Social media has become an indispensable part of any modern marketing strategy, and one of the main pillars of social media marketing is influencer marketing. 

42% of marketers shared that influencer marketing was their top ROI-generating marketing strategy of 2020, with 90% indicating that influencer marketing results have been as good as or even better than pre-COVID-19 numbers. 

Social networks were identified as the third most popular channel used by Singaporeans for brand research in 2021 (the first and second being search engines and consumer reviews, respectively). With this in mind, influencer marketing in Singapore presents a significant opportunity for ecommerce business owners to reach a wider audience and lift brand recognition amongst their target markets. 

What are micro-influencers?

Influencers are usually tiered based on their follower count, with micro-influencers falling between 10,000 to 100,000 followers on social media. Micro-influencers are rising in popularity, especially for smaller businesses, as they boast certain advantages over influencers with larger followings.

Compared to the top stars and macro-influencers, micro-influencers tend to attract smaller-scale communities with niche interests. This makes their content hyper-targeted and relevant to their audiences, typically resulting in higher engagement and conversions. 

Think about it: if you are an ecommerce business selling specialty coffee and related accessories, and you engage a celebrity with over 500,000 followers on social media, what proportion of that following is likely to be interested in your products?

In comparison, a micro-influencer with only 15,000 followers on social media but who specializes in reviewing and recommending coffee blends would have a far more targeted audience – and better credibility in the coffee community. 

How to find micro-influencers in Singapore

There are many micro-influencers occupying various niches such as food, fitness, beauty, parenting, and more, and they exist on all social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. 

While you do have the option to hire a micro-influencer agency like X10 or Gushcloud to source and manage your influencers for you, it is absolutely possible to run the campaign on your own – and without the additional agency fees. 

You can start with a hashtag search on your social media channel of choice to see which profiles turn up, or use influencer marketing platforms like Whalar and Influence.co to find micro influencers that match your criteria.

If you’re looking to run an influencer marketing campaign on Instagram, here are some examples of Singapore micro-influencers known for creating engaging content across different niches. 

Pet products micro-influencer Luna (lunamoontheloon)

Food & beverage micro-influencer Mark Ong (makoeats)

Parenting and lifestyle micro-influencer Anabel Chew (anabel.chew)

Health and sustainability micro-influencer Bella Koh (catslavery)

Why use micro-influencer marketing for ecommerce?

While micro influencers have smaller followings than macro-influencers, they more than make up for it with relatability, authenticity, and closer relationships with their audience. 

Engaging a micro-influencer can offer multiple benefits for your ecommerce business, including affordable publicity for greater brand awareness to boost sales. 

Brand awareness

The critical benefit of influencer marketing for ecommerce is reaching out to new customers – rather than shouting out about your business and products to your own network of followers, you’re tapping into someone else’s network, effectively expanding your reach. Having your micro-influencers lead audiences directly to your ecommerce website or promotion landing page can also give a significant boost to your brand's visibility. 

Qualified leads

Because micro-influencers have a more niche following than macro-influencers, their audience is more likely to find their content relevant to their interests, whether that’s fitness or food, travel or tech. That's why micro-influencers boast a conversion rate that is 22.2 times higher than other types of influencers, giving you more bang for your marketing buck. 

Authenticity

Micro-influencers represent the more approachable side of influencer marketing. They tend to work on the principles of word of mouth rather than the idolized celebrity of top stars and macro-influencers. And with 92% of consumers preferring to trust recommendations from individuals over brands, micro-influencers offer a dimension of authenticity to your marketing that’s often missing in traditional paid ads and celebrity endorsements. 

Affordability

A smaller following tends to mean smaller fees, which is great if you’re conducting influencer marketing on a tight budget. Engaging multiple micro-influencers rather than spending all your budget on one big-name influencer can be more cost-effective and deliver better results, especially if your goal is to increase engagement and conversions. Some micro-influencers even accept products instead of cash payment or are open to profit-sharing (for example, 50% of the profit margin from referral sales) rather than a fixed fee. 

How to develop your own micro-influencer strategy

Getting the most out of micro-influencer marketing requires effective collaboration – the final content should be equally reflective of the influencer’s and your brand. 

Remember that one of the most significant values of engaging a micro-influencer is their authenticity, so it's essential that you give them the creative freedom to inject their personality and style. Force-fitting your message or dictating how the influencer should create the content will likely backfire. 

