Buying decisions are significantly affected by influencers: One in five people in Germany (21.6%) say that they have already bought a product that was promoted by an influencer. Therefore, it is only logical for brands to rely on influencers when it comes to efficiently generating visual Social Content for their own marketing measures. Everyone keeps talking about how important it is to find influencers best suited for individual campaigns and in the course of this, people preach how good and beneficial so-called micro influencer marketing is in this context.
But what are the benefits of micro influencers and which concrete improvements result out of it for brands? To answer these questions, this article lists the main advantages and provides you with tangible goals that you can easily achieve through good micro influencer marketing.
What is micro influencer marketing?
Advantages of micro influencer marketing
In the preparation of influencer relationship management, companies need to determine which goals are to be achieved through a campaign with visual content production by influencers. Depending on which goals a brand has, the appropriate influencers have to be selected. There are quite a few arguments in favor of using micro influencers in marketing:
High supply
The majority of German influencers belong to the micro segment; in 2020, the share was at 43%. This creates a large supply of potential cooperation partners for brands. The pool of micro influencers is large, which makes it easier to find suitable candidates for campaigns.
User engagement
The engagement rate of micro influencers is about 60% higher than that of macro influencers. The guiding principle is that the fewer followers an influencer has, the more engagement is achieved on the social platform with the content. The average engagement rate of micro influencers is 4%. In comparison, it is only 1.7% for influencers with more than 100,000 followers.
This means that the community of a micro influencer is more in touch with this person, so an exchange about the promoted products can take place, which strengthens the knowledge about your products and the trust in your brand.
Correlation follower & engagement rate
- < 1.000 follower (nano-influencer) → 8% engagement rate
- 1.000 – 10.000 follower (micro-influencer) → 4% engagement rate
- 10.000 – 100.000 follower (macro-influencer) → 2,4% engagement rate
- > 1 Mio. follower (mega-influencer) → 1,7% engagement rate
Small invest
Collaboration with micro influencers in the course of marketing is significantly cheaper than with most of their colleagues. On average, collaborations with them are 6.7 times cheaper than with macro influencers. Due to the lower costs and with efficient use of content, including influencer whitelisting, a higher influencer marketing ROI can be achieved more quickly.
Product seeding is often used in micro influencer marketing. The principle is simple: The brand sends the selected influencers a product free of charge, they can test it and then share their opinion with their followers in the form of posts, stories or the like. This payment method allows influencers to get an unbiased picture of the product. To learn more about influencer marketing costs and the different compensation methods, feel free to read our blog post on the topic.
Easier collaboration
Micro influencers usually have fewer collaborations than influencers with more followers and a higher reach. For this reason, the negotiation effort with micro influencers in marketing is usually lower, as they have to reconcile fewer product placements and arrangements. They have more time to engage with the product. They dive deeper into the subject matter and are correspondingly better suited to highlight detailed advantages of products in a more differentiated way.
Trustworthy image
Often, micro influencers do not work full-time as content creators. The relevance of their content is their top priority, as they only share content that they see as adding value to their loyal community. They see it as their hobby and their duty to give their followers good and helpful recommendations.
For this reason, they have the image that they share honest experiences about brands and products. This creates authenticity, trust and credibility and can be seen as a kind of digital word-of-mouth, social proof.
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Precise addressing of the target group
By integrating micro influencers into marketing, you can select and target the type of people your brand reaches with promotional content more individually. In perspective, you select an influencer whose community forms an intersection with the target group of your own brand. This expands the circle of potential buyers of your product. Here are four arguments why micro influencers support reaching the optimal target group:
- Micro influencers have a small community. They form manageable but strong networks. In these networks, the influencer keeps in touch with his or her own audience and can thus disseminate information effectively. In addition, there is personal proximity between influencer and community, which creates trust in the opinion.
- Micro influencers build a community of interest around them. They are committed to certain topics and thus cover specific niches, addressing the members of these topic groups directly. With their help, it is possible to reach precisely those selected people who might really be interested in the products or services.
- Micro influencers are part of their target group. Through the intensive public discussion of their focus topic, they have an expert status. Through their own interest, they are communicators and audiences at the same time. They report on products that affect them and address personal issues that affect their lives. This further strengthens the close relationship with their community and enables them to influence the opinions of their followers.
