How to maximize performance from micro-Influencers

Unravel Media January 18, 2023

Influencer marketing has grown in popularity in recent years, and more people are interested in learning more about it now than ever before. Globally, Influencer marketing was estimated to be a $15 billion industry in 2022. It has become popular because of its unconventional and quirky approach. It has come forward as completely different from traditional marketing techniques that provided superficial sales content. Conversely, influencer marketing focuses on more meaningful conversations and experiences. As a result, influencer marketing is more personal than data-driven commercials.

Micro-influencers or creators with a small following are people who work in their respective niche, are truly knowledgeable, passionate, and authentic, and are regarded as reliable sources for product recommendations. It’s ideal for companies that do not have the budget to work with macro influencers but want to reach a more targeted audience. When it comes to Micro-influencers, the connection is everything. They receive a steady stream of comments, likes, and clicks as a result of their authenticity. As a result, unlike their Macro and Mega counterparts, Micro-influencers are frequently perceived as more approachable and relatable.

The competition among social media influencers is increasing, and we see a wide range of influencers and content generation. This may surprise you, but if you want higher brand engagement, go for micro-influencers rather than macro-influencers, that is, any influencer with 1,000 to 100,000 followers. According to research, the bigger and more popular the influencer, the lower the engagement (likes, comments, shares). Influencers with fewer than 1000 followers receive likes on their posts 8% of times, compared to average of 1.6% for those with tens of millions of followers or more.  As a result, for maximum engagement and lead generation, look for an influencer with 10K to 100K followers. However, the number of followers is not the only metric to consider; you should also consider how engaging the audiences are. Idle followers don’t help brands seeking exposure.

• High Return on Investment: Micro-influencers provide low-cost marketing solutions with a high return on investment. They also exponentially expand a company’s reach and are highly trusted by their followers. Engaging with multiple micro-influencers broadens but also deepens the reach. The average engagement rate for micro-influencers across feed and sponsored posts is 2%. Macro and Mega Macro influencers, on the other hand, have engagement rates ranging from 0.8% to 1.3%.
• Cult-Like Loyalty: Micro-influencers already have a following of people who are interested in businesses, products, and/or services like yours. Their followers are also cult-like in their devotion to every word and recommendation made. This increases the ROI of micro-influencers in your industry or niche. To get them on board, start a social media conversation and tell them how much you enjoy their content.
• Genuine Audience Connection: Because of their smaller, more engaged audiences, working with micro-influencers often produces more impactful results than working with macro-influencers or celebrities. People nowadays want personalized one-on-one recommendations, and micro-influencers can help them establish that authentic connection with their audience.
• Deep Audience Understanding: Make every effort to align your goals with those of the micro-influencers. Inquire about what their audience responds to the most and collaborate with them to make the posts more authentic. In addition to paid placement and promo codes, aligning incentives with an affiliate program can help. While maintaining brand consistency is important, give the influencer a seat at the strategic table to maximize results.
• Increased Credibility: Micro-influencers can increase the trustworthiness of your brand and assist you in reaching your desired target audience. Encourage your micro-influencers to become the new faces of your brand in terms of micro-influencer engagement. Request that they provide honest feedback on your products/business and that you use that feedback constructively, or that they create product tutorials and relevant live-stream videos.
• Sales and top-of-funnel traffic have increased: While celebrity influencers with vanity metrics have recently fallen out of favor, micro-influencers have proven to be effective partners for businesses of all sizes. Their value is derived from authentic and original content, which primarily drives top-of-funnel traffic and sales, which can be measured using performance-based models such as CPA. Treat them as true partners, and you’ll see your revenue grow.
• Involvement in More Intense Social Conversations: Working with micro-influencers allows brands to engage in a much more intimate social conversation with communities that typically demonstrate higher levels of trust and engagement. Sponsorships for micro-influencers are inherently more personal, so brands must seek out influencers and audiences who personally align with their brand values. –
• Sharing of Comprehensive Content: Micro-influencers have highly targeted audiences and are ideal for sharing in-depth content, ABM campaign material, or vertical-specific material. Begin cultivating relationships with micro-influencers as early as possible in the process.
• Product Evaluations: Micro-influencers are a great marketing asset when used to get product reviews on their social media and at retailers. They should disclose that they were involved in a seeding campaign, but their opinions are genuine and their own. To get your audience engaged and excited, you should re-gram their content or have them take over your Instagram Stories for a day.
• Brand Promotion: Today, online influencers and reviews generate the same level of trust as a recommendation from a friend. According to studies, micro-influencers have the highest engagement rates. Spend less money by using their niche market to reach your target audience and testing what works and what doesn’t. Product/service reviews and social media sharing are excellent places to start before moving on to personal content promotion ideas.

How to Collaborate with Micro-Influencers?

• Be clear with your Expectations and Goals: Before you begin working on your Micro influencer marketing campaign, you should define your goals and the metrics that will be used to measure success. Spending time outlining your goals will help you decide who to work with and what deliverables to request.
• Verify Micro-Influencers to Collaborate With: When selecting a Micro influencer to work with, ensure that they are a good fit for your target audience and brand. Working with influencers who have high engagement rates, post consistently, and have a distinct personality or voice is ideal.
• Negotiate Fees and Make an Influencer Agreement Contract: What happens now that you’ve identified a few Micro-influencers with whom you’d like to collaborate? The money speaks for itself! When the fee has been agreed upon, you must draft a contract that includes the payment amount, mode of payment, content deliverables, deadlines, contract length, and so on.
• Track and Monitor Outcomes: It is critical to track, monitor, and measure the outcomes of your campaign. You’ll be able to see how the content performed and use it to inform future campaigns, whether you’re working with the same Micro-influencers, finding new ones, or establishing different goals.
• Clear plan to run a follow up campaign – In our experience, we have seen 50% of campaigns with micro influencers fail despite having best of efforts on influencer selections, communication and follow up. The rest 50% work better than expected and over a long time meet the campaign goals too. However, for this to happen, as a brand you need to have a clear follow up campaign plan as many of these micro creators grow exponentially in terms of their subscriber base or views or other metric that you track. Since growth for Micro influencers is really fast, at times repeating a campaign with them costs a lot more than when they are small, Not only this, since typically the growth of subscribers is led by amazing content quality, chances of these getting viral is much higher. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you have a follow up campaign plan and inform them well in advance.
• Identify the right compensation strategy – You might want to explore a hybrid payment model with a few nano influencers who are willing to work on a fixed fee plus an incentive linked to a milestone. This brings Cost of goal much lower and influencers are motivated to work on content. By doing this, brands also get a chance to explain their objective in a much better manner which helps influencers to execute or evangelize to not only followers but in their own community too.

We really hope that you find this useful and would try and implement those on your micro creators strategy for additional sales. If you want to discuss this further or any other thing with respect to your influencer strategy, Do write to us and get started for free!