The Power of Micro-influencers for Social Media Marketing
In the cosmetic and fashion industries, brands work with models, and celebrities to market their products and services. They do so because these people represent the target audience for their products and services.
Lately, brands have been shifting to influencer marketing. Since 2016, influencer marketing has been growing. By 2018, the value of influencer marketing tripled to nearly £3.5 billion. As of 2022, it’s valued at £12.57 billion.
Due to the rising popularity of influencer marketing, 38% of brands allocated 10% to 20% of their marketing budgets to influencers. Today, brands are increasingly moving away from mega and macro-influencers. They are choosing to collaborate with a new breed of influencers called micro-influencers.
So, who are micro-influencers, and how can they grow your brand? In this guide, we’ll take a closer look at what exactly micro-influencers are and how they can grow your brand.
What Are Micro-influencers?
A micro-influencer is a social media user with a following larger than that of a normal individual but smaller than that of a macro influencer. Micro-Influencers use their following to promote a brand, its products and services to their followers.
They have a strong grip on their audience because they are closer to them. Not only that. They are experts in their niche be it fashion, fitness, lifestyle, food or beyond. Micro-influencers have 10,000 to 100,000 followers. Thanks to their smaller audience, they connect deeper with them and generate greater engagement. In fact, they deliver more than 60% engagement because they’re invested in their craft.
Social media followers often see micro-influencers as their peers. More than 84% of consumers trust recommendations from micro-influencers as much as those from family and friends.
What this shows is that feedback from everyday folks carries more weight than an endorsement from a celebrity. As a brand, collaborating with micro-influencers puts your brand, products and services in front of the right people.
How Micro-Influencers Can Grow Your Brand?
The following are ways micro-influencers can grow your brand.
Boost Sales With Promo Codes…
Online shoppers who use promo codes spend 24% more than shoppers who don’t use them. Brands that offer promo codes through social media see 26% higher average order values from customers who use them. More than 77$ of online shoppers follow their favourite brands on social media to stay updated on upcoming sales, promo codes and offers.
From the statistics above, it proves that promo codes play a big role in boosting sales through influencer marketing. As demonstrated, promo codes can deliver results almost instantly. This is because they incentivize customers who might be on the fence to convert and shop from your store. As a result, your sales increase.
To make promo codes effective, you need to collaborate with micro-influencers. You can give them your promo codes to promote on their social media channels. To promote them, micro-influencers can run contests or simply share the codes with their followers.
In turn, the followers will use the promo codes when purchasing products on your online store. It’s important to offer a significant discount. This helps their followers to feel like the offer is exclusive, and they will get to save more.
With each unique code given to the micro-influencers, you can track their performance. This allows you to find out which influencer had the most conversions. As such, you can continue working with them to boost your sales and revenue.
Create a Loyal Community…
Spotify is one of the largest music streaming service providers with more than 400 million monthly active users. This includes 180 million paying subscribers. A few years back, Spotify launched its Discover Weekly feature. Despite having more than 400 million active users, the brand chose to work with micro-influencers.
The influencers created user-generated content. Basically, they posted images and videos plus mentioning their Spotify list on their social media channels. As a result, the marketing campaign was successful and generated more than 29,000 likes and comments.
Not only that. The influencer campaign also generated an engagement of more than 2.37% and created a loyal community for the brand. Your brand can also leverage micro-influencers to create a loyal community.
Over 79% of consumers say user-generated content impacts their purchasing decisions. More than 90% of consumers say that authenticity is important when it comes to deciding which brands they support and like.
If you collaborate with micro-influencers, they will talk about your brand on social media and share unique content about it. This will bring followers together creating an engaged branded community.
To ensure this works, invite micro-influencers who are already posting about your brand. Sign them up and involve them in your brand’s social contests and hashtags. You can also request them to create more content for your social media accounts, blog and website.
Paid Advertising…
By now, the majority of brands understand that you cannot boost brand awareness with organic posts alone. To achieve their objectives, brands need to tie in sponsored posts alongside social media organic posts. As of 2022, ad spending on social media will reach over £173 million.
In the same year (2022), social media video ad spending increased by 20.1% to £24 billion. This is thanks to the continued popularity of TikTok, Reels and Instagram Stories.
Sponsored posts drive engagement and allow influencers to create videos about your brand. They reinforce your brand to your target audience giving you valuable traffic to your website and creating a loyal community for you.
To maximise your brand’s growth, reach out to your desired influencer and offer them free products. This is in exchange for their honest reviews. If you already have micro-influencers you’re collaborating with, ask them to post sponsored content. Since people trust micro-influencers, they will trust what they recommend.
Increase Trust in Your Brand…
Speaking of trust, consumers take a lot of time to establish trust with a brand. However, if your brand collaborates with micro-influencers, they can shorten the time a customer trusts your brand.
A global survey recently conducted by PwC found that trust in a brand has a strong influence on where consumers decide to shop. Over 35% of respondents said trust in brands was one of the top three reasons influencing their decision to shop at a particular retailer.
As aforementioned, modern consumers prefer a recommendation from a micro-influencer. Through their engagement rate, your brand will gain trust from consumers.
Micro-influencers have more recommendation power than macro and mega influencers. This is because they engage with their followers daily. As such, they appear to be more authentic. This gains loyalty from their followers and even non-followers.
Influencers build trust with their followers by posting videos while using products they’re endorsing. To their followers, this is more believable than a commercial ad designed to promise a brand.
For example, your brand sells hand mixers. If you collaborate with a micro-influencer to build trust for your brand, she will create videos of herself using the hand mixer. Once she shares the video on her social media channels, her followers will view the video and like it. They will then share the video with their followers extending your reach.
Overview
There are so many micro-influencers on social media platforms. Manually searching for the influencers on social media can be time consuming, tedious and fruitless.
However, if you work with influencer marketing agencies you can find the right micro-influencers. When you collaborate with the right micro-influencer(s), your brand stands a better chance of growing its presence online.
This way, you can find your target audience with ease who in turn will purchase products from your store and increase your sales and revenue.
Further Reading…
