A Comprehesive Guide to Micro-Influencers

The Rise of Micro-Influencers

For a long time, influencer marketing - in all forms - was only accessible to large brands with big marketing budgets to engage celebrities. A newer concept known as micro-influencer marketing recently became mainstream in the social media and influencer marketing scene. Traditionally, word-of-mouth was hard to scale on social, until the emergence of micro-influencers. The searches for Micro-Influencer have risen 10X over the past few years according to Google Trends.

What is a Micro-Influencer?

Micro influencers are influential creators on social media platforms who typically have between 1,000 and 100,000 followers. These creators typically build followings around niches like travel, fashion, beauty and photography, and cultivate communities surrounding their topic of influence. Unlike traditional "influencers," micro-influencers have a more modest number of followers but they boast hyper-engaged audiences.

Why Micro-Influencer Marketing?

  • Micro-influencers have 22.2 times more conversations weekly about recommendations on what to buy when compared to an average consumer
  • Influencers in the 10k-100k follower range offer the best combination of engagement and broad reach
  • 59 percent of micro-influencers believe Instagram to be the most effective social media platform for engaging their target audience
  • 53 percent of micro-influencers have never paid to promote a post
  • 84 percent of micro-influencers charge less than $250 per Instagram post
  • 97 percent charge less than $500 per post
  • 72 percent of consumers will take some action after reading a positive review from
  • 86 percent of marketers are now practicing influencer marketing in some form
  • 48 percent Marketers plan to increase their influencer marketing budget
  • 92 percent of consumers trust recommendations from friends, family, and influencers
  • 26 percent of desktop and 15 percent of mobile users use ad-blockers

What's The Benefits Of Working With Micro-Influencers?

Authenticity

According to a survey from Adweek, 92% of today’s consumers trust recommendations from others over branded content. With influencer marketing, brands can reach millions of consumers through the voices of people they trust the most - their peers.

Engagement

When you work with micro-influencers, engagement happens naturally as a result of the meaningful relationship influencers already have with their audiences. Brands may find that sponsored content with micro-influencers sees a relatively higher percentage of likes, comments and shares than larger influencers.

Niche

Micro influencers cultivate niche communities around their topic of influence. In generating content that is niche and focused around their specialties, micro-influencer can help to reach out to the right crowd.

Affordable

Micro-influencers don’t have the higher price tags associated with some higher tier influencers such as macro influencers and mega influencers. Depending on an influencer’s reach, engagement and experience, brands may be able to partner with a platoon of micro influencers for the same price as partnering with a single macro influencer. You can commission one video to mega influencer or you can have 100 micro-influencers to create a variety of video for the same cost.

Scale

There are over 200 tools focus on helping brands engage micro-influencers to develop creative, authentic, engageable content at scale. With the help of Micro-Influencer marketplace or agency, you can activate hundreds of micro-influencers who then create thousands of pieces of original creative content about your product or brand and share them across multiple social networks, increasing awareness through stories versus the paid static banner ads.

What Determines Micro-Influencer's Influence?

The 4Rs of Micro-Influencers - Reach, Resonate, Relevance and ROI

Reach

Engaged reach, specifically. A micro-influencer has a social media following of 1,000 and above, with 25% + engagement around specific topics.

Resonance

Resonance is the quality of micro-influencer' connection with their followers, a combination of high trustworthiness and authenticity that drives their power to convert.

Relevance

Relevance is the quality of micro-influencers' alignment and connection to your brand, industry or correlating topics.

ROI

Micro-influencers' ability to convert their friends. Quantified by cost-per-acquisition, app installs, e-commerce purchases or promo codes, among other strategic, bottom-line metrics.

What Should You Use Micro-Influencer Marketing For?

Increase Awareness

According to a survey from Adweek, 92% of today’s consumers trust recommendations from others over branded content. With influencer marketing, brands can reach millions of consumers through the voices of people they trust the most - their peers. You can activate hundreds of influencers who then create thousands of pieces of original creative content about your product or brand and share them across multiple social networks, increasing awareness through stories versus the paid static banner ads.

Engage Audience

When you work with influencers, engagement happens naturally as a result of the meaningful relationship influencers already have with their audiences. Consumers are more likely to engage directly with your brand or product if they’re introduced to it by someone they trust rather than through brand-created content.

Drive Traffic

Influencer marketing has also proven itself to be a reliable tactic for generating inbound traffic especially if it is an evergreen long-form content, such as a blog post. This type of content will continue to surface in search results and drive traffic to your site long after the conclusion of your influencer marketing campaign.

Grow Database

It is quite common for brands to tap into Influencer marketing to grow their email list. You can offer a sweepstakes entry, newsletter sign-ups, or coupon downloads and ask your influencers to promote the contest or event to their fans.

Increase Sales

Want to see an increase in sales? Influencer marketing can be very effective at driving sales if you do it right. It's about working with the right influencers to produce the right content that map your customer journey.

