How to Find Relevant Influencers for a Niche Product

Why finding niche creators needs a different approach

When you choose influencers for a mainstream product, you can often optimize for reach: large follower counts, recognizable names, general category relevance. A niche product flips that. The audience is narrow, often knowledgeable, and skeptical of content that doesn't land precisely. A creator with 4,000 followers who posts about your niche daily typically has an audience that matches your customer far better than a generalist with hundreds of thousands of followers and broad, uncurated content. Finding niche creators is therefore less about follower count and more about locating the accounts where your niche is already an organic, recurring part of their content — not a one-off sponsored post.

Five ways to find niche creators

The five methods below complement each other — most niche searches use at least three of them.

1. Native platform search

Instagram and TikTok have both built creator search directly into their platforms. Meta launched its Creator Marketplace in February 2024 as a built-in directory where brands search creators by category, follower range, audience demographics and location. TikTok has an equivalent, TikTok Creator Marketplace, available through TikTok for Business, where you can filter by interest categories — such as sustainable fashion, fitness or DIY content — which typically reflect where a creator has organic authority. Both are free for brands to use and a natural first stop.

2. Discovery platforms and databases

Third-party tools such as HypeAuditor, Modash and Upfluence let you search across a much larger pool of profiles than the platforms' own tools, and filter by niche keywords in bio and captions, not just category. These typically cost a subscription, but are worth it if you're building an ongoing niche shortlist rather than sourcing one creator for one campaign.

3. Competitors' tagged content and UGC credits

Check who is already tagging, or being tagged by, competitors in your niche. A creator who has made paid or organic content for a comparable product has already shown they can speak credibly about the category — and their followers have already seen relevant content from them before.

4. Niche communities outside Instagram and TikTok

The most specific niches often have their center of gravity somewhere other than the big platforms: a Reddit thread, a Discord server, a forum, or a review-focused YouTube channel. This is often where you find creators who aren't (yet) listed in any discovery database, but whose audience is extremely targeted to your niche.

5. Hashtag and keyword search inside the app

Build a list of 10-15 hashtags and keywords specific to your niche (not generic ones like #fitness, but something like #ultrarunning or #veganbaking), and search them directly inside Instagram and TikTok. This often surfaces micro and nano creators who haven't yet been picked up by the larger databases.

The six-step process

1. Define the niche precisely. "Running" is too broad. "Running training for first-time half-marathoners over 40" is a niche you can actually search on.
2. Build your keyword and hashtag list from step 1 — including the terms your audience actually uses, not just industry language.
3. Run native search and a discovery tool in parallel to cover both well-known and lesser-known profiles.
4. Check competitors' tagged content for creators who have already made similar content.
5. Go where the communities are — Reddit, Discord, forums, YouTube — where your audience already recommends products to each other.
6. Filter on niche fit and genuine engagement, not follower count. See the section below for how to judge that.

Follower count isn't the first filter — how to judge niche fit

This is Make Influence's own rule of thumb, not an industry standard:

Green — move forward: The creator posts about your niche regularly and unprompted, the comment thread shows real questions and discussion about the topic (not just emojis), and the content shows a clear personal relationship with the category. Follower count can easily be under 5,000 — that's not a problem by itself.

Yellow — investigate further: The creator has posted about the niche once or twice but is otherwise a broad lifestyle or generalist profile. Can still be a match, but you need to verify the audience before you pay, so you know whether their followers actually match your niche or just their broader theme.

Red — pass: No organic relationship to the niche at all, an inactive comment thread, or signs of bought followers or engagement — see how to spot fake followers for the concrete warning signs.

Worked example: from hashtag search to shortlist (hypothetical)

This is an illustrative worked example — the numbers are made up to show how the filtering typically narrows the field, not figures from an actual campaign.

Imagine you're searching for creators for a niche product: a supplement aimed at first-time runners training for their first half-marathon. You start with three hashtags (#firsthalfmarathon, #runningover40, #beginnerrunner) and find roughly 340 accounts that have used at least one of them in the past three months. After filtering out accounts with fewer than 3 posts on the topic, accounts that are clearly general fitness profiles, and accounts that don't post for your target market's language or region, you're left with around 40 accounts. A quick check of the comment thread on each account's last 3 posts — are you seeing real questions and answers, or just generic emojis? — narrows the list to around 18 accounts showing signs of genuine engagement. From there you weigh budget, tone and any red flags, and typically end up with a shortlist of 5-8 creators to move forward with.

The most common mistakes

• Filtering on follower count first. This often excludes exactly the creators whose audience fits best.
• Stopping at native search. The Creator Marketplace tools only surface creators who are already registered in the platform's own database.
• Ignoring communities outside Instagram/TikTok. The narrowest niches often live somewhere else.
• Assuming niche content means low engagement. The opposite is often true — see how to calculate engagement rate to compare properly instead of guessing.

Make Influence's take

In our experience, the biggest mistake brands make with niche products is using the same selection process they'd use for a mainstream product — they look for reach when they should be looking for relevance. That's our observation, not a documented industry statistic, but a pattern we see recur: a narrow, highly engaged niche creator often delivers more credible content and better comment-thread conversation than a broad profile with a far larger follower count. Combine that with a sound brand safety review before you sign an agreement.

FAQ

Does it matter if a niche influencer only has 2,000 followers?

No, not by itself. For a niche product, niche fit and genuine engagement are better indicators of whether the partnership will work than the raw follower count. See the green/yellow/red framework above.

How many niche influencers do I need for one campaign?

That depends on budget and objective — see how many influencers you need for a campaign for a step-by-step formula.

Can I use the same methods for a B2B niche product?

Yes, with the addition that communities like LinkedIn groups, trade forums and newsletters are often just as important as Instagram and TikTok for a narrow B2B niche.

Do I need a paid discovery tool if I only need to find 5 creators?

Rarely. For a single, small campaign, native search, hashtags and manual community research typically cover the need without a subscription.

How is this different from choosing the right influencers in general?

The general guide to choosing the right influencers covers the full selection process. This article is specifically about how you find the candidates in the first place when your niche is too narrow to surface in an ordinary search.