Why Micro-Influencers are the Best Influencers

The world of influencer marketing has grown. Now you don’t have to be a celebrity, model or create the best memes on the internet to be an influencer marketer.

Actually average social media users with only a few thousand followers have become some of the most powerful influencer marketers in the industry generating the highest conversion rates for brands. You also don’t need to break the bank to partner with influencers anymore. Many smaller influencer marketers are willing to work with brands in exchange for just a free product or for some sort of cross-promotion deal. A new world of social media influence is upon us.

Average people are now making a living off of influencer marketing as Micro-Influencers

Photograph of Micro-Influencers via Pexels

The Influencer Game Has Changed

There are now new labels for the growing variety of influencers. Each type of influencer comes with different advantages and disadvantages which we’ll go over in the following paragraphs. Here is what the industry is calling the different types of influencer marketers:

What are Nano-Influencers: Nano-Influencers are social media users with 500 – 1000 followers. They usually have high engagement levels and low follower reach.

What are Micro-Influencers: Micro-Influencers are social media users with 1,000 to 10,000 followers. They usually have high engagement levels and average follower reach.

What are Macro-Influencers: Macro-Influencers are social media users with 10,000 to 1,000,000 followers. They usually have average engagement levels and high follower reach.

What are Mega-Influencers: Mega-Influencers are social media users with 1,000,000+ followers. They usually have low engagement levels and high follower reach.

Influencer marketers now come in all sizes. As the world of technology has become more advanced and social media platforms have expanded, influencer marketers as followed suit. Companies big and small are now devoting large percentages of their marketing budgets to influencer marketing campaigns. According to a recent marketing study published by Linqia, 39% of marketers surveyed planned to increase their influencer marketing budget in 2018, with 19% deciding to spend over $100,000 per campaign, up from 13% last year.

The Pros And Cons Of The Different Types Of Influencers

There are various benefits and downsides to working with the variety of influencer marketers. Let’s start with Nano-Influencers. Nano-Influencers are the cheapest to work with and usually will be willing to create and post content in exchange for a free product or a few dollars. Even though these social media users don’t have a very big following, their engagement and trust levels are usually very high since most of their follower base are people they know (friends and family).

However their reach is very limited, so the time it takes to communicate and deal with Nano-Influencers often doesn’t pay off and isn’t worth the effort. They also usually don’t care about the quality of their posts and aren’t very creative, so don’t expect content created by Nano-Influencers to be very good.

Next we have Micro-Influencers. These social media users have become the new ideal candidates for influencer marketing campaigns since their followers are usually very engaged. Micro-Influencer followers often consist of a mixture of close associates and loyal fans who love the niche the Micro-Influencer is posting about. These Influencers also know their subjects really well and their followers trust their opinions, since they interact a lot with their audience and are relatable (being normal people and not celebrities).

Micro-Influencers have the highest product conversion rates in the Industry.

Photograph of Influencer via Pexels

Micro-Influencers are also very targeted in their posts. They have garnered a following by becoming masters of their topics and creating engaging, quality content within a specific niche. Another great benefit of working with Micro-Influencers is that they are often willing to post on social platforms or perform online tasks in exchange for just a free product or a cross-promotion instead of getting paid. If they do want payment for posts or task it will be a low cost fee.

Then we have Macro-Influencers. Macro-Influencer reach is much greater than Micro and Nano Influencers but their followers are not as engaged since they have much more people to satisfy and the majority aren’t personally known. These Influencers also have begun to taste “celebrity status” and usually have slightly inflated egos which makes them less likely to work with you without getting paid.

For companies with large budgets to spend on influencer marketing, Macro-Influencers aren’t a bad choice but will cost much more than smaller influencers and their additional reach may not be worth the extra expense. Also Macro-Influencer subject niches aren’t as specific as micro-influencer accounts which can limit your ability to run a highly targeted influencer campaign.

Last but not least let’s go over Mega-Influencers. These social media users are usually celebrities, models or very creative individuals (meme profiles, artists, etc.). They have the highest reach out of all the types of influencers but their engagement percentage is the lowest. Working with Mega-Influencers can be very beneficial for your brand since people worship certain celebrity profiles and with only a single post you can notify a massive group of social media users about your company.

However if you’re looking for product sales, your conversion rate percentage will most likely be much lower than if you worked with less popular influencers since engagement and trust isnt as high. You will also end up shelling out a pretty penny to get a Mega-Influencer to post about your brand and usually the influencer will delete the post after a day or two so the longevity of your influence is often limited.

The Best Of The Bunch

The title of are article already gave this away, but in my opinion and the consensus of the online world, the best influencers to work with are micro-influencers. Mega-influencers had their time on top but their crown has been taken and their kingdom has finally been overthrown. Why you might ask? The reasons come down to cost, engagement, reach, relate-ability and targeting.

As I mentioned before, Micro-Influencers will often create and post content without needing to get paid. They have a large enough following that will make it worth the effort to work with them. Their following base is often highly engaged and trust their suggestions, which increases product conversions for your brand. They are relatable to their audience because they live normal lives like the people who follow them. Because of their new found popularity they develop and share quality content that is enjoyable to view/read. Last but not least their posts are usually directed at specific niches so you can create highly targeted influencer campaigns and reach your ideal customer base.

Influencers have grown to include more than just celebrities 

Photograph of Influencer via Pexels

Recently the Wharton school of business and the New York Times best selling author Jonah Berger (also business professor at Wharton) partnered with the Keller Fay Group (a leading market research company) to perform a research study on the most effective influencers in the industry. After interviewing 6000 individuals, their research concluded that micro-influencers took the cake.

They found that “82% of consumers are highly likely to follow the product recommendations of micro-influencers”. The study also showed that “Micro–influencers have up to 22.2 times more ‘buying conversations’ that include product recommendations each week than an average consumer. In conclusion their research deduced that Micro-Influencers are the best of the bunch and even more trusted than average consumers when suggesting products or services to purchase.

Micro-Influencers For Amazon Growth

Due to the many benefits listed above, our agency Stack Influence decided to focus on developing a community of micro-influencers in order to help online sellers with their marketing efforts. We’ve now accumulated a massive network of micro-influencers who love trying products in exchange for posting on social media.

Unlike Macro or Mega influencers, Micro-influencers are ideal for growing Amazon brands because they will promote on social media without breaking the banks with additional payment for creating or sharing content. Next Micro-Influencers provide quality curated content for sellers to use for marketing efforts and for their own social media promotion. They share their posts with a highly engaged audience with just enough reach to dramatically increase brand awareness. Finally they have the highest product conversion rates out of all the influencers, since their followers trust their suggestions, so they can bring in additional affiliate sales to increase your profits and scale your social legitamacy even more.

By William Gasner

CMO at Stack Influence

Micro-Influencer marketing is now a billion dollar industry and ‘the game for 2018’ if you’re in the eCommerce business. For 2019, I believe influencer marketing and specifically working with micro-influencers is only going to become more prevalent and valuable. Amazon sellers have started to realize running influencer campaigns is one of the best strategies to help their business succeed on the leading online marketplace. Amazon has now taken control of almost half of all online sales for 2018 and will probably increase their market share in 2019, so being on Amazon and working with influencers is the formula for online success. Don’t get left behind on the hottest marketing strategy to help you dominate the eCommerce world in the new year.