Latest / Field Notes: Creator-led Growth Podcast / Micro vs. Macro Influencers: Which Should Brands Actually Invest In?
Transcript
- speaker-0: Welcome to Field Notes, the Operator's Playbook for Brand, Creator, and Growth. This is the influencer marketing podcast for people actually doing the work. Real strategies, real examples, and the parts the other shows leave out. speaker-1: Welcome back. speaker-0: Back field notes. speaker-1: Just a couple of idiots talking about emotion marketing. speaker-0: Who definitely know what they're talking about. speaker-1: We do. Okay, what's today's topic? What are we yapping about? Something fun. Something that you and I both get asked a lot. So we are Elefante in the room. speaker-0: All the time, and that is micro versus macro. When to use a micro creator versus when to use a macro creator. Should you be using both? Should you put a lot of your budget into these macros or should you do all micro? There's a lot of information out there about both of these groups and what you should do. speaker-1: And you know what? I don't know. Just kidding. I do know. speaker-0: Can imagine? Episode number. speaker-1: Episode over. We don't know. Thank you for tuning in. 30 seconds later. Bye. I think we actually should start by defining what the heck we mean by micro and macro. Because my god, I get people who are like, micros have less than a hundred thousand followers. I'm like, girl, what are you drinking? Well. So how are we defining macro? How are we defining micro? speaker-0: Yeah, 'cause there's also a mid somewhere in there. speaker-1: There's a mid there's a mid tier. So micro, let's say what? Less than fifteen thousand. speaker-0: I was gonna say fifteen to twenty, yeah, less than that for sure. speaker-1: fifteen to twenty. But then for me, mid tier, it jumps. Mm-hmm. it's like two it's like an average of two hundred thousand to two fifty. speaker-0: Yeah, I like that. I was gonna say once we approach three hundred is when I start going speaker-1: They're pretty big. Pretty macro. Yeah. I would say 300. I would I was even gonna say five hundred. but that's big as hell when I think about it. This speaker-0: But then I think about speaker-1: is the reason why I struggle with identifying these tiers, is because I don't give a f how many followers someone has. I don't. I care about your engagement and our team calculates it ourselves, and that's how we price you. And I could tell you what someone's average engagement rate is, but I couldn't tell you what their follower count is. So put that out there. but that's the thing. That's that's the issue. When you're asking someone or you're trying that's decaying. When you're trying to build an influencer program, you gotta you gotta identify your tiers. So that's how we identify them, right? Yeah, like 300 plus macro average size, 175 to 200 is more mid-tier, and then micros are. fifteen thousand below and you may be asking us, Lily Sarah, what about those people that are fifteen thousand to two hundred through a hundred and seventy? Well, we don't talk about them. You know what? They're we work with a lot of creators in that size, but they don't really fall within a tier. They're they're mid tier also, this is why tiering doesn't even matter. But I think what we can talk about is when what is the time and place to work with small creators who are just starting? It's almost like starting out versus established. What's the d who do you use and when do you use them? So all this hoot hoot no. speaker-0: gonna throw out one of our favorite terms the hills that we die on and I'm gonna give a quick one because the amount of programs are in the zero to one phase that are presenting plans to me when they initially get on and they're like, we're thinking about this. And then I always, always like I would say like 80% of the time, they hand me over a deck that separates their program based on micro, mid, and macro creators. And I'm like, why why? Would you separate your programs like that when it should be s built on so much else other than the follower count to your point? The type speaker-1: What? speaker-0: of creator they are, what persona they are, what customer they're leaning towards for your brand. Like the follower count means nothing and newsflash, it can change literally overnight. So why would you segment your programs that way when that's also more work for you to keep it up? speaker-1: Yeah. You know what I think? Do you think it's AI? Do you think it's AI? people are trying to build an influencer program and AI is like micro, macro, throwing out terms. I guess it's pretty rampant. It's like a disease spreading within our industry pretty rapidly with these definitions of tears. I think a lot of people, when you don't understand influencer marketing, that's that's the instinct. That's how you kind of like rationalize it, that's how you understand it. When really influencers you have customer personas, I would hope speaker-0: That's how I did my program. speaker-1: That's how you build an influencer. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: It's like who what influencers fall within our customer personas? There you that's where you start, but then you also test outside of those personas to find your next customer persona and so on and so forth. But for the per you know, we've completely negated the topic of this podcast. We're like, we actually don't want to talk about this, but we are. In your experience, Sarah, how many brands are coming to you want like thinking they want micros? Like, is it? Has it been? way more common this year compared to last year. Like, why why are brands thinking they want microcreators? speaker-0: Think there's two things. One of them, I'm not one of them is they're scared of the price of macro. So I actually don't think it has anything to do with strategy. I think it has everything to do with we don't have a large budget and the macro creators or even the mid tier creators really scare