Influencer marketing is at an all-time high right now. If you’ve ever gone on any social media, you have probably seen someone promote some type of product.
For example, a lot of YouTube videos start or end with the content creator talking about their sponsor.
You don’t have to go far to spot it: even Pewdiepie, the biggest content creator on YouTube (with 110 million subscribers as of now) is promoting NordVPN in this video.
And it makes perfect sense: his audience is mostly young people who spend a lot of time on the internet. And NordVPN helps solve two issues that come with that:
- Privacy. It helps you hide your IP address and allows you to browse the web anonymously.
- Region-restricted content. YouTube, Netflix, and other OTT video services might have content that is restricted in some regions (shows, videos, etc.). NordVPN helps you get around those restrictions.
Although, at this point, Pewdiepie classifies as a celebrity. And to reach an influencer of that scale, you would have to spend a lot of money.
In this article, we will be focusing on micro-influencers, a much smaller breed of internet personalities that can have just as big of an impact on your business.
But first, we have to answer the question: who are micro-influencers?
Who Are Micro-Influencers?
Pretty much anyone that has a following of 10,000 – 100,000 on any social media can be considered a micro-influencer.
They are bigger than nano-influencers but not as large as macro-influencers, who can have a following of up to several hundred thousand, or even a million.
Micro-influencers are usually viewed as an expert in a very specific niche. They focus on creating content that is informative and useful for their audience.
Even though this audience might not be as big as with macro and mega-influencers, there is one thing that they exceed in: engagement.
Typically, the smaller the audience of an influencer, the higher their level of engagement with them is.
They participate in much more active discussions, and the influencer themselves is able to personally interact with a lot more people from their audience.
This leads to them having a much stronger relationship with their followers. This means that the people actually care about what the influencer has to say, and respect their opinion.
These types of influencers also value that relationship, and won’t just accept any marketing offer that is irrelevant because it might damage their reputation.
And the users know that the influencer would not advertise any product that they themselves didn’t like, or thought was irrelevant to the niche they’re in.
Muhammad Muzamil, The Sr. Digital Marketing Specialist at Cloudways WordPress hosting says that “Micro-influencers are the new celebrities of the tech space that the marketers actively reach out to boost their product’s visibility, and ultimately resulting in better sales through word-of-mouth-like recommendations. The micro-influencers have now taken over traditional marketing methods, as their audience trusts whatever they recommend.”
This makes micro-influencers great targets for your influencer marketing campaigns, as they are much more easily reachable than macro influencers. The high levels of engagement with their audience is also great for the effectiveness of your campaigns: the users are much more receptive to the products that their favorite influencer promotes.
Aleyda Solis is a very good example of a micro-influencer on the verge of becoming a macro-influencer.
Reasons To Run A Micro-Influencer Campaign
So, what can micro-influencers do for your business? A lot of things, as it turns out.
Tap Into New Audiences
Getting traffic with just your website can be quite difficult. The reason for that is because it will only attract people that are willing to go on it, or are looking for a type of product/service that you’re offering.
Same goes for your social media. And the problem with straight up advertisements and PPC is that people are naturally skeptical when it’s obvious that someone is trying to sell them something.
Micro-influencers can help you tap into new audiences and sell your product/service along the way.
They’re called “Influencers” for a very good reason – the ability to influence other people’s purchasing decisions.
Don’t underestimate this ability: according to Twitter’s own study, 40% of Twitter users have purchased a product as a direct result from an influencer they like.
Build Brand Awareness
This ties in directly with the previous reason. The more people see your product/service being promoted, the more will know about it.
Increasing brand awareness should always be a priority, and is a key component of growth.
Influencer marketing works similarly to word-of-mouth recommendations: a person that is respected within their niche talks about how they like your product and which problems it helps fix.
Build Trust With Your Audience
Influencer marketing doesn’t only help you find new audiences and promote your business in new places – it also helps strengthen the ties with your already existing audience.
The influencers that you reach out to also operate in your niche – otherwise it wouldn’t make sense for you to work with them.
By showing their audience that they trust your brand, they’re effectively influencing their decisions by showing that your brand is, in fact, trustworthy.
And if someone from your already established audience becomes aware of that, that will only strengthen their trust in your business.
And if someone was already aware of your brand, but wasn’t sure whether they should make a purchase or not, the influencer might be just the push they needed to do it.
Arrange Giveaways
Giveaways are awesome for all sides involved. Influencers get increased activity in their social groups, their followers get the chance to receive something cool for free, and you reap a whole bucket of benefits: all of the three that I mentioned above.
Another common promotion method utilized in influencer marketing is coupons, discount, and affiliate codes.
A nice discount is sometimes all the incentive a person needs to make a purchase. Humans are impulsive by nature, so why not take advantage of that?
Author’s note: while writing this article, I got distracted by my phone and went on YouTube, where I saw a guy eating allegedly the world’s most sour candy. The result? I just ordered two packs of it. And your potential customers might do the same if they see their favorite influencer promote your product.
Recruit Them As Your Affiliates
Influencers are rarely used for a simple one-off promotion. A lot of the time, collaborating with them also entails affiliate partnerships which is one of the best ways to make money with YouTube for creators.
