Nano-influencers are a relatively new type of influencer. Their accounts are neither glamorous nor polished and their photos aren’t retouched with dozens of filters. They are everyday people with a following ranging from 1,000 to 5,000 and tend to be a trusted voice with highly engaged followers, which is why brands like working with them.
If your company has yet to discover the advantages of working with nano-influencers, you are not alone! Many people think that the number of followers an influencer has directly equates to their actual influence on people, but this simply isn’t the case. An endorsement from a nano-influencer can have a much bigger impact than one who has hundreds of thousands of followers. Not convinced? Here are five reasons that will sway your opinion:
1. They Have the Highest Engagement Rate
According to the recent State of Influencer Marketing 2020 by HypeAuditor, the engagement rate of nano-influencers is twice as high as that of other groups of influencers.
Engagement rate has a huge impact on reach, meaning the higher the engagement rate, the more likely an influencer’s followers are to see a post. Take Saasha Jacobson, a lifestyle and fitness nano-influencer from Portland, Ore., for example. She shared a post with her then-2,000 Instagram followers and tagged two women’s sportswear companies. The post got 377 likes — almost 19% engagement!
2. They’re Much More Accessible
Working with nano-influencers is usually a less formal arrangement than working with other influencers. In most cases, these people will not even consider themselves influencers, so it’s up to you (or your marketing team) to find them and reach out. Because they’re not high-profile celebrities receiving thousands (if not millions) of DMs, it’s much more likely that a nano-influencer will actually see your message and respond in a timely manner. Nano-influencers are also usually self-managed, so you’ll need only to negotiate terms of the agreement with them, not a rigid agency that manages tons of clients.
3. They Can Reach Super-Niche Audiences
Brands often work with nano-influencers when they want to target specific niches and stretch their marketing dollars. Nano-influencers tend to make their content more category-specific, allowing you to make your advertisements more relevant to each of these segments by targeting the right creators with your original content. Additionally, leveraging nano-influencers is helpful when you’re interested in testing your product/service in a potential new market. You can do this by working with nano-influencers in different niches at a fairly low cost.
4. They Get You the Most Bang for Your Buck
Speaking of low cost, nano-influencers will not break the bank! While working with Kim Kardashian will set you back anywhere from $300,000 to $500,000 per sponsored Instagram post, nano-influencers are often happy with free products, gift cards or a small fee.
Take Gabby Whiten, a lifestyle and fashion nano-influencer based in New York, for example. In 2019, when she was approaching 3,000 Instagram followers, she told HuffPost her pay rate for one Instagram feed post, a handful of Instagram story frames and a blog post was $145 plus a $120 gift card. Marketers love working with nano-influencers for exactly this reason! However, it’s important that you’re not taking advantage of nano-influencers. If they tell you their rates, there’s usually some room for negotiation, but don’t be disrespectful! Their services are valuable and need to be treated as such.
5. Working with Them is Easier and Builds Trust
Possibly the most valuable thing about nano-influencers is the trust they’ve built with their audiences. When looking for the right nano-influencers to collaborate with, you’re looking for people who are going to be authentic and enthusiastic about your product/service so their audience truly believes in what they’re saying. If you give the influencer super strict rules they need to follow and exact phrases they need to say when promoting your company, it will diminish the authenticity of the post, which is really the reason you chose to work with a nano-influencer in the first place.
Instead, send them your product or give them a promo code to try your service for free. Offer them support as they try it out and answer any questions that come up along the way. This will enable them to give an authentic review from a first-hand experience, which will be extremely valuable to their followers.
If influencer marketing is one of those tactics you’ve always wanted to try, but have no idea where to start, talk to us! We’re happy to walk through the pros and cons of influencer marketing, and will develop the best strategy for you. Whether your organization sells B2B or B2C, effective social media keeps you front and center with your audiences with an immediacy unmatched by any other marketing activity.
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