Micro in­flu­en­cers and what they mean for social media marketing

Classic online ad­vert­ising methods like banners or pop-ups are being in­creas­ingly ignored or even hidden by ad blockers. This makes it very difficult for marketers to bring attention to their products and/or services. As a con­sequence, there is now demand for new methods, creative campaigns, and com­mu­nic­a­tion strategies. Currently one of the most discussed and most important dis­cip­lines in the world of online marketing is the so-called in­flu­en­cer marketing – the iden­ti­fic­a­tion and re­cruit­ing of important brand am­bas­sad­ors online. For a long time, there was a large amount of effort and focus given to celebrit­ies with large online fol­low­ings. But new stat­ist­ics have shown that so-called micro in­flu­en­cers, with much fewer followers, can achieve a larger en­gage­ment rate than these celebrit­ies. Anyone who up until now has not been very active in in­flu­en­cer marketing is probably now asking the following questions: What is a micro in­flu­en­cer? Why can they exert more influence on their followers than celebrit­ies? What are the ad­vant­ages of col­lab­or­at­ing with micro in­flu­en­cers for marketing, and how does one even go about finding the right micro in­flu­en­cer? All these questions will hopefully be answered below.

Compared to big in­flu­en­cers and celebrit­ies with several hundred thousand or even millions of followers, micro in­flu­en­cers are opinion leaders that have a much smaller base of followers but still manage to relate to these followers to a much greater extent. Whilst celebrit­ies may have a wider reach, these micro in­flu­en­cers have the advantage of au­then­ti­city and closeness because they engage in regular and lively dis­cus­sion with their com­munit­ies and followers. The target audiences of such opinion leaders is quite specific, which means that their followers are much more likely to have a genuine interest in the issues and topics that the micro in­flu­en­cer engages with. Their posts come across as much more authentic, more direct, and the micro in­flu­en­cer’s opinion will be valued a lot higher by like-minded followers. Often, they are seen as experts in a specific area, e.g. fashion, tech­no­logy, cosmetics, etc. This means that their re­com­mend­a­tions are much more trust­worthy than those of famous celebrit­ies spotted on large bill­boards.

Micro in­flu­en­cers are defined by the amount of followers that they have. If you have a look online for concrete figures, you will find a range of follower data. And the strategies of agents and busi­nesses can also be very different: While some will opt for in­flu­en­cers with 100,000-200,000 followers, there are companies, such as the social ad platform Gnack, which go after those with less than 10,000 followers. There is also more than one defin­i­tion of a ‘micro-in­flu­en­cer’. Mavrck define it as ‘everyday consumers who have 500-5,000 highly engaged followers around relevant topics’.

Accounts with 100,000-200,000 followers cannot really be clas­si­fied as ‘micro’ and it must also be noted that the users with less than 10,000 followers rarely have a note­worthy reach or influence. But if you find an account that is roughly between these two sets of figures, you should then have what you would call a micro in­flu­en­cer, i.e. an account with between 10,000 and 100,000 followers.

What is decisive for the success of a marketing strategy is the return on in­vest­ment, i.e. the profit compared with the capital invested. In order to establish the worth of a social media col­lab­or­a­tion, it’s necessary to have access to reliable figures on why a co­oper­a­tion with a micro in­flu­en­cer might be worth the in­vest­ment. At the end of the day, they will only reach a fraction of the people compared, for example, with a Kar­dashi­an. It was exactly this question that a study by Markerly tried to get to the bottom of – a company that brings social media opinion leaders and brands together. This study looked at how high the en­gage­ment rate is (comprised of likes and comments) in pro­por­tion to the number of followers of a par­tic­u­lar Instagram account. Re­search­ers looked at more than 800,000 accounts and their re­spect­ive en­gage­ment rates as a per­cent­age of their total followers. The result was quite sur­pris­ing: the higher the number of followers, the lower the en­gage­ment rate per­cent­age was. The highest en­gage­ment rate was found among the group of Instagram users with less than 1,000 followers. Here, the average ‘like’ rate was ap­prox­im­ately 8 percent. In com­par­is­on, while users with more than 10 million followers only reach an average ‘like’ rate of 1.6 percent. As a result, this means that the like rate for posts made by celebrit­ies (when viewed as a per­cent­age) is quite low. And even rarer is the per­cent­age that comment on a celebrity’s post – according to Markerly, this figure lies at about 0.05 percent for accounts with millions of followers. Accounts with fewer than 1000 followers in this case have a 0.56 per­cent­age rate. If you consider how much it would cost to pay a social media superstar like Kim Kar­dashi­an to post a photo with a certain product, then the ROI would be wor­ry­ingly low.

