At Obviously, we’ve spent years executing thousands of campaigns from end to end and working with influencers of all sizes, from the smallest nano influencers to celebrities with millions of followers. Throughout all of this, we’ve learned what works and what doesn’t when it comes to influencer campaigns, and mapped out the most effective strategies in the industry. We’re sharing our expertise so you can revolutionize your sales this holiday season.
One of the most important lessons we’ve learned through years of collecting influencer marketing data is that bigger isn’t always better. In fact, working with nano influencers, those with between 1-10k followers, can be more effective for your brand than committing to expensive partnerships with influencers who have large social followings but lower engagement and little relevance to your brand.
Here are five reasons to stop spending as much on macro influencers and start seeing real results with nano influencers before 2019 comes to a close.
Nano influencers are typically everyday people who are cool, have great taste, and create high-quality content that’s drawn in a larger-than-average following on social media. These content creators are just starting out with building brand partnerships, meaning they’re excited to collaborate on the basis of product and a modest payment with brands that they genuinely love.
For brands on a budget as the year winds down, nano influencers can be the best and most cost-effective way to generate a buzz during the holidays.
“They’re excited to collaborate on the basis of product and a modest payment with brands that they genuinely love. ”
Most of the people who follow a nano influencer are their family, friends, friends of friends, and wider communities. Their engagement rates are off the charts at about 6x the engagement rate of other influencers.
“Their engagement rates are off the charts at about 6x the engagement rate of other influencers. ”
Those personal connections to their followers mean nanos fill a coveted “word of mouth” space in influencer marketing -- and it also means that their recommendations carry more weight with their followers, who trust in the brand-influencer affinity because they have closer ties to the person making the recommendation.
Want to drive customers to a holiday pop-up or promote an event or activation in a specific locale? Nano influencers are your best bet for generating real brand engagement if you’re going hyperlocal. Most of the time, a nano influencer’s followers are concentrated in their surrounding areas, meaning a partnership with several is the best way to reach the right audience. With our targeted technology, we’re able to verify where their followers live to ensure this strategy works.
Because nano influencers are new to the space, they’re normally less picky about their feeds and more open to suggestions. This is especially helpful if you have specific holiday messaging you want to get across, or if you want the post to fit aesthetically into a larger campaign. If they love your brand, nano influencers will bend over backwards to deliver on content requests and gain the legitimacy that a great collaboration offers them.
“If they love your brand, nano influencers will bend over backwards to deliver on content requests and gain the legitimacy that a great collaboration offers them.”
While some nano influencers are just in it for fun, many have aspirations to grow into the micro and macro influencers we’re more familiar with. By forging a relationship early on with a great creator, you can grow along with them as their influence increases. Because you were there from the beginning, your collaboration will retain that feeling of authenticity while increasing in value.
The biggest challenge of working with nano influencers is naturally their limited reach, but this can be overcome by scaling your influencer campaigns. At the right scale, the collective reach of a large group of nano influencers can exceed that of a handful of their larger counterparts - but at a fraction of the cost and with higher engagement.
What nanos lack in numbers, they more than make up for in enthusiasm and authenticity, which translates to the genuine word of mouth advertising that customers trust above all else.
