Influencer Marketing is becoming more popular and with good reason. 74% of all consumers say that they check a product on social media before making a purchase. At the same time, 92% of all people rely more on other people’s statements than a brand. But which influencer should you choose?
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INFLUENCER MARKETING
Influencer marketing is in many cases a rewarding investment for your business. Influencers can help you gain more followers, greater publicity and more sales. A successful collaboration between your business and the right influencer can lead to long lasting and positive word of mouth, especially if the influencer is happy with your company and your product.
That sounds really good. But how do you choose the right influencer?
An influencer is not just an influencer, and there are many different types of influencers, each with their own personal style, following group, target group, tone of voice and number of followers. A good place to start is to decide what size the influencer’s follower group should be, and thus also what engagement rate you want. Overall, influencers can be divided into 3 types based on number of followers: micro, macro and mega. Each type has advantages and disadvantages, so it is essential to find an influencer that fits your brand and strategy.
The 3 types of influencers
1. Micro-influencer
Let’s start with the smallest influencer group, the micro-influencer. This influencer is characterized by a following group of under 20,000 followers on Instagram.
Now you might be thinking: Why do I need ordinary people on Instagram?
You are right. There are many of these influencers – and they are rarely particularly well-known in a larger sense. This is also the influencer’s biggest drawback, that they do not have the widest crowd of followers to spread your brand’s product and image.
Apart from this obvious disadvantage, there are almost only advantages to working with the micro-influencer.
The strengths of the micro-influencer
You may recognize it. You follow a cool acquaintance on Instagram who always post inspiring, beautiful and inviting photos, and you always like their posts. You always look forward to their next post and you trust that the person stand for their personal style and thus what they choose to show through their profile.This influencer does not have a huge number of followers – on the other hand, it can be expected that a large percentage of followers actively engage in the influencer’s life through likes, comments, reposts etc.
In other words – the credibility of this type of influencer is often very high!
Credibility is really important in the context of influencers, and it helps to ensure that your brand is linked to another positive brand, which is the influencer’s own brand.
This means that your brand gets positive word of mouth via the influencer. Even though there is not the largest audience in terms of followers, you can count on your brand’s product receiving extra loving attention from the followers who see your collaboration. In other words, the engagement rate can be really high with these influencers, which increases the awareness of your brand.
This is why the micro-influencer is interesting to you
Often, micro-influencers are cheaper to work with than the larger influencers, and they are therefore ideal for a smaller company that want to strengthen their market position. This type of influencer can also be rewarding for a larger company that want to use different type of influencers.
It can be discussed whether you should focus on conversions as the ultimate goal when working with influencer marketing. However, it can be argued that if you find a micro-influencer with a high engagement rate and credibility, then your conversion dreams can come true with this type of influencer.
2. Macro-influencer
The next type of influencer, the macro influencer, have a higher number of followers. This influencer has +20,000 followers, and the follower size can therefore vary more, than the micro influencer.
The macro influencer are the type who are a little more famous than the rest of us. This type of influencer is often Instagrammers with a larger following group, bloggers, opinion leaders, etc. They often have a larger reach and many have a big and loyal following group, which you as a company really want to reach.
Now you might be thinking: Perfect! I want for this type my brand. What can go wrong?
What you need to be aware of with the macro influencers
First of all, it is important to be aware of the size of this influencer group. There are many, and they often work in completely different ways.
Therefore, focus on finding an influencer who can be a positive and credible ambassador for exactly your business. It is essential that the followers can see a clear connection between your company and the influencer’s brand and tone of voice – otherwise mistrust can arise for both you and the influencer.
Besides that, this type of influencer is often a person who more or less make a living from being present on social media. This naturally means that this influencer is not as cheap as the micro-influencer. So you have to be prepared to spend more money if you want a serious and rewarding collaboration.
Advantages of choosing the macro influencer
In return, this influencer can bring a lot more traffic and buzz for your business, as long as your collaboration creates value for everyone involved. This type of influencer can be used for both conversions and brand awareness, but the ultimate goal should focus on brand awareness. Here, you focus your efforts around the top of your marketing funnel, which in the long run creates strong brand awareness, valuable brand ambassadors and finally sales.
3. Mega-influencer
When does a macro-influencer become a mega-influencer?
The mega-influences are the big players on social media. They are the icing on the cake, and they have thousands, sometimes millions, of followers who more or less keep up with their daily lives. A rule of thumb is that mega-influencers in the Danish context often have +100,000 followers.
This type of influencer can consist of different type of celebrities, for example actors, models, Instagrammers, reality stars, etc. The characteristic of all is a large following group.
Now you might be thinking: Okay, now we’re talking. I want this type!
The mega-influencer's requirements for you
You can get this. It just usually requires you to spend more money. An example from the real world: Supermodel and reality star Kendall Jenner earns an average of over 3.8 million kroner on a single Instagram post. Few companies have the opportunity to spend that amount of money on influencer marketing.
Fortunately, smaller companies can do it as well, and it all depends on finding the perfect brand match for your business. This type of influencer seem obvious to sell your product because they can reach a lot of potential customers at once. But mega-influencers should first and foremost be used for long-term collaborations, where the focus is on strengthening your brand awareness to a broad target group. When you are successful with that, sales are likely to follow.
Challenges associated with mega-influencers
It is also worth noting that some mega-influencers have become so cooperative that they sometimes have several sponsorship deals at once. This can lead followers to lose confidence in the influencer, and thus your product, if they fail to see a clear connection between the two. Therefore your important advertising dollars can be wasted on the big celebrities, where smaller influencers actually can create more value for your brand.
Overall, it is important to find the right influencer that match your brand, your product and your ambition. Spend time and effort finding an influencer you can vouch for who can offer its followers meaningful sponsorship content. We can help you with this.
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ENGAGEMENT RATE
The engagement rate can help you understand the influencer’s followers. This is essential because the influencer’s followers are the target group you are primarily trying to reach through your collaboration.
The engagement rate indicates what percentage of the followers actually interact with the influencer’s posts. That is, how many people like and comment on the posts.
The calculation:
The engagement rate is calculated by dividing all interactions (likes and comments) on the last 12 posts by the number of followers, and then multiplying by 100 to get the number in percent.
Often the engagement rate is higher among influencers with fewer followers. This may have something to do with people feeling a more personal relationship with these influencers and thus engaging more in their posts.
A rule of thumb for influencers with fewer than 100,000 followers is that the engagement rate should preferably be above 1.5%. If the rate is closer to 6%, it is considered to be very high and will therefore be valuable for your business.
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In addition to the fact that your company’s brand and product must match the influencer’s personal style, it must also be relevant to the majority of the influencer’s followers. Therefore, spend plenty of time researching who the followers really are. Do they match your core target group?
At Iternum Digital, we can help you select the right influencers for you that suit both your target group, your strategy and your business goals.
ARE YOU CONSIDERING TO USE INFLUENCER MARKETING? YOU ARE WELCOME TO CALL US, SO WE CAN TALK ABOUT WHICH INFLUENCES ARE BEST SUITED FOR YOUR BUSINESS GOALS.
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