What is the difference between a celebrity in a TV commercial telling you about a great product vs. your best friend?
It is the level of trust, which makes influencer marketing different from any other type of advertising.
Today, more than ever, it became crucial for brands to build trust with potential clients.
But how do you build confidence in your brand using influencer marketing?
In this article, I will answer your questions about influencer marketing and how to choose the right influencer for your brand.
TL;DR
Influencer Marketing Background:
- Influencer marketing is effective due to trust between influencers and their followers.
- Brands need transparency and trust in influencer marketing strategies.
- Influencers provide authentic conversations and can reach niche audiences.
- Macro-Influencers:
- Defined as influencers with >100K followers, often celebrities or public figures.
- Provide vast audience reach, but often at a higher cost and with lower engagement rates.
- Pros:
- Immense visibility with broad and diverse audiences.
- Brands often have more control over content.
- Time saved in influencer selection and campaign management.
- High-quality, polished content.
- Cons:
- High price with potential for lower ROI.
- Lower engagement rates and potential authenticity issues.
- Vulnerability to hackers and spambots.
- Ideal For: Brands looking for wide reach and brand awareness.
- Micro-Influencers:
- Defined as influencers with 1, 000 – 50K followers, specialized in niche areas.
- Followers see them as relatable, often leading to higher engagement and trust.
- Pros:
- Affordable and potentially willing to collaborate for free or product exchange.
- Access to unique niche markets.
- Higher trustworthiness and relatability.
- Affordable content creation.
- Cons:
- Smaller reach requires collaboration with multiple influencers.
- More influencer management is required.
- Potentially less experience in brand collaborations.
- Ideal For: Brands prioritizing engagement, trust, or working with a smaller budget.
- Bottom Line: Brands should choose between micro- and macro-influencers based on their campaign goals, budget, and the specific audience they aim to target.
Why Invest in Influencer Marketing?
Influencer content outperforms brand-created content by far because they built trust with their followers in a specific niche.
They help brands build human to human connection, equally beneficial for B2B and B2C marketing.
To succeed, every brand needs to learn how to maintain transparency and trust when building an influencer marketing strategy.
Not only the trust between the brand and consumer but also between the influencer and the brand.
Influencers have genuine conversations with their audiences and offer brands an opportunity to tap into these conversations and to reach audiences that otherwise were unattainable.
For instance, when aiming to engage audiences in a different country, collaborating with influencers native to that region can facilitate a stronger connection with your target demographic.
Hiring internationally for a global influencer relations expert can be a smart choice, too.
Besides creating brand awareness and getting people to engage with your brand, influencers are excellent content creators.
Many marketing productions were postponed or canceled in these turbulent times, so the traditional way of doing things is over.
Influencers can create content with minimal resources better than anyone. So now, it is the right time to invest in influencer marketing.
Whether you’re a healthcare marketing agency aiming to launch influencer campaign, or an eCommerce business looking to increase sales, you have to choose the influencers wisely.
Before the rise of the micro-influencers, brands spent substantial marketing budgets for just one macro influencer and got questionable results.
Today, micro-influencers enable marketers to stretch their influencer marketing budgets further and achieve more by paying less.
Macro-influencers still have advantages for the brands that can allocate significant funds.
They have a wide audience range and can help reach more potential customers at once.
So, let’s look at the different types of influencers you can work with.
The 4 Types of Social Media Influencers
When planning influencer campaigns, it's crucial to understand the different types of influencers and how they operate on various social media platforms.
Each category of influencers offers unique advantages based on their audience size, content quality, and engagement levels.
Here, we break down the four main types of influencers:
1. Mega-Influencers
Mega-influencers are at the top of the influencer hierarchy.
This influencer type boasts millions of followers across social platforms.
These influencers are typically celebrities or well-known personalities who have a larger audience and significant reach.
The content quality produced by mega-influencers is often polished and professionally managed.
Due to their vast follower count and audience demographics that span globally, they are ideal for larger influencer campaigns aiming for widespread brand visibility.
A good example is the actor Jeremy Renner partnering with Brooks Running.
Although the actor shares his traumatic experience, the ad is still very much polished.
