who routinely skips disclosure is a risk to your brand as well as theirs.

Values and reliability

You're associating your business with everything they post, not only your collaboration. Check that you're comfortable with their other content and public comments. Signs of professionalism, like a contact email in their bio, a media kit and prompt, clear replies, are good indicators that deadlines will be met.

Many small and local businesses get the best results from smaller creators with closely matched audiences, often working with several at once rather than one large account. Larger creators bring broad reach and usually more formal agreements and higher fees, which can suit national launches.

There's no single right answer, and size thresholds vary across the industry. Our guide to influencer marketing in Australia covers how the different creator sizes are typically used.

Most creators receive a steady stream of vague requests, many asking for free posts. A clear, specific message stands out immediately. Contact them through the business email in their bio (or their manager, if listed) rather than a comment or a quick DM.

A good first message covers:

• Who you are, in a sentence, with a link to your website or account.
• Why them specifically. Mention a post or series you liked. It shows you've actually looked.
• What you're proposing: the platform, the type and number of posts, and rough timing.
• What you're offering. A fee, product, or both. Be upfront; “exposure” isn't payment, and hiding the budget wastes both sides' time.
• Whether you want to reuse the content, for example in your own ads. This affects their price.
• A clear next step, such as asking for their rates or a short call.

If you don't hear back, one polite follow-up after a week or so is fine. After that, move on; a lack of reply is an answer.

Once a creator is interested, confirm the arrangement in writing before any work starts. Even a clear email both sides reply to is far better than a verbal agreement. Cover:

• deliverables: platforms, formats, number of posts and any stories or links
• key dates, including drafts, approvals and posting
• what you can and can't ask to change, and how many rounds of feedback are included
• how the post will be disclosed as an ad or paid partnership
• usage rights: whether you can reuse the content, where, and for how long
• any exclusivity, such as not promoting a direct competitor for a period
• the fee, payment terms and what happens if either side cancels

Some product categories, including alcohol, gambling and therapeutic goods, have additional advertising rules in Australia. If you're in one of them, check the relevant guidance before you brief a creator.

• Choosing on follower count alone, without checking where the audience is or how it engages.
• Over-scripting. Creators know what works with their audience; a word-for-word script usually sounds like one.
• No way to measure results. Decide in advance how you'll judge success: a discount code, a tracked link, bookings mentioning the creator, or simply the content itself.
• Forgetting usage rights, then wanting to run the post as an ad later and discovering it wasn't agreed.
• Treating it as a one-off. Creators whose audience responds well are often worth working with again, and repeat collaborations tend to feel more genuine to followers.

Collabify is an Australian marketplace for paid collaborations between businesses and creators. It hasn't launched yet. When it opens, businesses will be able to post an opportunity with their brief, receive applications from interested creators and compare their profiles, instead of searching and messaging accounts one by one.

During the pre-launch you can create a free business account so it's ready on day one. If you're a creator reading this, see how creators will find brand collaborations on Collabify.

Start with a clear goal, customer and budget. Look first at people who already talk about you and creators your customers follow, then widen the search through platform search, similar businesses and marketplaces. Check audience location, real engagement, content fit and past brand work before you reach out, make a specific offer, and put the agreement in writing.

Done this way, even a small budget can go a long way with the right creator. If you're also considering content-only collaborations, read how to find UGC creators.