me. So we just want to work with micro. The other side of it is the more strategic side that is again, they probably don't have a ton of budget. But they're more so thinking about I want a creator that I don't really care the size, but they're probably small, but they have a really engaged audience that is primed to convert because they're focused around affiliate and they're focused around UGC content. And that makes a lot of sense to me, whereas the other one doesn't make a ton of sense to me. But I am of the the belief that you do need every kind to kind of like have a healthy, well-rounded program at the end of the day. speaker-1: Yeah. And I think another way to think about tearing out your program is also when you think about the acquisition funnel or like the marketing funnel. What's top of funnel, who's mid funnel, who's bottom of funnel. I think a lot of brands think that microcreators are going to be instantaneous bottom of funnel conversion drivers, which is simply not the case. They don't actually have a lot of influence. They have really strong communities most of the time. So they have really strong engagement rates because random bots haven't started following them. They haven't gone viral and they haven't attracted a bunch of followers that actually don't care, actually literally don't care about what they have to say. So micros tend to have higher quality communities than macros just by the nature of social media. But the volume is going to be low. So you're going to have to be spinning your wheels and reaching out to a ton of microcreators in order to drive a certain growth in order to drive the type of growth that you could just generate from working with one macro. but to your point, it's a risk thing. It's a risk aversion, which I completely understand. When you're a bootstrapped brand and you're just starting out, like it's scary as hell to spend money on something that is so bewildering and still still to this day, very bewildering and very hard to attribute and just generally difficult. Unless you have an agency or an in-house person that knows what they're doing. So but I think again, then the issue, what happens is then you're automating things that don't need to be automated and you're reaching out to hundreds of microcreators a week and you're diluting your brand by doing so. and I think, yeah, like, but honestly, the best microcreator is your customer. Fair. Have you look have you taken a look at your referral and loyalty program in a minute? Yeah. Those are your microcreators, guys. Guys and gals, and they're that is your literally, that is your microcreator right there, is your customer. And I haven't said this in a long time. Boy howdy. Customers. Influencer marketing is just digitized word of mouth. And what was the original word of mouth? Your customers. So like. Instead of going after micro influencers, why don't you go after your customers a little bit and make them feel like influencers? speaker-0: them taste makers, the ones that are like in your community where you trust any recommendation they tell you. Yeah. Those are the micro taste maker after. wow, that's really nice. I did get told that I need to make a shopmai the other day and I was ultimately flattered. speaker-1: Y yeah, 'cause you're so opinionated and like you've tried a lot of things. And yeah, I feel like you're better. We're gonna totally side tangent. If you need like a gadget, if you need to be influenced on buying a certain gadget, you come to me. Red light mask, vibrating plate, high frequency wine, you come to me. I've tried it. You are like everything else. I digress, but it's a perfect example. Sarah ain't an influencer. I ain't an influencer, but I'm influential to the people that I speak to about certain things. So Instead of hyper-fixating on your on microcreators who are gonna charge you a flat fee anyway. Sorry to break it to you. focus on your customers and knowing who they are, knowing what they're knowing what they care about, knowing how you sell to them, knowing how they like to be sold to, then identify your influencer personas from that exercise. Microcreators nowadays, and this is like a huge shift, literally, I would say, within the last six months, eight months, is that microcreators are charging flat fees, but Because they want to work with brands on UGC. It might be $250, $150 to work with them, but they're saying no to commission based deals. They just simply are. So that's something to just be aware of. And then obviously, the macro tier is used for many different purposes. If we go back to that funnel, they are, they're the full funnel. Depending on how you like. Structure their deal and depending on how you price them, they're the they're the full fun speaker-0: The way I like to think about it, this is kind of a difficult example, but I really, really like to think of Road or Rare Beauty. You have someone, Road probably more than Rare Beauty, you have someone who's an ultimate influencer, Hayley Bieber. She's running the brand. She's obviously going to post when the new bronze collection comes out. But what Road didn't do and doesn't do is rely on just Haley to have that effect for every single purchaser. Instead, they still really, really nurture. their influencer program of mid macro all the way down to micro creators and they get the word out, there's no way they would have the amount of sales that they did if they just relied on Haley. So that's also the like, how do you take someone like Haley or a macro creator and create constant buzz around that entire moment where it's not just about that person? speaker-1: Totally. And I think like almost all also if you think about like Kylie Jenner too, like a serial entrepreneur, yeah, she's got her face on a lot of products and a lot of different lines. It's like I mean, sh that celebrity tier and celebrity level is so different from macro, but having all of it and having having at least an eye or a hope that your program can