Five ways to collaborate with Instagram nano-influencers

Nano-influencers are an amazing alternative to micro-influencers as they have in-person relationships with the majority of their community

The days when only big dogs like Calvin Klein and Glossier could afford influencer marketing are far behind us. Today, nano-influencers, a new breed of opinion leaders, allow both popular and emerging brands to get business results without spending much of their marketing budget.

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In 2019, there’s no need to be a world-known celebrity to affect consumer buying behaviour. With a great number of sponsored posts on Instagram, modern customers trust real and authentic personalities more than ever, so it’s no wonder that ‘nano-influencers’ campaigns are on the rise.

Nano-influencers — those who are common social media users with less than 1000 followers — are an amazing alternative to micro-influencers as they have in-person relationships with the majority of their community. Utilizing nano-influencers has two main benefits:

• Higher engagement rates: The more followers an influencer has, the more an engagement rate falls. As specified in one report, nano-influencers have an engagement rate of 7.2% on Instagram while micro-influencers engage up to 3.7% of their followings.
• Low costs: In comparison with other opinion leaders, nano-influencers don’t require much marketing budget as they charge around $100 on average for a branded Instagram post, and the majority of them are ready to review your product/service in exchange for branded freebies.

In short, nano-influencers can help brands of all sizes and shapes promote their products effectively.

Case in point:

To announce a rebranding, Dunkin’ Donuts worked with different influencers, each with 50,000 followers and below. The results showed that nano-influencers generated higher engagement rates. For example, one lifestyle blogger Vanessa achieved an engagement rate of 26.1%, a performance more than five times the campaign average.

So, wouldn’t it be great if you could run a similar influencer marketing campaign successfully on Instagram? There are five ways to collaborate with Instagram nano-influencers to get business results.

1. Send your products for the review

Today, 37% of marketers claim that brand awareness is their top priority, so it’s no wonder most companies want to work with opinion leaders to enter an already-established community of loyal followers and spread the word about their products and reach their target audience fast.

When it comes to nano-influencers, they aren’t spoiled with brand deals, so they can be happy to review your product to get it for free. For brands, this means a cost-effective opportunity to get customer feedback and user-generated content as well as research your target audience, as you can monitor the comment section to see what other people say about your product.

Just take a look at an example from My Bookmark. The company reached out to bookworm Noel who took a photo of the bookmark and spread the word about it with a tag.

Want to know the best part? Working with nano-influencers who don’t charge much, you can spend your influencer marketing budget to collaborate with 20 micro-influencers and reach a wider audience instead of wasting the same sum on working with one mega-influencer.

2. Invite a person to become a brand ambassador

Living in the era of paid ads and sponsored posts, modern customers don’t trust overly-polished brand posts. Thus, more and more brands integrate brand ambassadors into their marketing strategies to affect consumer buying behaviour in an authentic way.

Last year, Tommy Hilfiger worked with a popular Formula One driver, Lewis Hamilton, to launch a new collection and promote it on his Instagram. This collaboration gave great results, but if you’re not one of the world’s most well-known brands, you may have trouble working with celebrities. Thus, you can turn to nano-influencers who still influence their loyal and engaged following.

For example, creative studio By Form has invited lifestyle nano-influencer, Abigail Brookes, to become a brand ambassador. The blogger added a profile link in her bio so that visitors and followers could tap on it and find out more about the company.

Here’s how Abigail promotes interior design solutions via her Instagram posts:

Before working with a nano-influencer, you can discuss an opportunity to use images that feature your product as user-generated content. Once a brand ambassador has featured your product on Instagram, you can use this image on your business profile.

Plus, with the growing popularity of video content on social media, you can also team up with a brand ambassador to create animated content, featuring real people instead of models. Animation helps to tell stories about your company effectively, and it grabs the attention of your target audience, so you can attract more potential customers.

All in all, turning a nano-influencer into a brand ambassador is a proven way to represent a brand in a positive light, promote your product genuinely, and get exposure.

3. Share coupons and discounts

It’s no secret that modern customers prefer buying things on sale. Any proof needed? According to Statista, 93% of consumers use a coupon or discount code at least once a year. This means shoppers want to find exclusive offers to save money, and brands can encourage their potential customers to buy their products with coupons and discounts.

Moreover, there’s no need to have a solid following on your Instagram profile to make the most out of your discount campaign — you can work with nano-influencers to tell their followers about your promo.

To increase e-commerce sales, Hemsley Organics reached out to Dee Wright, a beauty and lifestyle blogger, to give her followers a 15% discount with a special code ‘spring15’ that allowed the brand to track ROI for the collaboration.

In 2019, bloggers make big money on Instagram, so it’s no wonder that most nano-influencers want to grow their following to get more brand offers with time. When you offer nano-influencers the chance to share a discount with their followings, you give them a great opportunity to increase user engagement, which can positively affect the following growth.

The bottom line? Sharing special discounts with nano-influencers is a great way to establish long-term connections with them and attract first-time customers at the same time.

4. Become a giveaway sponsor

People love free stuff. Social media giveaways continue to be extremely popular among users, so it’s no wonder that both brands and influencers organize contests to interact with their followers. Over the last few years, Instagram giveaways have become a powerful tool to increase engagement and trust. They also help to attract more followers, so some nano-influencers organize giveaways to interact with their followers.

If you want to secure a collaboration opportunity with nano-influencers, being a giveaway sponsor is a proven way to establish a connection with an opinion leader and get business results.

Since nano-influencers don’t have much budget to offer expensive presents for their giveaway participants, being a sponsor is a great way to provide them with free stuff to give away. If you help nano-influencers grow, they will never forget you. Thus, it’s a great opportunity for brands to establish long-term relationships with opinion leaders who can become partners with them.

Here’s an example of a giveaway from Reannoin Jean Celins in partnership with Starbucks:

As you can see, the blogger gives away gift certificates so that the winners can choose whatever product they want. For a sponsor, this means a great opportunity to attract more potential customers and understand their needs and wants better.

All in all, being a giveaways sponsor helps to bring your product to a wider audience and build strong relationships with nano-influencers.

5. Generate user-generated content

Do you know that customers find user-generated content (UGC) to be 9.8x more impactful than branded content when making a purchase decision?

The popularity of user-generated content is on its rise. Modern customers want to get social proof that your product is worth buying, so they pay close attention to the number of real customers who have bought your product.

Unless you have an army of loyal customers who create UGC for you, collaborate with nano-influencers to generate this content. Simply put, if you want to encourage high customer engagement and provide followers with social proof, learn from Primal Coffee how to create user-generated content with the help of nano-influencers. Here’s how this post looks like on Instagram:

If you also run a local business, you can ask your customers to take a picture of your product for a chance to get it for free or offer them a discount in exchange for user-generated content.

The bottom line

In 2019, there’s no need to work with world-known celebrities to reach your target audience on social media. Working with nano-influencers is another digital marketing trend that is taking the world by storm. Since these opinion leaders are common social media users who share their likes and dislikes with friends and family, they have a great impact on their following due to in-person interactions with them. Thus, it’s no wonder that both big and small brands turn to these influencers to get business results.

It’s high time to jump on the bandwagon, so choose any of the above-mentioned ways to collaborate with nano-influencers and get business results.