The time for Influencer culture to reign supreme has come. And it is now. With tiers of influencers, Brands can engage in tailoring their strategy while exploring more avenues to expand their reach.
Slowly but also very surely, celebrities are also inching their way to a share of the influencer pie. Their popularity and reach translate in numbers and substantial impact on the products and services they endorse. The informality of social channels provides them with an alternative way to share and connect with their fans from different walks of life. Increasingly, Brands are also capitalising on their online presence to continue their physical ad activations.
While celebrities may be engaged as brand ambassadors or even front advertising pages, they are not typically obligated to spread their word on their platforms. Some do it out of goodwill, while others place a price tag on each Instagram square your brand chooses to buy.
Engaging a celebrity has its perks, and those perks often will mean Brands need a large enough budget for it. This may not be accessible to brands, even for established ones should the budget priority is elsewhere. Here is where Macro Influencers fill the market gap.
Macro Influencers, figuratively defined, are influencers with a following of 100k and above. They are a Brand’s typical go-to if the current campaign goals are to raise awareness and increase visibility.
Image Credit: @darylaiden
In the case of Rebecca Lim, while she only has a following of +/- 466k, she is regarded as a Celebrity because of her main profession as an actress in Singapore. The public eye on her is different, and her focus is not on expanding her social following. Rather, her social channels are used as a communicative tool to update her fans on more personal things.
A Macro-influencer has their priority to optimise the following growth. As such, their approach when it comes to content strategy will differ. Their objective will be to ensure that their content reaches as many unique eyeballs as they possibly can.
Chances are, macro-influencers are self-managed and started sharing a part of their lives that people took an interest in.
Image Credit: @xiaxue
Xiaxue, an established influencer who has always been known for presenting her most authentic self, still embodies the same persona as she did since the days of blogspot.com.
While some may find her personality too much, Xiaxue never caved into public comments to reform herself on Instagram. She continued to win the hearts of followers from all walks of life and added to her authenticity and credibility.
Who else can forget about the “CSI work” that she did in her most recent expose: sgchickenrice.
Image Credit: @xiaxue
Compared with celebrities where you are paying more than just their publicity fees, marco influencers’ payment structure is more straightforward. There are no management fees, agency charges and other costs that come with macro influencers.
Image credit: @mongabong
Engaging either a Celebrity and Macro influencer comes with an obvious understanding of their online image. However, Celebrities generally come with more conditions. This is why, sponsored posts by them are usually performed in a very safe fashion to get the job done.
Macro influencers, on the other hand, are more dynamic to work with. There is more creative wiggle room.
Image Credit: @njltheawesome
In the case of Brands, a vitality supplement drink, they engage @njltheawesome, an influencer known for his fitness regime. He aligned with the Brand values in providing clarity of mind to push personal boundaries. As such, Brands knew that they are able to reach a new demographic aside from their usual audience group - parents. Working with @njltheawesome enabled Brands to initiate awareness and possibly, increase their sales with an alternative group at different sale cycle periods.
Every campaign, big or small, comes with a price tag that corresponds. Same goes for influencers. While Macro influencers may command a smaller price tag, it is important to align your campaign’s objectives and understand if their influence will make a positive impact on the results. And that is difficult to gauge as an industry outsider. Here’s where an influencer agency is handy.
Every successful campaign is run by a dedicated group of people that found the way to victory. More often times than not, Brands do not know better as to who might be a better fit with their campaign’s goals. Sometimes a Celebrity could work better and sometimes a micro-influencer might reap better rewards. In speaking with a dedicated influencer agency, a Brand dedicates tasks to skilled professionals to (1) Negotiate a better deal - whether in dollars or in deliverables (2) Strategise, track and optimise content value (3) Measure and evaluate.
Therefore, an experienced influencer agency such as (no prize for guessing) X10 Media, is able to find relevant solutions and define a plan of action that alleviates your stress on manpower and logistics.