Nano or micro, macro or mega influencers? Who is the ideal influencer?

What’s the most popular type of influencer partnership? This is probably one of the most common questions asked by those who are just getting started with influencer marketing. The most honest answer is that all types of leaders are great for ad campaigns. But, of course, they each have their own special features.

Nano influencers: 1K–10K followers

These influencers are the closest to ordinary users. Basically, almost anyone can become a nano influencer. And most people know a few dozen acquaintances like this. On average, nano influencers have the highest engagement rate (ER)—from 7 to 10%. The small number of subscribers indicates that the coverage of these influencers is low, but the impact of advertising campaigns can be even bigger than that on the top channels, where the audience composition is blurred. As a rule, the nano influencer audience is very compact and concentrated in one city or state.

When should you go to nano influencers? When services or goods are provided only in one specific place. In this case, nano influencers are the perfect choice. They are also suitable for testing business ideas on a small audience. Another bonus is that you can keep your budget low.

Hypetrain allows you to search for influencers who create content for YouTube (we also plan to expand our service for processing data from Instagram in the near future). For example, we chose the USA and influencers with the number of subscribers from 1 to 5 thousand people to search for nano-influencers.

Nano or micro, macro or mega influencers? Who is the ideal influencer?

This is a random sample that shows the average engagement rate of nano- influencers. In general, with under 10K subscribers, it is extremely hard to get a high number of views on YouTube. The best platform for searching nano-influencers for advertising partnership is Instagram.

Micro-influencers: 10K-50K followers

Micro-influencers give a wide audience coverage and also keep a fairly high ER— from 6 to 8% on average. They are perfect for advertising collaborations within one or a few cities. The micro-influencer audience is less compact than the nano-influencer’s, but most often it is also concentrated in one or more states.

Why can nano- and micro-influencers be more interesting than big influencers?

As we said before, nano- and micro-influencers are closer to the audience, they can communicate more with subscribers, they know their interests better, and, accordingly, the opinion of such influencers is more valuable and they are more trustworthy to the audience. They can be effective not only for local brands, but also for large companies. In the case of large businesses, nano- and micro-influencers, among other things, help to increase trust and brand loyalty.

Macro influencers: 500K-1M followers

Here, the level of engagement is lower, views are higher and the recommended price for advertising integration is higher. Macro-influencers are suitable for those who want to increase sales of goods or services by attracting a new audience.

Mega-influencers: over 1M subscribers

Mega-influencers are expensive, they tend to have a “spread out” audience that is scattered all over the world, and they will only be suitable for those brands that want to enter the global market with their products and services. A small ER, usually not exceeding 3-4%, is compensated by maximum audience coverage. Followers of mega-influencers are less loyal and easily understand the difference between advertising and sincere advice. Mega-influencers will be useful for drawing maximum attention to the goods or services of companies. There are, of course, mega-influencers with high ER. For example, PewDiePie’s engagement rate is 7 to 8% per month, and that’s why he is considered one of the coolest YouTubers in the world.

By the way, if we are talking about big brands, they turn not only to social network stars, but also to influencers with a small audience. Here we wrote about how Adidas selects nano-influencers for advertising collaborations.

So who is more effective?

It depends on the specific advertising proposal. If the brand works in the local market, it makes no sense to go straight to macro- or mega-influencers. The best solution would be bloggers with a small but compact and very loyal audience. It is important to remember that the wider the audience, the less loyal it becomes, but a larger audience can increase sales of goods or services by attracting new customers.

The universality of influencer marketing allows you to find the leaders to solve any business problem. And the small price of advertising cooperation with nano- and micro-influencers can help you to understand the reaction of the audience and adjust the advertising message, which will go to a larger audience. In general, our main advice is not to be afraid of experiments and choose those influencers for cooperation whose followers will share the brand’s values as much as possible.

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