The jury is out: Good things do, indeed, come in small packages.
Specifically, packs under 100,000 followers, as evidenced by the growing impact of micro-influencers on beauty brands’ earned media value, which is a monetary value assigned to a brand’s social media content and exposure.
Data from Tribe Dynamics indicates that for the top 15 US beauty brands on EMV from August 2020 to July 2022, which include Charlotte Tilbury, Huda Beauty, Colourpop and Elf Cosmetics, micro-influencers generated a larger share of EMV for each brand than any other level of influencers. .
To fully understand the significance of this, one must remember that a mere five years ago, during the end of the Golden Age of YouTube beauty influencers, it was the cosmetic looks of a small cohort of mega-influencers: James Charles, Nikkie de Jager, Jeffree Star and Tati Westbrook, to name a few, whose content dominated the internet, commanding audiences of sizes not often seen in today’s digital beauty landscape.
This is not because consumers are less interested in beauty, rather the opposite is being shown, but because consumers are beginning to turn to niche creators, or micro-influencers, who are increasingly cultivating small followers powerful enough to make waves on a noisy social network. media landscape.
Far from being the spiritual successors to their YouTube beauty influencer ancestors, the main advantage wielded by today’s rising micro-influencers, who claim Instagram and TikTok as their primary platforms, is their targeted appeal.
“[Microinfluencers] they have specific niche audiences that are highly engaged and really resonate with what they’re putting out. As a brand you want to trust, that’s very valuable,” said Alanah Dixon, vice president of influencer relations and social media for Anastasia Beverly Hills.
The Traackr data supports Nixon’s assessment. The influencer marketing software company compiled engagement rates from more than 1.1 million posts made by approximately 87,000 influencers in the US from January to August 2022 to determine which level of influencers drives the most engagement.
Traackr found that nanoinfluencers, or those with less than 10,000 followers, had the highest engagement rates, averaging 3.35% engagement, while influencers with 10,000 to 50,000 followers had a average participation of 2.7%. Mega-influencers, which the company defined as those with 1 million to 5 million followers, averaged an engagement rate of 1.44 percent.
“Micro-influencers have this level of authenticity that makes them feel like neighbors or family members, someone who can be trusted,” Nixon said. “They help [Anastasia Beverly Hills] connect with audiences that we would otherwise simply never reach.”
Tribe Dynamics reports that of the total $1 billion EMV Anastasia Beverly Hills earned from August 2020 to July 2022, 42 percent was generated by micro-influencers.
The brand was second only to Colourpop in terms of total EMV during the period, with Colourpop reaching $1.3 billion by comparison. Thirty-eight percent of that total was driven by micro-influencers, who made up more than three-quarters of the 16,900 content creators the brand benefited from during the time period.
Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty launched its micro-influencer program, Rare Collective, just over a year ago and has seen a 21% year-over-year increase in group EMV since, according to Tribe Dynamics.
Rare Beauty’s top micro-influencer for the first half of 2022 was Marwa Islam, who has 49,000 followers on her main platform, TikTok, and generated $864,900 of the brand’s $423 million EMV during the period.
A makeup look by Marwa Islam, or @marwa.muah on Instagram and TikTok.
courtesy photo
Like many other fledgling beauty influencers, Islam began posting makeup videos to social media during the pandemic in an attempt to offset lockdown-induced boredom. It wasn’t until 2022, when she began uploading videos of makeup looks inspired by the hit HBO Max series “Euphoria” following the show’s second season premiere in January, that her accounts began to gain momentum and brands began to propose collaborations.
“It was [creating videos] for fun, just as a way to practice something that I love and enjoy in my spare time,” Islam said, adding that her first brand collaboration was with Elf Cosmetics, in which she created an eye makeup look to promote Elf x Dunkin’ brand. limited edition release in March.
Since then, Islam has worked with Half Magic, the own makeup line of KVD Beauty, Morphe and “Euphoria” makeup artist Donni Davy, and has even signed contracts, which he says average length is a year, with several of they.
