Which influencer is right for you?

Reports say a single post on a Kardashian/Jenner page can go for up to $500,000. And for good reason, a post from a Kardashian can result in a company’s product completely selling out in minutes and rocket launching brands like ‘HiSmile’ straight to the top of their field. Not every company can pay to get on the queen of Instagram, Kylie Jenner’s page, but online influencers are a great tool to kickstart your brand’s online presence or to grow your audience. Instagram is where most influencer’s capital is, but Youtube, Twitter and Facebook are great sources for different audiences as well. Especially Youtube having the power to have longer form video placements, such as featuring your whole range of skincare in an influencers morning routine!

First, what is a micro influencer?

If I have 300 followers on my personal Instagram does that make me a micro-influencer? Isn’t everyone a micro-influencer then? Well…no, not exactly. Micro-influencers have varying numbers used to define them, but it’s usually an influencer with around 1,000-50,000 followers. One you move upwards of the 50,000 follower mark, influencers become macro. They’re semi-celebrities, up to the big names in pop culture. Micro-influencers are more ‘real,’ raw and relatable than larger creators. They’re usually focused on one niche on their platform, like photography, fashion, minimalism, veganism, etc.

Compared to macro-influencers who have different audiences within their follower groups from different events (eg. the followers that came from their first scandal, some from when they had a yoga phase, some from a reality tv show they appeared on, some from when they dated another celebrity they liked, etc). So the entire audience of a macro-influencer is not engaged in all of their content. A post about an athletic clothing brand could only interest an eighth of a macro-influencers audience, whereas a post on a micro-influencers page who mainly posts about yoga is more likely to have the interest of their whole audience.

Which is better for your brand?

Depending on your budget, the time you want to put in and what kind of company you have, you could be recommended either micro or macro influencers. A website to easily see the stats straight away is ‘Influencer Marketing Hub’, you can quickly see their engagement rate, estimated price and estimated cost per engagement.

Cost:

Macro-influencers can go anywhere from $2,000 to $50,000 per post on the lower end. If you want a big name celeb that could be up to $500,000! Whereas micro-influencers can start from about $50 up or even post about your brand if you send them the items to review for free (but you won’t control whether that review is positive or not).

How easy it is to contact them:

Websites like Tribe can get you easily connected to hundreds of micro-influencers and find the right fit for your brand. Influencers can either post sponsored posts on their social media platform about your brand or create content that your company can own and use in your own advertising. Add in your own specs of what you want from the campaign and let the influencers come to you with their pitches! Bigger influencers either have to be inboxed or emailed and potentially get lost in the hundreds of other messages they receive. Or you might have to go through a talent/PR agency that manages their brand deals. You really have to make your brand stand out, offer them a solid post idea and tell them what to say straight away. You are more likely to get knocked back as well if they don’t think your brand fits with their aesthetic or they’re too busy. You’ll also have to plan pretty far in advance if you want to the post to happen around a certain time or be the launch of a new product, as it can take weeks to months for them to get back to you and send an approved post.

Reach:

As said before, a larger influencer may not have a fully engaged audience in everything they post about. Fake followers and bots are rampant and can further inflate influencers followings. Still, if an influencer has 2 million followers and only 5% are interested in yoga, that’s 100,000 potential buyers. A study by Experticity found that 82% of consumers have a higher likelihood of acting upon recommendations from micro-influencers. And they have a whopping 60% higher engagement rate than macro-influencers! Followers are more likely to have a genuine interest in the influencer’s area of expertise and if that’s in your brands’ realm then you have an audience waiting for you.

Transparency:

Trust and transparency need to be a HUGE focus for brands in 2019. It’s more important than ever to say when a post is a #ad and not over saturate a page with sponsored posts. Most micro-influencers don’t rely on marketing as the sole source of their income, meaning they’re less likely to have a social media feed packed with paid posts. In fact, the majority of micro-influencers surveyed only completed 5 sponsored campaigns per year. Larger macro-influencers start to lose the trust with their audience who doubt that they actually do use and love all of these products they’re promoting.

In conclusion,

if you have the budget and can find a macro-influencer that posts around themes related to your brand, it could be a great test to see how they really perform for you! Otherwise, for most brands, we would suggest micro-influencers and to try as many as you can at first to get to know who you like and who brings the sales. This can be hard to track on some platforms, but tools like discount codes or referral links can help you track how many genuine leads are coming from your influencers.