Here's What Savvy Entrepreneurs Should Know About Influencer Marketing

For nearly a century, companies and marketing agencies have recruited popular celebrities to put in a good word publicly for their brand.

Even Orson Welles himself once did voiceovers in advertisements for frozen peas.

There are tons of examples of successful celebrity endorsements. Remember that notorious Carl's Junior commercial that Paris Hilton did in the early 2000s? Not to mention Britney Spears's iconic Pepsi commercials from around the same time period.

People look up to celebrities. And when a celebrity endorses a business or a product that gels with their own personal brand — not to mention their fans' aesthetic tastes, aspirations, and self-concept — it's fantastic for driving sales.

Today, the internet has created a new class of mini-celebrity. We call them “influencers.” Many of these people are “micro-influencers,” people with a fan base numbering in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

Of course, we've still got “macro-influencers” too. Figures like Kendall Jenner and Kim Kardashian are huge on Twitter and Instagram.

So how do these two classes of influencers compare? Naturally, macro-influencers — traditional celebrities, basically — have a lot more reach. Their messages reach more people.

But at the same time, micro-influencers with smaller, more niche followings tend to get a lot more engagement, at least relative to the size of their fan base. Someone with only 15,000 Instagram followers might be getting a great engagement rate, with more shares and more comments than someone else with ten times as many followers.

Which is a better choice for your brand, assuming money isn't necessarily a primary concern? Recently, Hubspot published an awesome new infographic that breaks down the latest influencer marketing statistics. Take a look at what they found.