Have you ever been convinced by a celebrity to buy a product? Often we see celebrities convincing us to buy a night cream, a shampoo, or a body spray. Well, this is influencer marketing. 5-6 years back, this particular marketing was limited to celebrities only, but now with multiple social media influencers around us, we see the rise of a newer concept of micro-influencers, or to be precise, micro-influencer marketing!

What is Micro-Influencer Marketing?

Micro-influencer marketing is the same as influencer marketing, but the latter is on a much smaller scale. For instance, brand partnership with small-scale social media influencers who have a smaller number of followers.

These partnerships or collaborations are initiated to promote products within this narrowed range of target audiences through authentic visual posts. Usually, micro-influencers have followers varying between 1,000 to 10,000 followers on their channel and have a high engagement rate. These influencers must not be mixed with typical celebrities or public figures who have millions of followers.

Bigger brands can piggyback on these small-scale influencers and tap onto a niche target audience for their internet marketing strategy.

Does Micro-Influencer Marketing Work?

But even with a modest number of followers, micro-influencers do have a hyper-engaged audience. And when leveraged rightly, they can drive a good number of traffic to your website.

Consumers nowadays have moved over from conventional marketing and endorsements to peer recommendations. And this particular trend has given rise to social media influencers. They are real people, whom you can come across at a busy street, or a cafe, and with whom you can enter into real conversations.

In fact, 70% of millennials and mostly teens think YouTubers are more reliable than the so-called celebrities. Thus, a social media influencer influencers consumers and their purchase decisions, and bring strategic results for brands.

The Micro-Influencing Landscape

Coming back to small-scale influencing, how effective are micro-influencers? Well, apparently, the whole concept seems to be more of a contradiction. Why would a brand want to engage with someone with a smaller following in for brand promotion? Wouldn’t he reach out to a legit influencer? A bigger game player in the influencer marketing realm?

Well, as it is always said, the bigger the better, in some cases the opposite is true. Although this might spawn a debate amongst marketers, there are several reasons why micro-influencers can yield a winning influencer strategy for your brand.

The latest studies show that small-scale influencers are doing much better when it comes to results, engagements, and clicks. The investment is also on the lower side.

It can be safely said that micro-influencers are going to open up a whole new dimension of brand endorsements. Honestly, at a micro-level, the investment rate is low, but the engagement is greater, along with tons of opportunities.

• Influencers who have 10,000 and above followers have a mere 3.6% engagement.
• Influencers with 5,000 to 10,000 followers have an engagement rate of 6.3%.
• And influencers with 1,000 to 5,000 followers have the highest rate of engagement – 8.8%.

Thus you see, this new kind of brand outreach is not just a variant of influencer marketing trend, but a much more successful one.

Most start-ups and smaller brands cannot afford celebrity influencers like Kim Kardashian, James Charles, or Nicky Jam. So for those start-ups, micro-influencers or nano-influencers, with their much more compact and targeted audience, are the best options to drive big sales.

Celebrity Influencer Marketing vs. Micro-Influencer Marketing

If we talk about PewDiePie, the biggest gaming vlogger, they have a audience that is huuuuuge! People from all walks of life, along with their different kinds of interests, see him speak about a particular brand.

But as it always said, the problem of plenty, with such a wide variety of audience, most people are no way the actual target. So, big-ticket celebrity influencers with millions of subscribers and followers might drive lesser bang for your buck.

Another recent study showed:

• Micro-influencers drove 2.2X more conversations when they recommended products.
• 82% of consumers prefer to follow a recommendation made by a micro-influencer than a big-shot celebrity influencer.

All these surveys clearly indicate the booming success of these smaller-scale influencers!

What are the 3 Primary Benefits of Small-Scale Influencer Marketing?

1. You get a Pool of prospective Influencers for your Brand

Micro-Bloggers and influencers are no longer confined to beauty products and lifestyles, but have vastly spread to B2B domain and non-traditional business categories. Whether you sell a SaaS-based software, random tangible goods, or even graphic designs, you shall get a dozen influencers waiting for you to deploy.

Around 15.7% of Instagram users have some followers ranging from 1,000 to 10,000– and if you consider this to be an average percentage of followers for the 1 billion Instagram user count, you get 157 million micro-influencers to reach out to. And that’s phenomenal!