include all tiers is it should be your ultimate goal. You shouldn't just kind of fixate on numbers. When you're just starting out. but what is the time and the place to use micros or mac I we're we're talking about that, but one or the other, any campaign examples that kinda like come to mind? speaker-0: UJC for sure, if you're looking to get content, I I will still fall back on the you get what you pay for a lot of time in this industry too. So also just be really clear when you go into these conversations with your team of micro versus macro, of are you going into micro micro purely because of the cost associated with it? Your content's probably not gonna be as good. It's probably not, you know, it's probably not gonna get the range that you want it to get, all those things. So that is definitely something like really in my mind. I just this is such an annoying answer. I just really like to have a well-rounded program. When I was running a program of the flight attendants, the surfers, the travelers, the aloha girls, the, we had all of our core personas. And then we started getting the fitness, the yogis. I wanted someone from all brackets with like within that program. If I have a hundred flight attendants, they better be ranging from 5,000 followers to 200,000 followers because that is how I'm gonna get the most. out of that persona in that community. I just I don't like thinking about them in these like small little groups almost. Cause especially too, I think it's a industry lore or like story, I want to say that microcreators have better conversions than macro creators as if we're talking about affiliate. I think maybe that's true sometimes, but not enough to for me to think that it's true all the time. I've what we've seen time and time again is for affiliate programs or conversion based programs, it is your top 10% bringing in 90% of your revenue, if not more. So and a lot of those are probably like somewhere in the middle there. And it just depends. It depends the fun part about influencer marketing. speaker-1: And I'll tell you this right now, the last affiliate program that I managed was massive. and the top performers were all my map like macro creators that were on an affiliate basis. Yeah, but also it was a hybrid deal. Back when hybrid deals were not very popular, it was like you're still paying in the flat fee every single month and getting commission on top. And those creators were posting every single month because they were contractually obligated and financially incentivized to do so. And yeah. They were so big. and like I think it's it feels very rat racy when people are like because they think that quantity is is the it is like number of affiliates or number of influencers is the success metric. And it's not. because so many brands I don't think earlier brands or newer brands realize this. It's it's manufactured virality, it's manufactured. it it's it's it's strategically designed influencer programs that feel like they're everywhere because they've got someone in-house or an agency doing it for them that is playing into the game, where it's like we know that quality matters, but we can leverage quality to make it feel like quantity. And then the quantity of customers thought. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah yeah, that's cool. speaker-1: That's my biggest thing. Your micro creators are your customers, and your macro creators are real influencers who can create great content that you can run as an ad that they can post about you organically. it's it's there's a time and a place for both. but you know, using your using those micro creators to support your macro creators and campaigns is also a huge like how when you have a huge influencer push, like are you similarly briefing? Your micro creators and your customers and your affiliate programs, are you helping them be a part of the campaign too? don't lose sight of that's how you build community is when you've got everybody working towards the same the same outcome, the same the same goal. Yeah. speaker-0: So and the I guess hot take with the micro too that I think a lot of people don't realize when they first start working with them, there are more work a lot of times. There's don't get me wrong, there's a ton of work on the macro side where there's a lot of red lines. You are teaching that person how to do some of their first brand deals, whether you know it or like it or not. Yeah. Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah. And time sometimes. Like totally. speaker-1: I love that. We're gonna love love teaching someone how to do their, mentoring them to be the best influencer they can be. But for these brands that think micro is the move, they're not thinking about that. They don't care about that. And they're not gonna take the time to do that because the reason why you want micro is because you want volume and you want it fast. And that's simply just not the case. I think Audrey at J Lab is a great example of this where she's working with a lot of commission-based creators, but she is teaching them and training them and it is time intensive. And if you don't have an Audrey, you know It's not gonna be as successful as you hope it to be. it's a channel like I I you and I always say this, I always say this like influencer is not a channel you can rush ever, even regardless of size of creator. speaker-0: Period. What's on there? Period. speaker-1: Okay. micro versus macro, the debate will always continue and the question will always be asked, but this is R POV. speaker-0: Yeah. And it might change every year, who knows? speaker-1: It literally could. It could. We could we could record this a year for now and be like, ha ha there are no more macro creators. My goodness. speaker-0: Gas. speaker-1: Cool. Well that's it. That's a wrap. Thanks for tuning in. Quick and easy. Any questions, comments, concerns, you let us know. What do you guys think? Micro versus macro. We're here to debate. speaker-0: Yeah.