How many times have you heard the word “influencer” in the past five years? Even if you are only scrolling your phone for a moment, it’s very rare to see any digital campaign on social media without the support of an ad from influencers across the globe, no matter the industry.
While influencer marketing can often call for eye rolls, we want to in a nutshell walk you through this growing space, giving you hints on when and why your business can tap into this trend based on your social media needs.
Macro-influencers are described as having a large number of supporters or followers (at least they have over 100,000). Celebrities previously dominated this space because of their ability to reach large audiences. If your business partner with a macro influencer with a huge followers’ base, boom, your brand will instantly be positioned in front of millions of people. They deliver awesome visibility.
Meanwhile, social media has now been given rise to new online individuals with similar reach. There has been an ever-increasing interest in working with micro-influencers, commonly described by their smaller number of supporter or followers (usually numbers from 1000 to around 100,000 followers on social media), micro-influencers were also previously described as having higher follower’s engagement rates just as macro-influencers
Let’s think of micro-influencers as your alternative word-of-mouth marketing. They are not too big; therefore, their contents resonate well with their followers with whom they have likely built closer relationships. Micro-influencers are also very likely to advertise products or events they actually use and like. They want to keep it very real with their followers and grow their page by being genuine and authentic.
Let’s examine now what each of them can do to help your business grow:
If Your Goal Is To Gain Reach, Macro-Influencers Are For You
An influencer that has more than one million followers on social media has the potential to increase engagement by 1000% for brands more than an account that has just about 250,000 followers. More reason why it is not surprising that campaigns sponsored by macro-influencers mostly have a better reach than those sponsored by micro-influencers, and also receive much more engagement when it comes to KPIs such as likes and comments.
A Nigeria actress, Beverly Naya, partnered with Nivea to create several campaign contents across social media, there is usually a high level of engagement on her Instagram page that it will ever be on Nivea’s business Instagram handle. This has prompted several people to subscribe to Nivea products even on a large scale.
If Your Goal Is A Matter Of Authenticity, Then Go With Micro-Influencers
Micro-influencers’ followers are characterized by the genuine love and trust their followers have for them; this is because they are usually real with whatever content they put out. Brands that collaborate with micro-influencers can see conversion rates of more than 20%. This is not so surprising, since every consumer makes most of their purchase decisions are based on word-of-mouth from relatives and friends (86%), distant friends (39%), and (macro and micro) influencers (31%).
So, Which One Would You Prefer To Go With?
A very vital aspect of a successful influencer campaign is authenticity. An influencer will always showcase a personal message, of course, on the brand’s terms, they don’t act as a spokesperson for the brand.
It is very important that brands also go for professionalism and efficiency. Often times, micro-influencers are praised for the higher engagement rates they tend to command, it is most times not entirely true.
There is no one-way approach to influencer marketing, campaign objectives will always determine the most suitable type of influencer to adopt. When you are researching the quality of your selected influencers, it is also pertinent you look beyond the number of followers that they have and consider working with people who can drive their followers to engage with their content.
We hope we have been able to enlighten you on the importance of working with different levels of influencers and how you can use them strategically to build your one, social media presence and two, conversions for your business.
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