Why Micro-Influencer Marketing Is Key to Promote Your Brand
Micro-influencer marketing is gaining popularity and quickly becoming a valuable strategy to promote a brand, particularly for businesses who need to employ an innovative and cost-effective way to find the right influencers. The micro-influencer marketing definition is leveraging individuals who carry influence over a large number of people, in a specific industry or space. The last part is one of the main differences between micro-influencer marketing and macro-influencer marketing. Micro-influencers have a smaller sphere of influence, usually 1,000 to 100,000 followers, and already have built their reputation and list of relationships.
There’s also a significant budget difference between macro-influencers and micro-influencers. ClickZ reported that it’s estimated that 84 percent of micro-influencers charge less than $250 for each branded Instagram post. In addition to cost, ClickZ also stated that according to L2’s report, there’s an inverse correlation between the number of followers and the engagement rate in Instagram influencers. A large follower size does not guarantee successful engagement anymore.
In fact, Public Relations Today reported recent research from SocialPubli.com about how micro-influencer campaigns perform in comparison to their counterparts, across social media networks. Results included that micro-influencers generate seven times more engagement than those with larger followings, which emphasize the strong downward correlation between follower sizes and engagement rates, regardless of platform, geographical location or niche. “Engagement” is another word for involvement, which is the foundation for a compelling commitment from existing clients and prospects. Micro-influencers have more meaningful, high-quality relationships that they can monetize.
Now that I shared why micro-influencer marketing is key to promote your brand, here are some ways you can put it into practice:
- Tell a story: Incorporate your brand and a micro-influencer in an on-going digital storyline, which will make it a more memorable experience for your target audience. In one of my blogs, I shared reasons to tell your story online. Digital story telling is effective in providing important information about your products or services, while captivating your target audiences in an interactive and emotionally charged way.
- Use hashtags: Once you have a micro-influencer onboard, make sure your brand ambassador can be found interacting with your brand. Seeing is believing. The right hashtags will connect your campaign with the intended audience. It’s a simple way to give your posts some much needed visibility, as well as find new and relevant audiences.
- Employ sponsored posts: Paid posts are an affordable and effective avenue to quickly boost traffic. It usually includes a branded story, in addition to one or more contextual links to promote a business, product or service. Time is one of the most precious assets we have. Why wait one month to reach 1,000 prospective clients, when you can reach them in the next hour with a sponsored post?
How to Find Top Micro-Influencers
Businesses can find top micro-influencers in their industry through specific paid tools including scrunch.com and buzzsumo.com. Scrunch.com is a technology platform that enables the user to search more than 20 million influencers on social media to find its ideal target audience. Buzzsumo gives the user insight into what content is working and the influencers who are amplifying it. You also can perform a Google search, by using keywords that pertain to your brand. Finally, scour social media channels and online forums. Begin by identifying the five keywords that people search for, to find your product or service. Then, locate the people associated with those words. That’s where you’ll discover your micro-influencers. Now that we live in a digital world, your whole world has been reduced to five words. Remember, people typically don’t type more than five words, when they perform an online search.
Micro-Influencer Marketing Success
CMA developed a series of evening, thought-leadership events for one of its clients, which were a group of physical therapists, to attract micro-influencers. The client was launching concussion testing for youth athletes. The evening events stressed the medical importance of testing and provided details about the procedures. At an event, there were 16 attendees. One of those attendees was in charge of all youth sports at a local township, which included 5,000 athletes. As a result of the relationship CMA helped its client build that night, it was named one of three authorized suppliers of concussion testing for the entire athletic community in that township. While only 16 people attended that event, the client reached 5,016, through an email marketing campaign, because of the influence that individual had over the 5,000 youth athletes, as well as the parents of those athletes. This campaign created new revenue opportunities in the short term and also helped the company build relationships with the other authorized suppliers—two large, prominent health care organizations—which could purchase our client’s company at a premium in the long term.
If you’re looking for a novel and efficient way to promote your brand, micro-influencer marketing could be the key. Here’s why. In life, there are two kinds of work. Hard work, which after a certain age begins to hurt your lower back, and smart work. The same goes for micro-influencer marketing. You can market to 10,000 people or you can market to one, who has sway over 10,000 people. Which route will you choose?
Do you think micro-influencer marketing could be the right solution for your business? Contact us today, to get the conversation started.