The Power of the Micro-Influencer in the Food and Grocery Industry
Almost every brand today utilizes influencers as part of their marketing strategy. The first wave of influencer marketing, before “influencer” was even a widely-accepted term, centered around celebrity product endorsements. Since then, influencer marketing has evolved to include micro-influencers. Micro-influencers are those who have larger followings than the typical individual, but smaller followings than that of a celebrity, ranging anywhere between 10,000 to 100,000 followers.
Their smaller followings are usually highly engaged, as they've chosen to follow the influencer specifically for their content, not for their fame. Micro-influencers typically share something in common with their followers, like a passion for fashion, cooking or a particular lifestyle. Instead of appearing in a television commercial, they create content for their blog or social media accounts that resonates with their audience, and supports brands that fit their lifestyle.
The nicheness of their content is what gives the micro-influencer power — their followers look to them as an expert or guide in a particular area of interest and expect them to curate relevant recommendations on their behalf. A micro-influencer recommendation sits in the sweet spot between that of a celebrity figure and that of a close friend’s, making it one of the most valuable recommendations a brand could earn.
Understanding the Value of Micro-Influencer Content for CPGs
CPG and grocery brands have a lot to gain from advertising within micro-influencer content. After all, everyone cooks (or, at least, eats) — meaning, there’s countless influencers creating content opportunities for your brand. Below we outline the three main benefits of advertising within this content.
High Engagement
High engagement is easily the most cited benefit of micro-influencer content. According to Social Bankers, micro-influencers have a 60% higher engagement rate and a 20% higher conversion rate than macro-influencers. This means that their followers are more likely to take full advantage of their content, clicking on corresponding links, saving recommendations for later and making purchases directly from their pages. With two-thirds of consumers shopping for groceries online, micro-influencer content can help boost ecommerce sales for CPGs.
More Potential
Injecting your brand into micro-influencer content can boost ecommerce sales, and in turn, encourage long-term brand loyalty with the influencers’ followers. Since 80% of online grocery shoppers are likely to repeat purchases, you want your brand to be first in-content and in-cart. Further, micro-influencer advertising offers more potential for growth simply because there’s so many micro-influencers, and therefore so much content to advertise in. Instead of allocating all of your resources to a single partnership with a large publisher, you can take advantage of a wide range of audiences and content styles.
Better Targeting
Since most micro-influencers fulfill a specific niche, advertising within their content lends for better targeting. This is the power of contextual commerce advertising. If your brand sells meat alternatives, for instance, then you can get directly in front of your target audience simply by leveraging the content of vegan and vegetarian micro-influencers. This goes for all diets and types of food — if it’s a category in the store, then there’s a community for it online.
Implementing Micro-Influencer Advertising
For food and CPG brands, micro-influencers can look like homegrown small food blogs or social media pages. Food bloggers, like Frugal Mom Eh and social media influencers like Chef Tariq are perfect examples of the type of micro-influencers that are creating content that CPG brands could use to grow their brand.
However, in order to truly feel the impact of micro-influencer advertising, or affiliate marketing, you need to partner with many (hundreds or thousands of) micro-influencers. Unfortunately, identifying the right influencers at scale can take a significant amount of time and resources. Once you’ve curated a list, you need to ensure that each influencer’s engagement is authentic (not purchased or bot-driven) and that they’re the right partner for your brand in the short or long-term. Since micro-influencers are usually newer to the scene, they often don’t have as much experience with sponsored content, which can make it difficult to ensure that your brand is being represented appropriately and adequately across micro-influencer channels.
This is where the right contextual advertising partner, like Chicory, will save you countless hours, creative costs and production hassles. Chicory provides solutions that allow you to advertise within micro-influencer content, without ever having to conduct individual outreach. Instead of worrying about hundreds of affiliate relationships, your brand can focus on interfacing with just one entity. Chicory’s contextual advertising technology can be found on over 1,500 recipe and food sites, ranging from large publishers to small, homegrown food blogs.
All shoppable links and advertisements on these sites are created directly by Chicory, not the influencer or publisher, ensuring consistency and control across all channels where your brand is represented. Further, since Chicory’s tech exists only in the recipe environment, you never have to worry about your brand showing up in or around content that doesn’t align with your brand’s values.
To learn more about how Chicory can help you kick-start your contextual, micro-influencer advertising strategy, email hello@chicory.co.