Most digital marketing strategy includes influencer marketing strategy these days and this strategy has seen rapid growth as a core method of direct-to-consumer branding. The core concept of influencer marketing is simple, get someone with a large audience base (followers) to promote your product or service.
Influencer marketing strategy often involves celebrities, market and thought leaders from a particular industry. These often influences the purchasing by the young demography, creating a sense of trust and acceptance. A recent study has shown that 70% of millennial consumers are influenced by the recommendations of their peers in buying decisions.
So, what is the difference between an influencer and micro-influencer and their respective impact on marketing strategy?
While influencers are social media accounts that are not only verified but also have a huge following, somewhere over 100k, micro-influencers are ones that have followers around 10k. The number of such accounts across various social media platforms is huge.
According to a study, engagement rates are better with fewer followers an account has. It was noticed:
- Influencers with 10,000 followers or more have just a 3.6 percent engagement.
- Influencers with 5,000 to 10,000 followers have 6.3 percent engagement.
- Influencers with 1,000 to 5,000 followers have the highest engagement at an 8.8 percent engagement rate.
The Benefits of Micro-Influencers
Potential New Segment Of Influencers
Did you know around 15.7% of Instagram users have between 1000 to 10,000 followers? Expand this to Instagram’s one billion users this percentage sums up to 157 million micro-influencers. It’s a huge minefield waiting to be tapped in. Not only that, like influencers, micro-influencers can be found to promote any type of product or service.
Grounded Perception
An influencer in the current sense is more of a known personality or celebrity than a friend. With micro-influencer, this is the exact opposite. Micro-influencers are people considered more relatable and are perceived to be ‘like you and me’ than a celebrity. In a Trust Barometer survey, it was found 61 percent of people find information from “people like me” to be credible.
Real Engagement, Loyal Followers
Taking forward from the above point, micro-influencers are folks who are able to connect with their audience and look forward to growing their community base. Micro-influencers are available to attend events, interact with their followers, reply to comments, engage and have a presence both online and offline.
Cost-Effective
Compared to their larger influencer peers, the cost to hire micro-influencers is significantly less. For the same price of hiring the service of a macro-influencer (those over 100k followers), you can hire 20-odd micro-influencers and get more traction with their highly engaged audience and increase your reach.
They Are Niche
Micro-influencers have a niche audience. Their followers are people whose interests and passions match with each other and also engage in content similar to their demographic profile. For any influencer marketing strategy, it is important that an influencer is relevant to the brand and product or service being promoted.
