Brand Breakthroughs: Micro Influencers Matter – More

Nothing influences you more than a recommendation from a trusted friend, right? In fact, if you are like most people, you’d trust recommendations even from people you don’t know over advertising from a well-known brand. That’s because the strongest influence come from authenticity – the very reason why influencer marketing is so effective. Brands today are growing awareness, driving engagement, and building credibility among consumers by harnessing the influence of individuals trusted within select buyer niches or industries.

And it’s not hard to see why influencer collaborations work so effectively to become branding amplifiers. It’s just as true too that influencer marketing, when strategically executed, can drive measurable business outcomes with tangible ROI. That’s why, smart brands don’t lose the opportunity to add influencer marketing to their performance marketing mix. But how should brands think about influencers? Clearly, one-size does not fit all, and here are three key tactics that I have seen working better when influencers are not just brand-amplifiers, but also demand-creators.

The micro advantage

At first, it might seem to make most sense for brands to choose only the best-known or most popular influencers with the greatest number of followers to create the widest possible reach, engagement, and conversion. But that would be strategically flawed. The influence that comes from relevant expertise no matter how enticing the follower count is invaluable. These influencers with relatively fewer followers are often better suited to drive sales outcomes as they are readily trusted amongst their specialized target base.

If authentic relevance is established, they have the ability to incorporate a brand into their content in a way that feels natural and unforced to their audience. For example, in our industry – the IT services business, industry analysts help clients to procure digital solutions and services. With their ear to the ground for buyer trends, these micro-influencers can not only serve as invaluable advisors, but also sway buyer perceptions. So, be on the lookout for authentic voices that are respected by your customers, and there is the first building block to identify a micro influencer you can benefit from working with.

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The engagement model rewired

When we think of influencer marketing, we mostly see examples of brands engaging someone with influence to shine light on a brand trigger – like a solution or product launch. But these tactical approaches are really remnants of the traditional advertising ‘campaign launch’ thinking. Ongoing long-term specialized influencer partnerships are better suited to the trusted relationships that both influencers and brands must build with buyers to grow their influence, while being perceived as authentic in their recommendations.

And that’s where micro influencers have figured out what works best. They are more tuned to moving away from pay-to-post or flat fee-based engagement to an outcome-based operating model. Hybrid models too – a combination of fixed fee and outcome-based compensation – is a good way to get started, especially factoring in the ease of digital traceability. A good example is how Airbnb works effectively with travel bloggers and vloggers who showcase their stays in offbeat locations around the world, thus inspiring their target audience too.

The data and AI play

We, as marketers, are already working on ways to gain first-party data as we move toward a cookieless future. We also know that social media listening is an important tactic in this context, that then enables us to personalize outreach and sales strategies for our brands. These direct insights give us a valuable peek into consumer perceptions and behavior in real-time. Similarly, a well-tracked influencer marketing program can immensely widen the brand’s access to first-party data and amplify the leads funnel.

In fact, the same first-party data can help you also gain insights into which content creators have the most influence in the categories and segments that are relevant for your business. Today, AI-powered tools can even help identify which influencers are best suited to align with your brand, whose audience profile best matches your target market, and whose trust index is strongest. Loreal offers an interesting example on how it partnered with AI influencer marketing platform Influential to match it with influencers based on ideal demographic and psychographic fit.

We are all marketing to an audience that is overwhelmed by promotional and advertising content. As people carefully curate who they choose to trust and follow for advice and recommendations, micro influencer marketing will only grow in relevance. Not just for brand building but for beefing up the marketing pipeline too. I am not suggesting that brands radically transform their choice of influencers – especially those already delivering solid awareness and perception outcomes. Rather, it will benefit us all to evolve our strategies over time to proactively view our influencer marketing game plan as a brand-new channel, feeding into metrics that matter.

Sumit Virmani is the global chief marketing officer at Infosys. He writes a column series 'Brand Breakthroughs’ on Storyboard18.

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