Influence is a huge form of currency in the social media world. Careers are now forged from this quality alone and brands are clabbering for influencers to sprinkle their fairy dust mix of engagement, reach and brand loyalty over products and services through endorsement. There are influencers for seemingly every niche – beauty, travel, fitness, food, parenting and fashion, to name a handful of the most popular. 80% of marketers find influencer marketing effective and even B2B brands have great success with this method.
Whereas in the early days brands were putting budget behind campaigns with celebrities and so-called mega influencers, in 2019 the buzz is very much around the rise of one group of social media personalities: micro-influencers. When you consider that a single branded Instagram post with someone who has 100k+ followers can cost 1000s of pounds, the appeal of working with those who have a more modest following is easy to see.
Plus, there are arguments about the connection between an influencer and their followers. Advocates of micro-influencers argue that they have a more genuine, authentic relationship with their fanbase and a better chance at swaying their buying decisions as a result. Endorsement like this is known as peer recommendation, since micro-influencers tends to have tight-knit networks that include friends and close acquaintances – both from real life and online. A classic case of quality over quantity, essentially.
But which actually represents the best value for your brand? Is it better to run campaigns with an established Instagram celebrity, or to put your faith, and budget, into a handful of people with less reach but a more ‘real’ presence?
We dig into these questions in this article, weighing up the differences and benefits of micro-influencers vs mega-influencers.
What’s the difference between a micro influencer and a mega influencer?
The distinction between a micro influencer and a mega influencer usually comes down to follower numbers, but where the line gets drawn is nowhere near universally agreed by marketers. To make matters even more complicated, the terms nano influencers and macro influencers are also used, for those who are not quite micro and not quite mega respectively.
In our opinion, a good broad definition for micro influencer is someone with a following of between 1000 – 100,000. Beyond 100,000 and you’re in mega influencer territory. Celebrities that are influencers by default like the Kardashians, who make a jaw-dropping amount of money per post, are at the very extreme end of this realm. Most mega influencers are not celebrities in the traditional sense, but they are notable social media stars with a dedicated fanbase, having made their name and career through a presence on social platforms, usually Instagram or YouTube.
Engagement figures also come into play in these definitions. Those with a smaller, highly niche audience have better levels of likes and comments per post compared to mega influencers, who make up for this through greater reach. Always check that there is healthy engagement on an someone’s account before considering a partnership, looking out for signs of fake followers and paid likes.
So, how should you pick which influencers to work with?
Deciding whether to work with micro or mega-influencers comes down to your brand, the specific campaign you are running and your budget. These are some of the main points to consider before approaching any influencers.
Costs
As already mentioned, even a single post by a mega influencer can take a hefty chunk out of your social media marketing budget. If you are a small business, a micro influencer is going to be a better match financially, with a reasonable fee and still the likelihood of good results. Smaller influencers are also more willing to promote free samples of your product without a monetary fee – when things are gifted with no strings attached, as opposed to ads which are paid for and signed off by brands.
Mega influencers are only really an option if you have more money to play with or to put behind a specific one-off campaign. That being said, it is worth taking into account the additional energy of managing relationships with multiple influencers, should you work solely with accounts that have a more modest following. As a Business of Fashion op-ed recently quipped, ‘It takes an army of micro-influencers to generate impact’. This is where software that manages your influencer relationships and content creation agreements comes in handy.
Communication and flexibility
We’re going to contradict our last point, in a way. Yes, it is harder and more time-consuming to source and manage a group of micro influencers but on an individual level, up-and-coming social media personalities are easier to collaborate with. They are often still carving out their career, sometimes alongside other jobs, eager to devote energy to brand partnerships. Clear, timely communication is important to them as they strive to make a professional impression, which is only positive from a brand point of view.
Those who have already achieved social media fame have usually gone on to develop sidelines to their business, which take up their attention and make them less reliant on actively seeking out and nurturing brand partnerships. You might even need to go through an agent or manager, as you would for a fully-fledged celebrity.
Then there is the issue of exclusivity. Mega influencers already have a list of commitments with other brands, who will have requested certain dates in the content calendar be reserved for their campaigns, leaving you in the queue to get your partnership launched. So on flexibility, micro-influencers have the upper hand too.
Engagement vs Reach
Figures universally show that micro influencers come out on top for engagement, averaging 8-15% while rates drop down to as little as .05% for mega-influencers. Why does it tail off so dramatically? The bigger your audience, the more diverse their interests, and the less chance your content is going to appeal to everyone you’ve amassed as a follower.
