3 Reasons You’re Better Off Leveraging Micro-Influencers

In today’s digital world, capturing the eyes of potential customers can be tough. Many have short attention spans and are already wary of advertising — if they’re not blocking out the ads altogether.

Over half of Americans use ad blockers while online. Today’s customers instead rely on the recommendations of trusted friends, colleagues, or other people they perceive to be similar to themselves before making a purchase.

In the case of the latter, many brands have started to leverage micro-influencers to bring more customers to their store. Here are three reasons you’re better off leveraging micro-influencers.

1. Cost-Effective

Dealing with celebrity and big-name influencers can take a big toll on your wallet. Per Influencer.co, the average cost of a sponsored post for an influencer with over one million followers was $1,405. Micro-influencers are considerably cheaper, with follower counts from 5,000–10,000 costing around $93 and 10,000–25,000 followers costing $133, which are both oddly cheaper than what micro-influencers with less than 2,000, and between 2,000–5,000 followers charge ($124, and $137).

2. Trusted By Consumers

Customers are looking to have authentic conversations with brands and receive more personalized recommendations they can trust. These are both areas where relying on micro-influencers can pay big dividends. Many micro-influencers started from the ground floor. They have stronger knowledge about their followers. They probably developed some close connections. This level of trust and rapport ensures your content will resonate better since micro-influencers know how to tailor products or services according to their audience.

This is something a top influencer can’t do because their following is too broad to engage with hyper-targeted content. If you’re selling makeup from home, for example, there’s little value in your getting a lot of impressions and hollow engagement when you could be featured by a micro-influencer with a narrower following. More targeted messaging is what drives engagement rates, which in the case of influencers, decreases with influencer popularity.

Per Digiday, influencers with under 1,000 followers get about 8 percent engagement, compared to 4 percent for influencers who have 1,000–10,000 followers. Top influencers with over one million followers see engagement levels of just 1.7 percent.

3. Creates a More Flexible Marketing Budget

Focusing all your time and money on one big influencer can be pretty risky. The partnership might be really successful, or you could spend all your cash in one fell swoop.

Working with micro-influencers allows you to stretch your budget further and experiment with different strategies across multiple audiences. This lets you figure out what is driving the most conversions. You can then take this knowledge and focus your time and money on the micro-influencers who are getting you results, freeing your marketing budget up for other endeavors.

Micro-influencers are easy to find, but it can be hard to pin down who will be the best for your business. Many of them might already be following your social media channels already, so connecting is just as simple as a message. Other people choose to pay for access to databases to search for different influencers across various niches. However, some of these platforms can be expensive, possibly making them cost-prohibitive for smaller businesses.

It takes some work to find the right micro-influencer, but the rewards are worth the search. You’re better off leveraging micro influencers because they are cost-effective, help cultivate a loyal following and allow more flexibility in your marketing spend.