Nano-influencers: disrupting brands and the marketing landscape.
In the past, there have been various misconceptions about influencer marketing. Some mistake having a huge following to equal having an actual influence on people — affect decisions, buying culture and trends. However, a word from an influencer with little or no huge followings can have even greater impact when compared to that of one with thousands of followers.
This sounds surprising, right? I expected such reactions.
As predicted, the social media influencer market is set to be worth more than $10 billion USD this year and we are seeing lots of changes as the industry grows leading to disruptions. The era when only big dogs in Nigeria like MTN, GTB, Coca-Cola, Heineken could afford influencer marketing and looked at just the count of followers seems to be fading away.
Today, there is a rise of a new set of disruptors. Industry innovators and big brands are actively collaborating with them to get business results without spending much of their marketing budget while providing a voice of authenticity — brand trust and acceptability.
You might be wondering: Who really are these disruptors? Let’s find out more about them.
Introducing nano-influencers!
Nano-influencers are a new generation of opinion leaders or influencers — regular everyday people with a smaller number of followers in comparison to micro-influencers, usually between 1,000–5000 followers.
They are known to have influence within their community or a particular niche such as fashion, tech, real estate or travel since they often start out focused on a genuine passion. A fashion designer, a student, a community leader, local pastor qualifies as they can influence a brand’s product or service to their friends and family through user-generated content and in-person recommendations.
According to Business Insider, “a lot of brands prefer to work with nano- or micro-influencers’ but the big question is: “Why consider nano-influencers as part of your strategy?”
Nano-influencers and your brand
You would have been wondering if using nano-influencers is a good strategy for your brand. So should you? Research shows that brands do not necessarily need a world-known celebrity to affect consumer buying behaviour as modern customers now trust real and authentic personalities, family and friends for recommendations more than ever especially if the decision requires a rather small investment of time, money, or effort (retail, restaurants, travel services, etc.). Moreso, these creators are more careful about choosing a product or service for advertisement because they don’t want to disappoint and lose the audience’s trust.
This new breed of influencers make original content that is more niche and category-specific thereby creating more relevance for your brand while allowing for segmentation and better product positioning.
However, one of the major advantages of using nano-influencers is that they have the highest level of engagement or impact on their audience given the fact that they have established a real-life relationship with the majority of their followers through good dialogue and one-on-one communication, which is much more intimate and engaging.
According to one report, the engagement rate of nano-influencers is twice as high as that of other groups of influencers (nano-influencers have an engagement rate of 7.2% on Instagram while micro-influencers engage up to 3.7% of their followings.)
For you, this strategy could be a real edge over your competition as nano-influencers exist in a largely untapped and inexpensive space at the moment. For most nano influencers, money isn’t part of the deal. Free products are viewed as fair compensation for the ads they post outside their day jobs.
Having said that, how can brands big or small collaborate and run successful marketing campaigns with nano-influencers?
Collaborating with nano-influencers
Despite the stronger connection with their audiences, high levels of engagement and brand authenticity afforded by using nano-influencers, executing successful marketing campaigns with nano-influencers require adopting the right strategy.
Here’s some:
- Send your products for review.
- Turn a nano-influencer into a brand ambassador.
- Share coupons and discounts.
- Become a giveaway sponsor
- Generate user-generated content.
It is important to note that most nano-influencers aren’t as experienced as micro-influencers. They haven’t collaborated with dozens of brands and they might not know how best to ensure traffic feeds through from their post to your Instagram page and ultimately your website. They might not know or appreciate the use of branded hashtags, or understand how their account insights can increase the engagement of your sponsored content.
It is best to show a nano-influencer on how to best promote your brand during the onboarding process.
Nano-influencers are the future
Should I scream or whisper? Whichever way, I don’t know about you, but in this constantly evolving industry, nano-influencers are the future of not only influencer marketing, but the marketing world in general.
Not only do nano-influencers allow you to tap into the audience pools that aren’t following micro-influencers or celebrities, but they encourage offline conversations around your brand because these nano-influencers are actually interacting with the people who follow them.
American Businessman, Scott Cook put it right when he said, “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is — it’s what consumers tell each other it is.” If you want a level of control on the conversation that happens between consumers authentically, you need to befriend the powerful voices of nano-influencers to get them on your side here.
