Influencer marketing has become one of the most effective customer engagement strategies in recent years. According to the State of Influencer Marketing 2020 study, companies are getting $5.78 for every dollar spent on influencer services, and in some cases, that figure has risen to $18.
Such results can only be expected when partnering with quality accounts and the right Influencers.
Today we're going to talk about the effectiveness of using micro and macro influencers in campaigns and when brands should resort to one or the other.
Macro- and Micro-Influencers: who are they?
Macro influencers are famous bloggers, celebrities, and other public figures with more than 1,000,000 subscribers. These influencers reach a large audience, access to which usually has an equally hefty price tag. Main advantage: Good for increasing brand awareness and prestige.
The benefits of working with macro influencers:
✅ Getting a valuable brand association with celebrities;
✅ Effective PR;
✅ The opportunity to reach a large audience in a short period of time;
✅ Easy to organize: campaigns with macro bloggers are usually conducted with the help of agents, and the bloggers themselves already know how to properly present and sell the product.
Compared to macro influencers, micro influencers have a much smaller audience (5,000-50,000), but brands find this group much more effective in terms of engagement and trust. This is because micro-influencers have a closer connection with their subscribers and often target a specific niche. Eighty-two percent of consumers are more likely to buy a product recommended by a micro influencer.
Benefits of working with micro influencers:
✅ Accessibility;
✅ High level of engagement;
✅ Authentic content;
✅ Niche audience = high conversion rate;
✅ Micro-influencers pay full attention to the product they advertise, making the recommendation seem useful and relevant to their subscribers;
✅ Easy to find with sites and platforms (e.g., instajet.io).
What to consider when choosing between Macro- and Micro Influencers
Choose macro influencers if you care about:
😎 Image and reach. Choose macro influencers if the brand image and reach are your primary goals.
👂 Macro bloggers help build brand awareness.
👨🏻🔬 👩🏻🎨 Diverse audiences. Working with macro influencers allows you to reach several categories of your potential target audience at once, so if you have several audience segments, this is the right option.
⬇️ Low risk. Macro influencers usually have a history of working with agencies and brands and demonstrate high professionalism.
🤙 Proactivity. If you have a specific vision for pitching your product, macro bloggers can quickly understand the task and implement it professionally.
Average Engagement Rate (ER) in 2018 among 100,000 accounts in the sample
When to choose micro influencers:
💸 Limited budget. Microblog postings are much cheaper but in many ways just as effective as postings in macroblogs.
🙇♂️ Engagement. Micro influencers have higher engagement rates because of their close connection with followers.
👩🏼🎤 Niche Market. Many niche brands benefit from micro bloggers who focus on relevant content and gather a community interested in a particular topic.
📍 Geotargeting. Look for micro influencers who live in the region or city where your business operates and have a large percentage of the audience from the same region/city among their subscribers. With such bloggers, you can run placements with geo-targeting.
🙂 Easy to attract: Unlike macro bloggers, micro bloggers don't get as many offers and aren't spoiled with money, so they're more likely to accept an offer to promote your product.
What to avoid when choosing and how to check the quality of a blogger's account
❌ Bought followers. Use additional verification tools provided by special platforms, for example, on the instajet.io service there is an open catalog with already verified bloggers and prices.
❌ Bought likes and comments. You can check it yourself. Check the comments on your chosen blogger's latest posts. If you see fake and irrelevant comments from the same people, it could be a sign of bought comments.
✅ A good indicator is 5-10% likes from the number of subscribers.
✅ There should be at least one decent comment per 100 likes.
❌ Bought views. There should always be more views than likes. If the situation is the opposite, the likes are tampered with.
✅ On average, a normal number of views is considered to be in the range of 20-30% of the number of subscribers.
❌ Lack of Stories and Highlights. If the blogger does not post Stories and has no Highlights, it's best not to buy placements on his account — few people can build a close and trusting relationship with the audience without posting Stories.
How else do you evaluate the quality of an account?
1) Calculate the Engagement Rate (ER) to assess the quality of an account's audience.
2) Ask the blogger for screenshots of their reach and audience structure, and don't ask for placements from people who aren't prepared to send you such screenshots. To save you time, many services offer such information themselves, such as instajet.io, a service that provides an extensive catalog with the ability to filter by geography, audience gender, topic, etc. Once you have chosen an influencer in the catalog, go through the detailed information about their audience and how much this data coincides with your target audience. All the bloggers in the InstaJet catalog are checked and verified.
3) Find the blogger's past advertising integrations and study not only how the blogger presents information in those integrations, but also how the audience responds to them.
4) Pay attention to the regularity rate, the ratio of subscribers to the blogger and vice versa.
Let’s wrap up
In terms of Influencer marketing, micro and macro influencers are extremely effective, and each type is good in its own way. Which type you choose depends on your campaign goals and budget. In general, macro influencers are better for increasing brand awareness, while micro influencers are better for increasing engagement and conversions.
Haven't found the right blogger yet?
Have a look at the instajet.io catalog — all bloggers are already verified and ready to cooperate.
