Influencer marketing has been gaining popularity as a tool for social media promotions. Over a few years, brands have collaborated with influencers. As a result, the industry is now worth at least $5-10 billion. Currently, the emerging concept of micro-influencers is all the rage.
Who are these Micro-Influencers?
Influencer marketing with micro-influencers is the same concept on a smaller scale. Brands interact and collaborate with individuals who have a follower base of 1000 to 10000 people. These individuals are well informed and reputed in their areas of interest. They will also have a high rate of engagement on their posts. When brands are looking to reach niche audiences, they typically seek micro-influencers.
A fashion influencer may boast millions of followers and many boutiques et cetera. A micro-influencer, on the other hand, has a smaller audience but a dedicated one. A micro-influencer might only post daily boho outfit designs or videos about DIY outfits.
Are Micro-Influencers Important?
Markerly, in one of their studies, found that with the increase in the number of followers, the engagement rate of influencers went down. But, micro-influencers with less than 1000 followers received likes 8% of the time. In comparison, influencers only received 1.6% likes. ExpertVoice also found in a study that micro-influencers have 22.2 times more conversations than regular users. It is, therefore, logical to assume that businesses would achieve a higher engagement rate with micro-influencers.
Micro-influencers have a defined Target Market
Most celebrity influencers have millions of followers. If a fashion clothing brand collabs with them, the content will reach a lot of people. However, most of these followers aren’t interested in clothing. The brand could, instead, collaborate with 100 micro-fashion-bloggers each with about 1000 followers. The chances of gaining leads from these 100,000 followers, who actively seek fashion advice from these micro-influencers are higher.
Affordability
As a business owner, you would want to invest smartly. Micro-influencers help you achieve a better ROI. Let me explain this further to see how. Captiv8 reports that an influencer with 3 to 7 million followers can charge $75000 on an average for a post on Instagram. In contrast, a micro-influencer charges less than $500 for a post. So even if you employ 10 or even 100 micro-influencers, you spend less and actually reach more people.
Micro-influencers are usually honest with their audience. They have a small following and they don’t want to lose their trust by giving fake reviews. So most of the time, companies may simply send them free goodies for a review instead of paying hard cash. For instance, La Croix Sparkling Water sent free product vouchers to micro-influencers.
Authenticity
Millennials look for authenticity. It is the current trend almost because they know it is easier to fake something on social media. Micro-influencers with their smaller audience do engage with any comment on their posts. They are more likely to behave authentically in the fear of losing their following in case of a fake review. It is also true that Instagram’s algorithm now has adjusted to weed out fake influencers, comments, and followers. So brands now are looking for someone who would be genuine. And micro-influencers are the best bet.
La Croix for example targets micro-influencers by searching branded hashtags like “LiveLaCroix”. They then reach out to people posting these with a lower follower base. The company even reaches out to individuals who have tagged the brand in their posts. They specifically target these individuals with lesser followers to maintain the feel of authenticity or “realness”.
There are a number of other brands that have collaborated with micro-influencers. You can check out our blog post to know more about their success stories. Before you make up your mind to invest in this, make sure you consider your strategy well. Instagram influencer marketing might work well for visual products like sparkling water or a fashionable sweatshirt collection. If you want to promote software, you might have to get creative, move out of Instagram and look for influencers on YouTube perhaps.