Social media and businesses on social media are beaming with the success of influencer marketing. And why won’t they? Influencer marketing has been a hot topic for a long time now. Working with influencers has worked wonders for most, while for the others it is still in process. No marketing strategy is now complete with influencer marketing. But there’s still something missing. 

When influencer marketing began, people lacked awareness about it and underestimated its potential. The lack of awareness and underestimation still prevails, not about influencer marketing but maybe about micro-influencers. Brands always want famous personalities endorsing their products because the stereotype is the more followers an influencer has, the higher is their capacity to engage with people. While this statement is not entirely false, it is indeed true that it overshadows the potential of micro-influencers. 

Let’s look at a common difference here to under a little about micro-influencers.

What do people think about micro-influencers?

Micro-influencers are individuals who are self-acclaimed influencers with no experience in the field or niche. They are in the business because they heard that being an influencer pays off well and they get to keep free stuff. And they are ideally useful just for small businesses. Pretty harsh, isn’t it? But this is the thought that prevails amongst most people. 

If we assess the situation to understand why people think this way about influencers, then we can conclude that initially, this was the case. Since there’s no gatekeeping in this field, no authorities, no assessment as such required to certify someone as an influencer, in the beginning, there were a lot of such people who claimed to be influencers because, to be honest, influencer marketing was the new shiny toy. So how to avoid this? We have only one word for this: Research. 

What are micro-influencers?

Micro-influencers are individuals who have a following between 10,000 to 1,00,000. Technically, all people care about, the number of followers. But with micro-influencers, that should not be the case because they have a lot more to offer. They follow a particular niche and if you follow any such micro-influencers on your Instagram, you will notice that the moment they shift from their niche, it impacts their following and engagement. So, they try to stick to their original niche. This only means that you can expect 100% authenticity with respect to content and niche from micro-influencers. And to burst the biggest myth, let’s just put this out straight that they are suitable for both big and small businesses. 

Now, do you agree that the power of micro-influencers is underestimated? There are easy ways in which they can help you generate brand awareness, increase sales, and even build your social media presence. They can do everything that macro and mega influencers can but what matters are your goals. There are different ways in which you can use micro-influencers to fulfill your agendas. Once you have set your goals, you can use some or even all of these ways to increase your sales with micro-influencer marketing. 

1. Host contests through them

Contests are the best way to increase engagement. Both for the influencers and you. Small businesses can make big profits out of this because this is an economical strategy that gives a great ROI. 

The benefit of influencer marketing with micro-influencers is that they have very engaging followers. Host contests through their page in a way that the audience is directed to your page or involves any activity of liking, sharing, or commenting. The theme of the contest can be best decided by carefully researching the audience of the influencer. Their mode of engagement can be stronger through comments, stories, or shares. Whichever it is, make sure that your contest revolves around that mode. 

2. Start affiliate marketing for long-term benefits

Affiliate marketing is a great way to pay only for the benefits that you receive from the influencers. Have your micro-influencers promote your product and give them a code that can help the audience to avail of a discount. By tracking the code you can understand which influencer gives you the most amount of sales. If you are a small business, then this is the way to save big bucks and still achieve good results on your campaign. 

Affiliate marketing vs influencer marketing has always been a hot topic. But when you balance them out together, you are capable of achieving better results. It is highly cost-effective and hence you can partner with multiple micro-influencers. You are paying them not for clicks or views but strictly for the sales made through them, however, that still depends on the kind of strategy that you use. 

3. Have them share their stories

Advertising today is all about storytelling. The core value of being an influencer is transparency and making people one with their lives. This is not a norm created by businesses but a natural environment created by social media and their users. 

When micro-influencers promote your business, have them tell their story revolving around your product and the experience that it brings. Experience is all that sells. People take the influencer’s word and once they show that they are having a good time with your product, their audience will expect the same for themselves. Just talking mindlessly about the product or sharing a picture with no context, cannot do much good for your brand. But a personal story shared with the audience by their favorite influencers will definitely go a long way. 

4. Start a brand hashtag

Hashtags are not just a trend now but instead they form identities and recognition for most in their own way. People start new communities and lead movements with the help of hashtags. You can start a campaign and designate a hashtag to it. This campaign idea has proven to be very successful for small businesses as it helps to put them on the ‘social media map’. 

Since working with micro-influencers is economical and efficient, you can partner with more and more of them. The brand hashtag can be communicated by the influencer through a mini blog in the caption to provide the context. Even better if the hashtag is catchy. Through hashtags, you can increase your visibility and create a community of your own. 

5. Organize meet and greet

Meet and greets are a great way for your brand to get recognition and for influencers to get closer to their audience. This is important because there is the audience that you will target eventually. Meet and greets are personal. They are purely fashioned in the interests of the audience and your or the influencer’s followers. When people meet their favorite influencers they click pictures with them, tag them, tag your brand and this increases your reach and brings a high amount of awareness. 

You can organize meet and greets for certain occasions like the launch of a new collection. Meet and greets can be location-specific too. And at such times, local micro-influencers are the best to work with. 

6. Ask them to review your brand

Reviews are loved by all. They can encourage or discourage a consumer’s purchasing decision. People want to know where their money is going and if the product is worth investing in. The only way to find that out is by reading reviews. They give them validation and affirm their faith in your product. So imagine how encouraging it would be to receive reviews from influencers. 

7. Invite them to brand events

Even marketing is a great way for customer engagement and building personal connections. Having influencers present at your events will create awareness and more people will pay a visit to the event, for your brand as well as for the influencers. When micro-influencers posts about these events it becomes easier to judge the footfall too. Instagram’s story feature has poll options which are great to understand people’s thoughts. Something as simple as that can tell you how many people are interested in the event. 

To make it more exciting, you can create a contest on the basis of the event where the winning individual can join the event with the influencer. There are ways to spice it up and you must try all of them. Constant updates about it on social media days prior to the event can help you generate more offline traffic. 

8. Do live streams with them

Live streams are super fun and you can take it up a notch by introducing new twists to it. You can hold a live stream on your page and create awareness about it through the influencer’s page. You can play various games and try to engage the audience in it as players and not just spectators. Live streams are helpful to cover events too on YouTube or any other social media platform. You can try to partner with micro-influencers on YouTube as well because they can help you build your YouTube community because it is another brilliant way to monetize your content. Involve as much video content as you can. Try all mediums, Facebook, Instagram live, stories, IGTV, and now, even reels. 

The journey of an influencer from being a micro-influencer to a macro or mega influencer is crucial for them as well as for businesses who wish to partner with them. The benefit of micro-influencers is that brands are their primary source of income and not ad placements, whereas for bigger influencers ad placements are equally important. Hence, micro-influencers tend to give more and more attention to brand collaborations and keep it as exquisite as possible. 

WORD Marketplace is an influencer marketing platform that lets you choose influencers for promoting. So if you are wondering where to look for these influencers that we spoke so much about, now you know it. The entire process right from publishing your marketing brief to making the payment, everything is controlled by you. Hence, it is assured that your experience will be seamless and hassle-free. 

This is how they lay the foundation of their career and it certainly shapes their future as an influencer. The common trait between all the influencers is that no matter what phase they are in, their awareness and dedication towards their job can only go up. So instead of comparing their number of followers, you just have to scale their authenticity and honesty towards their work.