Social media is critical to marketing, and many businesses are now turning to micro-influencers to help market their brands. Let’s take a look at some tips from top business leaders to help us understand how to find the best micro-influencers for your company, and how they can help you reach your target audience.
Using Hashtags
Nik Sharma, CEO, Sharma Brands
With TikTok and Instagram, utilizing hashtags is a great way to grow your brand fast, and to find the best micro-influencers to work with. Do a search, see what content is trending in your space, and then check out the engagement levels on some of the top micro-influencers in that area. If you think their audience would like your products, reach out. This can be as simple as sending a DM on instagram and connecting. Working with the right micro-influencers can help you to launch, scale, and elevate your products on digital platforms.
Connecting with Followers
Robbie Salter, Co-Founder, Jupiter
For a long time, social media marketing focused heavily on influencer campaigns and having the best and biggest faces for their brand. As this field continued to get more and more saturated, the market for influencers changed. Instead of having one or two popular influencers showcasing your brand, businesses are selecting a larger number of influencers with a higher conversion rate of followers. These “micro-influencers” are changing the game for influencer marketing. Because they have a smaller audience, they are able to personally connect with these followers. Typically, micro-influencers have a niche market of content, and are followed by consumers with very specific interests. While developing influencer campaigns, ensure you are choosing the right influencers; look for similar types of brand deals and similar personal values!
Trusted Sources
David Armano, Strategy, Edelman
Because they are personally invested in their crafts, micro-influencers are trusted sources of recommendations for followers.‘The Game’ isn’t just getting eyeballs; but getting eyeballs that care!
IG Follower Export Tool
Jameson Rodgers, Co-Founder, CBDfx
More businesses are using micro-influencers because they have a much more loyal following than macro-influencers. Whereas macro-influencers are focused on large partnerships, micro-influencers are more focused on building out a community, henceforth leading to a higher purchase conversion rate.
My recommendation: use a tool such as IG Export to compare who your customers are interacting with. Once you have a strong overlap between 10-15 customers, choose the respective micro influencer for your next campaign.
Saving Money on Marketing
Benjamin Smith, Founder, Disco
More and more, brands are working with micro-influencers who have a smaller following because they make more relatable content that is very valuable to their audience. Smaller brands with limited budgets find that working with micro-influencers is more affordable because some will not charge for making posts about the brand and simply ask for a sample to make posts about. You can easily find micro-influencers who might be a good fit for your brand by searching for hashtags that are related to your brand or looking at your existing audience to find potential micro-influencers.
User-Generated Content
Ryan Craver, Founder and CEO, Mallary By Matthew
With so many big influencers and branded content out there, sometimes it can be hard for audiences to know which products to trust. However, consumers see user-generated content as more trustworthy and authentic than branded content, which helps to boost engagement. Find micro-influencers that are already using products in the same category as your brand, such as sustainability. Working with these influencers will be more cost-effective, but most importantly, this user-generated content will actually reach more individuals in their community.
Finding a Specific Audience
Courtney Buhler, CEO & Founder, Sugarlash PRO
Micro-influencers are perfect for brands just getting started with influencer marketing because they are much more approachable than larger influencers. They tend to provide content that is geared to a specific audience and niche, and also has a high engagement rate. It’s much more important to find someone who has a highly engaged audience, rather than someone who just has a wide reach. An influencer of any size with a wide reach offers brands little to no benefits because they are not driving active engagement that will likely lead to helping grow your business.
Making a Team of Micro-Influencers
Summer Romasco, Growth Marketing Director, Ad Hoc Labs
Two heads are better than one. To help grow your business and your followers, find several micro-influencers to work with, who all have a similar passion for your brand. If you find one micro-influencer that you like and works well with your brand, then you can replicate this by finding similar influencers who have a similar audience. Make sure to not target the same audience each time, but to find similarities, and to make a diverse team of micro-influencers, who are passionate about your products.
Matching Brand Quality and Aesthetic
Eymel Daniel, Co-Founder, ForChics
Brands are using micro-influencers more often because customers are much more likely to purchase based on their recommendations than a larger influencer or other people they know. If you decide to use a micro-influencer for your brand, make sure they have an aesthetic and posting quality that is on par with your own. You don’t want to hitch your wagon to someone who does not mesh well with your brand values and mission.
Gifting and Promo Codes
Jeff Henretig, President, Apothecanna
Gifting is a great way to help reduce campaign and marketing fees on your business. Many micro-influencers are happy to try and review products, in order to fully promote the product’s functionality. Make sure to agree in advance on deliverables, like how many posts or stories that you want them to create. It can also be a great marketing strategy to incorporate promo codes into micro-influencer marketing. This is a great way to see the ROI and helps the influencer to feel like they are giving their followers additional value. By creating products of great quality, the audience will be sure to love them. This is a win-win for all, at a low cost to the company.
Building a Community
Liz Tomic, CGO at Flying Embers, Flying Embers
Micro-influencers may have smaller followings, but they can prove extremely valuable when it comes to their engagement. If they’ve built a loyal, niche community these ‘micro’ influencers can actually move the needle more when it comes to direct sales, compared to their larger counterparts. Micro-influencers tend to be more focused on organically integrating the brand into their routines and lifestyles, which translates to their followers, versus regurgitating inauthentic talking points and sales language.
Followers and Level of Engagement
Sara Shah, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Journ
Micro-influencers can have a more engaged following than larger influencers. You could gain 100 sales from someone with 5,000 followers just as easily as someone who has 100,000. The most important thing to consider when choosing micro-influencers to work with is what level of engagement they are receiving from their followers in their story views, likes, comments, save, shares, etc. To start finding micro-influencers, take a look at your best customers to see if they could possibly be micro-influencers. Alternatively, you could ask them what influencers they follow and research their recommendations for micro-influencers. Once you find one and start following them, TikTok and Instagram, for example, make it easier to find similar accounts. These platforms will suggest accounts, and from there you can reach out to the ones you are interested in working with. Ask them for the press/media kit or ask about their stats. It’s important that they have something in common with the people you are trying to reach and are very authentic in their approach to content marketing.
Macro vs. Micro-Influencers
David Wolfe, Founder, Oliver’s Apparel
More businesses are using micro-influencers because they can strategically be used in tandem with each other to not only generate a higher ROI — but also a lower initial investment — than one macro influencer.
One of the easiest and most effective ways to find micro influencers is by searching Instagram based on either a hashtag or location. Use a hashtag if your business is not dependent on regionality, and a location if you are a local business looking for community validation.
The Future of Marketing
Ismael El-Qudsi, CEO, SocialPubli
Influencer marketing is at an inflection point and micro-influencers are playing a vital role in its evolution from a passing fad to a permanent, viable and effective marketing strategy. Micro-influencers have strong, authentic personal brands and are committed to providing their online communities with creative, quality content. While they aspire to dedicate themselves to influencer marketing on a full-time basis they have also voiced a clear need for greater recognition which is indicative that the ecosystem as a whole needs to mature and improve in order for them to be able to effectively translate their vocation as influencers into a tangible career path.
