Animal actors have been valued for a long time now, but over recent years it seems that businesses have started to realise the benefits that come with hiring pet influencers specifically.
Petfluencers are different to animal actors. An animal actor will be hired by a brand to attend their in-house photo or video shoot, whereas a pet influencer will post content (often user-generated – more on that later!) onto their own Instagram page.
If you find yourself confused as to why pet influencers are so popular, just compare it to normal ‘human’ influencer marketing. Who do you think has the higher reach on Instagram: Molly-Mae on her personal Instagram profile, or the official Pretty Little Thing brand account (that Molly-Mae is the creative director for)?
The answer is Molly-Mae’s personal profile – despite her having over 10M less followers. So when she posts #ads, the millions of people who are engaging with her content are seeing and interacting with the brand’s content second-hand.
Why is this the case? Because people prefer to engage with other people, and this includes our pets, too!
Carry on reading for tips and tricks on how you can find the best animal influencer for your business on Instagram.
How many pet Instagram accounts are there?
It’s impossible to work out exactly how many Instagram accounts there are for pets, but we can see that the hashtag ‘pet’ has 129M posts as of February 2023.
Chances are, no matter who you are, if you scroll down your own Instagram feed it won’t be long until you see a post or a video with a dog or a cat in it. Either they’ll be doing something funny, cute, or talented. They may be advertising for a brand, and you might not even know it!
If you want to secure a pet influencer for your own brand, then the good news is that you have plenty of pets to choose from! However, this can also be a downside. Let us explain…
Why your brand should work with a pet influencer agency
Pet influencer agencies have contacts in the industry and can connect your business to a pet influencer on your behalf.
A good pet influencer agency will know what accounts are the most popular, what profiles are up-and-coming, and what animals would pair best with your business.
One of the biggest reasons why you should seek out a professional pet influencer agency is the time and headaches that they will save you.
Having to negotiate with influencer brands can be a drawn-out process, and you may be working with an animal influencer account that is known for being difficult to work with without knowing.
On top of this, the animals that are associated with an agency should have a level of professionalism guaranteed, which is good news if you want to receive the best level of content for your money.
Hiring a professional agency to find you a pet influencer may cost you a little more than if you were to skip the middleman, but the pros far outweigh the cons!
The skill, knowledge, expertise, and client list that an agency has built up over many years makes working with one a very lucrative investment. Much more worthwhile than attempting to juggle an increased workload with effectively managing your business.
Here’s information on some of the work that would be required if you were to attempt to try and secure an animal influencer for your business, with no experience.
How to find Instagram pet influencers
Still considering going it alone? Well, you’ll find the best pet influencers on Instagram by searching hashtags, keeping up with the latest trends, and following brand profiles. As you can imagine, this is hugely time-consuming which is why you’ll save so much time using our animal talent agency.
Some of these methods require much more time and effort than others, so let’s jump into each one and go into more detail so that you can make an informed decision.
Hashtags
Hashtags are one of the easiest ways to find pet influencers on Instagram. When you search for a hashtag, you will see every post that has ever featured that hashtag.
Whenever a savvy pet influencer posts, they will include hashtags in the caption to increase their reach. This will make them visible to people like you who are browsing through posts featuring that hashtag.
The trick is to find the right hashtag that matches what you are looking for. For example, if you want specifically a dog influencer, then you should use hashtags that feature the word dog. And the same goes for cat influencers, and so on.
You can also use generic pet influencer tags such as petstagram and petfluencer. These tags will also make it less likely that you’ll see non-influencer profiles.
Bare in mind that there are hundreds of thousands of hashtags with millions of people using them and you’ll start to understand how difficult it can be to find the perfect account for you.
Trends
Trends are another great way to find pet influencers on Instagram! Whenever a popular trend takes off, it often seems like every single account is jumping on the bandwagon.
If there is a specific hashtag for a challenge or viral trend, view that and look at some of the content that petfluencer accounts are publishing.
This method allows you to get a good feel for an influencer’s creative flair, production values, and personality.
The downside? Everyone and their dog (literally!) get on board with trends. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with profiles posting for their friends, it can make your task harder if you are trying to find your perfect pet influencer – like finding a diamond in the ‘ruff’!
Follow brand profiles
Many pet influencers also take work on as animal actors or models.
For example, some of our biggest pet stars are well known in the industry and are sought after for sponsored posts as well as film sets.
When a brand creates a post featuring a particularly popular animal influencer, they will likely tag that animal’s account in their post.
By staying clued up on brands that regularly use animal influencers or looking into brands that have successful marketing campaigns, you can find some of the most in-demand pet influencers in the market.
Of course, you’re busy and might not have the time to keep up with trends across all social media platforms and that’s exactly why we do that for you.
Get in touch with our agents at Urban Paws Ireland!
Remember, there are more than 1 billion monthly active users on Instagram, with 95 million images and videos uploaded to the platform every single day.
So now you’ll likely appreciate how much time you’ll have to invest into just finding what you think will be the right petfluencer for you. That’s without the additional work of negotiating a deal and securing the contract.
Fortunately, here at Urban Paws Ireland, it’s our job to keep our fingers on the pulse at all times and make sure that we are up to date with all things animal-influencer.
If you would like to hire a pet influencer for your business, whether it be a dog, cat, rabbit, or any other animal, get in touch with our agents and we can direct you to the right animal for you.
You can either let us know what type of animal you are looking for or tell us about your business and we can offer you recommendations. We have many years of experience in the pet influencer market and know what works and what doesn’t, so working with us can save you time and money.
