By Petia Abdur-Razzaaq
Principal
The concept of influencer marketing isn’t a new one. Back in the day before social media, we had celebrities endorsing products on product packaging and via all forms of traditional media, and it worked!
The equation was a simple one…Americans, in general, tend to love their favorite actor, baseball player, singer, etc. As a result, if that person took a picture and said that they enjoyed a particular product or service, their fans believed them and ran in droves to purchase whatever it was.
Fast-forward to 2019 and while celebrity endorsements still exist, times have changed. For starters, social media has created a platform where anyone can become “insta-famous.” All you need to do is create your profiles, establish a credible personal brand, build an engaged following, and begin to have authentic conversations with your tribe about …whatever. We are in the age of the micro-influencer.
To be more specific, a micro-influencer is an individual who has a following on social media of up to about 50K. 2019 also saw the rise of the nano-influencer; this is someone with a following as low as 1K, who has trackable, convertible influence with his/her audience. Micro-influencer marketing is the strategic collaboration between brands and influencers to promote a specific product or service on social media.
You are probably asking yourself why you would want to collaborate with someone who has as little as 1K followers, right? Well, here’s your answer!
According to a recent study in Ad Week, engagement tends to drop the more followers an influencer has. Those with audiences smaller than 1,000 typically have engagement rates of around 15 percent. That means a person with 1,000 engaged fans might earn 150 likes on each post.
People with 1,000 to 9,999 followers often have engagement rates around 7.4 percent. That means a person with 2,000 might also get around 150 likes per post. Engagement rates fall to just 2.4 percent by the time a person has more than 100,000 fans, meaning they might only get 2,400 likes per post (Source: izea.com)
The value of a micro-influencer, however, goes far beyond “likes”. As a general rule, they are viewed as trusted advisors by their audience and have a high level of credibility with them. For this reason, even though they do charge collaboration fees, you can’t pay a micro-influencer to endorse a product or service that they have never experienced and don’t believe in. This level of authenticity, in turn, inevitably leads to high conversion rates and trackable ROI for the brands who work with them.
Here are some interesting stats that make an excellent case for influencer marketing (source” Influencer Marketing Hub)
