There’s one type of influencer that’s nearly always a perfect fit for brands of every kind and size: micro influencers, or those with between 10k - 75k followers. These influencers have enough experience to create high-quality, professional content, yet they’re still in a stage of growth that allows for maintaining a highly engaged community.
With the right technology to efficiently scale working with micro influencers, they can be the secret to developing an influencer strategy that works for the long haul.
Smaller influencers tend to have higher engagement rates because their audiences are passionate and loyal. Micro influencers hit the sweet spot - they’re big enough to amplify their voices louder than nano influencers, but still maintain a high average engagement rate of 5%. To put the significance of this in context: a group of 10 micro influencers with an average of 5% engagement can deliver more engagement for your brand overall than a single macro influencer with a 2% engagement rate… and at a fraction of the price. That type of engagement can mean more product awareness, more clicks, and more long-term impact for your brand.
“A group of 10 micro influencers with an average of 5% engagement can deliver more engagement for your brand overall than a single macro influencer with a 2% engagement rate.”
One of the most strategic reasons to partner with micro influencers is that they usually have concentrated audiences, meaning they offer a way to reach a specific target audience. Their followers could be geographically concentrated, like in a city, state, or on a college campus, but they could also be people interested in a more niche category like vintage fashion or vegan cooking. Being able to reach hyper specific audiences is a huge plus of working with micro influencers, whether you’re testing a product or service with a new demographic or aiming to drive foot traffic to a local event.
“Being able to reach hyper specific audiences is a huge plus of
working with micro influencers.”
This could be the most basic reason to start building micro influencers into your marketing mix. They normally charge about $100-$300 per post plus product or experience, which is an excellent price point for the broad value and high-quality content they provide. They’re perfect partners for both brands looking to get into influencer marketing and brands who want to build a huge influencer marketing program. Their moderate impact on a budget also means brands are able to reap the benefits of the next two reasons to work with micros.
Imagine having the budget to work with dozens to thousands of influencers at a time. With the right technology and strategy (that is, micro influencers), you can. There are a number of great perks to working at that scale within an affordable budget.
First, you can afford to test, learn, and optimize what type of influencer and content performs best for your brand and work with those that rise to the top again. We’ve found that brands win when they re-engage high-performing micros. Second, once you figure out which influencers are the best partners for you, they offer repeat exposure and become your natural network of brand ambassadors over time. Finally, as this group becomes long-term brand ambassadors, their natural affinity for your products and services becomes the hallmark of authenticity in marketing that all brands desire.
“Once you figure out which influencers are the best partners for you, they offer repeat exposure and become your natural network of brand ambassadors over time.”
But - and this is a big but - there are two critically important caveats to working at scale. First, the right technology is essential. Executing large influencer campaigns becomes too time and money intensive without a powerful platform at your fingertips. Second, all the reporting you receive at the end of a campaign should focus on how to improve the next time. Strong influencer marketing strategists have the expertise to analyze performance metrics and create actionable context for you.
Micro influencers help solve for the near-constant demand for fresh, high-quality, on-brand content. With a healthy following and their growing experience, micros almost always churn out professional, creative content. Brand marketers working with dozens of micro influencers on a campaign also end up with a wide variety of content - and lots of it - that can be leveraged in different ways across the marketing mix. Most of the time this UGC can be reposted as part of the campaign, but purchasing image rights is also relatively less expensive than original content creation when working with micros.
After years of research and experience in influencer marketing, we’ve found that micro influencers are a nice balance between achieving a solid reach and finding audience perfect for your product. They can be a great creative resource when it comes to helping your brand attract and entice shoppers. Plan on working at scale, using the right technology, and connecting over time to really reap the benefits of micro influencers.
This article was originally posted on Influencer Marketing Hub.
