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12 Advantages of Micro-Influencer Marketing

Posted on March 27, 2020

Influencer marketing began with celebrity marketing and endorsement. For years, brands of paid celebrities to promote their products for them. Why celebrity marketing may work well for a few large brands, it doesn’t scale well for the mass market. there are only so many celebrities available, and they usually charge massive amounts of money. This puts them out of reach for most businesses.
Another issue with celebrity marketing is that there is often no genuine connection between the product they’re endorsing and the celebrity. Why should consumers trust a celebrity’s word on a product if he or she clearly doesn’t use it themselves?
That’s where macro-influencers come in. Macro-influencers have anywhere between 10,000 and a million followers with a focus on a particular niche. Many professional bloggers and critics can be considered as macro-influencers. Though they aren’t quite celebrities, they are well known by those who are interested in their topic of expertise.
They don’t count as celebrities but they are certainly recognized by followers in their niche. They’re busy people who can afford to be picking and choosing the products they endorse and they can get away with charging quite a bit of money for their endorsement.
For many marketing firms and small businesses, this too is out of reach. If they want to engage in influencer marketing they must work with micro-influencers. These are people who have between 2,000 and 10,000 followers depending on their niche and main social media channel.
Though they may have considerably fewer supporters than celebrities or macro-influencers, their followers are strong in their support and highly engaged.
Here are 12 advantages to working with micro-influencers, regardless of their chosen platform.

1. Better Engagement Rates

Though micro-influencers may not have as many followers as the superstars, they have a strong active relationship with their followers. The benefit of being small enough is to still be able to keep things relatively personal.
Generally, they work in highly vocal and active Niche groups with followers who regularly respond to post on social media or blogs. The supporters are often very interested in what the micro-influencer has to say and take their recommendations seriously. Micro-influencers have built up tremendous trust with their audiences

2. Higher Conversions

When a micro-influencer promotes your brand and monetizes their following, you are likely to see an increase in conversion rate. The majority of micro-influencers are experts in their niche. Whether it’s lifestyle and travel or tech and gadgets, their views on the topic are considered trustworthy and genuine by their followers.
As a result, micro-influencers Drive the most traffic into conversions. If a brand decides to work with micro-influencers in a specific niche, there is a high chance they will attain better conversion rates as compared to working with bigger influencers across various platforms.

3. More Affordable

The vast majority of micro-influencers are relatively ordinary people who use social media and blogging as a hobby next to a regular job. Because of this, firms can generally work with them for a substantially lower cost than they can micro-influencers and celebrities.
In some cases, brands work with micro-influencers for the cost of some free samples.
Some influencer marketing platforms provide a market for a relatively low-cost campaign. With a database of thousands of micro-influencers who have signed up on the platform, brands come up with a proposal for the influencers whether it is a free product, a discount, early access to something or small cash payment.
The influencers who wish to be part of the campaign apply and the brand chooses who they want to work with.
In this situation, your company has to pay a subscription fee to be a member of the influencing marketing platform but the cost is still substantially cheaper than paying macro-influencers or celebrities huge fees.

4. More Authenticity

The advantage of working with micro-influencers is that they are highly similar to their supporters. This is usually what makes them popular to begin. If a micro-influencer genuinely appreciates the brand, then the odds are high but their fanbase will be just as interested in the product promoted.
The issue with macro-influencer and celebrity endorsements is they never feel authentic mainly because they are always distanced from their supporters. If you are interacting regularly with a micro-influencer who has the same interests as you, you can feel their happiness, understand them, and empathize with their pain.
You believe that they can also understand you and your problems. You trust them far more than some distant person with millions of followers that you couldn’t imagine meeting in real life.
There is a catch-22 here. If an influencer accepts payment for a clearly identified sponsored post there is the danger that they lose the feeling of authenticity.
It’s up to the micro-influencers to be selective about the products they choose to promote sticking where products that truly like and are happy to receive for free rather than being paid a cash amount.
If an audience sees an influencer who is constantly taking any and all sponsored campaigns they can get their hands on, they may be turned off and choose to no longer interact with that person. If this happens, the micro-influencer loses its influencer status.

5. Long Term Relationships

Long-term relationships are more meaningful to your brand than one-off relationships. 71% of marketers say they believe ongoing ambassadorships are the most effective for influencer marketing.
The communication appears more authentic and genuine when an influencer supports the brand they have come to love over a long time rather than a couple of weeks of a one-off campaign.
What the cost of macro-influencers and celebrities being so high, it is harder and more unrealistic for brands to be able to maintain those long-term relationships that will provide the long-term impact. Micro-influencers offer a more cost-efficient approach for long-term campaigns.