Why Small Instagram Influencers Are Better for Your Business

Instagram influencer marketing is growing. While the exact value of the market is hard to pin down, SBT reported it surpassed the $1 billion mark in 2017. And it is now estimated at over $2 billion.

No matter where the market value currently stands, there is no doubt Instagram gives brands access to a large audience. And with the proper optimization, you can target your campaigns with the right influencer and get more bang for your ad dollars.

For small business owners with limited budgets, micro-influencers provide great opportunities and value. And according to a report from CreatorIQ, micro-influencers are growing at a much faster rate than their macro counterparts.

The emailed report, titled, Influencer Marketing Benchmarks, looks at AB categories, platforms, and content types. And across the four major social media platforms, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, nano and micro-influencers are doing much better than medium and mega influencers in different metrics.

Influencer Marketing Benchmarks

When it comes to engagement for Instagram, nano influencers (1K-10K) have the highest rate at 4.4%. Micro (10K-100K), medium (100K-1M), and mega (1M+) influencers have rates of 2.4%, 1.8%, and 0.7% respectively. This is the same across the board on all the platforms.

The best platform is YouTube. It has the highest engagement rate for nano (6.7%), micro (6.2%), medium (5.0%), and mega (4.0%) influencers.

Facebook and Twitter have the lowest rates with under one percent for all levels of influencers. But even for these platforms, the nano and micro-influencers fare much better.

When it comes to the type of content, images do better than videos on Instagram across all levels of influencers. Video lags anywhere from .7% to .9%.

Industry Segments

Instagram influencers run the gamut, which is why it provides a great opportunity for reaching a targeted audience. And depending on what industry you are in; Instagram can deliver great returns for your ad dollars.

The overall average engagement rate of campaign content on Instagram is 2.4%. But it can be higher or lower based on the industry.

Pets, for example, has the highest rate at 3.9%, which is followed by tobacco and smoke at 3.3%, and children and baby toys at 3.2%. On the low end of the scale are personal finance (1.7%), music (1.6%), and healthy living (1.2%).

As you can see, some very popular industry segments don’t do as well on Instagram. It just goes to show just because it is good for fashion, it doesn’t mean your personal finance business will do well on the platform.

Engagement

Engagement rates are post likes or reactions, shares, views, and comments.

When it comes to influencer marketing engagement rate is important. When the rate is high, it means people are responding to the content and if it is low, they are not responding. Subsequently, influencers with high engagement rates charge more.

As a business, the engagement rate is but one metric you should look at, but it is an important one. By carefully analyzing the influencer’s engagement rate and other metrics, you can determine if they will deliver a good return on investment.

As the CreatorIQ report points out, the number of followers doesn’t dictate engagement levels. An influencer with 10K followers can give you a better ROI than someone with 200K followers. This is because the one with 10K might have an engagement rate of 15%. Meanwhile, the one with 200K is barely getting 1.5%.

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This article, "Why Small Instagram Influencers Are Better for Your Business" was first published on Small Business Trends