While stories like Islam’s are becoming more relevant, this is not to say that brands aren’t still reaping the benefits of turning to great creators: they are.
Creators like Mimi Choi, who has 2 million followers on Instagram and is best known for her intricate, art-inspired makeup looks, and Kali Ledger, who has 538,000 followers on Instagram, the main platform to which she uploads her imaginative makeup tutorials. makeup, are currently the top influencers driving EMV overall for NYX Professional Makeup and Charlotte Tilbury, respectively, reports Tribe Dynamics.
Anastasia Beverly Hills and Colourpop also state that mega-influencers are the creators driving the most EMV overall, though compared to their impact from 2016 to 2017, which was before micro-influencers came into play with such force, mega-influencers are generating a fraction of the EMV, the group he once led.
The highest EMV a single influencer generated for a beauty brand from August 2020 to July 2022 was $18.8 million, and was produced by makeup artist-turned-brand founder Danessa Myricks, for Morphe.
While considerable, that’s significantly less than the $32 million EMV driven by top Morphe influencer from 2016 to 2017, de Jager, also known by her YouTube channel name NikkieTutorials.
During this period, de Jager also reigned as the top EMV influencer for MAC, Tarte, Morphe, Benefit and Huda Beauty, single-handedly generating double-digit million worth for each.
Nikkie de Jager, who was the top EMV driving influencer for many beauty brands from late August through the 2010s.
courtesy of BengBeng Studio
However, the days of a lone influencer generating $32 million in EMV over the course of two years for a brand, which de Jager and other creators with a following of her size did with seeming ease in their heyday, are over.
Today Huda Beauty’s top EMV influencer Petra Miettinen or @bangtsikitsiki on Instagram raised a total of $5.1 million for the brand from August 2020 to July 2022.
And yet the brand continued to grow.
Huda Beauty’s total EMV rose to $727 million during August 2020 through July 2022, up from $618 million from early 2016 through late 2017, when the brand, like most others, was more focused on directing an all-star cast of influencers. .
Yet today’s brands have more than a few reasons to think twice about latching on to mega-influencers. Central to the dumpster’s appeal for many of the biggest names in beauty influencers, like Charles and Star, is the controversy and scandal in which their public personas seem inextricably imbued.
With many of beauty’s biggest influencers proliferating a series of petty crimes that range from being totally out of touch with reality to facing accusations of sexual misconduct and being criticized for racist behavior, consumers and brands alike have grown weary. more and more of the group.
Last month, Forma Brands, Morphe’s parent company, was said to be considering filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
A number of factors led to the circumstance, including widespread supply chain issues and other impacts on the brand’s performance of late, including the recent controversy surrounding two of its former top influencers, Charles and Star, whom the brand has now eliminated. ties with.
In fact, the big bets by beauty brands on influencers are, with increasing frequency, beginning to fail.
The same weariness that turned consumers away from celebrity brand endorsements (see: public reaction to Kendall Jenner’s 2019 partnership with acne-care brand Proactiv) and thus partly fueled the popularity of megainfluencers as a seemingly more relatable alternative to the late Aughs and 2010 firsts is once again making its rounds.
This time, it’s the same mega-influencers that the sentiment once bolstered, who are now suffering its consequences.
Even Beautytok darling Mikayla Nogueira, whose popularity has skyrocketed during the pandemic thanks to what viewers saw as a refreshingly authentic approach to content creation, isn’t exempt from the bubbly phenomenon. Earlier this summer, Nogueira received backlash for complaining about long hours in a TikTok video in which she scathingly invited viewers to “try being an influencer for a day.”
The video, coupled with the increasing incidences of mega-influencers, only further fueled the perception that influencers, like the celebrities before them, are not from planet Earth.
Consequently, more consumers are looking to micro-influencers for their product recommendations and content intake, and therefore brands that cultivate relationships with such influencers are starting to see a substantial payoff.
Source: news.google.com