The approach that traditional marketing is known to use doesn’t happen to be as effective as it used to be before. That is why you need to know what is a micro-influencer!
With the advancement in technology, consumers have turned out to be somewhat savvy. Before opting but anything online, they do research of their own and are less swayed by brands messaging strategy.
We all know brands want to sell us something, but we want it to be subtle.
This is where micro-influencers come in handy. They build the trust with their followers by themselves first, then this trust is linked to your brand. They show people what credibility your brand has and make their personal connections work in order to make your brand stand out from the crowd.
In this article below, we will try to cover each and everything that you might need to know about “Micro-influencers”.
What is a Micro-Influencer?
What is microinfluencer? Micro-influencers are considered the people who have somewhere between 1,000 to 100,000 followers on their social media accounts and many people also consider them to be known and experts in their respective niches.
For all you know, an influencer could be a local food blogger, an specific items fashionista (bags, shoes, watches, etc), a vehicle enthusiast, or vegan traveler! It really can be anyone who has nailed down a not so common niche.
However, there are some specific niches that have an effect that make them connect better with people on a deeper level, so generalizing on numbers is usually not ideal since they might have a low followers number but high engagement.
One of the main advantages of micro-influencers is that a lot of them have built a community and their followers are really engage with their content.
As far as the numbers are concerned, a lot of times, influencers engagement could be lesser if their total followers is higher.
Having said that, having followers somewhere between 1K-100K is just the right amount when it comes to gaining maximum engagement.
Let’s look at this from an angle that makes more sense. When you choose to go with a smaller audience, they are more likely to reply better to your responses.
Similarly, if you go with more followers, a lot of them are not likely to even like what you post.
The 4 Main Benefits of Working with Micro-influencers
The benefits that brands can get when they choose to work with a micro-influencer are many.
If we listed down each and every benefit these micro-influencer provide to the business they partner with, we would need to do a really long article.
This is why, just to provide you with an idea of what perks you would be having by pairing up with a micro-influencer, we are enlisting some of the main benefits below.
Do give it a read, and see for yourself the perks these micro-influencer come with!
1. High Engagement
The main and most important benefit of working with micro-influencers is the higher engagement rate they have compared to the influencers with millions of followers.
When you decide to go with a mega influencer or a celebrity to promote your products you can be sure your product will be seen by millions of people. But sales might not increase much. There is also always the chance that some mega influencers have bought fake accounts to increase their followers.
With a micro-influencer is more likely their followers will end up buying your product, just because they feel more connected to them and trust them more.
A big or celebrity influencer is someone who has a few million followers, and with those numbers it becomes really hard for them to personally interact with even a few of their followers.
Thus they won’t make efforts for your product or service that you are expecting them to make.
However, with micro-influencers, this isn’t even a thing. As they have a much lesser amount of followers then it is much easier for them to interact with their audiences.
So they can do a way better job at making your products or service stand out from the crowd.
Keep in mind that if you are a big brand, micro-influencers will be happier to work with you compared to celebrities since they can also get some sort of “fame” by representing your brand. So it is a win-win for everyone.
2. Higher Conversion Rates
With high engagement comes high conversion rates.
Most people are easier to convinced to buy a product when someone recommends it versus if they just see an ad about it.
For example, when you are searching what to get yourself for dinner, you can’t probably simply just go to any restaurant that comes in front of your eyes.
If you want to eat from a good place, you would look up the reviews a restaurant has over google, and then you will make your decision to opt for that place to eat or not.
Similarly, micro-influencers happen to be as effective as looking up reviews online.
You can gain the trust of your potential leads and turn them to become your potential customers by tidying up the trust they have in a micro-influencer to your product.
This is why we classified this advantage as the second biggest one.
The high potential lead to the potential customer conversion rate you may receive with the help of the micro-influencer would surely be incredible.
3. It Is Cheaper To Work With Them
The exposure that a big Influencer is great because of the lots of people who follows them and due to this, the demand for celebrity and big influencers these days has gone up to the sky.
According to the modern day perspective, the more followers a person has, they will ask for a bigger a mount of money for their services.
It is not uncommon for even mid size influencers with a couple hundred of thousand of followers to charge $1,000 per post they publish.
Which can be a little too hard to afford by brands that have just begun with their business.
And this is where these micro-influencers come in handy. These micro-influencers do not have demands as high as bigger influencer.
Hence, it becomes easier for brands, especially the ones that have just begun their journey, to work with them.
This way, you would surely be saving a lot of your money working with them and can invest that saved money in something else your business needs.
4. Target The Right Audience
When you choose micro-influencers over big ones, you will be able to target your audience better.
There is no doubt that the follower count of celebrities is much higher. Having said that, they are likely to have followers from all over the world!
This can include different lifestyles, demographics, or ages. Which might not actually target the audience you are looking for.
Comparatively, if a micro influencer belonging to a specific niche endorses your product, you are likely to attain much higher responses from the right audience.
On the other hand, when you get a celebrity to endorse your brand, you will find that only a fraction of people will respond to their endorsement.
Who Should Work With Micro-influencers?
Micro-influencers happen to be one of the best strategies that you will come across in this marketing world when you are a small brand.
The amount of exposure these micro-influencers come in handy with is more than enough for making a brand or service stand out of the crowd.
But who can really benefits from partnering up with micro-influencers? In simpler words, if you are a small business owner, have a product which has an specific market, don’t have a big marketing budget, your services are only local, or something similar to that. Then micro-influencers might be your best shot to get new customers.
