Digital marketing with the rise of micro-influencers

It is almost 3-4 years since we have started seeing a rise in the importance of influencer marketing. Earlier, traditional marketing was the best way accepted by brands for promotion.

Aprediction made by Influencer Marketing Hub in 2018 suggested that micro-influencers will gain more influence over celebrities. With the current situation, it is clear now that their prediction was correct and on the mark.

You might wonder how they were right in their prediction? To understand it, read it till the end.

First of all, let us see the movements of brands from traditional social media marketing to influencer marketing.

Back in 2017, when traditional marketing was given importance over influencer marketing, the average number of people searching for social media marketing was more than people searching for influencer marketing.

The average number of users searching for Social Media Marketing per day – 62
The average number of users searching for Influencer Marketing per day – 6

In 2020, the average number of users searching for Influencer Marketing had increased to 15 users per day. The average number of users searching for Social Media Marketing has remained almost similar.

This indicates how Influencer Marketing has risen in their popularity in this years.

In the earlier years of Influencer Marketing, it lacked the correct definition and the measures for success. One of the easiest ways of finding the influencer for a brand was to look at the number of followers on the social media channel.

Brands accepted the situation for a while, even when influencers tried to increase their cost of posting brand stuff on their social media channels. The charges were relatively lesser than what brands had to pay for celebrity endorsements.

However, brands have started raising their questions about reach, followers, and a few other things in the past year. Having tens of thousands of followers does not mean that they influence everybody.

We have seen several influencers gaining followers, likes, comments, etc., using cheap and paid techniques like keeping bots. As a result, brands have started losing their interest in hiring influencers with more followers and lesser reach. Such a situation pushed an increase in the importance of micro-influencers, having lesser followers but a better reach.

More prominent brands still believe in celebrity endorsements, apart from influencer marketing. However, smaller brands have started gaining interest in influencer marketing since 2018. The main reason behind influencer marketing’s rise is a rapid increase in the number of micro-influencers.

The key advantage of micro-influencers is that they are micro in the number of followers, but they can influence their followers. They genuinely influence the decision-making of their followers.

Reach is just a nice simple number to discover, but it does not tell a brand about the benefits of hiring a micro-influencer. In our understanding, the benefits are intangible.

Based on research by Markerly, Influencers with 10,000 to 1,00,000 followers will give you a better combination of reach and engagement.

Micro-influencers have established relationships with their followers. If you have done proper research and hired a micro-influencer, then micro-influencers are likely to give positive feedback regarding your products. This will influence their followers to make a favorable decision regarding your brand.

No micro-influencer will accept your proposal if your brand can hamper its followers in any case. It means if a micro-influencer shows interest in working with your brand, you are likely to receive the best output.

At times, brands do not receive quality output from micro-influencer activities. There are several reasons for this. A few of them we have mentioned here.

As a brand, you have not given leeway to micro-influencer to create their way of promoting your brand.

You have tried to stamp your authority on the relationships with micro-influencers.

As a brand, you ask for approvals before any content goes live.

How can a micro-influencer create a genuine conversation with its followers if you try micro-managing as a brand?

You must understand that micro-influencers are storytellers in reality. They know how to conceptualize a story to solve the problems faced by their fans.

We suggest you stay back and let micro-influencers create stories and promote your brand.

Let us take an example from one of our previous micro-influencer marketing activities to help you understand the importance of micro-influencers in the current period.

Back in July 2020, one of our FMCG clients, #Proburst wanted to launch a new product just after the lockdown. We partnered with 30 odd micro-influencers and created a campaign called #ClinicallyTestedForPerformance.

Please Note – Being an FMCG client in the fitness industry, the micro-influencers we used were fitness enthusiasts.

We had run this campaign on Instagram. The campaign got 10,000 views, with over 1 million impressions. Additionally, we got 60,000 likes overall.

As a digital marketing agency in Mumbai, Liqvd Asia has worked on several such influencer marketing activities and is working on them presently. As a brand, if you are unfamiliar with any such activities or want any help in influencer marketing activities, you can connect with us.