The verdict is absolutely clear: If you’re looking for ‘hyper-engaged’ audiences on a low budget from your social media campaigns - Then you’re better off leveraging some key micro-influencers than going for ‘big name’ celebrities or macro-influencers!
Brad Fay, cofounder, COO and lead researcher of the Keller Fay Group says: “Our research shows that real life influencers who are passionate about what they are recommending have significantly more buying conversations, and consumers are more likely to act on their recommendations.”
The research conducted by Keller Fay Group and Experticity reveals that micro-influencers have 22.2% more conversations each week regarding recommendations on what to buy, in comparison to average consumer.
Below are a few more stats surrounding Micro-influencers:
- A Google study shows that 70% of teenage YouTube audiences are influenced more by YouTubers than traditional celebrities.
- 82% of consumers are “highly likely” to follow a recommendation made by a micro–influencer.
- Instagram Influencers with less than 1,000 followers received likes on their posts 8% of the time; whereas those with 10 million+ followers only received likes 1.6% of the time:
Influencers with less than 1,000 followers generate comments about 0.5% of the time, compared to 0.04% for those with 10M+ followers – a difference of nearly 13X:
Now that we have enough reasons to believe in the power of Micro-influencers; let’s dive into creating an effective Micro-Influencer Campaign, which brings optimal value for every dollar you spend for your social marketing budget:
1. Setting Clear Goals & Metrics
Before you even jump into searching for your Micro-influencers, it’s essential to ascertain what kind of metrics and goals you need from your campaigns.
Are you looking to increase brand awareness? Then you may need to grow your social media following; your target then could be reaching a speculated number of social media mentions.
If you intend to boost your sales, then you may want the campaign to designate a coupon code for the influencer in question. It could be any other goals such as; stirring up more engagement from the users; or increasing the customer retention rates – These desired outcomes should be carefully listed before you come up with any micro-influencer driven campaigns.
Setting up goals upfront can be a huge advantage, as you can always measure your progress while the campaign is active and make necessary adjustments as you go along.
2. What’s Your Preferred Social Media Vehicle?
Next up; you should decide which platform is best suited to run your social media marketing campaign. Every social media platform has its unique strength, style and appeal with regards to its audience. For instance, if your user personas are more of teenagers or young adults, then Snapchat or Instagram may be more appropriate than going for Facebook or LinkedIn.
Likewise, if you’re into videos then YouTube or Facebook could be one of your choices. For photos you can go with Instagram and Pinterest; whereas if you’re serious about putting out articles, or text as content, then LinkedIn fits the bill.
As popular social media platforms are already a crowded, noisy space to start with – you may also want to tap an upcoming new social channel or lesser known social platform to find your own sweet spot – given your target audience and your marketing objectives, platforms like Medium, Tumblr or even Quora can work as an effective platform for your campaigns.
3. Finding The Right Micro-Influencers
When looking for the right micro-influencers, ‘relevancy’ is the key. It’s no use leveraging an influencer from a different industry with 10,000 random followers; with few actually interested in your product or your ideas to start with.
Instead you’re getting more bang for your buck even through a small following - say 500 followers of a micro-influencer who’s working within your industry; as these targeted audiences are already engaged, invested and interested in your offers and stories.
A quick way to look for a suitable micro-influencer is to jump into each social media channel and do a good old ‘manual search’ by entering your preferred ‘key word’.
For instance, below is a result of a quick search performed in Facebook on keyword ‘food’. One of the results is of an influencer/food enthusiasts/ chef named Yaman Agrawal who has over 891k likes on his Facebook page ‘Cooking Shooking’ and 0.8 million followers in his You Tube channel. If your industry/product/niche has anything to do with food or cooking for that matter; then Yaman could be your appropriate micro-influencer:
And similar searches can be performed on other channels such as Instagram or Twitter. Below is an example of an advanced search on the keyword “food” on “people”, which gives a result of various influencers you can further explore to suit your needs:
If you’re looking for better results and are willing to spend a bit on your influencer ‘hunt’, then you can always opt for an influencer marketing platform. These platforms are equipped with valuable datasets on a broad list of influencers, record of their past collaboration and reviews; which can help you make informed decisions on whom to select as your stellar micro-influencer.
Some of the popular influencer marketing platforms are; NeoReach, Advowire, Influence.co, Klear, Grapevine etc. You can also find innovative platforms such as BrandBrief which can attract right influencers for you by crowdsourcing content submissions.
When a content brief/campaign is posted by you on their website, it gets published in the BrandBrief Influencer App notifying influencers in your niche, demography, target locations and genres. The platform has the option to attract influencers from various social platforms to find the right one for your needs.
4. Measuring Your Campaign Success
Once you’ve entered into a contract with a suitable micro-influencer and your campaign gets underway; it’s time to measure your success.
You can measure engagements and ‘clickthroughs’ in real time and assess/compare which of your influencers (if you go for multiple influencers) are engaging more followers or ticking most of the boxes laid out previously in your campaign goals.
It’s crucial to review the performance of the campaign and ascertain how the influencers affected your results – As this helps you to devise/alter your campaign ideas/strategy and also helps to keep a tab on the most effective influencers for future campaigns.
For any micro-influencer marketing campaign, one key metrics is the ‘Campaign Reach’ – a crucial yardstick to see how far your content/brand message has travelled. This can be assessed by measuring Key Performing Indicators (KPIs) such as: The number of followers; Impressions – as in the number of times your brand message lands in front of your target audience; and the total amount of traffic the influencer drives to your site.
Much of this data can be easily obtained from any analytical tools geared to read social metrics, such as; Buzzsumo, Brandwatch, Buffer, Klout, Google Analytics, etc.
To Sum It Up…
Finding success with your micro-influencer campaigns depends on the clarity of your marketing goals; the right selection of your social media channels and most importantly the relationships, rapport and partnership you build with your influencers – as their support can take your campaign to a whole new level and bring highest return on your investment!
Call Andy Fox (me) on (03) 5249 5570 or email andy@element7digital.com.au
Our Website is www.element7digital.com.au
