Today, you can’t plan out a marketing strategy without stumbling upon the topic of influencer marketing. Using an established influencer to help promote your brand means reaching a dedicated portion of your core audience without going through the time and trouble of building that audience from scratch.

A niche influencer is someone who is highly knowledgeable in a specific area. Their followers rely on them for suggestions and product reviews, trusting their opinions greatly. This makes niche influencers great partners if you want to engage with your audience and build trust in your products or services.

Here’s a great example of a niche influencer, especially because this is a niche within a niche (within a niche). This is the Instagram account for the popular YouTube personality Tim Tracker and his wife (and adorable baby). They explore theme parks and events in Orlando, often focusing on Disney. They’re also in the parenting niche and talk about being parents to their little ones. Plus, a lot of their content focuses on food and eateries. If you have a food-focused business in the Orlando area that caters to families, you’d want to work with this influencer.

Source: TheTimTracker on Instagram

Niche Influencers vs. Mega, Macro, Micro and Nano Influencers

At first, you may think that a niche influencer is different from a mega, macro, micro, or nano influencer. Actually, though, niche influencers are in their own category, and they can be any of the other types of influencers. You can have a nano niche influencer or a mega niche influencer, for example. Let’s go over the other four types of influencers so that you know what the terms mean when you come across them.

Mega

This is likely the type of influencer you’re most familiar with. Mega influencers have humongous followings (in the millions), and they’re often recognized as social media celebrities. And some of them are actual celebrities, like actress Jessica Alba who founded the Honest companies.

Source: JessicaAlba on Instagram

Macro

Macro influencers have small-ish followings, typically between 100,000 and 1 million people. These are often the best kinds of niche influencers – they have a pretty big following while focusing on a particular niche. Macro influencers don’t usually have the built-in audience that mega influencers have from the beginning. Instead, they had to build their brand and following from the ground up, which makes them experts at audience growth.

Jesse Driftwood is a macro influencer with a following of just over 160,000 people. This ad promotes a Canon mirrorless camera – as a YouTube video creator, his audience trusts his recommendations for a camera that can also shoot video.

Source: JesseDriftwood on Instagram

Micro

While micro-influencers are small, with just 10,000 to 100,000 followers, they’re wildly popular. Yes, they have a shorter reach than some of the other influencer types on this list, but they have extremely engaged and loyal audiences. That makes them excellent for niche marketing, not to mention more affordable to work with than some larger influencer types.

SugSean is a micro-influencer with around 55,000 followers. His account is focused on minimalist living in London, and his posts tend to tell a story through visuals, like this one:

Source: SugSean on Instagram

Nano

Nano influencers are the smallest of the bunch, with under 10,000 followers. Like with micro-influencers, nano influencers have small yet highly dedicated followings. Brands that are looking to get into influencer marketing for the first time should consider partnering with a nano influencer. They’re affordable, and some may even take free products as payment – they want to build trust and rapport with their audience as much as you do. It’s also a good way to try out influencer marketing to see if you like it and to get used to working with influencers.

Lauren Blake has just over 32,000 followers, but they’re pretty engaged. This post about vegan ice cream has more than 700 likes, plus several comments.

Source: WholeLivingLauren on Instagram

When Should You Hire a Niche Influencer?

Working with a niche influencer can connect you with your core audience and bring a lot of attention your way within your specific niche. This is a lot better than working with more widespread influencers who don’t have a focus. Celebrities may have massive followings on social media, and they may use their platforms to promote the products and services they love, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they focus on any particular niche.

Any marketer knows that effectively promoting a brand means reaching the right audience. And, at the same time, you shouldn’t be spending time, money or effort reaching people who probably won’t become part of your audience. Niche marketing is the best way to go, and niche influencers can be part of your overall marketing campaign.

Wrapping Up

One great thing about using Instagram for niche marketing is that you can find influencers in practically any niche. Whether you’re in the fitness or beauty industry, or you promote travel, tech, or food, there’s likely a niche influencer of some size available for you to connect with.

Macro influencers are among the best to work with for niche marketers. They have larger audiences, but those audiences are super engaged. The people you reach through niche marketing with a macro influencer tend to respond very well to brand collaborations.

Micro-influencers shouldn’t be ignored when it comes to niche marketing, either. Often, the reason micro-influencers have a following at all is that they specialize in a particular niche.

When searching for niche marketers to work with, focus on credibility. Does the marketer promote quality products? Do they receive positive feedback from followers who love the brands that are promoted? If you start small, you can save a bit budget-wise as you narrow down the influencers you like working with best.