What’s next, Influencers?
DDB Influences July Edition — This month: #MicroInfluencers

DAVID VS. GOLIATH — WHY MICRO-INFLUENCERS ARE THE HIDDEN CHAMPIONS OF INFLUENCER MARKETING
Writer: Marco Kohm
The rise of the social influencer has changed today’s marketing environment. While marketers used to collaborate with famous celebrities for them to endorse the brand, today more and more brands shift their budgets to social influencers — mostly ordinary people who became quite famous by creating and distributing content via their own social channels. In the constant battle against ad blockers and algorithms that tremendously cut brands’ reach, influencers seem to be a mighty weapon to break through to your target group in the digital realm.
But influencers are not only a popular marketing channel because of their many fans and followers, but mostly due to their strong influence on these potential buyers. Influencer marketing is the new form of digital word of mouth marketing. While there’s clear evidence that product recommendations by peers are more effective than any form of advertising, influencers are even more effective. Their word of mouth effectiveness is boosted by the opinion leadership concept that was first mentioned by Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet in 1940. They analyzed political communication prior to an election in the US and observed that a vast majority of people is influenced by the information from people in their social environment rather than from media outlets. They concluded that in every social group there are very few opinion leaders, who develop more elaborated opinions on certain topics and therefore significantly influence other people’s opinion. Influencers are what traditionally used to be journalists, industry professionals or celebrities — opinion leaders.
Influencer marketing today
However, the influencer-sphere is changing constantly. Today there are influencers with several millions of followers who turned into modern celebrities. They embellish magazine covers rather than only acting in the social web. Together with brands they create their own products, like beauty products or even whole fashion collections. Many of them are building up a second profession in the media, fashion or beauty industry, may it be as a moderator, model or by releasing music albums.
The way brands collaborate with these social media celebrities is professionalizing as well. Some companies have already implemented an influencer marketing department. Many influencers have their own management team or are organized in influencer networks. This professionalization is coming along with exorbitant price increases. Forbes Magazine recently reported on “Two top-tier lifestyle Instagramers, each with a total reach of around one million followers” who “charge $15,000 and $20,000 respectively for one post.”.
On the other hand, influencer marketing databases are on the rise. Providers like Leaders, Brandwatch, etc. offer these databases, which are basically registers for thousands of independent influencers from a whole lot of different categories and, just like traditional media buying, allow for companies to approach and “book” influencers at the touch of a button. These databases nearly automize the process of influencer collaborations and, more importantly, grant companies access to a whole lot of niche influencers that would have been impossible to identify before.
The rise of the micro-influencer
The rise of the so-called micro-influencer means yet another change to the influencer-sphere. According to Influencer Marketing Days, micro-influencers are those with a rather limited fanbase, ranging from 1.000 to 10.000 followers. Most micro-influencers’ content covers single topics, may it be generic lifestyle and beauty topics or even more niche fields like knitting or graphic design for Powerpoint presentations. As there are millions of them in the social web, there is almost no topic or target audience that is not covered by a relevant influencer.
Brands obviously need to collaborate with a higher number of influencers when it comes to awareness and reach. However, as smaller influencers can still engage with their audience quite intensely, many studies and reports certify a high word of mouth influence on consumers, even higher than a regular peer person’s. According to a recent study by the Keller Fay Group and Experticity, “82 percent of consumers who were surveyed for the study, reported they were highly likely to follow a recommendation made by a micro influencer.” Furthermore, micro-influencers are “more direct in their recommendations with 74 percent encouraging someone to “buy it or try it””. Also, the study shows that micro-influencers are more impactful, scoring higher in “more knowledgeable” (94% vs. 84%), “more believable” (94% vs. 83%) and “better at explaining how the product works or could be used” (92% vs. 83%). Their fans trust in their opinions and recommendations because they are either experts in a certain field or because they are especially passionate or authentic. Their fans can better identify with a micro-influencer living an almost ordinary life than with a celebrity-like mega-influencer hopping between sponsored events, sponsored holiday trips and business meetings. Their credibility might also be higher as they are still micro-influencers who have probably endorsed only very few brands and products, compared to bigger influencers who receive countless requests every day and seem to collaborate with everyone who’s willing to finance their glamorous lifestyle.
Digiday UK reported on a survey of two million social influencers conducted by the influencer marketing platform Markerly, that shows how consumer engagement decreases with increasing follower numbers. According to the survey, influencers on Instagram with less than 1.000 followers have an average like rate of 8% while it shrinks down to 4 percent for influencers with between 1.000 and 10.000 followers and further down to 2,4% for those with between 10.000 and 100.000 followers. Comment rate behaves similarly.
What’s the Influence?
Influencer marketing is more than a short hype. Social influencers are a mighty weapon within a company’s marketing mix. Being the latest incarnation of opinion leaders, social influencers are incredibly effective when it comes to digital word of mouth. However, the influencer landscape is changing constantly and today can be split into two extremes: one the one hand there are mega-influencers with sometimes high six-digit or even seven-digit follower numbers. Therefore, they have an enormous reach in the digital realm and powerful channels when it comes to product or brand awareness. In many cases companies have to spend insane budgets on these mega-influencers in order to collaborate with them. The relationship between mega-influencers and their community equals the one of celebrities and their fans — it’s not on eye-level but rather characterized by admiration and fandom.
On the other hand, there are micro-influencers with follower numbers raging from 1.000 to 10.000. These influencers are still rather ordinary people and able to engage with their smaller community quite intensely. Despite their limited reach, micro-influencers are much more effective when it comes to user engagement and sales activation.
Based on their specific objectives companies have to decide whether a higher number of micro-influencers or few but expensive mega-influencers are the better choice and how the actual collaboration will look like. Especially for small to mid-sized companies micro-influencers are most likely to be the more effective and more efficient way to go.
By:
Marco Kohm // Strategist // DDB Berlin

