Micro-influencers are defined as online creators with between 10,000 and 75,000 followers. The reason it’s a good idea for small businesses to partner with this tier of influencers comes down to a few factors: engagement rate, collaborative partnerships and click-thru capabilities. Micro-influencers tend to be a perfect fit for brands of every kind and size because they have enough experience to create high-quality, professional content, yet they’re still in a stage of growth that allows for maintaining a highly engaged community.
Micro-influencers are also a great option if a business is looking to expand to a hyper-local market and get noticed by untapped audiences. Seeing as their following is smaller than the traditional celebrity macro-influencer, their audience tends to be more highly saturated in certain geographical locations, thus giving businesses a leg up in that specific region.
Leveraging micro-influencers to promote a business will help to not only increase overall brand awareness across the board but will also diversify the content portfolio for a much more cost-efficient price. These influencers have a unique brand that they’ve spent time zeroing in on and crafting to create content that resonates with their audience. It’s a great opportunity to generate content that goes against the grain of what a business typically creates to cater to an audience that the business otherwise might not have come across on their own.
The influencer audience is always a big selling point when it comes to activating these kinds of partnerships. Influencers, specifically on the micro-scale, have spent copious amounts of time building trust, loyalty and overall credibility with their audience. This makes them a go-to source for all things having to do with their specific niche. It’s taking word-of-mouth marketing to an entirely new, and more cost-efficient, level.
While cash compensation is the name of the game these days, micro-influencers are often flexible and can include some sort of trade agreement that could help to lower the cash compensation by a decent amount. They’re often willing and able to make a campaign work within a budget that’s mutually beneficial to both parties, especially if the campaign is something that aligns heavily with the personal brand that they’ve crafted for themselves.
Candie Guay is the co-founder and creative director of Scottsdale-based Envida, the nation’s leading multifamily creative agency.
