In the early days of influencer marketing, brands largely focused on mega influencers or celebrities with around a million followers. But over the last two years or so, there’s been a lot of interest in influencer marketing strategies using micro-influencers among digital marketing experts. A micro-influencer often have a lot fewer followers, but the people who follow them tend to engage closely with their posts. 

A micro-influencer often has a much closer connection with their followers which results in a higher ROI for campaigns. Unlike mega-influencers, it also costs a lot less to work with a micro-influencer making it more appealing to digital marketing teams.

Let’s have a look at some of the top micro-influencer campaigns that produced amazing results for the brands. 

Top Micro Influencer Marketing Campaigns To Learn From

1. 20 Mule Team Borax

Pinterest is not the first micro-influencer marketing platform that comes to mind when you think of micro-influencer campaigns. It had a mere 463 million active users in 2023, compared to the 2.4 billion users on Instagram. But 20 Mule Team Borax made a brilliant and highly successful microinfluencer marketing strategy and one of the main reasons for their success was that they chose Pinterest for it. 

Instead of going after influencer marketing platforms with a large number of followers or users, they went for to a place where their customers went to improve or clean their homes. They worked with 6 lifestyle micro-influencers who produced around 100 pieces of content around the various use cases for their product and they managed to create an 11% lift in sales for a home cleaning product from a brand that has existed in the market for more than a century. 

What set this micro-influencer campaign apart from the rest is that it proved that influencer campaigns can work for anything and for any brand with the right strategy. Most brands that produce home cleaning solutions go for traditional TV or radio adverts or hoardings in public places. Influencer marketing was usually reserved for flashy products or brands, such as fashion, automotive, and tech. But 20 Mule Team Borax proved it could work for everything and anything. 

2. Luseta Beauty

It’s not easy for a beauty and skincare brand to stand out with micro-influencer marketing. Just about every brand is regularly conducting high-profile influencer marketing campaigns to promote new products. So what makes Luseta Beauty’s micro influencer campaign unique? 

The most obvious reason is that they worked with micro-influencers for their brand. Up until recently, beauty brands worked almost solely with mega-influencers. @guliettemaribel, a micro-influencer Luseta worked with, had just around 40k followers on TikTok when they launched the influencer campaign. 

Another interesting aspect of this influencer campaign is that the team went with an omnichannel approach. Instead of sticking with just Instagram or Facebook, Luseta also used TikTok as a micro-influencer platform and even blogging for their influencer campaign. They asked Instagram micro-influencer @ashleymarieblog (who has just around 13k followers on Instagram) to write a blog about their products and put a social media post. The Instagram post created interest in the product, but the blog gave detailed information about their products which won’t fit well in a social media post. 

By working with micro-influencers on multiple influencer marketing platforms, the brand was able to reach its customers on different social media websites. 

3. H&R Block’s New Tax Pro Go Software

As with Borax, tax software is not exactly what comes to mind when you think about micro-influencer marketing campaigns. However, H&R Block understood that with the right combination of influencers with a following aligned with their targeted audience, they could get better results than what they could with traditional advertising solutions. 

The team wanted to promote their new tax filing software and wanted to create awareness about their solution. They partnered with an influencer marketing agency to find the right influencers, who were known for giving financial advice and had a largely Gen Z audience. The team identified six such micro-influencers and worked with them to produce content. 

The campaign was much smaller than what you’d expect when working with influencers. Instead of putting tons of UGC, the micro-influencer marketing campaign produced just a couple of blogs and sponsored posts on Facebook and Twitter. However, the campaign got a serious ROI and helped boost the sales of the new solution. 

The campaign shows an interesting aspect of micro-influencer marketing campaigns: you can scale it to your needs. When you’re working with a micro-influencer, the minimum spend can be as low as around $100. But if you have the resources, you can work with many micro-influencers to reach a wider audience. 

Another aspect is the targeting. With micro-influencers, the audience won’t trust any creator promoting any product. It’s not like a movie star promoting a shampoo or a mobile phone. You need to pick a micro-influencer who regularly talks about the industry the brand is in and is a trusted voice on that topic. 

4. Sperry’s OOTD posts

As a fashion brand, influencer marketing was the perfect marketing strategy for Sperry. But instead of going with one single mega-influencer, the brand went with a series of micro-influencers. 

They wanted to position their footwear as ideal for cold and wet weather but at the same time fashionable. 

