Mega-Influencers in Influencer Marketing

In the pre-internet days, celebrity partnerships were accessible only to select brands. Fast forward to today, social media has given brands of all sizes the means and tools to access social media influencers, the modern-day celebrities, and collaborate with them.

One of the most influential groups of creators today is mega-influencers. These are individuals boasting an audience consisting of millions of people, who have a significant impact on the ongoings of their market niche. And because of this, they have been gaining popularity among brands looking for partnerships during the last few years.

To help you understand who mega-influencers are and if working with them is right for your business, this article goes over some of the main benefits and downsides of working with mega-influencers, as well as several strategies you can use to make your partnership a success.

Who Are Mega-Influencers?

Mega-influencers are social media individuals who have a following ranging between 1M and 10M. Due to this large audience, they are considered to be celebrities in their fields and have over the years amassed significant influence and popularity through their content, brand collaborations, personal projects, collaborations with other influencers, and many other ventures.

This wide reach and following positions mega-influencers as some of the most influential voices in their respective fields, as they have the power to impact the opinions and buying decisions of a significant number of users. Very often, mega influencers are not simply opinion leaders, but trend setters and innovators.

Because of this, mega-influencers occupy a very special position in the influencer marketing industry as they can have an impact on the companies and brands they choose to work with to a significant extent.

Benefits of Partnering With Mega-Influencers

As some of the most influential individuals in the online world, mega-influencers yield invaluable benefits, and can significantly help the brands they collaborate with in achieving their business results. Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can benefit through a partnership with mega-influencers.

Wide Reach
Let’s start with one of the most prominent strengths of mega-influencers, the reach. Because these creators typically have millions of followers across different social media platforms, the content they post has the power to reach a significant number of people and go viral. This vast reach, in its turn, can help you put your brand in front of the eyes of millions of potentially interested people.

Increased Brand Awareness
This benefit is the logical continuation of the previous one: collaboration with mega-influencers can significantly boost your brand awareness and exposure. Due to the size of their audience, millions of brands will learn about your brand, and, what’s more important, through the voice of someone they know and trust.

Noticeable Engagement
When it comes to engagement rates, it’s important to mention that in influencer marketing, the larger the audience, the lower (in numbers) the engagement rates. So, in the case of mega-influencers, you are unlikely to see the 8-9% engagement rates you’d see in the case of nano-influencers or micro-influencers, for example. The numbers here will be significantly lower. However, what’s important to consider is that because mega-influencers have a much larger following, very often, the number of people engaging, even if the engagement percentage seems low, can end up being quite high.

Improved Credibility
Mega-influencers are social media powerhouses, who have significant credibility and impact in their niche, and the brands working with them can greatly benefit from them. These creators are very picky about the brands they work with, and their endorsement of your brand can make your brand look quite credible, and give it an “elite” feel, leading to increased consumer confidence.

Professional and Creative Collaborations

Mega-influencers usually have years of experience and a wealth of various collaborations under their belt. Many of them even have their management team helping them to handle the partnerships and collaborations. As such, you can always count on them being very professional throughout the whole partnership, as well as bringing in a plethora of fresh ideas and storytelling abilities to your campaigns.

Potential to Drive Sales

Lastly, through their vast reach, engagement, credibility, and storytelling skills, mega-influencers have a very high potential to drive sales for the businesses they work with.
Their endorsements can act as powerful social proof, and they can also showcase your brand’s offering in a compelling way, highlighting all its benefits. These two, combined together, lead to a very high likelihood of their recommendations translating into purchases.
Overall, collaborating with mega-influencers can provide your brand with various opportunities to tap into their extensive following, attract them with your offers, and convert them into loyal customers.

Downsides of Working With Mega-Influencers

As discussed above, working with mega-influencers boasts quite a few benefits. However, it comes with certain downsides too, and to properly weigh the pros and cons when making a decision whether to work with mega-influencers, it’s important that you are aware of both pros and cons of potential partnerships. Below, we take a look at some of the more prominent downsides of partnerships with mega-influencers.

