Nano, micro and macro influencers: what’s the difference?

Influencers are officially the latest focus of brands. Influence holds an ever growing space in enterprise’s marketing strategies, and many professionals have recurred to content creators to advertise their brand or product. This communication tool has proved time and again its efficiency, and diving into the year 2021 fresh off a hard 2020, it’s more essential than ever. 

For someone to be considered an influencer, they must address a group of people that follow them voluntarily. What distinguishes influencers is their community. Influencer’s community differ from one another because of the number of followers, their characteristics (age, interests, geographic location) their compromise, engagement, etc. 

Influencers can address their community through messages on social media, articles, videos, images etc… The influencer’s community is responsible for the effectiveness of the influence campaigns deployed by brands. 

How can I distinguish the different influencer profiles and what are their strengths nowadays for brands?

Nano influencers: trustworthy ambassadors 

Nano influencers are everyday people. In a nutshell, they’re Mr. and Mrs. Everyone. Their communities have less than 5 000 followers as a norm. Due to the rapidly evolving social media and internet environment, these individuals are highly connected and don’t limit themselves anymore to friends and family. They can now reach other consumers, as well.

Nano influencers nowadays have the opportunity to express themselves and share their opinion through social media, forums, comments etc. These opinions are very important to other consumers, as 88% of internet users consult reviews in their shopping process, and 68% trust these reviews, even when the writer is a complete stranger. (Source: influence)

The number of people they reach will be lower compared to other profiles, but the message is all-powerful as consumers will deem it credible and worthy of trust. 

Micro influencers: an authentic and credible message 

Micro influencers are people mainly specialised in one specific sector (beauty, gaming, travel, fashion, cooking, etc) who have developed a close-knit community. Their communities typically range between 5 000 and 100 000 followers. 

The crucial advantage of this profile is that its message is authentic. In fact, micro influencers collaborate with brands only because they really want to and have a genuine interest in their products. They share their opinion and aren’t as demanding in compensation as macro influencers. Moreover, according to a study, 61% of millennials follow the advice of at least one influencer when shopping. 

Various studies have also proven that the engagement of micro influencer’s publications is higher than that of macro influencers. The conversion rate is also higher with this profile because their influence is better quality. This is due to the proximity of their relationship with their community. Because they have smaller communities, they can interact and exchange more easily with their followers. 

To achieve a successful influence campaign, using a few influence factors is enough to guarantee good results. However, we must be attentive to the characteristics of the chosen influencers, specially when dealing with a niche sector. The goal is to address the right people that could be interested in the product or service promoted by the influencer. 

Macro influencers: more visibility 

A macro influencer is characterised by a large community of more than 100 000 followers. Its community has been built through social media and grants him enormous visibility. 

Due to their reputation, the investment and cost required to collaborate with them is much higher. As they’re solicited much more often, it’s harder to collaborate with them. Their expectations and requirements are higher given their experience. For brands, working with them means a bigger investment in time and resources. 

With the democratisation of influence, consumers are less and less trusting of macro influencers. They know brands are paying them to promote certain products, which makes their opinions less objective and less believable. As a consequence, consumers are less influenced by these profiles in their shopping process. 

The large amount of followers of macro influencers guarantees the reach of their content, but their engagement rate is much lower. It’s simple: if you influence 1 000 followers you have an engagement rate of 16%, but if you influence 3 000 000 followers your engagement rate is barely above 2%. (Source: Tanke)

How to establish a winning strategy

To establish an influencer marketing strategy, you need to clearly set your goals in accordance to your resources. Once your objectives have been established, you’ll be able to identify which influencer profile is best suited to your needs. However, it’s hard to find satisfactory results without having tested different strategies. Which is why it’s often necessary to launch several campaigns and analyse their results to determine which strategy will work best for you and your brand in the long run.

For instance, if you want to increase your visibility and reach, you could use macro influencers, although the costs will be elevated (time and money wise). To achieve the same result with lower costs, you can use several micro influencers at once. 

The most effective way is to entrust your influencer marketing strategy to a platform whose objective it is to help brands develop their community, notoriety and sales. Our platform can offer you excellent influencer targeting according to your objectives, a swift and efficient relationship with influencers and an in-depth analysis of the campaign results. 

If you want to learn more about the advantages of using an influencer platform that brings brands and influencers together, you can read our case studies as well as our e-books. You’ll find the results our clients have obtained and the reason why they decided to trust Hivency.