Think about the last purchase you made. Why did you buy that brand over its competitors?
As consumers, it feels easier to choose a brand that someone we know recommends over a brand we’ve never heard of.
It’s human nature to trust the opinions of people we know instead of making purchases on a whim. This idea of vetted, trustworthy, personal endorsements has developed into what’s known today as influencer marketing.
People trust recommendations from other people. That’s why collaborating with influencers has become a popular and powerful social media tactic.
While many brands execute influencer marketing campaigns at a strategic corporate level, there’s an enormous opportunity for local affiliates to generate word-of-mouth marketing locally to grow revenue for your business and your brand.
This is how you can boost awareness by adding micro-influencers to your local marketing strategy.
What Is a Micro-Influencer?
A micro-influencer is a topic expert who builds brand awareness and drives sales at the important local level. Their followings are typically smaller but hyper-targeted to a geographical area, allowing you to only target those who could be potential clients. The best micro-influencers are relatable and are able to connect with their audiences to drive high engagement levels.
A micro-influencer has a social media following between 1,000 and 100,000. Although their followings are smaller in quantity, if you run a local business, it’s more about who is following influencers versus how many people are following them.
Here’s how adding a micro-influencer to your influencer marketing strategy will drive revenue.
How Local Micro-Influencers Leverage Their Niche Expertise
Local influencers use their niche expertise to build brand awareness, increase market share, and drive sales.
Brand Awareness
If your local community doesn’t know your brand, they can’t make a purchase. By partnering with micro-influencers you can make more consumers aware of the services or products you offer. It’s all about tapping into the credibility and trust they have built with their audience.
Driving Sales
Mixing micro-influencers into your marketing strategy is a cost-effective way to drive traffic to a website to complete a transaction, contact a lead form, or give prospects more information. Think about what call to action you want to include in your influencer campaign. How can you entice their audience to become your audience?
Niche Content Creation
Local influencers know their specific area of interest deeply. By creating content around a passion, hobby, or discipline, they grow a dedicated social media following who share their interest.
BrandMuscle’s team found creators to promote insurance for a particular client in interesting, creative ways. That led us to explore cool and unique themes like motherhood, DIY values, and lifestyle. Now we’re exploring ways to do that more broadly in other industries.
Inside a Successful Micro-Influencer Program
Here’s a peek inside a micro-influencer campaign that BrandMuscle executed for one of our leading insurance clients.
The client was already executing paid and traditional media tactics but was curious what additional marketing channels they could pursue at the hyper-local level. That’s when micro-influencers came up as a way to connect with specific groups of people with the ability to land their brand in front of the right consumers, outside of other forms of paid and organic social.
The micro-influencers reached key audiences for our client in a novel way. That built brand awareness, developed trust, and drove conversions, because our creators established a clear call to action in their own tone of voice and linked to a specific landing page. People relate to authenticity, and these micro-influencers’ posts all felt authentic in the way that influences consumer behavior.
BrandMuscle established influencer relationships in order to promote 27 insurance agents in different markets throughout the country. We vetted influencers using a vendor platform called Upfluence and tested different ways of contacting creators through Instagram DM and email outreach.
Working within a set influencer payment budget, micro-influencers used real-life scenarios to promote home and auto insurance for agents on TikTok and Instagram. Influencers received between $50 to $400 per post, depending on factors such as follower count, engagement rate, and overall page aesthetic, and they found creative ways to tell the client’s story, within the context of mom life, DIY, construction, and lifestyle posts.
Influencer Campaigns Drive Results
The campaign generated 42 posts across Instagram and TikTok between June and September 2022. Those 42 posts had 20,809 total engagements, 257,400 total impressions, and a reach of 206,191 people. Each post reached 4,909 people on average and averaged 495 engagements. (For perspective, an average reach for an organic social post is around only 50-100.)
The program proved how creators’ originality can position a promoted product or service in a distinctive way that generates high engagement within a set budget.
For brands, micro-influencers are a valuable asset to mix into your local marketing strategy, because they can easily connect with your audience, generating significant online buzz surrounding your brand.
Start Working With Local Influencers
Interested in adding micro-influencers to your influencer marketing strategy? Get in touch with us to implement a program suited specifically for your brand.