The influencer industry is by now well-established, but there are many nooks and crannies that brand marketers can explore to know how to make it work for them. The concepts of micro-influencers and macro-influencers are among them.

If you’re looking into partnering with influencers to boost your brand, it’s important to understand the distinctions before you start your influencer outreach strategy.

Here, we’ll run you through the differences between micro- and macro-influencers, the benefits of working with each type and how to choose which one is right for your brand. 

 

Micro-Influencers vs Macro-Influencers

Perhaps the most obvious difference between different types of influencers is follower count.

There’s no hard-and-fast rule for it, but micro-influencers typically have tens of thousands of followers, while macro-influencers tend to have hundreds of thousands, if not millions. As you might expect, it can vary between industries, but there are often differences in engagement rates between these types of influencers, too.

Massive audiences might look more attractive on the surface, but they rarely translate to actual interactions and, crucially, conversions. In most industries, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a genuine and honest conversation between a macro-influencer and a potential customer of a brand because they’re not built on two-way conversations.

That’s not to say that brands can’t benefit from partnerships with multi-million-follower influencers—many do, but mainly because they have the marketing budgets to get them there.

Micro-influencers often prove to be an appealing option for brands with more modest budgets because they’re generally paying to reach smaller audiences. As we said, though, size isn’t everything, so there are mutual benefits to be had with this approach if brands are connected with the right storytellers.

 

The Benefits Of Working With Micro-Influencers

Broadly speaking (but also from a tonne of experience), micro-influencers enjoy more natural interactions with their audiences because their relationships with brands are built on gifting and not advertising. This means that they are carefully selected and gifted products they are more likely to love, rather than being paid a lump sum to post an ad, regardless of their feelings towards the item.

They’re not obliged to post about the products they’re gifted either, so they’ll only get their cameras out for the ones that resonate the most. This might feel like a risk if a chosen influencer doesn’t particularly love your product, but it means you stand to benefit from only the most authentic content if you find one who does.

You might sacrifice sheer reach, but you can often make up for it in engagement and conversions as a result of this carefully crafted and emotionally motivated content.

Working with micro-influencers also has cost-saving benefits when you consider the levels of reach and engagement you can achieve. Let’s say you gift to 100 micro-influencers with 10,000 followers each and 80% of them post four pieces of content about how much they love your product. At an average engagement rate of 4%, they enjoy 40,000 engagements and 400,000 impressions from 300+ pieces of content. 

In the current market, you’ll part with a similar amount of cash to have just one macro-influencer posting about your product. They might have a following of 300,000 and they might be guaranteed to post three or four pieces of content, but, at the same engagement rate of 4%, their total interactions might only hit 12,000.

It’s a hypothetical scenario, of course, but it’s an indication of the bang-for-your-buck marketing you can enjoy if you work with the right micro-influencers. Those with smaller followings aren’t always perfect for certain big-hitting brands, though, so this is where macro-influencers might enter the fray.

 

The Benefits Of Working With Macro-Influencers

The clearest and most obvious benefit of working with macro-influencers is the fact that they can turn millions of heads to your brand with a single piece of content. Everyone knows this comes at a significant cost—one glance at this Instagram rich list shows you just how much the biggest stars are raking in per post on the platform. 

At these levels, you’ll be looking at crazy amounts of awareness by virtue of association with such celebrities, so you’ll typically see them used by well-established brands to maintain their stellar statuses. 

Of course, the likes of Kylie Jenner, Leo Messi and Selena Gomez are top-of-the-pile stuff. Not all macro-influencers cost millions, nor do they need to have millions of followers. Some influencers with 100,000-500,000 are still of the macro mould and they might be the right fit for your brand (and your budget).

If your goal is strengthening your brand’s authority in your niche and widening your reach in the process, the right macro-influencer can add credence to your voice. It’s important to choose carefully here, though, as the partnership needs to make sense to both your and your chosen influencer’s audiences. Any hint of artificiality and your marketing activity will likely backfire. If the partnership is perfect, though, you could be reaping the rewards of reaching thousands of new prospective customers in one fell swoop. 

Sometimes, working with only one influencer can also make life easier when it comes to campaign management. The tracking and reporting might be simpler if you’re flying solo and you can often see the impact immediately. 

The prospect of working with 100 micro-influencers might seem pretty daunting by comparison, but that’s why we do all the legwork for you at Gifta, from outreach and packaging to tracking and reporting back. Interested? You can find out more about our approach for brands here.

 

Which Type Of Influencer Is Right For Your Brand?

Some brands use a combination of micro- and macro-influencers to achieve their marketing goals. The direction you take will depend on your own objectives, so be sure to take the time to map these out before you start any influencer outreach.

The most important thing is to avoid jumping in at the deep end with a big sackful of cash—this usually only goes one way. Consider what you want to achieve in the short, medium and long run and craft your influencer strategy accordingly. 

You might start off small with a few micro-influencers to test responses in your niche and build up to 100 with a new product launch a year down the line. You might choose a macro-influencer to achieve brand awareness goals within a couple of months. Whatever you do, don’t rush it—the right influencers for you are out there.

Get in touch with our experts at GIFTA to see how we can connect you with the storytellers who’ll love your brand today.