- Micro Influencers want to fit into the public image. The small size of the community, the fact that micro influencers see their work as a hobby and love it, and the personal connection to their followers all contribute to the fact that micro influencers place a particularly high value on honesty and authenticity. They want to treat the trust of their community with dignity and not disappoint. Thus, they question the added value of products for themselves and their community more critically. If their résumé of a product is positive, the brand can assume that the micro influencer will give everything to present the benefits in the right social media light.
Furthermore, working with target group experts allows us to learn more about the target group. As a result, the potential buyers can be defined more and more precisely. As a result, the marketing strategy as well as the brand and its products can be continuously developed and optimized.
Brand fit
Micro influencers are ideal brand ambassadors. In the case of smaller influencers with few collaborations, it is easy to recognize which values and principles they stand for with their content. If the brand’s set of values matches the influencer’s, the brand fit is already given in the first instance. This is a good starting point for further communication between the brand and the micro influencer.
Micro influencers in marketing support the achievement of your goals
By adding micro influencers to their marketing mix, brands can achieve their goals more effectively and with much less effort. Here are a few specific aspects that are easier to achieve:
Brand awareness – micro influencers increase knowledge about the brand
By working with micro influencers, you increase your brand awareness and showcase your values and products. The knowledge about your brand spreads in small target group-specific networks and reaches the people it should reach. Because working with smaller influencers is fairly inexpensive, your brand can work with multiple content creators to increase brand awareness in different communities. The influencers’ smaller reach is made up for by their more pointed audience. The values an influencer represents assimilate to your brand and thus have an impact on your brand image.
Increase sales – micro influencers increase conversions
According to a study, micro influencers attract 22.2 times more customers on social media platforms than typical consumers who recommend a product. Trust and authenticity have a positive effect on the customer journey and are more likely to lead to a purchase. The pointed target group, the small community and the personal relationships that go with it literally pay off.
The trust placed in them by their community can spill over to well-placed products. The influencer trusts the brand and demonstrates this publicly (cf. social proof) – the followers trust the person they follow, ergo the trust that this person places in the brand is also transferred to the community. This can lead to users identifying more and more with the company and its values and consequently increases conversions.
New followers show social proof
If the micro influencer’s community likes the brand, its members may also follow the brand’s social media account. In this way, they receive constant insights about the brand and products and can subconsciously build up long-term trust and relationship with the brand. The brand and its image are consolidated in the minds of potential buyers, which increases the probability of a purchase. This creates a base for brand loyalty.
The followers who interact with your brand on your brand page show other users that they are interested in your brand. By interacting with your brand on social media through comments, likes and shares, they make social proof visible.
Example – @francialexa – vegan lifestyle
@francialexa is a micro influencer. She is mainly active on Instagram and YouTube. Her niche is all about a life as a vegan – how does she integrate the vegan lifestyle into her everyday life? She takes her almost 12k followers on a daily journey through this topic on her Instagram account and spreads awareness for positive factors of veganism – health, environment, ethics.
She is part of her target audience herself, as she is a vegan and buys vegan substitutes and generally animal-free products that make everyday life easier. The visual content springs from her everyday life. Because she deals a lot with the topic herself, she is an expert in this field. She places the product in the real life of the user and not in an agglomeration of umpteen other topics and cooperations.
Conclusion
Relying on micro influencer marketing is a solid solution to increase brand awareness and sales through authentic and approachable brand ambassadors. Through micro influencers, a positive sentiment of your brand is established and you can open an honest discourse with your target group. In addition, you generate social proof, which in turn contributes to the positive perception of your brand and your products. Integrating influencer content into your marketing mix is a great way to meet the desire of buyers for visual Social Content. To learn how to embed Instagram content on your website, check out our related blog post.
Sources
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1092636/influencer-campaign-spending-tier-world/
https://www.expertvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/MAR-1543-Influence-Quantified-Refresh-ar_v4.pdf
https://influencermarketinghub.com/micro-influencers-vs-celebrities/
https://markerly.com/blog/instagram-marketing-does-influencer-size-matter/
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/327554
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1119620/umfrage/influencer-nach-anzahl-der-instagram-follower/
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/993035/umfrage/einfluss-von-influencern-auf-kaufentscheidung-in-deutschland/
https://onlinemarketing.de/lexikon/definition-micro-influencer
