Latest / Influencer Marketing with Fexingo: Creators, Sponsorships, and Modern Endorsement Deals / The Creator Economy's New Middle Class
Transcript
- Lucas: So Luna, I was digging into some influencer marketing data this week, and I kept tripping over the same number: the average engagement rate for creators with under 100,000 followers is sitting at around 6.2 percent. For the mega-influencers with over a million, it’s barely above 1.5. Luna: That’s a fourfold gap. And I’m guessing it’s not just because mega-influencers are drowning in sponsored posts. Lucas: Right. It’s partly the size of the audience — smaller audiences are more niche, more invested. But it’s also the way the algorithms treat them. A 50,000-follower creator feels like a friend you trust; a five-million-follower creator feels like a billboard. That’s not a knock on them, it’s just the psychology of scale. Lucas: And that’s why we’re seeing this whole new category emerge — what some brand managers are calling the creator economy’s middle class. Not the superstars, not the nano-creators, but that band between roughly 10,000 and 100,000 followers. They’re becoming the workhorses of influencer marketing, and the numbers are making it hard to ignore. Luna: But how new is that really? I remember five years ago everyone was talking about micro-influencers. It feels like we’ve been hearing that term forever. Lucas: The term is a decade old, sure, but the economics have shifted. Back then it was mostly a gut feeling — they seem more authentic. Now we have real cost per engagement data, and the gap is enormous. A top-tier creator might charge $50,000 for a post and generate one point five percent engagement. A micro-influencer charges maybe $500 to $1,000 and gets six percent. That works out to a cost per engagement that’s often 80 percent lower. Luna: Eighty percent. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a budget story. Lucas: Exactly. And that’s what’s driving the shift. I talked to a skincare brand last month — they moved 60 percent of their influencer spend from big names to micro-creators over two quarters. Their conversion rate on influencer-driven traffic went up 35 percent, and their cost per acquisition dropped by nearly half. Luna: So it’s not just about engagement — it’s about actual sales. That’s the kind of proof CFOs want to see. Lucas: And that’s the thing — for a long time, influencer marketing was treated as a brand-awareness play. You couldn’t easily tie it to revenue. But with micro-influencers, the attribution is cleaner. Their audiences are smaller, so you can track direct code redemptions, dedicated landing pages, even a simple swipe-up link. The data gets a lot more convincing. Luna: But what about the trade-off? Surely there’s a reason brands haven’t just fired all the big names and gone all-in on micro. Lucas: The big names still deliver reach. If you’re launching a national product, you want that one post that hits five million eyeballs. Micro-influencers can’t do that. But the smarter play is a blend — a few anchors for awareness, then a broad layer of micro-creators to drive the actual conversion. That’s the strategy that’s showing up in more and more campaign briefs. Lucas: There’s also a logistics problem. Managing fifty micro-influencer partnerships is a completely different beast from managing five big ones. Each one has their own style, their own contractual quirks, their own approval process. That’s why we’re seeing a whole new breed of influencer marketing agencies spring up that specialise in micro-talent at scale. Luna: And that’s the part I find fascinating — the middle class of creators is also creating a middle class of agencies. It’s not just the mega-agencies anymore. Lucas: Exactly. Look at a place like Brandbassador, or even some newer platforms like Upfluence — they’re not really platforms for the top one percent, they’re marketplaces where brands can find thousands of micro-creators and run campaigns almost like a programmatic ad buy. That’s a big shift from the days of negotiating endlessly with a single talent manager. Luna: But if it’s so easy now, why aren’t all brands doing it? What’s holding them back? Lucas: One big factor: fear of the unknown. A micro-influencer might have a small following, but you don’t have the same level of vetting as you do with a celebrity. There’s the risk of fake followers, or a creator whose values clash with yours in some unnoticed way. The brand that fired the big influencer for a controversial tweet — that was yesterday’s problem. Today’s is a micro-influencer who posts something problematic and you didn’t see it because you didn’t have a full-time social listening team. Luna: So the authenticity that makes them effective is also the source of the risk. They’re less filtered, more off-the-cuff. Lucas: Right. And there’s also the fraud issue — what people are calling nano-influencer fraud. Some creators buy followers and engagement to look bigger than they are. With a million-follower influencer, you can hire a service to audit the audience. With a 15,000-follower creator, the audit might cost more than the entire