If you are looking for ways to upgrade the marketing strategy for your business and you still are not using influencer marketing then that’s exactly what you should consider. For many years, marketers have worked with influencers to market their products and that strategy has proven to be effective. The word itself explains the reason: influencers are people influencing a certain number of people who have certain interests. As a rule, the influencers were mostly TV stars or any other celebrities. However, with the technological advancements in this new era, influencer marketing and influencers themselves have undergone some dramatic changes. Once popular influencer marketing with TV celebrities now mostly includes micro-influencers.
Who are the micro-influencers?
These are internet users who have leveraged the powers of social media to create a base of followers who are loyal to them and their content. Social media has given an opportunity for everyone to become an influencer if they want to be. With time, the number of micro-influencers is increasing, and marketers are becoming more prone to choosing to work with them.
A natural question might arise “Why the change of heart?”.
Now, let’s go through all the aspects of this question and figure out why this change is happening and why it won’t stop.
They work with niche markets
Unlike macro-influencers whose audiences may reach millions, micro-influencers have less than 10,000 followers. However, the difference is that they have created highly specific audiences. And because of that, the number of audiences that macro-influencers have can’t compete with the number of niches that micro-influencers cover. Let me cite an example to be more specific. Do you think you can find a macro-influencer with millions of followers for the origami market? Probably not. But the good news is that there are many micro-influencers who are ready to help. There are micro-influencers for niches of all types. There are most probably as many as there are existing business niches.
They are cost-effective
Having a smaller audience than macro-influencers makes it natural for micro-influencers to charge less. This becomes another advantage of choosing them. And, just because of the lower cost many companies prefer turning to micro-influencers for help.
Micro-influencers are generally people with everyday jobs who also happen to have a hobby of writing posts on their blogs or social media. If they are truly happy with the product they are trying to market, they may even agree to do it for free samples.
They may appear to be more trustworthy than macro-influencers
Trust is one of the most important features of any kind of influencer marketing. As a rule, influencers are authentic. But, when we compare a macro and micro-influencer, the latter appears to be more authentic. The reason is that they are ordinary people just like their fan-base and they don’t put any distance in between. When talking to a micro-influencer one feels understood and that everything happening in the micro-influencer’s life resembles all the activities one does every day. In addition, most micro-influencers don’t think they are authentic at all which is exactly what gives them more authenticity.
Micro-influencers are easy to access
Because they don’t consider themselves as authentic as they really are, micro-influencers end up being accessible and mostly willing to help. But there is also another reason for their willingness to help people. Micro-influencers are all potential celebrities who have their small audiences. Many of them really want to enlarge their fan-base as much as possible. They understand that if it wasn’t for their audience they wouldn’t become influencers in the first place which is why they nurture their audience and try to be as accessible and open as possible. They are ready to attend events and interact with their followers or be available 24/7 to interact online.
Their audiences have higher engagement levels
Followers of micro-influencers are mostly people who they have met personally, people who are in their circle of friends and family, people who really trust the content they share and stay loyal to it. An influencer with 100,000 followers may have less than 1,000 engaged devotees but as the number of followers gets smaller the percentage of those engaged gets higher. This means that if you are willing to start influencer marketing campaigns, it is more efficient to hire someone with fewer followers in your niche because it will cost less and be more productive.
They have an easier content creation process
Micro-influencers are professional content creators. The best part is that their content is of high quality, but they don’t really spend much time on it. They just know how to leverage the technological advancements and the magical tools of the internet era. While a macro-influencer might go through multiple photo shoots and hire a big team to help him or her create photos, the micro influencer just uses a phone with a good camera and starts creating photos which may look just as amazing after a few retouches. Instead of hiring a film agency to make a video, they use the same phone to shoot a video and then work with an online video maker to edit it. At the end of the day, they still end up looking professional.
How to get influencers?
There are 2 ways to start working with influencers. The first is to find them personally and offer to work with them, negotiate the terms and start your influencer marketing campaigns. But, keep in mind that as the number of their followers grow, influencers become more demanding and less accessible. So, if you’re thinking of getting a macro-influencer to work with you by using this method, you can forget about it.
The second is to start looking for influencers at many available influencer marketing platforms to find the perfect match for your business needs.
Overall micro-influencers are going to become much more popular amongst small business marketers because they are cost-effective and provide promised results. The only thing you should be very careful about in choosing a micro-influencer is their niche. Make sure that their audience exactly matches yours. Even minor differences can be an issue, so try to find an exact match. You should definitely be able to do that since there are so many different niches available in the influencer marketplaces.
