Nano Vs Micro-Influencers: Which Is Better?
Nano Vs Micro-Influencers: Which Is Better?
Over the last few years, and especially more pronounced during the Covid-19 period, there has been a paradigm shift in influencer marketing from these mega-influencers to Nano and Micro-influencers.
Yeni
One of the proudest achievements for entrepreneurs and marketers these days is to have their brands or products featured by a huge celebrity Getting an endorsement from Kylie Jenner (278M on Instagram), Ariana Grande (272M), or Beyonce (215M) certainly seems to be akin to striking the lottery, because you will almost definitely see a tremendous boost in your sales. However, in today’s context, this is almost impossible for the regular small and medium businesses to engage these mega celebrities, due to the exorbitant, sky-high fees that they charge.
Over the last few years, and especially more pronounced during the Covid-19 period, there has been a paradigm shift in influencer marketing from these mega-influencers to Nano and Micro-influencers. They are definitely more budget-friendly as compared to Mega-influencers, and they also have a host of benefits that come along with engaging them.
If you’re exploring the next online marketing strategy to test, then you might want to consider shifting your focus to these Nano and Micro-influencers, and see if they suit you better. With the rise of Nano and Micro influencer marketing, this might just be the publicity breakthrough your brand needs.
In this article, we will be focusing primarily on Nano and Micro-influencers; discussing the pros and cons of these 2 types of influencers, and providing insights into which is better and more suitable for you.
Types Of Influencers By Follower Count
Knowing the different types of influencers is key to assessing if your advertisement will reach your target audience. Essentially, the types of influencers are divided into the range of their following count on a certain social media platform—the most common being Instagram.
Here’s a broad classification:
▶ Nano-influencers: 1K to 10K followers
▶ Micro-influencers: 10K to 100K followers
▶ Macro-influencers: 100K to 1M followers
▶ Mega-influencers or Celebrities: 1M+ followers
From a business perspective, how would you be able to determine the perfect balance of brand fit vis-a-vis return of your investment? With the advertising market starting to shift its focus more on the employment of Nano and Micro-influencers, which of the two will be more suitable for your brand?
Nano-Influencer Vs. Micro-Influencer
There are different factors that you should consider when deciding between going with a Nano or a Micro-influencer. Each carries its own pros and cons that vary upon the nature of your brand and the marketing outcome that you want to achieve.
Nano-Influencers
Nano influencers (in the context of Instagram) is an Instagram user with a following count of 1k-10k. The numbers may vary, with other marketers considering Nano influencers to have a maximum of 5k followers while others include users with following counts of hundreds.
Despite having smaller follower counts, there are a lot of positive outcomes in engaging a Nano influencer to promote your brand/product. Here are some of the reasons why a Nano influencer could be the best pick out of the different types of influencers for your marketing.
Pros Of Nano-Influencers
1. They Possess High Authenticity And Brand Enthusiasm.
One of the best reasons to choose a Nano influencer to rep your brand is High Authenticity. Nano-influencers tend to stick closer to “reality” and share details about their actual life. This potentially translates to a sense of relatability to their audience —with a mutual peer relationship rather than as a celebrity icon.
Nano-influencers are also known to be more enthusiastic about working with brands, especially those who are in their early phase of growth and development.
2. Closer Engagement With Followers.
A Nano influencer with 1,000 followers will have a much closer relationship with their audience than an influencer with a 100K count.
That’s because the influencer would have the capacity to have more personal and direct one-on-one engagements with a smaller group of audience. As a result, Nano-influencers have closer relationships with their audience which makes it ideal for marketing to a niche market. This also builds mutual trust that makes their audience more willing to trust your brand and product as well.
3. Budget-friendly.
A huge plus for small to medium brands is that Nano-influencers can offer their services without monetary compensation, or in some cases, a small monetary token would suffice. The majority of Nano influencers accept brand deals in exchange for your product or service because sponsorships also help them become more visible in their field, which is key in the progress of their status as an influencer.
4. Opportunity To Establish An Authentic Relationship With Future Brand Ambassadors.
The great thing about paying attention to smaller influencers is you get to become part of their growth. As their account grows, so does the opportunity for you to build a lasting mutually beneficial relationship that can reap rewards on an increasing scale. When these Nano-influencers grow in their following size and influence, you still retain the contact and relationship with them, and can tap on their stronger influence for your future shoutouts!
Cons Of Nano-Influencers
Of course, a Nano influencer also has its own limitations.
1. Lower Exposure And Outreach
Nano influencers will have a lower exposure and outreach quantum which can be limiting your marketing, especially if you’re looking to widen your brand outreach.