A smaller community also allows micro influencers to be much more active in engaging with their fanbase and remain personal while they are at it. They have the time to respond to individual comments, which means greater opportunities to generate discussion about the brands they are working with. See those conversations in the comments as a space for soft selling, where influencers can spread their magic a little further, helping move potential customers further down your sales funnel towards decision-making and actual purchases.
While there is a lot to be said for the engagement on offer from micro influencers, the reach of social media stars is not to be sniffed at, especially if brand awareness is your number one goal. They can introduce your products to a huge audience in just a single post. You would need to work with at least a handful, realistically even more than that, of micro-influencers to achieve something close to their titanic level of reach.
As well as giving a great boost to brand visibility generally, this can be particularly useful for new product launches, getting a campaign hashtag out there, or a rebrand. Mega-influencers are seen as ‘tastemakers’, so capitalising on their vast audience at these stages, when you want to attract people at the top of the sales funnel, is a clever strategy.
Authenticity is key
This is the big one. Consumers are smart and questioning. When they see a branded post, the first thing they are going to evaluate is whether this influencer actually uses the featured product. The trust has to be there for someone to be influenced into buying from or showing interest in a brand. For instance, a feed that is cluttered with sponsored posts is an instant knock to authenticity, arousing suspicion that an influencer focuses on creating content for money rather than for passion.
Authenticity is a dealbreaker and the accounts with less than 100,000 followers and an engaged, segmented community are, generally, where you find it. They are immediately more relatable than someone who has amassed near celebrity status. We are instinctively more trusting of the former – for the most post.
However, the right mega-influencer can still have a hugely trusting fanbase, if they have been discerning about who they work with and preserved an honest presence, true to their founding niche. More status comes hand in hand with the luxury of choosing brands that closely align with their own values after all, allowing them to remain true to themselves (or at least true to their online persona) if they wish. Consumers recognise and respect that.
Whether someone has 1000 followers or 500,000, if that audience trusts them and believes they are endorsing a product from a place of authenticity and not money-chasing, the campaign has lots of potential for success. It is wrong to see a big follower figure and jump to the conclusion that everyone will see their ads as selling out.
Brands can help themselves by not enforcing too strict a guideline on how the campaign should run or a caption that doesn’t resonate with the audience. Handing over control is understandably scary when a big budget is involved, but the creativity and real voice of the influencer coming through is essential to achieving authenticity. Of course, brand safety is important and you need to feel comfortable with the content. But the right influencer for your business should naturally reflect your values and enthusiasm for your products, without it being heavily engineered.
The trouble with ROI in influencer marketing
You will only know whether investing in either micro influencers or mega influencers has paid off by measuring the ROI – but that’s not always easy. 84% of marketers have said proving the ROI of influencers was a big challenge.
While tricky, it is possible to effectively measure the value of influencers. For instance, when it comes to tracking actual revenue, affiliate links and discount codes are a tried and tested way of seeing how directly an influencer is affecting sales. You might also breakdown the cost per follower, engagement or conversion.
Just as we’ve suggested that influencers need to be chosen on a campaign by campaign basis, so does the way you measure success and ROI. There would be little point using the same performance markers across your campaigns with micro and mega-influencers since they offer your brand different types of value, for bespoke end objectives.
If there is one KPI that we can evaluate on a level playing field between our micro and mega influencers, it’s brand sentiment. No matter what category of influencer someone falls in, it’s useful to analyse the type of reaction your branded content generates from their fanbase. This information is helpful in so many ways: it’s raw customer feedback that you can use to enhance your product development, brand identity and of course, future influencer campaigns.
Takeaways
There is no clear cut answer on whether you should be working with micro influencers or mega influencers. Both have their place in marketing strategies, in the same way that word-of-mouth and billboard advertising each add a different but equally worthy kind of value to your campaigns.
The excitement around micro-influencers is understandable and indeed, deserved. They have introduced a new layer to influencer marketing that has helped it snowball further into a vitally important medium. An authentic connection with followers is their superpower and a valuable asset to brands, but they aren’t the missing link to success in every single campaign.
So, let’s not rule out certain influencers based on their micro or mega status alone, or because of trend reports that points to one or the other as the future for marketers. Instead, we should carefully consider our exact objectives and potential for ROI, always putting brand values and needs first.
