For the last few years, ‘everyone’ has been talking about influencer marketing as a strategy to get someone really famous or has internet clout to promote a product or service. As all of us that are in the game know, this has always been a very expensive proposition…but moreso than that, from my experience, it’s one that actually doesn’t have a high ROI at all. Now, if Kim Kardashian is posting something about your product (for an estimated $250,000.00 per post,) that one thing, but even then, would that strategy even be ROI positive?
In comes the nano influencer. What is it? “Nano” influencers are generally defined as having fewer than 10,000 followers on Instagram. And some have turned their social-media hobbies into part-time jobs or side hustles.Â
I always thought the better way of making this ‘influencer’ strategy work was by having those people with a few thousand followers push your product as it achieved THREE main things.
- Create UGC (user generated content)
- Target a new audience from leveraging the following of that one
- And between those two , you have some trust build up from having third party content created about your product.
Many are starting to come around to this strategy and way of marketing DTC ecomm brands, and it’s a great way to do so. With a oversaturated market, you do need a lot of outreach.
Aside from outreach, you do need a strategy as to how you’ll leverage this type of relationship / partnership with the influencer. For example, will you pay them for post? Will they be part of your affiliate program? Will they get free product?
My advice is do the outreach to get the interest of the person first and offer a few different options to work with them which I’ve found most responsive.
Here is a great conversation that goes into detail between Chase Diamond and Pau Benigeri on leveraging nano influencers.
