4 Ways Micro Influencers can Positively Impact Your Campaigns

We live in the age of the influencer. It’s a recognised career choice, a popular hobby and sometimes, a creator of household names. For any brand marketer, the dream would be to be mentioned by a famous influencer and go viral. Imagine what a shout out in a Kim Kardashian post or even closer to home, a Love Island or similar personality could do for your business. Traffic and sales would skyrocket and your brand visibility would be off the scale.

And yet. When you’re putting up the budget for your influencer campaign, it’s highly likely that your available funds don’t run into the hundreds of thousands of pounds needed for a single mention by one of social media’s reigning Kings or Queens.

But does it need to? Happily, the answer is no.

Micro-influencers are often a much more sensible choice for many brands and offer an array of benefits that you may not even have considered:

1. They are more affordable

Bigger isn’t always better, especially when we’re talking about the chunk of cash that will disappear from your marketing budget to pay for a big influencer campaign.

With pricing often heavily tied to follow numbers and average engagement rates, the cost of working with a micro influencer tends to be much more affordable, especially for smaller brands and those coming to the end of their budget but still needing to create a buzz.

The more affordable price tag also means that it’s easier to generate a favourable return on investment. What’s more, that smaller fee means that you probably won’t have to sell everything you own to afford just one post and can instead invest in a series of posts for a steady stream of posts from your preferred influencer or influencers.

Because you aren’t spending so much money on the cost of the post, that leaves budget free to be super creative or, to develop a presence across other channels to reinforce your micro promotions.

2. They bring authenticity

Authenticity matters to modern consumers. Perhaps more so that you might think. Sure, none of us want to feel like we’re being hoodwinked but, you may be surprised to hear that 90% of today’s consumers say that authenticity matters when it comes to choosing which brands to support. That percentage has crept up over the last few years too, showing how it’s now becoming a key deal breaker for shoppers.

Adding yet another nuance to the matter of authenticity is that you might not be doing this as well as you think you are. While over 90% of marketers reckon, they’ve got it sussed, most consumers feel that less than half of brands are genuinely authentic.

Authenticity can solidify a connection with a consumer, and you help you build a closer relationship, but if it’s lacking so too is brand trust and consumer loyalty.

Smaller influencers tend to be perceived as more authentic because they’re likely to post fewer sponsored and promoted post. They’re also closely in tune with their audience, because it’s smaller, more manageable, and often occupies a clear niche, so the influencer can carefully select brands and products that really align with their own beliefs. This isn’t always the case with larger influencers.

One recent example of this can be found in the Superdry and Brooklyn Beckham partnership. The soccer offspring signed a £1 million deal with Superdry but was let go eight months into a 12-month contract.

While Superdry’s official party line was that it often reviews creators it partners with, social media users had pointed out a few faux pas, with one post seeing Brooklyn promoting Superdry’s vegan leather trainers – despite him now trying to forge a career as a chef and cooking meat on TV and across his social channels.

3. They help you get closer to your audience

Micro influencers won’t have hundreds of thousands of followers (they will tend to have anything from 3000 to 10,000 followers to be classed as a micro influencer) which means their audience numbers are more manageable. As the pool is smaller, micro influencers tend to be much closer to their audience, can develop stronger relationships and connections with them and keenly understand their likes and dislikes.

Smaller influencers will tend to be more niche. Finding a micro influencer in your niche is the perfect way to precisely target your content and get in front of your preferred demographic.

The more precisely targeted messaging can also pay dividends in other ways too, over and above bringing you directly into contact with very specific audience segments. The care and time needed to cultivate a small but loyal following also means that micro influencers tend to be regarded as experts and trusted voice within their tribes. This is a substantial advantage for brands when it comes to endorsing products and services, as the community is more likely to take the desired action, including making a purchase or starting a subscription.

Getting closer to your audience can also be useful when you need consumer input, opinion or want to beta test new products and services before fully launching to market.

4. They deliver higher engagement rates

As mentioned, those with smaller audiences tend to really understand what makes that audience tick, meaning they can serve up exactly the kind of content, information, and product recommendations that their small, very focused community is looking for. They can use their deep awareness of their audience’s preferences to guide you in creating content that really makes an impact, helping you to drive a better ROI from your expenditure and better results when reporting back on campaign outcomes.

The net result of this understanding is that influencers will smaller followings often have much higher levels of engagement than big influencers with their own celebrity status.

Higher engagement levels can mean an uplift in brand awareness or social mentions, more traffic to your site, a boost for your own social media handles, more web traffic, more enquiries or more visits to your physical location.