4 Influencer Types in 2024 and How to Select the Best Ones

As influencer marketing grows, more businesses decide to create their first campaigns. According to Business Insider, by 2024, the influencer marketing industry is expected to become a $15 billion industry.

With that in mind, there is an opportunity for brands to launch a sponsored collaboration with an influencer. This will increase your brand awareness, visibility, traffic and sales.

However, to have a successful campaign, there are different steps to consider. In this article, you will find various kinds of influencers and how to make sure you choose the right collaborator.

4 Kind of Influencers: from Nano Influencers to Celebrities

As part of the discovery of influencers, you will see that each content creator posts unique content and has an audience.

This is what makes this industry so different from traditional marketing. The main differentiating factor when talking about influencers is the category they are thought to be in, considering their number of followers:

1. Nano Influencers

Those influencers range from 1K to 5K followers. They are new to this business and are growing an audience interested in their content.

These influencers work if you have a local business or your product is for a specific audience.

If the nano influencer has the same audience as your product, your brand will be shown to the right people. They don’t create posts that are too retouched or “perfect” as other influencers, but they have credibility.

Furthermore, if you have a low-budget campaign, these influencers have cost-per-post fees that are not expensive. You often send your product and there will not need to be any monetary compensation.

The cons of collaborating with them are that they don’t have high engagement rates or reach due to their low number of followers. Also, this is not their main job, so they probably don’t have as much time or resources to create an attractive post as micro influencers do.

2. Micro Influencers

Micro influencers are always a great resource because they have from 5K to 50K followers.  They have a very committed audience and they are experts on their field.

There are Beauty, Travel, Fitness, or Lifestyle micro influencers who can show your products or services to their audience and increase traffic to your website or profile.

These content creators have high engagement rates because their audience trusts the kind of content and brands they sponsor. Since they have fewer followers than top influencers, they can communicate with them and are very active in responding to comments on social media.

If you are a brand or business starting in this industry, they are the influencers who are a good option for your campaign.

Their budget is usually lower than that of top influencers, and sometimes, you just need to send them products so they can try them and write reviews.

Brand exposure when working with micro influencers is very successful. The influencers’ audiences are committed to watching and checking their posts, and they trust their opinions, which turns into sales for the sponsored product.

Make sure your audience is active on social media channels, such as Instagram, YouTube, or Twitter and then select micro-influencers who are the best fit for your product.

Another important tip is to analyze their engagement with several influencers with the same number of followers. This way, you can determine their real impact on their audience. This analysis should be done on the influencer’s latest posts so the metric is as up-to-date as possible.

As you can see in the following graph, this micro influencer has a high engagement compared to other micro influencers, so they are a suitable option.

This metric and many more can be found through an influencer marketing platform, which can help you find and analyze influencers in seconds.

3.Mid-tier Influencers

Those influencers have between 50K and 500K followers. They have high social media status and continuously collaborate with industry-leading brands.

For example, in Beauty, top influencers work with Sephora, L’Oréal, etc. Sometimes, these influencers were micro-influencers in the past and their connection with their audience made them top influencers.

Their voices are powerful in terms of advertising and they can grow a brand’s value with just a few posts. As mid-tier influencers, they are very natural when it comes to sharing a message and their followers trust them.

Collaboration might require a higher budget than collaboration with microinfluencers, but it can leverage the impact of your campaign.

Furthermore, depending on the channel you are interested in, working with several mid-tier influencers will result in more loyal customers than with other strategies.

4. Mega Influencers

From 500K followers up. These are considered celebrities in their field. They are usually very busy working on different collaborations, and the cost per post is much higher than that of any other type of influencer.

It is important to sign a contract with them since some legal aspects might need to be covered.

When working with these influencers, brands should be aware that they might be working on several projects simultaneously, which can delay the launch of their campaigns.

These influencers have a large follower base, so their message is shared with millions of people all over the world. If your brand is located in several countries, you can collaborate with them.

Sometimes, people don’t believe in their collaborations because they are frequent and don’t look natural.

The brand and sales impact for these types of collaborations is usually very rapid, but analyzing their audience to convert them into loyal customers might be challenging since they are very different.

How to Select the Best Influencer for a Campaign

Once you know the different kinds of influencers, it is time to select the best fit for your goals. Various aspects should be considered when selecting them. As mentioned before, an increase in sales does not only happen with mega influencers.

To choose an influencer, you should consider:

• Campaign goals: What do you want to reach with the campaign? Select a couple of goals that you want to obtain after the campaign. Once the team knows these goals, select metrics that will determine the success of your campaign. Stick to the most important goals and have a time frame for when you want to reach them.

• Channel: Where do you want the collaboration to be? Instagram is the most powerful channel for influencer marketing, but it depends on your product or service. Some products might have a higher chance of being visible if you choose a specific channel. Also, analyze your audience to understand what channels they usually use. As a brand, you might think Twitter might be a good social media channel, but if your audience doesn’t use it, investing time and money there won’t make sense.

• Audience of your product: Who is your buyer persona? Analyze your most frequent customers and find influencers with a similar audience. Ensure the influencer is an expert or has collaborated with brands in the same field; that way, you know their audience is aligned with yours. You cannot see this by checking their Instagram profiles, so you need to ask for this information or use influencer analytics software that has this information available.

Conclusion

This year is a good year for influencer marketing. New social media channels are popping up, and brands and businesses want to increase their visibility with content creators.

Each type of influencer has its characteristics. Micro-influencers have higher engagement than mid-tier influencers, nano influencers, and even mega influencers.

Other times, more popular influencers like mega influencers can leverage a brand’s visibility very rapidly and reach a niche audience. To select the best influencer for your campaign, each business needs to analyze their goals, audience, and channels.