There’s no doubt we’re in the age of social media, which has become a key channel for brands to communicate with potential customers. However, even though social networks have all the information needed to target communication according to each user’s interests, they can’t escape ad saturation and the “skip ad” button.
This is where we see the importance and effectiveness of influencer marketing, the power of recommendation. Because in the digital era, consumers are no longer mere recipients: they’re part of brands’ communication, share opinions and get involved in their corporate narrative, which significantly boosts a brand’s reputation and, therefore, the sales of its products or services. But pay attention! Because the ones who really hold the power of recommendation are micro-influencers. Do you know them?
Micro-influencers are users with no more than 100,000 followers, which allows them to influence a large number of social media users while conveying a sense of closeness. They tend to interact with their followers and frequently reply to their messages and comments, creating something close to a sense of friendship. This gives their communication more weight in their followers’ decisions and makes their content feel more authentic. And we’re not just talking about credibility, but brand loyalty.
But that’s not all. The value of micro-influencers lies in their targeting power: unlike a big influencer or celebrity, micro profiles are closer to their followers, sharing their interests, family situation, age range and often even location. This is what ensures brands that their influencer marketing campaigns are properly targeted to their real audience, avoiding wasted effort and investment on users who are far from becoming potential customers.
So let’s consider this: with our favorite macro-influencer we’ll reach many more users than with a micro-influencer, but what kind of users? How worthwhile is it to reach the followers of Ibai Llanos or Dulceida? How much investment do you need, and how many of them are your potential customers? And bear in mind that a story doesn’t reach 100% of their followers… In other words, if you have a baby products brand or you’re promoting a postpartum anti-stretch-mark cosmetic, for example, is every follower of a big influencer a potential customer? Can you imagine how diverse they are? On the other hand, a mom with 60,000 followers who shared her pregnancy, birth and postpartum experience and builds her content around caring for her baby: how many of her followers are like her and interested in her content? Probably most of them. And few teenagers with no potential or interest in buying these products will follow her, right?
Or, for example, if you have a restaurant in Madrid, doesn’t it make more sense to work with several micro-influencers with 20,000 followers who live in Madrid and often share experiences in the city, rather than a macro-influencer whose audience is spread across Spain and much of the world? By targeting your reach, you connect with an audience that can become your end customer, because you know they’re interested in the content your chosen micro-influencer shares. It’s about adding value for the right users and maximizing your reach. Because for what you’d invest in one macro-influencer, you can work with several micro profiles that offer similar or even greater reach, and of higher quality.
Then comes the big question… How much do these campaigns cost? Are they expensive? Aren’t influencer campaigns only for big brands? Well, this is where we have to tell you you’re completely wrong. Working with micro-influencers is possible, feasible and affordable for any company.
But how do you choose the ideal influencer? If you want the right advocate for your brand, you need to look at more than follower count: their demographics (location, gender and age, among other indicators), topics and area of expertise, community characteristics, content quality, communication style and values… and the icing on the cake, their engagement rate. A micro-influencer’s engagement rate with followers is significantly higher than a macro profile’s, and this metric also measures the quality of results you can expect from your influencer campaigns.
Only by combining these qualitative aspects with quantitative ones can you select the right profiles. But beware of follower counts! Some profiles have large numbers of fake followers because they bought bots, which is why it’s also important to measure the quality of their audience and look at their engagement rate.
Once you’re clear on which type of influencer is most profitable for your brand and what to look for in your ideal profile, it’s time to get to work. But managing, finding and negotiating with each profile can be very tedious and take around 10 hours per profile. That’s why there are alternatives on the market that make management simpler and faster, like the FuelYourBrands platform, which also provides real-time results and has a professional team to help you stay focused on your campaign goals. FuelYourBrands aims to help brands match with the most effective and profitable micro-influencers and find true brand lovers, optimizing resources and cutting campaign setup time from 10 hours to 10 minutes.
