Micro Means Genuine: Why Everyone Will Be Competing For Micro-Influencers in 2024

Micro means genuine. What do we mean by that? Before explaining what micro actually means we need to unpack why being genuine has become increasingly important.

Why Are Brands Having Such a Hard Time Building Trust Online?

There are many factors over the last decade or two that have impacted a company's ability to build trust and authenticity online. For a short period of time when the digital world was fresh and unknown, brands could post things with little to no competition. Things quickly became saturated and brands were forced to get more and more creative. Now everyone knows the ins and outs of the online world. Folks can quickly decipher real versus forced content. A great example of this is search / pay per click advertising.

We challenge you to find someone who can’t recognize a Google search ad at first glance (below the age of 65). Does that mean that search ads don’t work anymore? Not necessarily. It just means there is an additional barrier of knowledge that marketers need to be aware of.

AI’s Impact On Authentic Marketing

Fast forward to today. Where artificial intelligence has taken over the digital world, particularly in the marketing space. With brands using it to create blog content, social media posts, email marketing, advertising, and more.

Let’s kick things off by saying AI is an incredibly powerful tool if used correctly. The challenge becomes the amount of people and companies that can churn out bottom level content in seconds.

Source: Insider Intelligence

How does that impact your company's content? Simple, it buries it in two ways. First, there’s more competition that you need to stand out in front of. And second, there is more ‘nonsense’ content out in the world. Ask yourself if you’ve already started noticing obvious AI content on social media? How do you think that will impact shoppers' mindset about online brands?

This increase of bad content will undoubtedly create a lack of trust for brands. You will have to battle twice as hard to come across as an authentic and trustworthy company.

What To Do?

As most marketers know, the space moves quickly. So pointing out the future problem always comes with a next step.

If you agree that authenticity will become a problem then the next question is what marketing avenues will help create a genuine, trustworthy presence.

How To Create Authentic Marketing Content In 2024

To achieve authenticity, brands will need to begin looking for new ways to market. Fresh ways to spread their voice while proving a real personality behind the efforts. A great example is more raw videos of real people talking on social media. Although, this will soon be combated with AI videos…

The way we see it, the buyer process will become increasingly more focused on word of mouth and trust via personal networks. This has always been a stellar way to market; it's just insanely difficult to take advantage of.

The closest we think brands can get: Micro-influencers.

No, not the Kim K’s of the world. The small folks that have a following of 1-50k. The people that have a small following and have done an incredible job of building their own little niche audience from scratch. If you could just access some of these folks then you could get your voice, product, or service out there in an authentic format.

Why Everyone Will Be Competing for Micro-Influencers in 2024

It’s for the challenge of trust and authenticity that we see millions of brands and marketers moving towards Micro-influencers in 2024.

The big name influencers are simply out of budget for most companies in the world. Dropping $10k on a single post with someone who has a million followers is a scary thought.

Instead, we can consider $100-$500 for some affiliates, reviews, general posting & promotions, and more.

The Micro-Influencer team created a database that focuses solely on micro influencers. These are the creators that are quickly gaining momentum, have a good base audience of patrons that engage, but aren’t quite big enough to ask for the crazy big dollars.

There are only so many of these individuals in each niche which is where the race will begin. Getting in early and finding these perfect micro-influencers for your niche quickly will be the challenge.