These micro-influencers took pictures with the footwear and posted them in a series of #OOTD social media posts along with branded hashtags. In the second week, they worked with brand enthusiasts who started posting their outfits with Sperry footwear getting their products more reach. 

As a footwear brand, an influencer marketing campaign was a sure and proven bet for Sperry. But instead of going with the usual approach and competing with other brands with similar products, the brand went with micro-influencers who had much higher engagement rates and had followers that aligned with their target audience, even if they were fewer in numbers. 

5. Glossier made their customers their brand ambassadors

Glossier took a different approach with their micro-influencer marketing efforts. Instead of conducting a one-off campaign through two or even ten creators, they created an army of micro-influencers who frequently talk about their products. 

Glossier realized that customers who spoke about their brands were the best ambassadors they could get for their products. The company also didn’t want over-the-top marketing since it wouldn’t align with its brand values. 

The team came up with a strategy to incentivize their most loyal customers active on social media to promote their products. Instead of giving them one-time monetary payments, the team incentivized the micro-influencers with products and other gifts. 

The interesting aspect of this approach was that there was no monetary payment involved. And the influencers weren’t mega influencers or people with large followings. They were people who already loved the brand and used to speak about them on social media. 

The campaign also involved a significantly large number of social media users. Around 500 people were involved in promoting the products. 

The advantage of this approach was that the brand was seen by a wide range of people among different demographics. 

The disadvantage would be to manage this large number of micro-influencers. However, there are many micro-influencer marketing platforms that can help marketers completely automate giving gifts and announcements to their influencers. 

6. Forever 21’s campaign with Kristal Heredia

Customers all over the world have been demanding that fashion brands have more diverse models for their clothes and Forever 21 did a very successful campaign by listening to them. 

They worked with Kristal Heredia, a micro-influencer known for her stance on body positivity to promote their line of beauty products. Kristal had (has) a very strong following who, even though smaller in numbers compared to mega influencers, connected very closely with them. 

By collaborating with Kristal, Forever 21 was able to raise awareness about their Forever 21 Plus collection. The micro-influencer marketing strategy worked and gathered significant engagement and brand approval for Forever 21 from their target audience. 

Forever 21 worked with the first rule of marketing: understand your customers and listen to them. They adapted their strategy to work with what the customer wants instead of sticking with their usual recipes. 

Another interesting aspect of this micro-influencer marketing campaign was that they were making a statement that resonated with their audience. They realized that their audience wasn’t interested in just good imagery and captions. To connect with them, they had to make a statement that aligned with their customers’ ideas and beliefs. 

That did wonders for their brand. 

7. Airalo Travel App

Airalo is an app that offers data packages for people traveling abroad and they wanted to target younger audiences who are going to a different country to pursue education. 

The first reason for the success of their influencer marketing campaign was their choice of micro-influencer platform: TikTok. TikTok's audience was (is) largely the demographics they wanted to target; people of ages from 18 to 23. Another reason was their choice of micro-influencers. They picked ten travel influencers who regularly gave advice on best practices and tips and tricks while traveling abroad.

 Then they produced content about traveling for education, universities, first things to do, what you need to pack for traveling, and similar topics. The content for the marketing campaign mentioned Airalo as a solution for students traveling abroad who need phone data. 

The micro-influencer campaign worked wonders and brought significant engagement and sales for the app. 

8. Workman Publishing on TikTok

Workman Publishing’s creator campaign should serve as a micro-influencer campaign guide for marketers. The team managed to build a highly successful campaign with over 4.5 million views about books, a subject that rarely, if ever, uses influencer marketing. The campaign proved that with the right approach, anything can be marketed with influencers. 

The marketing team chose TikTok as their platform due to its younger audience and the active BookTok community. They also used reading influencers on Instagram to get the reader community on the platform. 

One of the noteworthy aspects of the campaign was that it reached a wide range of readers, from parents to young adults to foodies who were also readers. The campaign was able to go wide, but also specifically narrow.

Micro influencer campaigns bring great ROI. But you have to know your customers well

The key factor for a successful micro-influencer campaign is to know your customers well and choose an influencer that appeals to them. With mega-influencers, it's fairly easy to choose someone aligned with your brand and you’ll be able to hit your target demographic easily. 

With a micro-influencer, you need to find creators trusted by their audience in the industry your brand is in. 

And there’s no better solution than InsightIQ. Book a demo and find out for yourself.

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