Professors at the University of Wharton say that 82% of consumers are “highly likely” to follow a recommendation made by a micro influencer, compared to 73% who are highly likely to act on a recommendation from an average person. Much factual. Considering some of the points made below, you might even consider them more impactful than word of mouth. 

Why are micro influencers the key to influencer marketing?

1. They have hands on experience with your product

Small creators or micro influencers are key to influencer marketing because apparently it’s important to actually know the product you’re talking about when you make a recommendation. When someone experiences your brand or product first hand, they can tell the story in a much more authentic way than if they hear it through the grapevine. It’s science.

The micro influencer study we mentioned earlier also notes that 26% of average recommendations are made with 2nd hard information. In other words, people who haven’t actually used your product are recommending it, and these are less influential that purposeful recommendations made by people who have. Micro influencer marketing is the key to unlocking the most authentic recommendations at scale.

2. Micro influencers are seen as more credible than the general population

Micro Influencer recommendations are taken more seriously than your average Joe. When an influencer gives a recommendation, it is seen as highly credible 94% of the time by consumers. However, the general population or word of mouth recommendations are considered not-credible 17% of the time. This trusted opinion drives real results for businesses, this propels micro influencers as a key influencer marketing tool and your general marketing mix.

3. Micro influencers are the key to storytelling about your product

Because these small creators are expert storytellers, over 90% of consumers feel they do a better job at explaining the intricacies or experience of a product than regular users. They can truly impact perspective and express your products story and value in a way people connect to. 

The reason you hire them isn’t because they suck at telling great stories on social media, it’s quite the opposite. These are professional creators, people who have been able to grow an audience of thousands just by telling stories. That’s some tricky stuff right there, Jack.

4. In 2019, Micro influencers are the key to authentic, unsaturated content 

Macro influencers post branded content on a weekly, or monthly basis. This waters down the trust between them and their audience, and makes their recommendations feel less meaningful. 

A survey by Bloglovin showed that smaller social media creators post branded content less than 5 times a year! This undoubtedly brings added power when they do recommend a product. Working with creators is the key to standing out with your influencer marketing campaigns, instead of sinking into a crowded and over saturated feed full of other brand recommendations.

5. Micro influencers have built highly engaged audiences

The truth is well know that influencers on the micro level are more engaging than those with huge followings. Mullen lowe's study shows that those content creators with 1000 followers generated 85% higher engagement rate than those with 100,000 or more. These small content creators aren’t only the key to influencer marketing, they are the key to driving true engagement with your campaigns.

6. Micro influencers 2019 are way less expensive

Micro social media content creators are the key to affordable, scalable influencer marketing campaigns. The same study previously mentioned shows that those social media content creators with small audiences are 10x more affordable than larger influencers. 

On average, 94% of those small content creators surveyed charge less than 500 dollars per post on instagram. Small blog posts cost less than $1000 per post. Facebook influencers charged less than 500. Branded tweets by a smaller content creator were less than $200 

If you can eliminate the manual labor and other misc BS of launching campaigns by using influencer marketing tools like Modash and automating heavily; the cost of might be next to nothing. Imagine the amount of time you could spend with your office dog if you could run an influencer campaign in 15 minutes. That’s why we exist.

The key to major savings with influencer marketing is barter. Often times with influencer marketing you can reduce the cost per post from an influencer to be close to $0, if you add a valuable product in for free. So if you make something worth having, try some old fashion barter system mindset. 

7. There is a massive number of Micro influencers

One more amazing thing about these influencers? There is a preposterous number of them. In fact, Modash’s influencer marketing tool lists 48 Million content creators with less than 100k followers. The wealth of content creators available to run influencer marketing campaigns, make them the content creators you can scale. This allows you to cover massive numbers of highly targeted audiences without the expense of traditional or celebrity influencers. 

On Twitch for example, there is 35,000 influencers with 1,000-15,000 followers that are highly targeted in their niche. These influencers are rarely approached in a meaningful way by the brands who could benefit from working with them, opening up huge opportunities in influencer marketing for those who do. 

8. You might be sitting next to a micro influencer

Employee advocates have 561% more engagement than your branded social media channels. I know, that hurts. 

Employee advocates as influencers can drive incredible results, especially considering Glassdoors survey shows that more than ⅔ of job-seekers use social media as a part of their job search.

The beauty of employee creator, is they know your product, your workplace and your brand better than anyone. Activating them can not only build a culture of real connection to the workplace, but can be super affordable and authentic marketing with smaller social media content creators.

PS: Employees spend 2 hours on social media during the workday on average, so they might as well be posting about their influential workplace. 

9. Your audience cares more about a micro influencer than George Clooney

Teen audiences are 3x more likely to seek out a micro influencers opinion than a celebrity. Why? They are relatable. 70% of teens say that they relate more with a Youtuber than they do with a celebrity. 

Youtubers, Instagrammers and other major site’s most active members are inspiring young people all over the world to do the things they love. Young audiences consider social media content creators as friends because they can relate with them. 

They are quirky, imperfect and have fought hard to do what they love. Attaching your brand to those positive messages is key to reaching young audiences heart with influencer marketing. 

10. Use Micro influencers to reach a real audience and push back fraud

Fake followers and bot accounts are on the rise. The huge number of fake instagram accounts that are auto-following people means that public accounts are bound to have a few fake followers. 

But this isn’t the worst. For 25 dollars you can buy 10k instagram followers, and many are abusing this opportunity. Luckily with smaller creators it is much easier to judge the credibility of the following with the naked eye. The key to spotting fake followings is to look to the comments and engagement of posts. 

If comments, or engagements of the post appear to be without personality or substance, you might be looking at a fake account. 

Modash is the key to Micro influencers.