Getting Started with Micro-Influencer Marketing on Instagram

Before taking any action, it's important to identify your specific goals and objectives for your micro-influencer campaign. This will help you develop an effective strategy and answer key questions such as who is best suited to achieve the desired results, what type of content is likely to engage followers, and which platforms are most likely to generate leads and sales. Setting clear goals ensures that you’re able to measure the success of your campaign later. Different sizes of influencers optimize around different objectives. For example, if you’re looking for a top of funnel strategy, larger influencers are your best bet, since they have been proven to grow large audiences and can direct that traffic to your page or website with a simple shoutout. The downside to that kind of scale though, is that those influencers aren’t as great for generating sales, simply because individuals follow them for too many reasons. Micro-influencers, on the other hand, have an exceptionally high level of trust with their audiences, and as a result have legitimate influence over their purchasing decisions. This is largely because at their (relatively) small size, individuals have selected to follow them usually for just one reason – because they have demonstrated passion or mastery in a particular area. As a result, they are treated as industry experts, and can convert much better than their larger counterparts.

The success of your micro-influencer campaign depends on finding the right influencers to work with for your business. Detailed manual research, like reaching out directly to Instagram profiles with proven engagement, before deciding who will represent your brand and the values it stands for, makes eminent sense. Influencers’ audiences will quickly be able to tell if a micro-influencer has chosen to promote a product due to a legitimate interest or if it’s just for the money. As such, you need to make sure you’re using influencers who align with your brand on a thematic and philosophical level. Manual research on micro-influencers makes sense if you’re on a tight budget. As we’ve covered in other articles, you can use hashtags, follower lists, or even blog posts to find Instagram micro-influencers for free. These tactics do have their limitations though. Typically, it’s difficult to know whether these influencers have legitimate audiences. You also might not know whether those influencers have influence or just followers – there’s a big difference. As a result, if your budget allows for it, it might make sense to use a platform like Smartfluence, where not only can you find micro-influencers on TikTok and YouTube that have already been vetted, but you can also leverage Smartfluence’s Discovery as a Service model, where we find curated lists of influencers for you based on your exact targeting parameters including demographics, experience, size, affinities, performance, and more!

Create unique content that resonates with your brand and the micro-influencer you have chosen to work with. Consider creating content-specific challenge boards or templates, which can be easily shared by the influencers to personalize it and make it their own. This type of content is designed to encourage engagement as it is interactive and encourages viewers to interact with it. Giveaways are another great way to take advantage of micro-influencer audiences since they lend themselves to going viral quickly. If you just want something a bit simpler though, like a shoutout, make sure to take a look at the micro-influencer’s best performing posts and try to replicate them in your engagement. Instagram loves repetition and rewards content that follows successful frameworks. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. While larger influencers are generally more strict on creative control, smaller influencers are more malleable and open to suggestions. Simply guide them along the right path and let them take care of the rest!

Before you make a micro-influencer agreement official, start engaging with them directly. Follow their content and comment/like posts when appropriate. This will help build a better connection with the influencer so that both of you have a great working relationship. You can also pitch collaborations to test out the influencer’s style or even ask them to review your product or service. This allows you to see how well they would fit in your overall marketing strategy. On a platform like ours, you can handle all your influencer communication and payment in one place, so you can foster a close relationship with your micro-influencer team easily and sustainably.

Once you have launched your micro-influencer campaign, never forget to analyze and measure its performance. Track the number of followers each post has gained, which posts are most liked and shared, and how many comments/questions were left in each influencer's post. This data will help you determine whether the campaigns were successful or not and what needs to be improved next time. Moreover, tracking the performance of the micro-influencers helps you decide whether they should become part of your core influencer marketing strategy or not. If you’re optimizing for sales, make sure to use a UTM so you can attribute traffic to your product pages, ensuring you credit the appropriate influencer for your results. Alternatively, unique codes and links may be used for your influencers as well.

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If you’re interested in learning more about influencer marketing and how Smartfluence can help you establish and scale your influencer marketing campaigns, feel free to book a demo here.