When brands start with influencer marketing, they naturally fall into the trap of wanting bigger and more popular influencers promoting their products.

We all want clout and popularity, it’s natural. But it won’t get to sales and it will be massively unprofitable when you’re starting out. It’s wiser to smart way small and build from there. This is where nano influencers come in.

Who are Nano-influencers

Nano-influencers are influencers with small, highly engaged, and niche audiences. The follower count of nano-influencers might be up for debate but we consider any influencer with a following of 3k-20k in the nano influencer category.

With nano-influencers, it’s just not about the follower count as they have a highly engaged audience and this audience is super niche, hence likely to have early adopters of your product. Even big brands know their importance and are partnering with more nano-influencers each passing month.

Why work with nano-influencers

Have you ever reached out to someone with a following of 75k and up? Even if you manage to get a response, it would be from their agency sharing a 15-page-long Media kit that highlights their statistics and the last page would mention their 4-figure rates.

You try to negotiate and get a response like, “Sorry, these rates are non-negotiable. We wish you all the best”. I know that feeling!

What I like most about nano-influencers is the simplicity and ease. You send them an email, get a response, strike up a partnership and it’s done. They engage with your brand and promote it authentically. If you see some of their posts, they elicit emotions. They genuinely use the products and rave about them with their audience.

Nano-influencers have a personal connection with most of their followers. They engage in comments, and messages and know their audience more intimately. This gives them more INFLUENCE over them. Remember, it’s influence marketing, not influencer marketing that you want to do.

Brand partnerships are not a primary source of their income and they are more likely to accept affiliate deals. You can even get usage rights for the content for just a small fee. This content can be repurposed into amazing FB and TikTok ads for your paid media efforts. That’s two birds, one stone.

Coming to the fee, it’s another great thing about nano-influencers. They are most likely okay with working on an affiliate basis if they like your product and think it’s a fit for their audience (which it should be by default since you’re vetting them for fit before reaching out)

Even if they do charge money, it would be a nominal $50-$100 in addition to a sample (i.e. your COGS). You can also ask them for usage rights for this amont to improve your ROI.

The best part about nanoinfluencers is that they grow over time, sometimes fast. So if you get in early, they’ll love and recommend you for life, even when they become huge influencers.

How to pick the right nano-influencers

It’s just not about partnering with nano-influencers but about partnering with the right ones. How do you figure that out? There are some rules of thumb that we follow here at Saral.

• They should be niche specific in their content. If you go for a general influencer who posts about everything then you will have a hard time getting any conversions. Instead, if you are promoting your beauty product and go for a nano one who talks about skincare, and beauty then you can expect more engagement from their audience.

• Avoid influencers who have already partnered with big brands. The reason is that they inflate their price once they have partnered with a couple of big brands. Their price would suddenly go up from $100 to $500 but the value (to you) remains the same. It doesn’t hurt to reach out though.

• Check the engagement rate. For nano-influencers go for at least 3-5% engagement. More than 7% means you’ve struck gold!

• The comments-to-likes ratio is the most important metric to gauge the engagement of their audience. Ideally, it should be 1:15. They should have 1 comment for every 15 likes. You can always check this metric easily with the Saral chrome extension.

Engaging with nanoinfluencers and getting results

Here are some best practices to be mindful of when engaging with nanoinfluencers.

• Discuss the deliverables in detail with the influencers. They know best what works with their audience. If they are telling you to do a post followed by 3 stories then that’s what you should test out at least for the first time. The foundation of every great partnership is trust. So trust them here as they know what will work best.

• Give them creative freedom to create the content. The important part is that the content with your product should look natural and resonate with the audience.

• Do at least 2 to 3 promotions in a month with the same nano-influencer. This is how you will get the best engagement from their audience. This way, you may also be able to bag a discount on their flat fee for a combo deal. Marketing works when customers see it over and over again.

• Maintain a level of decorum in your communication but don’t be too professional or corporate sounding. They are giving you access to their audience so they should be treated as brand partners and nothing less.

• If you didn’t already, discuss the possibility of usage rights - especially if the piece of content got good comments. This way, it’s more likely to be a hit on paid media channels too.

• Partner with at least 10 nanoinfluencers each month. More influencers you partner with create more buzz and you are more likely to see exponential growth in your sales each month.

Summary

The right product in front of the right audience is the key to any form of marketing. Teaming up with dozens of nano influencers month by month can drive a tremendous amount of sales for your brand.

Most brands frown upon working with influencers with a smaller audience. They see a 5k, 7k audience and think they are not big enough to make any impact. But they are WRONG, it’s literally five thousand people, that’s an auditorium full of potential buyers! Imagine getting your product in front of all these prospects.

This is why nano influencers are important. Don’t wait, capitalize!

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