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Influencer marketing has been around for a while, but now there is a new kid on the block: micro-influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing is a form of marketing in which there is a focus placed on specific key individuals to ‘influence’ a certain audience. It is essentially using someone’s high profile status to influence the behaviour, opinions and purchase decisions of others. Influencer marketing has been a common approach in sport for some time now, think back to Beckham and the predator. The only difference now is that there are an array of platforms for brands to experiment on.
MOTM _xD83D__xDE4F__xD83C__xDFFC_ #newbalance pic.twitter.com/ILfEZFQDvA
— Aaron Ramsey (@aaronramsey) May 7, 2017
However, research from marketing platform Markerly found that once a social media influencer reaches a critical mass of followers, engagement begins to decrease. Markerly’s survey of 2 million social media influencers discovered that for unpaid posts Instagram influencers with fewer than 1,000 followers have a like rate of approximately 8%, but those with 1,000 to 10,000 followers have a like rate of 4%. Comment rate follows a similar pattern and as following bases increase, like rate keeps decreasing.
Enter the micro-influencer.
Gnack, an influencer outreach platform, define a micro-influencer to be an everyday social media user with fewer than 10,000 followers. There are also middle-influencers, who typically have 100,000 to 200,00 followers. These users still have full-time professions and as a result, post less often than high-profile users. This said, micro-influencers can be any everyday social media users with between 1,000 to 100,000 followers.
But which brands are using micro-influencers?
Adidas first saw the benefits of using micro-influencers when launching Glitch, an app where football fans can test and buy boots – but only through an invitation from an existing app user. Adidas promoted new boots and their app by using micro-influencers selected from football academies across London. The German company have also used micro-influencers in their attempt to grow its share of the women’s sports market, fitness coach Robin Arzon being one of them. With Adidas shifting more of its marketing budget to digital, influencers will have a bigger role to play in the future. The sportswear brand’s e-commerce business increased by 59% in 2016 and they have set an online sales target for 2020 of $4.6 billion.
Create your legacy. #adidasambassador #heretocreate @adidas pic.twitter.com/oYTsnsIqgl
— Robin Arzon (@RobinNYC) February 3, 2017
The benefits of micro-influencers to brands like Adidas are that they provide targeted exposure to the right kind of consumer – one who is interested and likely to pay attention. The online word-of-mouth recommendation of content posted by a micro-influencer also benefits an organisation’s SEO. The more mentions a brand gets on social media, the higher it will rank on search engines.
Furthermore, posts from people with smaller followings get strong engagement, whilst bringing a combination of authenticity and trust. They allow brands to avoid the negative perceptions attached to the obvious forms of advertising. This is all without stating the obvious – that hiring a micro-influencer is much cheaper than contracting a global superstar.
Searching for a micro-influencer may involve a hunt through your follower list or a search using a relevant hashtag. Equally, using a search engine to find top local bloggers may aid in your hunt for a micro-influencer. Nevertheless, it is important to find micro-influencers with values the akin to your brand. Once your micro-influencer is on-board, asking them for authentic reviews and to promote giveaway campaigns can help to maximise their impact.
So, there’s micro-influencing explained in a micro-article. A cheaper alternative to those blue-ticked beings, where a maximising a brand’s targeted exposure, strong engagement and authenticity all point in the direction of the hot micro-influencers.
This article was originally published by our partner FutureSport.
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