Unleashing the Power of Micro-Influencers: A Game Changer for Your Brand

The power of the influencer in marketing cannot be understated. But these days, shooting for people with millions of followers isn’t necessarily the best approach.

Micro-influencers are becoming increasingly popular in brands’ digital marketing efforts. When done right, these key campaigns can translate into lots of benefits.

Check out this short blog post to learn everything you need to know about the world of micro-influencer marketing, the perks of working with them, and some key steps on how to tap into their potential.

Demystifying Micro-Influencers

First, let’s define what a micro-influencer is since the term can be slightly confusing. A micro-influencer is anyone with an online following between 10,000 and 100,000 followers on a social media platform.

Anything over that range would be considered a macro-influencer, and these are usually celebrities (such as singers or actors) or huge influencers who’ve achieved celebrity-like status, such as Jaclyn Hill, who has over eight million followers.

Working with micro-influencers is increasing in popularity. Though they come with smaller followings, their audiences are usually in a better position to take the actions that brands want.

The Impact of Micro-Influencer Marketing

There are several compelling reasons why micro-influencer marketing is gaining traction:

1. Cheaper: Micro-influencers charge a lot less than macro ones. You can expect to pay anywhere between $100 and $500 for a social media post if you’re working with a smaller micro-influencer. The price goes up if the content creator has a bigger following, but it doesn’t even come close to the thousands a macro influencer will ask for.

2. Engagement and results: Micro-influencers generate 60% more engagement than macro influencers and a 20% higher conversion rate. Though macro influencers may get you more visibility simply because of their audience size, the results per se are generally better in micro-influencer marketing.
3. Niche audiences: Micro-influencers usually don’t gather the attention of the general public. Instead, they specialize in a niche, and over time, they can even be seen as experts. Their audience, therefore, is much more well-defined, allowing brands to carefully choose who they work with based on the type of audience the micro-influencer reaches.
4. Authenticity: Most people don’t believe Kylie Jenner actually uses all the products she promotes. However, smaller influencers have a stronger authenticity to them, which makes their product recommendations a lot more powerful. This also explains why they get higher conversion rates.

Finding the Right Micro-Influencers

Here are three ways you can find the right micro-influencer to work with:

1. Determine Your Goals

First, consider what you want to get out of your micro-influencer marketing efforts, which may be to promote a specific new product or even boost your overall sales.

In any case, once you determine your goal, it can be a lot easier to go through the list of micro-influencers and see who can help you reach it.

2. See Who’s Already a Fan

Contrary to popular belief, not all influencers post exclusively about the products and services that pay for their content. Your company may already have a handful of micro-influencers that have recommended your products or services or may even follow you.

These are usually the best people to start your micro-influencer marketing strategy with. You can use a social listening tool to identify online content that mentions your brand in a positive way and find both micro and nano influencers to collaborate with.

Once you identify them, you can use social media platforms to find other similar microentrepreneurs. For example, Instagram will recommend several other profiles every time you follow someone, so use that list to build a bigger list of content creators.

3. Create a Brand Ambassador Program

Let micro-influencers come directly to you by setting up a brand ambassador program. People can sign up and begin to collaborate with your company based on a set of predetermined rules.

For instance, Sephora’s program (called Sephora Squad) is a yearlong paid partnership designed to help the company promote its beauty products but also help micro-influencers get more exposure and grow. That’s why the company specifically mentions that people with any size social following are free to apply.

Leveraging Mandala AI for Micro-Influencer Campaigns

Finding the right micro-influencer to fuel your marketing campaigns may be somewhat difficult at first, but Mandala AI’s suite of social listening and analytics tools can help you streamline the process.

Two highly beneficial features to use in your micro-influencer marketing campaign include:

1. Top Mentions: Discover what others are saying about your brand and identify the best micro-influencers who already love your products or services. The Top Mentions feature is a powerful social listening tool that can assist your brand in several ways, including determining brand sentiment.
2. Top Channels: Learn which media channels are the most beneficial to you and optimize your efforts and campaign spending on the web areas where your message gets across best.

Mandala AI’s tools can assist you in all stages of marketing campaign creation and implementation. Once you learn who your top micro-influencers are and launch a campaign, you can get timely analytics data to assess your efforts.

We encourage you to learn more about how Manada AI’s tools can support your micro-influencer marketing efforts here.

Conclusion

Brands are increasingly realizing that partnering up with people with the biggest audience size isn’t necessarily the only way to conduct influencer marketing.

In fact, thanks to higher average engagements and conversions, collaborating with micro-influencers can do much more for a brand’s bottom line. If you haven’t done micro-influencer marketing before, then it might be time to consider it, especially if you haven’t been able to connect with your audiences effectively until now.

What are your thoughts on micro-influencers? Sound off in the comments, and be sure to let us know if you’ve worked with them before!

Don’t forget to check out Mandala AI’s tools for micro-influencer marketing and see how they can help you refine your strategy.