The growth of influencer marketing over the last few years has significantly impacted the marketing industry. This tactic allows businesses to connect with their current and prospective customers on a more personal level, and for small-to-medium-sized business owners, this connection couldn’t be more important. Competition is often steep for SMB owners, and personally connecting with consumers is often what sets the winners apart. In this article, we’ll discuss how SMB owners can leverage influencers, and more specifically micro-influencers, to gain a competitive edge.
What are Micro-Influencers?
According to Forbes, a content creator is identified as a micro-influencer when they have a follower count between 1,000 and 100,000. The followers of these creators, while less than those of macro-influencers, tend to be more engaged and more loyal than those of a creator with a larger following. This is a direct result of micro-influencers’ ability to relate to their audience through the sense of community established by sharing a common location. These influencers offer their followers a much more personalized experience, consistently posting about places in their city and discussing local current events. While macro-influencers have a broader reach, micro-influencers develop a more authentic relationship with their followers and garner their trust. When a micro-influencer recommends a product or service, their followers listen. Therefore, it is no surprise that the use of micro-influencers for executing marketing campaigns has grown exponentially in the past year.
Micro-influencers tend to be most effective on social media sites such as TikTok and Instagram where communication with their followers is frequent - usually multiple times a day. TikTok tends to be more popular with Gen Z and Millenial consumers, as well as the growing Generation Alpha, with almost 50% of TikTok users being under 30 years old. Influencers on Instagram can also have a target audience within this age range, especially content creators who do restaurant and experiential reviews, but the best-reached audience through Instagram are older Millennials and Gen Xers.
Benefits of Micro-Influencers
While the impact of macro-influencers is widely recognized, the power of the local micro-influencer is often overlooked. For one, micro-influencers are significantly more cost-effective than macro-influencers. They tend to be more willing to negotiate and find an option that benefits both parties, making micro-influencers more accessible for many businesses. While a campaign with a macro-influencer may cost tens of thousands of dollars, some micro-influencers have been known to feature local businesses for a small gift card. As previously mentioned, micro-influencers are also better for reaching an audience in a specific area, making them ideal for businesses with one or a few locations in the same locale.
Fostering an organic connection between the content creator and the product they’re promoting is extremely important. If the product or service has no relation to the creator or their audience, the promotion of the brand may seem more transactional than collaborative. This is where micro-influencers thrive. Their messaging is not only relatable, but it’s also relevant since they consistently produce content for their niche audience. Micro-influencers feel less like social media promoters and more like trusted friends. This deep sense of trust leads to higher levels of credibility, and in turn, higher conversion rates with micro-influencer campaigns than with advertising or organic content from business assets.
In Pittsburgh, for example, there are a handful of notable local food, fashion, and lifestyle influencers. “Yinzers”, or Pittsburgh natives, are more likely to take the recommendation of these influencers over that of a macro-influencer that might be passing through. When looking for a new restaurant or activity, the people of Pittsburgh - natives, students, and new residents alike - are quick to turn to these local micro-influencers.
How to Implement a Micro-Influencer Strategy
Interested in implementing a micro-influencer campaign? Follow these steps to get started:
1. Define your target audience: Before choosing a micro-influencer, you must identify your ideal customer. What are their age, gender, interests, and concerns? Where do they get their information? Where do they hang out online? Are you targeting middle-aged women who spend time in Facebook groups? Or teenage boys who spend their afternoons perusing TikTok?
2. Identify the goals for your campaign: Are you trying to sell a particular item, increase foot traffic to your store, or drive traffic to your website? Determining your goals will help you guide the influencer when they are creating content.
3. Identify prospective influencers: Finding the correct influencer for your campaign is crucial. Your choice of influencer should align with your target audience and your campaign goals. They should also have a connection to your product. As previously mentioned, one of the best things about working with micro-influencers is that their followers view them as reliable. The campaign will be less effective if the product doesn’t align with the influencer’s typical content and messaging. Their followers may feel that the post was simply for financial gain rather than for the benefit of their followers. In fact, many influencers won’t even accept a campaign unless it is aligned with their audience.
The right number of influencers to target will vary depending on the product or service. Usually targeting anywhere from 3-7 micro-influencers is sufficient. As long as your ideal customer is aligned with the audience of the influencer, it can’t hurt to reach out and see if they might want to promote or collaborate with your business
4. Contact the influencers: Contacting an influencer to gauge their interest in working on your campaign may seem tricky, but it is quite simple. Another benefit of micro-influencers is that they are far easier to reach and engage with about a possible project. Many influencers can be contacted through the direct message feature on the social media apps they post on, and if not, most provide their contact information in the bio section of their page. Most micro-influencers handle their own social media and partnerships, so you’re working directly with them to gauge interest.
5. Agree on terms: Payment will vary between creators. Many will review a product for as little as a gift card or a complimentary product. Others may charge a fee for each post or set of posts.
It is important to remember that many influencers, especially micro-influencers, will give their honest opinion of the product, service, or experience. Their following is based on trust, and this is important for them to maintain. Therefore, it’s a good idea to require previews and approve content before posting.
Finally, you’ll want to agree on exactly what the influencer will deliver. It could be one or more posts on Instagram, a YouTube video, etc.
6. Agree on content and execute the campaign: Once you agree on terms and provide guidance on exactly what you hope to achieve with the campaign, the ball is in the court of the influencer. Review their content once it is ready and give them the go-ahead to post! Remember to repost the content on your business pages.
Micro-Influencers and POWER Marketing
Here at POWER Marketing, we have experience assisting our clients with collaborating with micro-influencers. With our client Smash Waffles, our goals were to increase community engagement and word-of-mouth to increase foot traffic for the store. We first targeted food bloggers in the area with between 1,000 and 5,000 followers; specifically, creators who primarily focus on food surrounding the University of Pittsburgh’s campus, where Smashed Waffles is located. We also pursued students at the University of Pittsburgh with considerable followings, some of whom focused their content on food around campus and others who posted about Pitt student life generally. After working with two micro-influencers, we observed a 450% increase in Instagram profile visits, an influx of over 350 new followers, and a 16% increase in sales.
Conclusion
Looking forward, the increase in the number of both micro-influencers and macro-influencers is expected to continue. As the impact and cost-effectiveness of micro-influencer campaigns become more well-known, many predict that micro-influencers will eventually secure more brand deals than macro-influencers. As competition for the best micro-influencers continues to grow, so will their prices, making right now the perfect time to begin implementing this strategy.
Interested in implementing influencer marketing tactics for your business but don’t know where to start? Partner with POWER Marketing to let this vision become a reality! When utilized correctly, micro-influencers are a cost-effective way of promoting your small business for impactful brand messaging and increasing engagement with your local target audience.