However, his community of followers is impressed and really responsive:
2. Macro-Influencers
Macro-influencers have a substantial following, generally ranging from 500k followers to one million.
This type of influencer includes successful bloggers, YouTubers, or social media personalities who have built their audience over time.
They offer a good balance of reach and engagement, making them suitable for influencer campaigns targeting a broader yet more engaged audience compared to mega-influencers.
Macro-influencers can effectively amplify a brand's message across various social media platforms.
3. Mid-Tier Influencers
Mid-tier influencers typically have between 100,000 and 500,000 followers.
This category of influencers is known for their strong niche presence and loyal audience.
They combine a decent reach with higher engagement rates, offering brands an effective way to connect with a well-defined audience.
Mid-tier influencers are seen as more relatable and trustworthy, making them a valuable asset for influencer campaigns that require authenticity and targeted outreach.
4. Micro-Influencers
Micro-influencers have a follower count ranging from 10,000 to 100,000.
Despite having a smaller audience size, their followers are highly engaged and loyal. Micro-influencers focus on specific niches, making them perfect for brands looking to target particular audience demographics.
Their content quality is typically high, and they have a genuine connection with their followers, which translates to more personalized and impactful influencer campaigns.
5. Nano-Influencers
Nano-influencers are the smallest type of influencer, with fewer than 10,000 followers.
While their audience size is the smallest, they have the highest engagement rates among all influencer types.
Nano-influencers are everyday individuals who are passionate about specific topics or communities.
They are highly trusted by their followers, with whom they have stronger relationships.
These high levels of engagement make them ideal for grassroots marketing efforts and hyper-targeted influencer campaigns on social media platforms.
Who Are The Macro-Influencers?
Some marketers categorize influencers into nano, micro, mid-tier, macro, and mega. For simplicity’s sake, in this article, I call influencers with less than 50K followers “micro” and those with more than 100K “macro.”
In many cases, macro-influencers are celebrities, athletes, thought leaders, or TV personalities working with top influencer agencies in London or New York.
They quickly build following on social media by leveraging this notoriety.
Macro-influencers have an exponential follower growth.
For example, Will Smith had 2m Instagram followers in December 2007. In August 2020 he has over 47m followers:
Macro-influencers with millions of followers can help brands to reach a higher number of people at once than micro-influencers.
However, they have lower engagement rates. Their audience feels less connected to celebrities because they don’t perceive them as “people like me.”
Pros of Working with Macro-Influencers
- Whether you run an online clothes shop or a B2B2C eCommerce platform like Shopify or Wix, which have headless commerce capabilities, your product will get immense visibility and an opportunity to reach millions of people. Additionally, headless eCommerce platforms offer a streamlined and efficient way to manage your online store, enhancing your product’s reach and maximizing visibility across a vast audience. Their audiences are broad and diverse, which allows brands to target a wide variety of customers. Macro-influencers can be right for you if your goal is to generate awareness rather than engagement.
- Because of the large budgets required for macro-influencer marketing campaigns, they are more likely to let brands retain more control over their ad creatives.
- With macro-influencers, brands can save the time required to invest in influencer selection and campaign management.
- Macro-influencers create well-composed and polished content that requires little or no edits. They usually have professional photographers and stylists working for them. So you can be confident in the quality of their images and videos.
Cons of Working with Macro-Influencers
- One of the most significant disadvantages of macro-influencers is a high price tag. However, their CPM can be lower than micro-influencers, thanks to a high follower count.
- Macro-influencers have lower engagement rates than micro-influencers, and their audiences have expanded beyond particular interest or niche. So your product would interest only a small percentage of their audience. As a result, you may see little or no engagement with your brand.
- Macro-influencers usually work with many brands. So it can be challenging for your product to appear authentic to your target audience.
- Hackers and spambots targetmacro-influencers accounts more often compared to micro-influencers.
When to Work With Macro-Influencers?
Suppose you are after reaching a large pool of audiences to create brand awareness and drive exposure for your product.
In that case, macro-influencers are the right choice for you.
For example, to generate the same level of reach of a macro-influencer with 1 million followers, you have to engage at least 10 micro-influencers (with 10, 000 to 50, 000 subscribers).