Here's how:

  • Awareness – Influencers extend your reach to their loyal audience base.
  • Consideration – Influencers spark higher engagement online and increase the amount of qualified leads flowing into your sales funnel.
  • Decision – Through product reviews and recommendations, influencers drive conversion and increase sales.
  • Adoption – Influencers create positive brand sentiment as a trusted source to their following.
  • Advocacy – Through digital word-of-mouth, influencers inspire their followers to share your brand’s content.

Why Is Micro-Influencer Marketing More Effective than Traditional Advertising?

Trust

Research shows that influencer marketing can sway the opinions of today’s consumers more effectively than traditional advertising. According to Nielsen, recommendations from people consistently tops the trust rankings across all generations, beating out branded websites, TV ads, newspaper ads, and editorial content.

More Value and More Effective

Influencer marketing programs deliver significantly more value than display ad campaigns and can even make your social advertising more effective. Each influencer marketing program provides the brand with original content and lifetime value. The influencer content will continue to be discovered through search and social sharing over time.

Authentic

To combat ad blocking, many brands are turning to influencer marketing as an effective alternative. Influencer created content can’t be blocked and is inherently different from digital display ads in that it provides entertainment or informational value as part of an authentic story. Because the content comes from a trusted source, consumers are significantly more likely to engage with the sponsored content rather than quickly clicking to exit.

How Do You Find Micro-Influencers?

Micro-influencers are prolific on different social media platforms, but finding the perfect one for your brand can be challenging. Though micro influencers may exist on a number of different social media platforms, Instagram is the primary hub of micro influencer activity on social media. There are different ways you can leverage on to identify the right Micro-influencers for your brands on Instagram.

Follower List: One proven way to go about finding the right influencers is by searching through your brand’s Instagram followers and seeing if any are already following you. Since those people are already fans of the brand, they will likely want to promote your products, and you can then build a successful relationship.

Fan Grader Tools: You can use Instagram Fan Grader to do this. It is a free tool that analyzes your Instagram page to discover your brand's most influential fans.

Hashtag Tools: You can use Instagram Hashtag Search to do this. Use the relevant hashtag to your brand to research for Micro-Influencers that are active promoting topics or brands like yours. This will help you find influencers who are already interested in topics related to your brand.

Google Search: Use Google Advanced Search to look for keywords on Instagram e.g. Fashion blogger site:Instagram.com. If you are looking for bloggers in your area who are active in your industry, you can search with the + operators. Try this: [your city name]+[your industry]+“blogger” site:Instagram.com.

Marketplace: One of the easiest and most efficient ways to find, engage and work with influencers is to use an influencer marketplace. Influencer marketplaces are technology platforms that connect brands and businesses interested in creating new content and reaching new audiences with influencers. Some influencer marketplaces only specialize in certain industries like fashion, fitness or food. Others are platform-specific offer only Instagram, YouTube or Twitter services. Some platforms offer a comprehensive catalog of services including both content creation and influencer marketing. Most of this platform offer service like managed-service and self-service.

How To Choose Your Micro-Influencer Marketing Content Types

Plan Your Content Type Before Activating The Influencers

Brand Generated

Brand creates the content and influencers are activated to share it with their networks.

Influencers don't add any personalization; they simply share the content. Least risk.

Less Creativity and personalization. Least impactful.

Co-Developed

Brand develops guidelines for the content and influencers create their own content based on adaptation. For example: “Share a picture of your selfie in Singapore Botanic Garden”.

Moderate Impact Pontential.

Mild risk.

Influencer Generated

Content is generated by Influencers based on their creativity. Brand gives loose and generic direction.

Influencers have full creativity with loose guideline from brands. Maximum impact.

Review process is needed as part of risk management as the risk is higher.

How To Choose the Right Incentive for Micro-Influencer

Plan Your Incentives Before Activating The Influencers

There are different factors you should consider before making a decision on what kind of incentives you offer to your influencers.

Exclusivity: Incentives should be exclusive to only influencers that you like to activate in order to motivate participation in your influencer marketing campaign.

Influencer type: Most of the mega-influencers and macro-influencers will require cash payment, while micro-influencers will consider other form of compensations aside from cash.

Brand affinity: The most enduring and valuable level of influencer relationship is based on the mutual belief that the influencers and the brand share common values. It is advisable to activate relevant influencer who is passionate about your brands for best results. Branded incentives will work best in this case.

Fulfilment Effort: If more effort is required by the influencer to create and share branded content, then a higher incentive value is needed.

Types of Incentives

Cash

For most of the mega-influencers and macro-influencers, you will have to use payments for incentives. However for micro-influencers, some of them are open to receive VIP treatments and special branded incentives other than cash.

VIP Treatment

When activating micro-influencers, the most popular incentive is an exclusive experience. This type of incentive works best when they are passionate about your brand. This could be in the form of a discount, gift card, limited product giveaway, VIP free trial etc.

Recognition

Micro-influencers are more than happy to receive non-monetary rewards such as recognition. You can do this by featuring their content on your owned media such as Website or share their voices and give them a limelight on your social media channel.

Common Incentives Ideas

  • Exclusive Event
  • Early Access
  • Discounts
  • Free Trial
  • Contest Entries
  • Gift Cards
  • Experience Box
  • Limited Product Sample
  • Priority Service

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