2. Might Be Picky With Your Marketing Materials
They also tend to be very specific in the way they deliver your promotion, and that might not fit your marketing brief. Highly-polished and copywritten captions have the possibility of “sticking out” from their feed, making the whole sponsored content inauthentic from their audience’s perspective, which can be both a good and a bad point; the good thing is that the Nano influencer will more likely be able to connect and share the message with the followers, while the bad being that the copywriting effectiveness may be eroded if the Nano-influencer modifies the tone and choice of words used too extensively.
3. Artificial Growth Using Comment Pods
You also have to look out for Nano-influencers who use comment pods which generate engagement rate artificially. Comment pods are user groups with mutual agreements to engage with each other’s contents to boost impressions and engagement and hence not representative of organic engagement. and according to a study done by HypeAuditor in 2019, Nano-influencers have the most tendency to use comment pods to artificially drive their growth.
Micro-Influencers
Micro-influencers are categorized as users with 10K to 100K followers. They have a larger following than Nano-influencers and most Micro-influencer accounts tend to have niche-based contents, which you can take advantage of to promote your brand or products.
Like Nano-influencer marketing, Micro-influencer marketing is highly robust and many marketers love partnering with them for promotions. Here are the reasons why adopting Micro-influencer marketing might be beneficial for your brand:
Pros Of Micro-Influencers
1. More Extensive Following
Micro-influencers have better reach in absolute number of followers compared to Nano-influencers. If brand outreach and discovery is your main goal in advertising, then partnering with a Micro-influencer is more effective than a Nano-influencer.
There’s also the benefit of being recognized by audiences outside of the Micro influencer’s followings. Since Micro-influencers have the proper engagements and reach to get discovered on other social media platforms, their extended reach can also be beneficial to you as well!.
2. Advantage In Having Polished, Themed Profiles For Marketing.
The main difference between Nano and Micro-influencers aside from their follower count is in how they present themselves to the audience. While Nano-influencers tend to post unfiltered, day-to-day content, Micro-influencers tend to take more special notice of how their overall feed looks.
That’s why most Micro-influencers have aesthetically-pleasing content and follow certain personal themes or branding. This can be beneficial to you if your brand also aligns with their content because you’ll have the marketing advantage of gaining higher brand consciousness from their audience.
There’s also the advantage of cross-marketing between other complementary brands, which can make your brand more reliable to consumers and competitive in the market.
3. Opportunity To Establish An Authentic Relationship With Future Brand Ambassadors.
Similar to Nano-influencers, Micro-influencers still have a lot of potential to grow their following and reach. That also means that you still have the opportunity and greater chance of success to build a closer relationship with them now, before they get too busy and overwhelmed to even take notice of you.
Cons Of Micro-Influencers
While Micro-influencers defeat Nano influencers in terms of sheer follower count, there are some factors that this particular type of influencer lacks.
1. Impersonal Tone
First is the tendency to be impersonal. Micro influencer marketing revolves around a more business-like relationship compared to Nano influencer. If you’re part of a bigger corporate brand or company, then this might be preferable. But for medium to small enterprises, this might come off as a disadvantage especially if you’re looking to build a community around your brand.
2. Dilution Of Marketing Effectiveness
Another downside to Micro-influencer marketing is the potential dilution. Since a lot of marketers specifically target Micro-influencers to rep their brands, your advertisements might get buried under other sponsorships that they have.
Micro-influencers also post more to keep the momentum of their engagement. Because of this, your sponsored posts might not get the maximum engagement that they could possibly achieve. This is the case especially for Micro-influencers who post more than once a day.
3. Higher Cost Of Engagement
Lastly, the breaking point for smaller businesses when it comes to engaging Micro-influencers is the higher cost charges for advertisements. Unlike Nano influencers, the majority of Micro-influencers only post promotional content in exchange for monetary compensation. Along with a potential high professional fee, you also need to provide your products or services for free for them to promote.
Which Is Better And When To Use Who?
The million-dollar question: who should you use —Nano-influencers or Micro-influencer?
Well, that really depends on various factors. As you’ve seen, both types of influencers have their own pros and cons.
If your primary concern is the marketing budget, engaging in sponsorship with a Nano-influencer may be better. This is the case especially for small businesses that are looking to build their online presence.
When it comes to marketing objectives, both types of influencers offer different perspectives. For product testing, reaching out to a Nano-influencer will give you the authenticity and reliability that you want. If you want to solidify a branding message geared to serious marketing leads, a Micro-influencer will be a better suit.
You can also look at it through your long-term strategy. Building a relationship with a Nano-influencer will give you the edge of being with them as they progress in their career. So when they become bigger influencers, you would already have established a relationship with them and have contact with them on a more personal level.
The point is, there really is no definite answer when choosing between Nano or Micro-influencers. Marketing strategies are not one-size-fits-all solutions. It all boils down to two main aspects: the cost and your outreach objectives, with the target audience and level of engagement being the driving factors of your marketing goals.
What do you think? How have your experiences with Nano and Micro-influencers been? We would love to hear you share your views and insights in the comments section below!
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