1. Pick the right influencer

Much of the success of your campaign hinges on finding the right influencer. Most importantly, whoever you choose must align with your brand values and appeal to your target customer. 

You must spend time vetting potential candidates – look through their past content and other social media platforms, and check out how they interact with their followers to ensure that you’re comfortable with having them endorse or represent your brand. 

2. Decide on your objectives

Before you embark on any marketing campaign, you must define your objectives, as this will determine your eventual call to action. 

Are you looking to boost traffic to your website? Increase the number of followers for your business social media account? Clock in more sales? 

Once you have a clear objective in mind, there are multiple ways you can incorporate micro-influencers into your campaign strategy, including: 

Referrals

Capitalizing on influencers is one of the best ways to extend the reach of your referral campaigns. They can lead traffic directly to your ecommerce website or landing page or incentivize their followers to make purchases by offering exclusive discounts or freebies. 

A common way for businesses to boost sales and track the performance of each micro-influencer or campaign is to generate unique voucher codes that offer upfront discounts or store credit (like spending $10 to get $10 off the next purchase). 

Publicity and engagement

Micro-influencers can help boost your own brand’s social media presence by directing their audience to engage with your posts or follow your business account. A popular way most influencers do this is to run a giveaway contest where one of the qualifying criteria is that the participant follows or engages with a business account or tags your business in one of their own posts. 

A contest like this is a great way to grow your own social media following and increase your organic reach without continually being dependent on paid campaigns or influencers. 

3. Set clear terms and expectations

Once you've found your micro-influencer and decided on your campaign objectives, the next important step is to negotiate key expectations such as: 

• Timeframe for content to be produced and duration of any promotional campaigns
• Amount of content to be produced, for example, the number of blog articles, videos, or static posts
• Usage rights for the content, such as whether you are allowed to repost on your own accounts or website in the future 
• Payment terms, and whether or not it will be a one-time fee or there will be profit-sharing involved

More specific campaign mechanics such as the use of appropriate hashtags or tagging of your business account

Boost your ecommerce brand with Shopify influencer marketing

The Shopify App Store has a wide selection of apps to help you easily manage your influencer campaigns for better visibility and effectiveness. You can track referral traffic to your ecommerce website or quickly implement a loyalty program with ReferralCandy, set up campaigns and find influencers to work with on Gatsby, and track influencer sales with Dovetale. 

Micro influencers can bring incredible value to your ecommerce business, especially if you're looking for a cost-efficient means of increasing audience engagement and conversions. Finding the right micro-influencer to collaborate with and reaping the maximum ROI from influencer marketing requires an investment in time and a willingness to experiment – but the payoff may well be worth it. 

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With social networks ranked as the third most popular channel used by Singaporeans for brand research in 2021, influencer marketing can be a powerful tool for you to grow your brand, particularly if you are running an ecommerce business.

Businesses are reporting significant ROI from influencer marketing – specifically, a $5.78 return for every $1 spent as of 2020.

But the cost of influencer marketing may pose a barrier for many business owners to take the plunge, especially when there isn’t much transparency and no ‘standard’ market rate for influencer pricing. 

What is the cost of influencer marketing in Singapore?

It is important to note that there isn’t really a benchmark for Singapore influencer rates, especially since there are multiple tiers of influencers, from nano to micro to macro to mega. 

But according to social marketing agency Kobe, you can establish a rough guideline for influencer cost per post based on: 

• Follower count: $100 for every 1,000 followers
• Average engagement per post: $250 to $750 per 1,000 engagements per post
• Video views: $50 to $100 per 1,000 video views

However, keep in mind that there are other variables to consider, such as the amount and types of content to be produced, production timelines, and usage rights (whether or not you can repost and repurpose their content on your platforms). 

Why use influencer marketing for small business?

Most business owners may have a common perception when they picture influencers are likely big names like Kim Kardashian or, closer to home, Jianhao Tan and Xiaxue. 

In reality, many tiers of influencers exist, including the more accessible nano influencers (1,000 to 10,000 followers) and micro-influencers (10,000 to 100,000 followers). These smaller – but no less powerful – influencers can add huge value to your business in the areas of: 

Awareness

Influencer marketing is such a powerful tool for small businesses because it allows you to reach new, untapped audiences. Rather than relying only on your existing customer base, you’re expanding your reach to someone else’s network, potentially converting their audience into new fans and customers of your brand. However, this is contingent on you choosing the right influencer whose audience best matches your ideal customer.

