Micro-Influencer Marketing

Micro-influencers — broadly 10,000 to 100,000 followers — sit at the point where a creator still replies to comments but already has real reach. Engagement rates typically run several times higher than macro accounts, the cost per post is a fraction, and the recommendation still reads as a person rather than a billboard. The trade is that you need many of them, and managing many is where most brands give up.

Why the tier works

A micro creator’s audience usually formed around a specific interest, so the targeting is inherent — a 30,000-follower account about home baking is a cleaner audience for a bakeware brand than a 2,000,000-follower lifestyle account. The audience also tends to be geographically concentrated, which matters if you sell in one market. And because the creator has not yet monetised heavily, a recommendation still carries weight.

What we actually do

Discovery starts from audience composition rather than follower count: where the audience actually lives, its age split, and whether its interests overlap your buyers. We screen for authenticity — follower spikes, comment pods, engagement that does not match the follower curve — because the micro tier is where bought followers are most common and hardest to spot by eye.

Then we run the campaign at cohort scale rather than one creator at a time: standardised briefs, negotiated rate cards, a content calendar that staggers posting so the campaign has presence over weeks instead of one spike, and tracking per creator so the next round keeps the ones that performed. Whitelisting and paid amplification let the best-performing organic posts run as ads against a much larger audience, which is usually where the return improves sharply.

How we report it

Per creator: reach, engagement, click-through and, where tracked links or codes allow, attributed revenue — so the roster is rebuilt on evidence rather than on who was easiest to work with. Aggregate reporting covers cost per engagement and cost per acquisition against the campaign target.

Frequently Asked Questions

What counts as a micro-influencer?

Usually 10,000 to 100,000 followers, though the boundary varies by platform and category. Below that sits the nano tier, roughly 1,000 to 10,000, which has even higher engagement and even lower reach per post. What matters more than the label is audience composition and whether the engagement is real.

Why not just use one large influencer instead?

Sometimes you should — for a launch that needs a single moment of mass awareness, a macro creator delivers it. But for the same budget, a cohort of micro creators typically produces more total engagement, far more content to reuse, a spread of audiences rather than one, and much less concentration risk if a single creator underperforms or has a reputational problem.

How many micro-influencers does a campaign need?

Enough that individual variance averages out — a handful is a test, not a campaign. Our campaigns typically run cohorts of dozens of creators, which is also why the management overhead is the real constraint and the reason brands outsource it.

How do you spot fake followers?

We look for the patterns bought followers leave: sudden follower spikes without a matching content trigger, engagement that does not scale with follower growth, comments that are generic or arrive in bursts from the same cluster of accounts, and an audience geography that does not match the creator’s own market. Any of those disqualifies a creator before we brief them.

Do micro-influencers need to disclose paid posts?

Yes, on exactly the same terms as any other creator. Under ASA and CAP rules, any payment or free product in exchange for coverage must be disclosed clearly and prominently, regardless of audience size. We brief for it and check it on publication.