campaign. So brands are left with a leap of faith. Luna: But there are tools now that can catch a lot of that, right? I’ve seen some new analytics that claim to detect bot activity with high accuracy. Lucas: There are — and they’re getting better. But they’re not perfect. One of the more reliable signals is the comment to like ratio, or the quality of the comments. A bot farm generates generic comments like ‘great post’ or emojis. A real audience leaves specific, sometimes critical comments. That qualitative filter takes a human eye, and that’s a resource a lot of brands don’t have in-house. Luna: So the middle class is growing, but it’s not a frictionless ride. There’s still a lot of manual work. Lucas: Exactly. And that’s where the opportunity lies for the people who can build the infrastructure to make it easier. We’re starting to see software that helps brands vet micro-influencers at scale, even ai powered tools that scan a creator’s entire post history for brand safety or potential red flags. That’s the kind of tool that could tip the balance even further toward micro. Lucas: And you know, this whole conversation reminds me of something — a lot of the shows we do at Fexingo are about the business of creative work, and they’re only possible because listeners like you support the network. If these marketing discussions have sparked an idea you’ve actually used, or just made you see campaigns differently, that’s the kind of value we want to keep delivering. Listening is free, but if you ever want to chip in to keep it that way, we’d be grateful — head over to buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It’s a small gesture, but it genuinely helps us cover the costs of research and production. Luna: Yeah, we keep the show free and ad-free, so it’s all listener-supported. And every little bit counts — we’re not a big network, we’re just a couple of folks who love this stuff. Lucas: And we really do — this is the kind of topic that keeps me up at night in the best way. So back to that shift — where does it leave the traditional influencer agency? Luna: Well, if the middle class is driving the growth, then the agencies that used to chase the top one percent need to rethink their model. A few of the big ones are already adding micro-influencer divisions, but that’s a hard cultural shift for talent managers who are used to champagne and private jets. Lucas: That’s the thing — the talent management business has always been about high-touch, bespoke service. Managing a creator with 50,000 followers doesn’t justify a full-time manager, but it could justify a software platform. So we’re seeing this bifurcation, where agencies either go high-end or go technology-first. There’s not much room in the middle for the old way of doing things. Luna: And that’s also changing the career path for creators themselves. A few years ago, the goal was to get to a million followers so you could land a big brand deal. Now, you can build a solid six-figure income at 50,000 followers if you’re in the right niche and you work with a cluster of brands. Lucas: Right. And I think that’s healthy for the ecosystem. It means you don’t have to sell your soul to the algorithm to make a living. You can focus on a niche you actually care about, and the brands that find you will be a better fit. The data suggests that micro-influencer audiences are more loyal — they stick around because they trust the creator’s taste, not because they’re chasing a celebrity hit. Luna: So what’s the one concrete takeaway for a brand listening to this? If they haven’t experimented with micro-influencers yet, where should they start? Lucas: Start small, but start structured. Pick a niche that matches your product, find ten micro-influencers who are genuinely active in that space, and run a test with a clear attribution link. Measure cost per engagement and conversion, not just likes. And then scale the ones that work. You don’t need to boil the ocean — you just need to find a few creators who move the needle and then build a program around them. Luna: That sounds like solid advice. And for the creators in the audience, what’s the play? Lucas: For creators, the play is to double down on your niche and build real relationships with your audience. Engagement is your currency, and you can be selective about the brands you work with. The best micro-influencers are the ones who turn down a bad brand fit because they know their audience will smell it. That trust is what makes you valuable — and it’s exactly what the big brands are paying for. Lucas: But there’s one more twist I want to leave you with. As micro-influencers become the norm, the next frontier might be what they call nano-influencers — creators with fewer than 10,000 followers but incredibly high engagement. Some brands are already testing that pool, and the numbers are even more extreme. Could the middle class eventually be squeezed from below? Luna: Interesting — so the next episode might be about the working class of the creator economy. Lucas: That’s a great title. Let’s save that one for next week. For now, thanks for listening — we’ll catch you on the next one.