The art of suc­cess­ful micro in­flu­en­cer marketing lies in finding a middle ground that still manages to yield a profit. Celebrit­ies with a large reach are too expensive and will only very rarely address the right target audience for a par­tic­u­lar product. Celebrit­ies like the Kar­dashi­ans have millions of fans and followers, all of whom have very different interests when it comes to products and topics. On the other hand, users with less than a thousand followers have, in many cases, too small a reach and not worth the expense of col­lab­or­a­tion. But if a marketing strategy focuses on those micro in­flu­en­cers with a reach of between 10,000 and 100,000 followers, then you should be able to achieve a fairly solid en­gage­ment rate and reach. In this case, the like rate usually lies around 2.4 percent and the comment rate at 0.17 percent of users. There are concrete examples out there that demon­strate the success of such a strategy with micro in­flu­en­cer marketing. In an interview with Digiday, Sarah Ware, CEO of Markerly, explained how her company began an in­flu­en­cer campaign with the Kar­dashi­ans. This par­tic­u­lar campaign revolved around promoting a new tea product to customers. In theory the campaign proved to be quite suc­cess­ful, and thanks to the enormous reach, also managed to achieve several hundred con­ver­sions. But it was only through the re­cruit­ing of between 30-40 micro in­flu­en­cers that the project really managed to take off. It is smaller brands that cater to niche markets where, in certain cir­cum­stances, micro in­flu­en­cer marketing can open up un­ex­pec­ted op­por­tun­it­ies – provided that one finds the right in­flu­en­cer. Another example of a campaign that managed to attract large amounts of attention and went through the media was carried out by the American clothing brand Lord & Taylor. In 2015, the company col­lab­or­ated with ap­prox­im­ately 50 In­s­tagram­mers, who were told to wear a certain dress and then post a photo of it. These micro in­flu­en­cers were given the freedom of choosing what they combined the dress with. In exchange, they received a fee of between 1,000 and 4,000 dollars. Within two days the posts managed to reach an un­be­liev­able 11.4 million Instagram users. In just a short space of time, many received over 1,000 likes and some even managed to get over 10,000. The brand itself racked up over 328,000 en­gage­ments on their Instagram account. Naturally, the dress sold out straight away as well.

The biggest obstacle for brands is finding the right micro in­flu­en­cer for their product. And it has been and still is the case that co­oper­at­ing with celebrit­ies and big in­flu­en­cers is the path of least res­ist­ance – potential can­did­ates can be quickly iden­ti­fied and contacted, and on top of that, these people also have a good image and a large reach. But if you are in fact looking to get the maximum out of your marketing efforts, then un­for­tu­nately it is not that easy. Anyone looking to be more target group-ori­ent­ated by working with multiple micro in­flu­en­cers will have to invest more time and effort. A poorly placed product comes across as unnatural and in the worst case may lead to negative headlines and an un­in­ten­ded comedic effect. To give an example: Many followers will un­doubtedly be bemused if a picture of sports equipment suddenly appears in the middle of an account’s long stream of ar­chi­tec­ture photos. As a result, this could lead to the image and repu­ta­tion of both the micro in­flu­en­cer and the company involved being harmed. There is also the danger that in­ad­equately char­ac­ter­ised sponsored posts bring about negative attention. Above all, micro in­flu­en­cer marketing has to be sus­tain­able. Anyone who carefully and de­lib­er­ately chooses their micro in­flu­en­cer or in­flu­en­cers can benefit long-term from such a col­lab­or­a­tion. How do you even go about linking with the right contacts these days in the jungle that is the social media in Web 2.0? Ad­mit­tedly, the search for celebrit­ies and big in­flu­en­cers, who can be iden­ti­fied through their number of followers, through their ‘in­flu­en­cer score’ (how au­thor­it­at­ive their online presence is), or with the help of other online tools, is al­to­geth­er a lot easier than trying to find micro in­flu­en­cers. But luckily there are several promising pos­sib­il­it­ies for doing this – and they are def­in­itely worth the effort in the long run. 1. Look for potential micro in­flu­en­cers among your own followers and then contact any eligible in­di­vidu­als. Ideally you will find someone who is already familiar with your brand, knows the product, and has maybe even posted something to do with your brand in the past. 2. Use hashtags in ways that are effective and relevant. Useful hashtags have two decisive ad­vant­ages when it comes to micro in­flu­en­cer marketing. Firstly, they act as a way of keyword indexing consumers, allowing for a com­pre­hens­ive analysis of target groups. The second advantage is that it’s very easy to identify the interest in par­tic­u­lar hashtags, their reach, and finally the re­spect­ive in­di­vidu­al who sees them­selves as a micro in­flu­en­cer. These factors make hashtags an effective research in­stru­ment. 3. Use the filter options of research tools. These are es­pe­cially useful if your account happens to have a lot of followers, making a manual search almost im­possible. Many tools also offer a lot more than just the pos­sib­il­ity of finding and identi­fy­ing the users with the largest reach. For example, the tool Brand­watch Audiences gives detailed in­form­a­tion regarding in­flu­en­cers and audiences. More in­form­a­tion on social media mon­it­or­ing tools can be found in our digital guide. 4. Spe­cial­ised micro in­flu­en­cer agencies also provide further op­por­tun­it­ies in this area, as they bring micro in­flu­en­cers and brands together. Both profit from this re­la­tion­ship: the in­flu­en­cers can remain active and focus on them­selves; the agencies can focus on making con­nec­tions with brands and potential col­lab­or­at­ors. This in turn means that a high level of thematic relevance can be achieved, i.e. brands can find users that are genuinely in­ter­ested in their products, so that these users only receive sug­ges­tions for campaigns that are actually relevant to them.

If you notice that a micro in­flu­en­cer has an interest in your brand and happens to have a large enough reach, then the first step is already done. Next it is important to carefully build up a part­ner­ship with them. Bring attention to yourself by liking and com­ment­ing on the micro in­flu­en­cer’s posts. Once the initial contact has been made and a mutual respect has developed, more often than not it is the micro in­flu­en­cer who will enquire about a possible col­lab­or­a­tion. Naturally, there have to be in­cent­ives offered, as the in­di­vidu­als are usually very aware of their own market value. For them, the col­lab­or­a­tion has to be worth their while. Depending on the available budget, your next move should be to offer a VIP bonus as an incentive; it is often the case that reviewers, bloggers, and YouTubers are very happy to receive free testers, which they can also keep. In certain cir­cum­stances, In­s­tagram­mers will post photos for free if they are par­tic­u­larly fond of the product in question. In­vit­a­tions to events are also often very welcome. Methods like these are quite cheap from your point of view, but can still have a very desirable effect, es­pe­cially if enough micro in­flu­en­cers take up your offer.