The long tail: It's time for microinfluencers to have their moment in the spotlight
The future of marketing is social - buying from the influencers we trust online. If you are building a company that helps make this happen, please connect.
Dogs and puppies. I’m peeking at my friend’s Instagram feed and it’s a series of the cutest animals. It’s rare to see a human on her screen. She’s a vet, so I think she chose the right profession.
Another friend’s phone is just a series of travel destinations. She’s often sending me images with a ‘we should go there!’ It’d take us years just to get to the places on her travel shortlist. Let alone her long list.
My phone? It’s things like stretching, workout equipment, how to run trick plays in beach volleyball, and sports psychology. You can tell I’m an athlete.
Being an influencer used to be tied closely to fame - movie stars, celebrities, and sports heroes we saw on TV. Now? The people that influence our choices are all around us, and they reach us through social media. Influencers range from our friends to people on the other side of the world who share our passions. Many of them don’t have millions of followers. These people form the long tail.
All of us follow influencers in the long tail. You too might even be one.
What is the long tail?
The long tail is the concept that there is a large number of people / products / companies who serve a small number of customers each. Amazon is the classic example - they built a business based on selling low volumes of hard-to-find books to many customers, instead of only selling large volumes of a small set of popular items (like most bookstores who have to do this due to limited shelf space).
For influencers, the long tail is the large number of accounts on a platform who have only modest followings. It looks like this:
Kylie has hundreds of millions of followers. Most of us that are active posters have several hundred to several thousand. My grandma has 17 - not bad for a 97 year old! (Sadly I think half of those follower profiles are inactive as she keeps out-living her friends).
But remember how niche the social media feeds of my friends and I are? The best thing about the long tail is that you can find and follow people that are extremely tailored to your individual interests. And the internet means you can follow those people even if they live nowhere near you.
People are migrating their attention from the most popular influencers, to the long tail. To micro-influencers.
Why don’t people in the long tail make money?
If you are in the long tail, you have something of value to offer, but often you aren’t getting paid for it. Someone with a few thousand followers on social media finds it really hard to monetise their account (trust me, I’ve tried!)
Why is it so difficult?
First, because matching is hard. Let’s say a brand wants to run a campaign that uses 100 micro-influencers, rather than 1 bigger name influencer. How does a brand find those 100 people? How do they know that they are the optimal 100 people? How do you know you can trust them?
Second, the economics don’t stack up. Let’s say you find the 100 perfect micro-influencers, it’s a ton of work to reach out to all of those people individually, negotiate each deal separately, send them a product to try, check they held up their end of the deal, and then measure the ROI.
Third, because ROI is really hard to prove. Sure I can tell you impressions and engagement on my posts, but that doesn't really translate to a brand’s bottom line. Right now, to really track ROI I’d be relying on the brand tracking it for me via click-thoughs or by customers using my unique referral code when they buy (use CHRISTIE10 for 10% off!)
As a result, Kylie Jenner gets paid $1.5m for a single post, and occasionally I get offered a free t-shirt to make a post. There are millions of micro influencers that would love to make money, but they can’t right now.
Things are about to change.
Why is now the time for micro-influencers?
Three markets trends are converging to make influencer marketing a $14B industry, up 40% year-over-year since 2018.
1. Data privacy
Cookies let brands track you on their own site, but changing privacy regulations mean brands can no longer follow your crumbs all over the internet (and then target you with ads). Plus 42% of internet users have ad blocking in place.
Micro-influencers are the answer. They’ve done the hard work of curating a niche audience that’s highly engaged. People don’t block their content. And brands also get to piggy-back onto the trust that influencers have built with their audience. 4 in 10 millennials say their favourite influencer understands them better than their friends!
2. Rising online advertising costs
Ask any digital marketer and they’ll tell you - prices are going up. Why? More companies are competing for the same keywords and online advertising space.
Micro-influencers on the other hand are cheap. Anything you can offer over a free t-shirt is a good deal for me right now.
3. In-app shopping
Imagine scrolling through TikTok, and with a single click being able to purchase the jacket the person is wearing. In your size. And to your address. Already 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations to shop.
Once in-app shopping is in place, influencers will own the entire marketing funnel for brands – from building brand awareness at the top of the funnel (what they currently do), all the way through to purchase at the bottom of the funnel. Brands can ditch the paid ads, and pay influencers instead.
The next wave of startups
For me, the future of marketing lies in unlocking the long tail. I’m excited to follow (and maybe even invest) in startups solving some of these problems.
Help influencers grow their followings
How can software help influencers get more followers who care about their content? The founder of Whaler told me: ‘Influencers isn't just about the number of followers, it's about the strength of the bonds between them.’ Steppen is a social fitness app for GenZ. They do a lot of the hard work of follower acquisition for their creators.
Empower influencers to deal with brands
Let’s be honest, even if a brand wanted to work with an emerging influencer, it can often be a giant headache because that influencer doesn't know the basics of what engagement metrics to share, what to charge, and how to do business. GGWP is a platform for gaming influencers that offers influencers training programs, and only allows them to engage with brands once they have enough experience and knowledge.
Match influencers with brands efficiently
How does a brand find the 1, 10, or 100 micro-influencers that perfectly represent their product and identity? A perfect match requires everything from the colour palette to the personality of the influencer to align. And then how do they connect and transact with those influencers?
Mys Tyler flips this problem on its head. Fashion influencers nominate the clothing brands they are wearing - so the matching is initiated by the influencers, not the brands. Brands can track the best influencers through affiliate links and double down on partnering with them.
Give influencers tools to produce effective brand content
Making quality content is hard work. Photos, video, audio - producing it often requires equipment, and then serious amounts of editing. That post you spend 3 seconds scrolling past may have taken the creator 3 hours to create.
Interesting companies in this space are building products that:
Help influencers be more productive (so they can create more content, more quickly)
Help influencers make better content (so their existing audience spends more time with them)
Help influencers align more closely to brands (so they can get paid more)
Canva is the OG example. They started out by helping influencers make and resize content for different platforms. (And now you can make ALL your content using Canva)
Facilitate in-app transactions
The race is on to own the transaction. Winning this space means clipping the ticket on every dollar that flows through your technology. (The app stores have slowed this race with their 15-30% cut of all in-app transactions.)
As consumers, we want 1-click transactions, and we want them to happen within the social media platforms. There’s nothing more annoying than having to close one app, open another, and have to begin your search for the item you want to buy all over again. For instance, Carted connects content with e-commerce, letting customers buy the item they want regardless of where it is stocked.
The long tail is the future
Ben from Night Ventures laid out how trust has shifted over time from institutions, to corporations, to individuals.
It’s human nature to trust people who are like us. Soon, we can find, follow, engage with and buy the same products as ‘people like us’ globally. I want that as a consumer. And as an investor.
This morning I scrolled past stretching advice, gorgeous photos of Africa where I’m planning to travel next, and gymnasts sharing their routines as they prepare for World Championships.
Lululemon, Tourism Tanzania, and the ticket seller for gymnastic events had no idea. But they’d definitely like to know - I’m their perfect customer. I’m sure the micro-influencers I follow would like those brands to know about me too, because then they could get paid for their content.
Marketing has always been a race to find new and more effective methods of reaching customers. The next race to win will be the one to unlock the long tail.
If you’re working on something in this space, please reach out via my LinkedIn.