Here micro influencers prove to be of great worth. They have what it takes to make your product or service reach out to a larger audience than a small brand can get to.
BUT, big companies can work with micro-influencers too. They probably work with many of them at the same time for one single campaign. It can be cheaper and most successful approach that hiring a celebrity to endorse their products.
For example, the boots brand Sperry aimed to take the brand in this direction for a marketing campaign. The campaign lasted for about two weeks and included a high number of fashion micro-influencers promoting their boots.
What they did was, these influencers posted Sperry boots in their pics using the hashtag #OTD (outfit of the day).
Since this hashtag is one of the most known ones, they started appearing higher in the Instagram searches and the explore section.
This way they reached thousands of people who not only were looking for outfit ideas but also had the trust of the influencers they follow.
It is not difficult to see how this campaign was so successful increasing their sales for those 2 weeks.
Where and How To Find Micro-influencers?
Now that you are tempted to give micro-influencers a shot, you might find yourself stuck with the question: Where can we find the right micro-influencers to promote your business?
One of the best ways to look for micro-influencers well-suited for your business is by using hashtag search option.
The first type of hashtag to search for should be using particularly branded hashtags. Try adding your brand name using a hashtag. This way, you will be able to find people that are already engaging with your brand, (that is if they are any).
This is one of the most straightforward and simplest ways when it comes to finding micro-influencers intended for your business.
Now that you have found people that are talking about your brand, you will find some micro-influencers too.
Once you see the list of all posts shared you can start lo look up for the ones who you think have better asthetics or the style that matches your brand the best.
From here you can check out the user profile and see the total of followers they have, ideally somewhere between 1k to 100k.
Check out a few of their posts, just to make sure this is the type of account you want your brand to be represented by. Then just message them, it is likely they don’t get hundreds of messages like the big influencers.
That is one of the best and easiest ways when it comes to finding micro-influencers better suited for your business.
Moreover, these Influencers are most likely to be tempted to go with you too. Meaning that you won’t have to do a lot of persuasion in order to make them work for you.
However, if your brand is not that popular, you can type in hashtags in the Instagram search bar using topics relevant to your brand or products. The more niche down the better.
Then follow the same steps we mentioned before. Search for posts, stalked the account a little and reach out!
Using one of the Influencer’s Database
Another way to look for micro-influencers is by using Influencer databases.
While there are some online databases that are free to use, the best ones are usually paid.
Still, try first with the free ones if your budget is not too big. Most of this databases happen to be free or have a free tier.
One of the best things about this online databases is that most come with an added bonus of statistical data about the influencers as well.
One of the databases you can go with is Scrunch.
Scrunch is one of the most trusted and vast databases when it comes to looking for influencers that are better suited for your brand.
There are many other ones, a quick google search will show you lots of them.
A Couple Tips For Becoming A Successful Micro-Influencer
Seeing that micro-influencers can have so many benefits, an idea may have popped up in your mind. Why don’t I just become a micro-influencers myself?
As we have discussed here, being a micro-influencers is not too complicated. Getting a couple thousand followers won’t take too much time and can also help your and other brands to build up their image too.
This is why we are providing some viable tips for you, that will set your micro-influencers career in the right path.
Be Creative, Unique And Brand Yourself
First thing first, you really don’t have to be famous to become a micro-influencers. You can really start by having around couples of followers, the most important thing is that they support and vouch for you.
The thing that really matters is creativity. Posting unique-creative content is the best way to get support from your followers. Choose your niche and start posting reltable content.
Your set of skills and the experience you hold are what people is looking for, not another meme page or a copy-cat from other accounts. Your followers can tell if you are authentic or not.
It might sounds too easy but really a couple thousand engaged followers are not too difficult. We have put together a few resources to help you like this guide to grow your Instagram followers and the best way to get more likes in your posts.
Starting from zero to a micro-influencers level requires a little bit of work but is not complicated.
Quality Over Quantity
Following the same idea than the previous point, make quality content.
This is a pro tip that not many people will provide to you when you are starting, most people recommend to posts, post anything all the time. But this rarely works for micro influencing since what you are looking for is engagement.
While doing branding for any business, specially your own, you must remember that you are quality matters not your quantity.
If you keep on posting more quality content on your Instagram account that people usually is looking for, they will stay with you when they find you.
It’s always preferred that you post your content once a day, but the content that you are posting should be good, otherwise the people who started to follow you will leave… forever! 😉
Final Words!
The term influencer is now not a new term to the people who use any of the social media platforms frequently.
Especially, on the odds that you are one of those people who is into digital marketing, then you must be fully aware of what Influences are.
However, this term “Influencer” is divided into a few different categorizations, and trust us, not many people are aware of them.
An influencer can be classified as mega, macro, micro, and nano. Each of these type of influencers has their own characteristics and features.
With all the hype Influencer marketing has reached nowadays, it has become really hard for people to differentiate between these four types of influencers.
However, if you really want your product or service to reach out to the people, then it becomes obligatory for you to be fully aware of what this four sub-types of influencers are, and what hidden perks and worth they come in handy with.
We hope to have shown you all the advantages micro-influencers have and the best strategy to work with them.
With that being said, we hope that the information and pointers we have provided to you above will be of great worth to you.
And will enable you to choose the right micro-influencers for your company or brand with ease!
