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Whether you hate the word ‘Influencer’ or not, it is here to stay, and in 2020 Influencer Marketing is bigger than ever. People have been online more than ever over the last 5 months of lockdown and with limitations on shoots for advertising to take place, there is no better time or place for brands to go to promote their businesses than with online influencers who already have an interested and loyal audience.
With streaming services like Netflix also being so popular, it means that many of the traditional forms of advertising just aren’t working in the same way anymore. Influencer Marketing is so effective because the content creator already has an audience built up who – if targeted correctly – are likely to be interested in the product or service.
Influencer Marketing can be used to increase brand awareness and reach new audiences, generate sales, improve a brand’s reputation and drive lead generation, such as increasing subscribers and adding people to their email list (and therefore their own audience) that they are then able to market to directly for free!
In its most basic form, an influencer is someone who influences people, so it could be you or me, or the couple down the road who influence me to not air my dirty laundry in the street for everyone to hear.
A social media influencer is someone who has built a loyal following through their online content creation. They often have large followings on social media, strong engagement – meaning they get lots of likes, comments and shares on their posts – as well as a targeted audience who trust and listen to them, meaning they have the power to affect their audiences purchasing decisions and their awareness of particular brands.
A micro-influencer is a content creator with a smaller following but the number this relates to differs depending on where you read. Generally, a micro-influencer tends to be used for someone with less than say 10,000 followers but I’ve also seen it suggested that it is someone with less than 2,000 people following them, as well as less than 100,000 followers! In my opinion, that big of a following does not a micro-influencer make.
Influencer marketing is when a brand or business partner with an influencer in order to increase sales, brand awareness or increase leads within a target audience.
A brand or business can pay these influencers to promote a product, service, or just the company in general, in various ways, from an Instagram post or Story, to a sponsored blog post or a video on YouTube.
Influencer marketing is a really effective way to quickly build a brand online and raise awareness. Consumers are much more likely to trust recommendations from someone they already know and trust more than a brand itself, and as Forbes points out, trust is paramount in the relationship between influencers and their followers. An effective influencer posts about things they truly like or believe in, which means they retain the trust of their followers and marketing to them is more successful.
Influencer marketing is a brilliant form of advertising as the audience is already there and gets the brand, product or service in front of new eyes.
Most influencer marketing campaigns fall into one of two categories: either brand awareness or specific actions such as clicks, sales or subscribers, although some aim to do both.
Often, when a brand is looking to work with a blogger or social media influencer they will look to those with larger followings, ruling out many of those who could be exactly what they need for a successful marketing campaign.
What is actually more important than hundreds of thousands of followers is the relevance of the influencer and their audience to the brand. For example, a brand who want to promote their yarn is likely to get so much more in return from a partnership with an arts and crafts influencer with just a few thousand engaged followers, than with a general lifestyle blogger or celebrity with a huge amount more who has no specific genre.
As an influencer’s follower numbers grow then their audience becomes less targeted with people with all kinds of interests, opinions, and requirements who are just a passive follower of them. So even though a micro-influencer may have much smaller numbers to promote to, the fact that they have a more niche audience means that advertising to them is likely to be more effective.
Of course, someone with hundreds of thousands of social media followers could create awareness of your brand to their followers, but if they are not targeted, their post is unlikely to be highly successful in making sales or creating leads.
A smaller influencer is also more likely to be engaged with their audience and respond to all comments and questions and have built up more of a relationship with them rather than someone with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers. Celebrities or famous YouTubers can often seem quite unobtainable and live an unrelatable lifestyle, whereas micro-influencers are often seen as a friend or at the very least more relatable and someone they have more access to.
They will also know what their audience is likely to be interested in and will respond to, unlike someone who may not even bother reading and reacting to any engagement or who may be managed by a company meaning any interaction is less personal.
Research by Markerly found that as an influencer’s follower total rises, the rate of engagement (likes and comments) with followers decreases. Those with less than 1,000 followers generally received likes on their posts 8% of the time. Users with 10 million+ followers only received likes 1.6% of the time. There is a clear downward correlation between follower sizes and post likes.
Influencers with smaller audiences are often more likely to put more effort into the work they do for brands. Obviously this is quite a big generalisation, but Kim Kardashian doesn’t have to put a lot of effort into promoting a brand she is working with to command high pay for the work, and yes, anything she recommends to her huge audience is likely to increase sales massively for the brand, but at an extremely high cost.
Someone with a few thousand followers is much more likely to work hard at creating great content for the brand so that the brand is happy with their work and may come back to work with them again and again. Plus they are much more likely to chat with their followers afterwards, answer any questions they have and work to increase engagement. You’re much more likely to get quality content from micro-influencers.
You want the influencer you work with to be passionate about your product or service, and a content creator with millions of followers can command high earnings whilst doing very little to engage their audience or create a story behind a product or brand. A smaller influencer with a targeted and engaged audience is likely to only work with brands or products they are interested in so that they don’t jeopardise the mutual relationship they have. Kim Kardashian doesn’t care if I unfollow her because she’s promoting fat-loss lollipops.
Buying followers is still something that is rife, particularly on Instagram. Some Influencers with massive followings have been shown to have tons and tons of fake followers. This means lots of their followers are likely to be bots, meaning they are not at all targeted and definitely won’t be buying anything from the brand!
Micro-influencers are much more likely to have relationships with their followers that they are able to nurture as they are not too large and therefore difficult to manage. This means that often smaller influencers have a more dedicated following who are interested in them and regularly interact. Feeling like you can chat to an online influencer will often mean that they are able to inspire you to try something new based just on their recommendations.
You can work with, for example, ten highly targeted influencers with an engaged audience for the same cost as working with one with a much higher number of followers. Not only is the brand going to get a lot more people with different audiences promoting them and producing varied content, but they are likely to be able to pay much, much less overall than if working with one massive influencer.
Micro-influencers are much more accessible to brands who want to promote online using content creators. They tend to offer audiences who are highly engaged, dedicated, and who are looking for recommendations from those they trust.
Micro-influencers’ work is important to them, and they have spent time building up their own brand and taking the time to engage and nurture their audiences. They are more likely to offer an authenticity that is often not found with major celebrity influencers, making them more relatable to people following them.
All of this means that brands can work with micro-influencers to build up their brand awareness, increase sales, traffic and leads, but at a smaller price. Finding bloggers and online content creators whose audiences are targeted to the brand, who are passionate about what they do and sharing things they like with their audiences, can make for a really effective marketing campaign.
If a brand is new to Influencer Marketing and still a bit clueless about it all, then it can be helpful to partner with an influencer agency to find out how to go about it all and discover lots of great influencers to work with.
This is a paid partnership with Intellifluence.
Welcome to Birds and Lilies! I'm Lou: mother, blogger and freelance writer. This is my lifestyle blog, where I talk about motherhood, infertility and IVF, beauty, my love for food and wine, as well as my thoughts about stuff, and our real-life and travel adventures.
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