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Influencer Marketing
Learn how to find and onboard nano influencers for authentic promotion to a highly engaged audience.
Contents
When brands start with influencer marketing, they naturally fall into the trap of wanting bigger and more popular social media influencers like macro influencers, mega influencers, and celebrity influencers to promote 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.
The definition of Nano influencers is that they are influencers with small, highly engaged, and niche audiences. A nano-influencer follower count 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 a nano influencer has a highly engaged audience and this audience is super niche, hence likely to be early adopters of your product. Even big brands know their importance and are partnering with more nano influencers each passing month.
1. No Gatekeepers or Agencies:
Reaching out to large influencers (75K+ followers) often leads to dealing with agencies, long media kits, and inflexible four-figure rates. Negotiations are tough, and the response is usually, “These rates are non-negotiable.” With nano influencers, it’s the opposite. You email them, get a quick reply, and set up a partnership without jumping through hoops.
2. Authenticity and Emotion-Driven Content:
Nano influencers actually use and love the products they promote. Their posts aren’t polished ads—they’re genuine stories and experiences. The content feels emotional and real, which resonates more with their followers and often leads to higher engagement and trust.
3. Stronger Connection with Their Audience:
Nano influencers typically know their audience on a personal level. They respond to DMs, reply to comments, and often have real conversations with their followers. This kind of interaction creates deeper trust—and more influence—than most large influencers can achieve. Remember, it’s about influence marketing, not just influencer marketing.
4. High Engagement Rates:
Despite having fewer followers, nano influencers often outperform macro and mega influencers in engagement. Their smaller communities are tighter and more loyal, making every like, comment, and share more meaningful and impactful.
5. Cost-Effective Partnerships:
Working with nano influencers doesn’t require massive budgets. Many are happy to collaborate in exchange for free products, small payments, or affiliate commissions—making it ideal for small and growing brands.
6. Authentic UGC (User-Generated Content):
The content created by nano influencers often doubles as authentic UGC. You can repurpose it in ads, emails, or product pages—adding social proof and a human touch to your marketing.
7. Easier to Build Long-Term Relationships:
Because they’re not overloaded with brand deals, nano influencers are more open to longer-term collaborations. This allows brands to build a consistent presence in their content and foster true ambassador-style partnerships.
First great example is Glossier. Instead of focusing on big celebrities, they leaned into their community of everyday users—people with a few hundred or a few thousand followers who genuinely loved the brand. These nano influencers shared authentic posts about their skincare routines and favorite Glossier products, which made the brand feel personal and trustworthy. Because their audiences saw them as peers, not promoters, engagement was high and word-of-mouth spread quickly, turning customers into loyal ambassadors.
Another standout is Daniel Wellington. They launched their watch brand by sending free products to tons of small creators with modest followings and asking them to post a photo wearing the watch with a discount code. These nano-influencers weren’t famous, but their posts felt real and relatable. The campaign was a success, and suddenly the brand was everywhere—without spending big on ads. It’s a classic case of using scale and authenticity to create buzz organically.
Brand partnerships are not a primary source of a nano-influencer's income and they are more likely to accept affiliate-only collaborations. You can even get usage rights for the content for just a small fee. This content can be used as ad creatives for 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 influencer marketing. The nano-influencers are most likely okay with working on affiliate commissions 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 the nano-influencers 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 to repurpose the influencer content for this amount to improve your influencer marketing ROI.
The best part about a nano influencer 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, creating a strong long-term relationship.
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.
If you’re looking to launch your first nano-influencer campaign, don’t overthink it—it’s all about finding the right people and building genuine relationships. Here’s a simple step-by-step breakdown to get you started:
1. Define your goal: Are you trying to increase brand awareness, drive sales, or collect influencer UGC? Your goal will shape the rest of your strategy.
2. Identify your ideal customer: Know who you’re targeting so you can find influencers whose followers match that audience.
3. Find relevant nano-influencers: Look for everyday creators with 1K–10K followers who already use or align with your product. Tools or manual Instagram/TikTok searches work great. SARAL's Influencer Search Engine can help you here.
4. Reach out personally: Keep your message casual and genuine. Show that you’ve looked at their content and explain why your brand is a good fit.
5. Offer value: Whether it’s free products, early access, or affiliate commission, give them a reason to be excited.
6. Track performance: Monitor engagement, reach, and any sales or sign-ups that come from their posts.
7. Build long-term relationships: Stay in touch with top performers—they could become long-term brand advocates.
Here are some best practices to be mindful of when engaging with nano influencers.
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!
But, if you are spending hours and hours scrolling social media platforms to find the right nano influencers, manually reaching out to them one-by-one, and managing them all on time-consuming spreadsheets - that's where SARAL can help you.
SARAL is an all-in-one influencer marketing platform excels at what matters most:
...and so much more so you can focus on things that can't be automated, like building relationships. Let's show you in person.
Learn what’s working in real-time with influencer marketing for other brands.
Are you a CPG brand looking to drive revenue? This guide will show you how influencer marketing can take your brand to the next level. Get actionable insights and proven tactics to build strong influencer relationships and see real growth.
If you want to build a community of influencers that can’t stop talking about you, consider giving the free trial a shot!