Engagement

Nano and micro-influencers represent the more approachable side of influencer marketing and are much more connected with their audiences than higher-tier influencers. Because they more frequently respond to comments and direct messages from their followers, having an influencer promote your business on your behalf opens up new avenues for people to engage about your brand. After all, people prefer interacting with other people rather than businesses.

Trust

92% of consumers trust recommendations from individuals over brands. Having an influencer talk about your brand is an expression of trust – as long as the influencer has built a strong enough reputation for credibility and rapport with their following. That’s why the most successful influencer marketing campaigns hinge on finding the right influencer whose values and personality best match your brand.  

Cheap influencer marketing in 5 steps

If you are keen to embark on an influencer campaign but are working with a tight budget, this guide will walk you through the process of developing an effective strategy that keeps influencer marketing costs low while helping you deliver on business objectives. 

Step 1: Set your goals

Setting your campaign objectives up front is a crucial first step to any influencer marketing campaign. Having a single focused goal will help increase effectiveness and determine your influencer’s ideal call to action. It's also an excellent way to measure your influencer's performance and whether they succeeded in helping you meet your business goals. 

Some common campaign objectives and performance metrics you can use are: 

• Engagement rate: views, likes, comments, and share of the influencer’s post
• Traffic: the number of referrals visiting your website or promotional landing page
• Brand awareness: increase in followers to your social media accounts or more people talking about your brand
• Sales: conversions, leads, and revenue generated

Step 2: Determine your budget

Most marketers spend up to 25% of their digital marketing budget on influencer marketing, but it’s perfectly ok to start slow and ramp up later once you’ve had a chance to measure your ROI. Starting with a smaller budget first also gives you room to experiment and refine your strategy down the road as you build closer or longer-term relationships with the influencers who deliver the best results. 

It’s general practice to set a marketing budget of 5-10% of your business revenue, but again, there is no hard and fast rule. 

Step 3: Research the competition

To take much of the guesswork out of your first influencer campaign, it's a good idea to scope out your closest competitors. See what’s worked for them in the past and take inspiration from there. This analysis can save you valuable time and money on experimentation. If you’re running an influencer marketing campaign on Instagram, you can use a tool like Whalar to compare engagement rates, followers, and post frequencies. 

And don't just limit it to your direct competitors – consider as well brands that would have audiences similar to your ideal customer. For example, if you're selling baby clothes, consider brands and businesses in other industries like food, lifestyle, or wellness that also target parents with young children. 

Step 4: Source the right influencers

Since you’re working on a tight budget, you’ll want to focus on quality over quantity when it comes to influencer marketing. This means you'd probably want to stay away from the more prominent influencers and focus on nano and micro-influencers instead. These tiers have demonstrated higher engagement and conversion rates than their more popular counterparts and tend to charge more affordable fees. 

You can scout potential influencers directly on social media using hashtags or try a Shopify App like UserGems, which identifies potential influencers within your existing customer base. Always take the time to vet your influencers to ensure that their followers are genuine and their values and personality align with your brand. 

5. Negotiate

Once you have your budget, objectives, and list of ideal influencers in place, you can start asking for rate cards to see if their fees fit into your budget. Remember that you are not just asking an influencer to create content for your brand. You are also asking to tap into their audience, repurpose their content, and engage with potential customers on your behalf. 

The great thing about nano and micro-influencers is that they tend to be more flexible and open to negotiation – provided you stay reasonable and do not lowball, as this is a quick way to damage your brand reputation. The point is to reach a mutually beneficial agreement and that you approach the table as a collaborator.

Run a cost-efficient influencer marketing campaign with Shopify

Influencer marketing can be a great way for small businesses to reach new audiences, increase brand awareness, and generate sales – and it doesn’t have to cost thousands of dollars to be effective. The key is finding the right influencers whose audiences match your ideal customer profile. That way, you’ll be able to ensure that your brand and products are being seen by those who are actually interested in your business and are most likely to convert into fans or paying customers. 

The Shopify App Store has many apps to help you easily measure and manage your influencer campaigns. In addition to UserGems mentioned above, you can also set up campaigns and find influencers to work with on Gatsby, and track sales conversions with Dovetale. For additional resources, check out our handy list of Instagram tools to become a social media champion and grow your followers on Instagram.

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