Go for macro-influencers if you have a big marketing budget to spend and can afford increased content creation costs and have time to wait until the celebrity influencer has a slot for your campaign.
Who Are The Micro-Influencers?
Micro-influencers are creators with 1, 000 to 50K followers.
They are experts and thought leaders in their focused niche, such as fashion, travel, food, fitness, technology, and much more.
Compared to the average consumer, micro-influencers have 22.2 times more weekly conversations related to product recommendations.
So, if you’re starting a ghost kitchen, opening a bakery shop, or have any other niche business ideas, working with micro-influencers is the best way to success.
Their followers perceive them as “People like me” and find them credible.
Many people know that celebrity influencers are being paid big dollars to promote your brand, so they trust micro-influencers’ opinions more. It’s why we built our company as a micro influencer agency.
In fact, we have seen that for particular clients, micro-influencers generated 80% higher engagement than those with more than 50K followers.
For these clients, the engagement rate was the most critical metric of campaign effectiveness as it translated into sales.
We noticed that the engagement decreases as the number of followers increases.
So it becomes challenging to have hands-on interactions and reach target audiences on a personal level.
Micro-influencers are more accessible both to brands and followers.
They regularly interact with their audiences and quickly respond to questions and comments.
It makes micro-influencers more relatable than those with hundreds of thousands of followers.
Pros of Working with Micro-Influencers:
- Micro-influencers are more affordable than the celebrity ones. Some might even work in exchange for a product or promote your brand for free if it stands for a good cause. In fact, money alone rarely motivates the right micro-influencers. If they don’t believe in your brand or product, they will not champion in even if they are being paid. For example, this micro-influencer works only with beauty brands that are 100% cruelty-free:
The best results from influencer marketing often come when a micro-influencer believes in your product and is happy to receive it for free in exchange for promotion.
- With micro-influencers, you can tap into unique niche markets. Consider the audience you are targeting and find influencers with followers surrounding them that align closely with your audience’s interests.
- Micro-influencers are more trustworthy and relatable than macro-influencers. Their followers base is tight-knit, so they create authentic and personalized content that sparks genuine conversations with their fans. To add to that, most people know that celebrity influencers aren’t really using the product they are promoting.
- Brands can use micro-influencers as affordable content creators. With an ever-increasing demand for quality content, they are a perfect cost-effective strategy to increase your content library without spending a fortune on photo or video shoots.
Cons of Working with Micro-Influencers:
- Smaller audiences of micro-influencers mean less exposure for brands. So you might need several micro-influencers to expand your reach and impact a large number of people.
- More influencers mean more work. If you choose to partner up with 10 or more micro-influencers, prepare to invest time in influencer selection and content management. An influencer marketing agency in Indonesia or any other country can help you speed up this process.
- Micro-influencers are less experienced. Some of them have little or no experience collaborating with a brand, so communication with them can be challenging at first.
When to Work With Micro-Influencers?
If you are after engagement and building trust in your brand, micro-influencers who have close relationships with their followers are the right choice.
By partnering with them, you have a bigger chance of reaching people who will take action and buy from you.
This case study shows that macro-influencer (the author calls them “mega-influencers”) got more likes than the micro-influencer.
However, the campaign resulted only in5 salesfor the macro-influencer and generated above 100 for the micro. We’ve built our influencer agency around this exact principle.
Another reason to choose micro-influencers is if you are on a tight budget.
84% of micro-influencers charge less than $250 for a sponsored post on Instagram, and 97% charge less than $100 for a branded Facebook post.
With macro-influencers, the price per post starts at $1000 and can reach up to $1 million.
Now that you understand the difference between micro- and macro-influencers, you can decide who to work with based on your campaign goals and budget.
The next step is to find influencers whose audiences and niche are the right fit for your brand.
Micro-Influencers vs. Macro-Influencers: Which Is Right for Your Brand?
Choosing between micro-influencers and macro-influencers can significantly impact your brand's success.
Each type of influencer offers unique benefits depending on your business goals. Here's a breakdown of key factors to consider:
1. Engagement Rates
Micro-influencers are known for their higher engagement rates compared to macro-influencers.