2. It is a much more Cost-Effective Solution

Celebrity influencers charge up to $80 for a single Instagram product promotion. Even a hundred such influencers would cost less than a single celebrity influencer.

Moreover, often these influencers are satisfied with free products instead of cash. A carton of your latest face cream or a box of your latest kitten-food, will work like magic. Your purpose gets served, the influencer is happy- it’s a win-win!

3. Their Content are of Higher Quality

Since they are very well aware that their audiences mostly rely on their unbiased and authentic product promotion, they take extra care while producing the content.

They are more likely to put a great effort into creating unique content for your product, supported by a genuine brand message that makes head turn.

Key Traits one must look for in a Micro-Influencer

This is the most critical stage for any brand marketers because this can either make, or break your brand. So what should you look for while finding the right influencer for your micro-influencer marketing campaign?

First, define your goals. What should be the goal and objective of your campaign – Is it to raise awareness of your brand? Or to drive more sales? Are you looking for more subscribers? Once these goals are set, start searching for the right influencer for your campaign. Check out these primary traits before making any decisions!

1. Engagement vs. Followers

No matter how many followers your targeted influencers possess, to ensure successful influencer marketing campaigns for your brand, always keep an eye on the rate of engagement they have with their audience.

Analyze how often people tend to engage with them and the response rates of the influencer themselves. If this engagement rate is minimal, then call it a quit and search for another influencer.

2. Niche

Micro-influencing works because of the highly specific, niche, and hyper-engaged audience- because such influencers are usually experts on their niche topic and have the potential for relevant brand content and brand fit.

After all, relevancy is the crucial key here. Consumers will prefer their favorite cooking blogger endorsing a ready-to-eat meal to a high-profile beauty blogger who speaks mostly about keto diets.

3. Audience

Yes, this is extremely important to check because that’s how you would get an understanding of whether the influencer is right for your product or not. If you and the influencer don’t have a similar audience, it is of no use to reach out to them. Also, the location of the audience matters.

In the end, your primary goal should be to raise brand awareness and drive conversions. If there’s a major difference in the audience between both parties, then not much of a value can be derived from such partnerships.

4. Things they Share

Does your influencer mostly share links on their pages to be followed by his/her audience?

If yes, check out the kind of links they share and what types of content their audiences prefer. Based on that, you may tweak your messaging, thereby increasing the chance of getting your website link shared by the influencers.

5. Are they Authentic enough?

This is of paramount importance. Consumers these days prefer authentic and bonafide sources of information and trust those who have a more genuine approach for brand or product promotion.

Aggressive marketing that goes over the top usually repels the audience and prompts them to abandon the channel. This is also detrimental for the advertised brand and negatively affects its online reputation.

Finding the Right Influencer for your Brand

But all said and done, how to find the right influencer? You might have already been using social media for most of your marketing activities, so it is expected that you would already have a handful of influencers in your hand.

However, you cannot just start reaching out to them one by one. You must find out the right way to reach out to the right person. You might take the help of some of the tools, like Agorapulse. This tool can give you an idea of the influencers within your own followers’ list, and whether they have a decent audience. Once you spot them, start connecting.

To narrow down your search more, try BuzzSumo or HYPR. Both of these tools can give you a lot of analytical data on several influencers from any niche. HYPR also comes with a free option for the first 100 searches.

For your outreach activity, you may take help from Buzzstream or GroupHigh, once you have compiled a list of influencers to reach out for your campaign.

It’s Your Turn Now!

Micro-influencer marketing has now been a pivotal part of any marketing activity, awareness generation and, product promotion. It is no longer just a buzzword; rather has a robust future in the coming years.

It is quite fittingly projected that by 2025, the global influencer marketing industry will grow up to a whopping $24.1 billion, from $6 billion in 2020.

So, follow the trend of influencer marketing and leverage its most potent subset that works on a micro-level. It can be a truly potent tool so long you share a similar audience. Finding the right kind of micro-influencers is not always easy, but the tips mentioned above can at least guide you and take you closer to the right people.

Also, you can make sure that your budget is spent on the ideal audience for your brand. And if you need any help in creating a unique brand messaging and visual content, we are just an email away!

And lastly, if you have found success with any influencer marketing techniques in your social media marketing strategy, write to us about it and keep the comment section active. In our next Blog post, we shall talk about those for sure. Till then, Happy Marketing folks!