The concept behind affiliate marketing is very simple: someone promotes your product, and places an affiliate link to your product on their blog/social media post/YouTube video.
When people follow that link and make a purchase, your affiliate earns a commission, the size of which you decide while setting up your affiliate program.
Affiliate marketing is one of the safest and most effective marketing strategies, and influencers make for the perfect affiliates due to their ability to influence their audience’s purchasing decisions.
How To Find Micro-Influencers For Your Own Campaigns
There are a few ways in which you can find influencers, and they’re all rather simple.
Search Hashtags
The most straightforward way to do it is to simply search your niche hashtags on Instagram or Twitter and see who shows up.
So, for example, if you’re a clothing company, you can look up something like #shoes, #outfits, etc.
You can also look for your competitor’s hashtags to find influencers that are working with other brands. If they are already working with someone, they are much more likely to accept your pitch as well.
The downside to this strategy is that there is no way to filter down the results, and you will have to manually go through accounts, check whether they’re an influencer or a whole company, as well as how big their following is.
Look For Niche Bloggers
Bloggers can be influencers as well. So, looking for niche blogs in your industry can be a good way to find micro-influencers to work with.
Most of the time, bloggers add links to their social profiles somewhere on their websites. Follow these links to get a feel for the size of their audience and the type of content that they share with it.
Again, the downside to this strategy is that it can be time-consuming to go through potentially hundreds of blogs in your niche. Also, even if a blog gets a lot of quality traffic, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the blogger’s social groups get as much activity.
Use An Influencer Database Like Followerwonk
There exist various databases that make finding influencers even easier. One of them is Followerwonk.
Although it’s a paid tool, you can use it for free to a limited extent.
Just type in the keyword of your industry and Followerwonk will give you a list of all influencers associated with it, along with the number of their Twitter followers, tweets, account age, and other relevant information.
Although, you will need to subscribe to access the data past the first page and be able to export it as a .CSV file.
This strategy is much quicker and easier than looking for influencers manually, but it will also cost you a few dollars.
Additionally, you will still need to manage the outreach part.
Use A Tool Like Respona
While Followerwonk is a simple influencer database, a tool like Respona adds an additional layer of functionality.
It has an integrated search engine for finding influencers: just switch the search source to “Influencers” and type in your keyword.
This will reveal all of the influencers associated with your niche, as well as their Twitter statistics.
You can add them to your campaign to reach out later on.
Respona is a paid tool, but you get some good additional functionality for the money you’re paying – it can also find your influencers’ email addresses, and lets you reach out to them in an automated fashion.
You can prepare the email sequence that will be sent to all of your influencers, and even use helpful variables like {first_name} that will automatically populate on the personalization stage, saving you some of that precious time.
Respona connects directly with your Gmail (or other email service provider) account, and once your campaign is launched, the emails will be sent out automatically, according to the schedule you set up within the tool.
However, if you also want to reach out to your influencers on social media, you will still have to do it manually.
How To Reach Out To Micro-Influencers
There are two main ways for reaching out to influencers, but before making any kind of pitch, it is beneficial to warm up your relationship with them.
Like their tweets, leave comments on their posts, little things like that. If they at least recognize your name, they are much more likely to actually respond to your pitch than they would ot a completely cold one.
Reach Out On Social Media
If you’re reaching out to a social media influencer rather than a blogger, you should first reach out to them there, as it is where they spend most of their time.
A lot of bigger influencers will actually have their direct messages closed, but with micro-influencers, you still have the chance to reach them there.
Send An Email
Even if the direct messages of your influencer are open and you’re able to message them, you should still also send a formal email.
You can send your emails manually, or use an outreach solution (like Respona).
Here is an example of a template that you can grab and use for your influencer outreach campaign:
Subject line: Adding you as an influencer
“Hi, {first_name}
How’s your {day_of_week} coming along?
It’s exciting times for us at {company}, and we want to bring you in for the fun!
I came across your {social media profile} and couldn’t help but notice your {notable post}.
We recently started an influencer program and we think you’d be a phenomenal fit for it.
We would love to set up a chat with the rest of the team to discuss further details.
If a certain time works for you, it’s all yours 🙂
[link to calendar]
I look forward to hearing back!
Much love,
{signature}”
The Most Effective Way To Get In Touch With An Influencer
Email is the predominant way of getting a hold of influencers. But you have to keep in mind that a lot of them are already working with someone, have most likely received such pitches before, and will receive more.
So, it is not nearly as effective as we would like it to be.
The most efficient way to reach an influencer is to actually meet them in person. Your industry events are the perfect place for doing it, as they are a magnet for both companies and influencers.
Whereas an email pitch might seem like a cold marketing move, getting to talk to an influencer in real life will allow you to convey much more information in a more natural and laid-back way, and show your human side as well.
So, whenever there’s an event or a conference in your industry, you should do your best to attend it, not only for learning new things, but meeting new people and establishing new, mutually-beneficial relationships.
Wrapping up micro-influencers
So, there are two main ways to find influencers: either go through social media or niche blogs manually, or use a tool/database to speed up the process.
As for reaching out, you should do it on social media and email, and when you get the chance, attend industry events to meet influencers in person for much better and human communication.