Their smaller follower base allows for more meaningful interactions and authentic connections with their audience.
This leads to higher levels of trust and loyalty, which can translate to a better return on investment for brands.
In contrast, macro-influencers, while having a broader audience, may face challenges with engagement due to their celebrity status and larger follower count.
2. Reach
When it comes to reach, macro-influencers have the upper hand.
Their extensive audience base, spanning hundreds of thousands to millions, allows brands to reach a broader audience quickly.
This makes macro-influencers an excellent option for brands looking to increase their social presence and brand awareness on a large scale.
Micro-influencers, though reaching fewer people, excel in niche markets, where targeted engagement is more valuable than sheer numbers.
3. Niche
Micro-influencers thrive in niche markets.
Their content caters to specific interests or communities, making them opinion leaders in their domains.
For brands aiming to target a particular demographic or market segment, partnerships with micro-influencers can be highly effective.
Macro-influencers, on the other hand, appeal to a more diverse audience, which can dilute the focus but increase the overall reach.
4. Authenticity
Authenticity is a significant advantage of micro-influencers.
Their followers perceive them as more relatable and genuine, leading to more authentic connections and meaningful relationships.
Macro-influencers, due to their celebrity status and commercial partnerships, might struggle with authenticity, although their endorsement still holds significant value due to their influence and visibility.
5. Negotiation and Cost
The negotiation process differs between micro and macro-influencers.
Collaboration prices with macro-influencers are generally higher due to their extensive reach and established status.
Micro-influencers are more flexible and open to negotiation, making influencer partnerships more accessible for brands with limited budgets.
The negotiation with micro-influencers can also be more straightforward, focusing on building long-term, meaningful partnerships.
Can You Work With Micro-Influencers as well as Macro-Influencers?
Absolutely, brands can and often should work with both micro-influencers and macro-influencers to maximize their marketing reach and impact.
Each influencer type brings unique strengths to the table, and combining them can create a well-rounded influencer marketing strategy.
That's what we did for our Miro campaign.
Miro is a collaboration platform that helps remote teams.
We hired different types of influencers in a B2B influencer marketing campaign to promote their Miroverse, where they post different collaboration templates.
Our campaign included Instagram micro-influencers:
And we had macro LinkedIn influencers too:
Here are the benefits of combining both types of influencers:
1. Diverse reach and engagement: By partnering with both micro and macro-influencers, you can leverage the broad reach of macro-influencers while also tapping into the high engagement and authenticity of micro-influencers.
Macro-influencers help increase brand visibility across a larger audience base, while micro-influencers foster deeper, more meaningful interactions with niche audiences.
2. Complementary strategies: A dual strategy allows you to complement your broad awareness campaigns with targeted, niche-specific efforts.
For instance, macro-influencers can generate initial interest and buzz, while micro-influencers can sustain engagement and drive conversions within specific communities. This balanced approach can enhance your overall campaign effectiveness.
3. Flexibility and adaptability: Working with both types of influencers provides flexibility in campaign design and execution.
You can allocate budgets across different influencer tiers based on campaign goals and metrics.
This adaptability ensures that you can respond to changing market conditions and audience preferences.
4. Enhanced content variety: Collaborating with a mix of micro and macro-influencers also results in a diverse range of content.
Macro-influencers produce high-quality, professional content that elevates brand perception.
Micro-influencers, on the other hand, create more relatable and authentic content that resonates deeply with their followers. This variety enriches your brand’s content portfolio and appeals to different segments of the audience.
Wrapping Up
In conclusion, the choice between micro-influencers and macro-influencers depends on your brand's specific needs and business goals.
If your objective is to reach a broader audience and enhance brand visibility, macro-influencers may be the better option. However, if you aim to foster authentic connections, target niche markets, and achieve high engagement, micro-influencers can offer significant advantages.
Alternatively you can partner with both types of influencers depending on your campaign goals, like we did for Miro.
Understanding these dynamics will help you make an informed decision that aligns with your overall marketing strategy.
If you're not sure how to get started, let's schedule a free strategy call and assess your best influencer marketing options together!
