In recent years, micro-influencers have become more and more popular and we see no evidence that this trend would stagnate or reverse. In fact, we have never seen so many smaller social media accounts used to promote and market products for large companies.
Despite this change in the industry, many still do not really know what micro-influencers are and even more are doubtful whether it is worth using them.
That’s why we decided to offer a detailed review of what micro-influencers are, but most importantly why it’s so important that you use them. And trust us, there are infinitely many good reasons to use micro-influencers!
With that said, we will now dive right into the world of micro-influencers so that you are well prepared for your next campaign.
Contents
What are micro-influencers?
Before we get started and list reasons and tips, we thought about offering a quick overview of what micro-influencers actually are. As I said, many still do not really understand the concept and the following paragraph is for them.
When you first started using social media influencers, companies and brands invested in finding the biggest influencers they could. It was about celebrities, actors, sportsmen, and other people who already had established fans from all over the world and who in many ways also had an influence in society.
After a couple of years of this system, things started to happen. First, brands realized that big influencers often delivered mixed results and at the same time, other social media users wanted to get their share of the cake. This resulted in brands and companies starting to experiment with smaller influencers. Instead of looking for users with millions of followers, they focused on smaller influencers with up to 50,000 followers and the results were striking.
It wasn’t long before you realized the benefits of using micro-influencers and before we knew it, the market had completely exploded.
As I said, micro-influencers today are a huge trend and small social media accounts from all over the world are helping companies sell products and maximize their ROI.
Below we discuss the reasons for this and also take a look at the benefits that smaller influencers offer compared to large influencers.
High engagement
The main reason why many today prefer micro-influencers is their high commitment.
When marketers are looking for influencers who can represent their brand, engagement is one of the most important factors to look at, and in the vast majority of cases, smaller influencers have much higher involvement than large influencers.
This is because it is much easier for a person with 15,000 followers on Instagram to have a personal relationship with their followers than it is for someone with 15 million followers. This means that micro-influencers often have more loyal followers who like, comment and share every post because they are genuinely interested.
In other words, micro-influencers can help you increase your exposure to each post.
Better and more targeted reach
Reach your target audience directly where they are most active!
In addition to increased commitment, micro-influencers can reach out directly to your desired target audience in a way never before possible.
It is not difficult to imagine the importance of using an influencer that focuses only on the niche you want to market within and which has 20,000 followers with a keen interest in that particular niche. Especially if you compare it to a celebrity who has millions of followers where only a small part of the follower group has an interest in your niche.
This unique relationship between influencers and followers creates a situation where brands can reach their desired target audience without much effort. And as we all already know, all successful campaigns require that you as a brand reach your target group in a convincing way.
You get more for your money
We have previously written about why you should invest in influencer marketing, when talking about the benefits of micro-influencers, there are three factors that are more important than everyone else. The first two are increased commitment and the opportunity to reach directly to a specific target group, as we mentioned above. The third factor has to do with the price.
Of course, a smaller influencer costs less than a large influencer, which means you can be smarter with your money. Please note that we do not say that you will spend less money, but that you will spend your money smarter – it is important that you understand the difference.
Let’s explain an example.
You have been given responsibility for a new marketing campaign and have been allocated a tight budget to be spent on influencers. You now have two choices. Either you spend your entire budget on one or two expensive influencers with huge fixed spread range and lower commitment. Or you spend the budget on several cheaper influencers that do not have the same reach but can easily reach potential customers in your niche.
Sure it makes sense?
Increased authenticity and personal influence
The next reason goes hand in hand with the first two we mentioned. Micro-influencers tend to have followers who actually care about the influencer and their lifestyle and opinions, while celebrities often have followers who only care about being known.
This means that every post posted by a micro-influencer feels more authentic to the followers. In fact, with the right text and image combination you can make a post feel like a personal message from a friend which is something that celebrities usually have no chance of achieving.
And in a world full of ads, advertising and outdated marketing techniques, consumers have become picky with what and who they choose to listen to. This is why authenticity has become more important than ever.
An ad or post that feels fake or scratched is the best way to convince a consumer not to buy a product. You need to understand that today’s consumers can easily see through your sales techniques and your classic copywriting, so if you fail to create a personal contact with your customers, you will never reach them.
Diversification reduces the risks
“Don’t put all eggs in the same basket.”
If you spend your entire marketing budget on an influencer and that influencer fails to reach your target audience, the entire campaign has failed. It’s that simple and it happens all the time.
If you choose to spread your budget to several influencers instead, the risk of you failing significantly decreases. Even if some of your influencers do not reach your target audience, the rest will, and in the end, the campaign will succeed.
Because of this, we encourage you to diversify your campaigns with multiple influencers.
Less risk of paid engagement
One advantage that micro-influencers offer and that is often ignored has to do with fake commitment.
Today, anyone can buy followers and likes on Instagram and other social media, as services that offer fake engagement become more sophisticated make it harder to sell real likes and followers from paid.
Of course, no one wants to get involved in buying fake engagement and the risk of it happening is far more extensive for people with a smaller number of followers. Therefore, micro-influencers tend to rely on organic commitment instead.
Thanks to the increased commitment we mentioned earlier, it is also usually not a problem for micro-influencers to reach out to their own target group, there is no need to buy likes.
Are there any problems with micro-influencers?
Now we have gone through all the benefits of working with micro-influencers, but is it just good or is there a downside?
Well, it actually does.
That said, micro-influencers can help you achieve your results and maximize your ROI better than big influencers can, but there are also two problems with this type of marketing.
First of all, many micro-influencers lack experience in marketing and just because you have many followers on social media does not mean that you can market products for brands.
This, in turn, can create problems between brands and influencers that can give the campaign worse results. Fortunately, this is not always the case and many of today’s micro-influencers are extremely professional. In some cases, micro-influencers even have more experience in this kind of marketing than the brands themselves.
Second, a campaign with many influencers requires much more work than a campaign with two influencers. If you are planning to hire 10 micro-influencers, it may require you to evaluate and contact 20, 30 or even more before you find any that fit.
The problem with this is that few of us have the time required to handle the work of so many influencers. Therefore, the extra work remains one of the most common reasons why brands choose not to employ micro-influencers today.
Find good influencers
To say the least, it can take time to find the right micro-influencers for your business and the products you plan to launch.
First and foremost, you need to find a number of influencers that could fit the campaign. And since some may say no to your offer or prove inappropriate, you need to find more than you actually need.
Then you need to contact them, agree on how the project will be compared, wait for their response, send out products and instructions, activate the campaign, evaluate each influencer and their posts separately, evaluate the entire campaign as a unit, collect data, make payments, deal with problems that may arise, and finally finish and summarize the project.
All of this is very time consuming and it can be difficult to get a good overview of all parts of the campaign. It requires that you understand a lot of time and dedication to be able to make a successful marketing campaign with micro-influencers and something many do not realize until you are in the process.
