Three weeks ago Eminence was presenting you 11 digital trends for a skyrocketing Marketing Strategy in 2019.
Today, we are picking out one theme of this article, namely Micro-Influencers, and will give you an insight into this exciting topic.
Micro-Influencers are opinion leaders, who have a relative low number of followers (between 1’000 and 10’000), but with a very high engagement, as they are very close to their followers and have a great expertise on their domain.
Micro-Influencers have a high Engagement-Rate
Instead of working with big Influencers (Macro-Influencers), who have over 10’000 or even millions of followers, you can work with Micro-Influencers to promote your product in an authentic and credible way. Several Micro-Influencers create the same effect like one Macro-Influencer and are in general not that expensive.
Choosing a Macro-Influencer who is having a lot of followers is not always the guarantee for success. If you check the account of some Macro-Influencers, for example with the Follower Check, you often realise that a lot of fans are not real.
Markerly has investigated in a study of the Instagram-Engagement and discovered a surprisingly trend: The higher the number of followers on an Instagram Account is, the more the likes and comments are decreasing, therefore more easily the Engagement-Rate is sinking:
- Instagram Users with less than 1’000 followers have constantly 8% likes (relation between number of followers and number of likes in percentage)
- Influencer with 1’000 – 10’000 followers have approximately 4% likes
- Influencer with 10’000 – 100’000 followers have approximately 2,4% likes
- Influencer with 1-10 million followers have approximately 1,7% likes
Micro-Influencers in the range from 1’000 -10’000 followers have much more interactions with their followers, than big Influencers. They are passionate about a topic and have a big know-how.
Precise Targeting
Given the fact, that Micro-Influencers are mostly focussed on a specific sector or interested in a particular topic, their followers are also interested in the same topic and there is very few “unexploded ordnance”. This means, if a product is associated with the right Micro-Influencers and is promoted over the Social Media Channels of the respective Micro-Influencer, a higher percentage of the users will be interested in the product and maybe make a purchase.
Promoting the same product with a big Influencer will have a larger audience but on a percentage basis, the interest in the product is smaller. By integrating Micro-Influencers in your strategy you can better connect and engage with your target audience.
More favourable than Macro-Influencers
In terms of compensation, Micro-Influencers are more favourable than celebrities or Macro-Influencers. The fees for Macro-Influencers have increased significantly in Switzerland and you need to invest a tidy sum. Micro-Influencers often ask for less remuneration than Influencers with lot of followers. An excellent strategy could be to work with several Micro-Influencers in order to optimise the coverage.
Micro-Influencers are more authentic
Micro-Influencers are true people who pursue Social Media as a hobby and share their passion and knowledge with other people. Most of the Micro-Influencers are publishing their content on their own and are responding to the comments of their followers personally. They are very authentic as there is a personal connection with their community and also the credibility of the Micro-Influencers is often higher than the one of the Macro-Influencers.
Various possibilities for a cooperation
There are various possibilities to establish a cooperation with a Micro-Influencer:
- You can send your product to the respective Micro-Influencer, of course without any obligation. If there is a post about the product or the brand you need to react and contact the Micro-Influencer, for example for offering a discount code for their followers.
- You can post some content of a Micro-Influencer on your website/company profile. On the one hand it will help the Micro-Influencer to increase its coverage and on the other hand it will support to boost your company or product.
- You can organise an event in a specific subject area and invite some Micro-Influencers who are active in this area to increase the credibility.
How to find the right Micro-Influencers for your brand or company
- Hashtag-search: You can find relevant Micro-Influencers with a Hashtag-Search on Instagram or Twitter. For example if you are an Interior Designer who is specialised in kitchen design you can search on Instagram after #kitchendesign and browse the top posts.
- Instagram Location Tags: You can enter your city in the search bar field and look for people, tags and places tabs.
- Check your existing followers: Some Micro-Influencers could hide within your follower community. A special tool, for example SocialRank, can help you to sort out your followers on the number of fans.
Successful stories with Micro-Influencers
Although a lot of brands have access to big budgets and celebrity advertising, they use increasingly Micro-Influencers as a successful model.
Adidas has several star athletes under contract, but for the launch of Glitch, an App that football fans can use to test and buy their new shoe line, was build up on a campaign by the power of Micro-Influencers. This campaign was very effective and the new line evolved to a great success.
The watch brand Daniel Wellington also used Micro-Influencers in some of their campaigns. Instagram users received in exchange with a post the chance to get introduced on the official account of Daniel Wellington (more than 4 millions followers). Daniel Wellington offered some of the Micro-Influencers a discount code, which they could share with their followers.
The shoe brand Sperry was collaborating with over 100 Micro-Influencers who posted their products on Instagram. To integrate this user generated content in their campaign, Sperry worked with Curalate Explore and built relations with the authors of the pictures.
One of the posts, from Instagramer Slava Daniliuk, became the post with the highest engagement rate of the year 2016.
In a nutshell
Marketing with Micro-Influencers works in particular with visual products but less with non-tangible products. Nevertheless, it is possible if you build up an extensive strategy for both. In general you work with several Micro-Influencers for a campaign, therefore you need to calculate more time and effort for the correspondence, as you also need to build up a long-term relationship with your Micro-Influencers. However, your additional costs will pay off, when you can reach successfully your target audience with the right choice of your Micro-Influencers. Eminence, your national and international agency, located in Geneva can help you to establish an extensive audit in order to build up an effective strategy and to choose the appropriate Micro-Influencers for your company or brand.