What Is a Macro Influencer? How To Find the Best Influencer

It goes without saying that influencer and creator marketing are the most popular forms of marketing on social media right now. Because of this, it’s important brands know the difference between the types of influencers and how social teams can leverage them for different levers of your social strategy. 

Macro creators are particularly influential in landing the so-called ‘sweet spot’ of followers and engagement. Let’s learn more about macro-influencers and how they compare to nano, micro and mega-influencers.

Macro-influencers are creators with between 100,000 and 1 million followers. These types of influencers often foster an engaged and active community that’s full of fans who love the brand and interacting with their content. Creators with this amount of followers can still maintain a bit of relatability and interact with their followers through comments and DMs, thus prompting even more engagement. 

Macro-influencers are often seen to be the Goldilocks of the influencer community — not too big or too small, just right. 

Nano vs. Macro-Influencer 

Nano-influencers are creators with 10,000 followers or less, so substantially fewer than macro-influencers. Though the follower number is far less, nano-influencers tend to have higher engagement on their content compared to macro-influencers as their audience is niche and invested in what they have to post. Nano-influencers also have the ability to easily answer comments, messages and questions that may otherwise get lost in the shuffle for larger influencers. 

Micro vs. Macro-Influencer

Micro-influencers have between 10,000 and 100,000 followers. These types of creators have worked to grow and maintain a strong audience, which usually leads to higher engagement rates with followers. Like nano-influencers, micro-influencers can easily keep a finger on the pulse of their community and keep themselves in the mix. Brands may have difficulty choosing between micro or macro-influencers, but the choice will depend on the reach you’re looking to get.

Macro vs. Mega-Influencer 

Mega-influencers are anyone who has over 1 million followers. For obvious reasons, this type of influencer typically has the highest amount of reach even beyond macro-influencers. Mega-creators are some of the most influential people on the internet and are more often than not, celebrities or soon-to-be celebrities. This type of influencer usually works with the world's largest brands, have an influencer brand all their own or don’t partake in influencer marketing at all. 

While you might think the best bang for your buck is to work with nano or micro-influencers or to increase reach through mega-influencers, macro-influencers afford brands the best of both worlds.

More Reach

Mega-influencers can give your brand the broadest exposure, however, the quality of that reach may not always be the best. Their massive followings often result in lower engagement rates, as many followers are drawn to their status rather than a deep connection with their content. In contrast, macro-influencers offer a strong balance — while their reach is slightly smaller, their audiences tend to be more engaged, making their influence and increased reach more impactful.

Key Opinion Leaders

The great thing about macro-influencers is that they have often spent quite a bit of time in the industry and have become experts in their field. This expertise makes them key opinion leaders and someone who brands can feel comfortable aligning themselves with, especially when trying to practice community-based marketing and reach a niche community or expand into different demographics. It quickly becomes a mutually beneficial partnership for both parties as the brand can share the knowledge and trustworthiness of the macro-influencer with its audience and vice versa for the creator.

Drive Quick Sales

41% of retailers choose to spend their money on macro-influencers over other types of creators. This preference for macro-influencers is for many different reasons — one of them being quick sales. While working with nano or micro-influencers can end up being a long game in terms of sales, macro or mega-influencers often have very quick turnaround times due to their extensive audiences who trust their opinion and influence and want to own the same products. 

Every influencer type is different and has unique best practices to help make the partnership soar. Here are some tips for working with macro-influencers effectively: 

Research Your Audience Preferences

While this may seem obvious, it’s important to ensure the macro-influencers you partner with align with your own audience preferences. Many times, macro-influencers are used to expand a brand audience versus targeting their own. By doing this, brands can sometimes put the needs and interests of their own audience on the back burner. When choosing a macro-influencer to partner with, ensure they closely align with your brand and audience so that it doesn’t come as a shock or surprise to someone who is already a fan of your brand.

Use To Boost Brand Awareness

Once you’ve solidified the macro-influencer you want to partner with is a good fit for your audience, you can then start strategizing how you can work with them to help build brand awareness. This is where macro-influencers shine as they have a sizeable following and very engaged audiences. In the early stages of a partnership, we even recommend using brand awareness as a key metric for success over things like ROI and sales. These things will come as you build trust and authority with an influencer and their community. 

Increase Spend 

A key differentiator between using, say, nano or micro-influencers and macro-influencers is spend. Since these types of influencers have higher follower counts and a larger reach in general, there will be a higher associated cost when working with them. It’s up to you and your team to decide if that increased spending is worthwhile. Spoiler alert: it is. Macro-influencers are some of the most successful in the business for a reason. 

Create an Ironclad Contract

With any influencer partnership (macro or not), a solid contract is a must to manage expectations for both parties. Work closely with your legal team to create a template that’s easy to customize on a case-by-case basis. In some instances, macro-influencers with a lot of partnership or brand ambassador experience may also have a contract for brands to sign. This attention to detail and specific approach just ensures compliance and safety on both sides, while eliminating any surprises. 

The best way to understand a macro-influencer’s impact is through their influencer marketing campaigns and partnerships with some of the world’s biggest brands. Here are a few standout collaborations between top brands and creators:

Lucy Williams and Sézane

Lucy Williams has over 571K followers on Instagram and is known for her visually stunning fashion, travel and lifestyle content. Both Lucy and Sézane have feeds saturated with color, texture and luxury and because of the type of content both parties post, a collaboration between the two just makes sense. 

While creating a bit of shock value with an unexpected partnership can help make waves and drive engagement, a collaboration like this that aligns with both the influencer and the brand’s core social media strategy, is always going to hit home and help foster a long-term, successful partnership. 

Chuck Cruz and YETI

Chuck Cruz is a chef and food influencer with over 260.5K followers on TikTok. His content is simple, to the point and delicious with his main focus being on the food. Chuck’s simplistic approach to content creation and cooking makes his collaboration with YETI a no-brainer. 

Chuck seamlessly integrates YETI products into his content in a way that feels organic and unforced. The top comment on the example above even says, ‘This partnership is such a flex for both sides,’ which is exactly how an influencer or brand should want their audience to react to a collaboration. 

Veronika Slowikowska and Banza

Comedian Veronika Slowikowska has gained over 683K followers on Instagram from her parody-style content. In this partnership with Banza, Veronika used her humor to address some of the comments people often make about mac and cheese, quickly changing her tune after trying it out herself. 

Though a comedy influencer and pasta brand may not seem like a natural fit, it works in this scenario because the brand is fine with its product being completely showcased in Veronika’s style. This specific collaboration is a good example of how brands need to be open to letting macro-influencers try what they already know works for their audience to see real results.

No matter the size of an influencer, Dash Social’s Creator Management is built to streamline influencer marketing from end to end. Influencer and creator management offers a suite full of features to source creators of any size, track deliverables, uncover EMV, ROI and more. Brands can stop with guesswork and know exactly which influencers and influencer types are most beneficial to their brand. 

What is a macro influencer follower count?

Macro-influencers are anyone who has gained an audience of between 100,000 and 1 million followers on any platform. 

What is the difference between macro and mega influencers? 

Macro influencers have anywhere from 100,000 to 1 million followers while mega influencers have 1 million followers and above.