Bigger the better not anymore: Micro Influencers are the real deal!

According to a report by Markerly, Instagram influencers with lesser than 1,000 followers have a like rate of 8 per cent, while influencers with a follower base of 1,000 – 10,000 have a like rate of 4 per cent.This gets interesting, influencers with 10,000 to 100,000 have a like rate of 2.4 per cent, this decreases further to 1.7 per cent like rate for those with a following of 1 million to 10 million.

With reducing audience attention spans and increasing product awareness, micro-influencers are proving to be more relevant for brands in reaching out to their target audience. And in case of small or niche businesses, micro-influencers are able to provide a targeted reach, higher engagement, and cost-efficiencies all together.

So what is it exactly that’s making micro-influencers

High Trust Factor

Micro influencers generally develop a niche follower base that consists of people from their close-knit circles –colleagues, friends,and local acquaintances – as well as people with similar interests and passions. As a result of this, their content appears more personalized, practical, and proximate (in case they have to take some physical action) for their followers. The authenticity factor of the content also goes up because the followers have seen these influencers putting time and energy in cultivating their passions and sharing genuine information with their followers over time.

Relatable

71 per cent of consumers are more likely to make a purchase based on social media referral. For instance, when an established travel blogger carries backpack of your brand it is very likely to, either get overshadowed by all the glamour in their posts or come across as scripted.

How many of us actually got a Netflix subscription after seeing Tanmay Bhat pull off a Narcos video? Compare that with a travel influencer with 500 to 1,000 niche followers, doing a product review for the backpack, they come as more relatable and reliable. Users are more likely to take notice and have a healthy conversation with a friend.
Agreed, when it comes to brand building and creating a mass conversation, celebrities are still a brand’s best bet. But when it comes to specific actions from a targeted audience, micro-influencers are quickly proving their worth.

Social Network Algorithms

Social networks like Facebook and Instagram are tweaking their algorithmsto limit organic reach of posts. So, if an influencer boasting 10,000 followers was a part of your campaign, it is very likely that only a certain percentage of those followers actually received your message. And not all those who would actually end up seeing the message might be your ideal TG persona, which would hurt the ROI of your marketing campaign deeply.

Affordable

Many influencers have grown quickly in popularity and have assumed the role of social celebrities in a short span of time. Because of their growing stature, brands with limited budgets may not be able to afford collaborating with these influencers. Usually influencers charge per campaign and when celebrities are involved they charge per tweets, with their fee ranging from 10 thousand to lakhs. On the other hand, micro influencers are usually up and coming and hence are more flexible with their modes of collaboration, and are not always necessarily interested in financial remunerations, instead they also appreciate exclusive brand opportunities, freebies and giveaways, and cause based opportunities.

And while micro-influencersare definitely a potential boon for small and local businesses, it is time bigger brands too start considering their power, especially on visual platforms like Instagram and YouTube.

How to find the relevant micro influencers for your brand?

While it’s easy to find and collaborate with celebrities and popular influencers, when it comes to micro-influencers, influencer discoveryand outreach platforms like Qoruz can really come in handy.

For example, here’s how a beauty and fashion brand based out of Mumbai looking to do an Instagram campaign could find relevant micro-influencers.

Step 1: Select country as India, and choose Instagram as the platform.

Step 2: From the list of categories, select ‘Style and Fashion’.

Step 3: To further narrow down the search, let’s put some filters like influencer location, follower range, and engagement levels. We select Mumbai, 1k-10k, and ‘High’ and ‘Medium’ engagement levels respectively*.

*In Qoruz terminology, engagement based classification follows the below statistical rule:

Nomenclature Qoruz Influence Index Engagement Levels

Celebrities, Experts and Popular Influencers 8-10 Very High, High

Micro-influencers 5-7 High, Medium

Normal Social Users 1-4 Low, Very Low

Step 4: We can further sort the influencers basis campaign objective. Here, there could be two ways to sort – more female reach or more engagement. In fact, a cross examination between the two sets would give us the best results.

This way, using Qoruz’ vast database of influencers and smart algorithm, we’ve found more than 80 potentially relevant influencers for our sample brand, within 5 minutes.

To know more about Qoruz, check out their website.