High Costs of Partnerships
First and one of the most important downsides of working with mega-influencers is the financial aspect of your partnership: these creators are celebrities, and collaborations with them will almost always come with a significant price tag. This price tag is naturally a result of their large following, status as a creator, and the “elite” feel they’ll transfer over your brand. As a result, partnerships with mega-influencers are not startup-friendly and are in general quite costly investments for brands with limited budgets.

Hardships Of Landing Partnerships
In the case of mega-influencers, simply having the funds isn’t a guarantee that you will be able to land partnerships. Mega-influencers are established creators who are very picky over the projects they collaborate with because maintaining an image is important to them. Therefore, it’s critical that your values, values, goals, and brand image align closely to that of theirs, otherwise, there is a high chance you’ll be rejected.

Targeting Challenges
Next up on our list of downsides is the targeting challenges. Now, one of the main reasons influencers became popular was their niche: they allowed brands to reach a very specific, targeted audience.
Because mega-influencers have a very large audience, their followers may have diverse preferences and interests, which may not always align perfectly with your business interests. While they still maintain a more or less clearly defined niche (sport, fashion, beauty, etc.), it’s not hyper-targeted, and the effectiveness of your marketing efforts could be limited as not all followers will match your ideal customer profile.

Lack of Authenticity And Loss of Trust

Brands with some experience in influencer marketing know that the bigger the influencer, the less authentic they risk seeming. One reason for this is that these creators usually work with a vast number of brands, and the sheer number of these endorsements can make them seem significantly less authentic. This can result in a loss of trust, as followers may perceive the content to be overly promotional. And while this can be mitigated with some additional effort from the creator’s side, it’s important that you keep in mind that the high levels of trust present in the relationships between smaller creators and their audiences are unlikely to be present here.

Limited Control

This one will depend on how you prefer to work. Mega-influencers typically prefer to have creative freedom as part of their cooperation. So, if you are looking for cooperation where you are in control of every step, from messaging and text through to the visual, working with certain mega-influencers may not be the best option for you. On the other hand, if you are more flexible and open to suggestions, this won’t present a problem. One potential risk, however, is that there is a possibility of the content not aligning perfectly with your brand’s messaging or values.

Higher Risk of Controversies

Speaking of risks, it’s important to mention that due to their vast audience, mega-influencers are also more prone to public scrutiny and controversies. And if an influencer you’ve worked with gets embroiled in negative situations, they can impact adversely the reputation and image of your brand as well.

Case Studies Of Successful Mega-Influencer X Brand Collaborations

1. 1. Denice Moberg X Gymshark

Denice Moberg is a Swedish fitness mega-influencer with 1 million followers, who has been collaborating with fitness apparel Gymshark at least since 2018 and is currently a brand ambassador. As a Gymshark Athlete, Denice features in her workout videos and lifestyle content wearing exclusively the clothing of the brand, promoting the brand among her audience of fitness enthusiasts. As part of their collaboration, the creator has been announcing new collections of Gymshark, promoting deals and sales among her followers, creating content for the brand to use, and giving interviews for the Gymshark website. Denice has been extensively sharing stories of combining motherhood with fitness through her own and Gymshark’s channels, additionally attracting a new audience of pregnant women and mothers.

2. 2. Leonie Hanne x Gucci

Leonie Hanne is a luxury fashion influencer with 4.5 million followers, who regularly features wearing items from luxury fashion houses. Among those was Gucci, and Leonie’s love for the brand eventually scored her a partnership promoting one of the brand’s new bags.

What’s interesting about this partnership is its specific target. Fashion is one of the key industries in influencer marketing, but in the case of Leonie, it’s even narrower, as she concentrates only on items by specific designer brands. As a result, her following to a large extent consists of people interested in high fashion and ready and in a position to invest in luxury items, giving Gucci a new platform to promote their pieces.

3. 3. Jadé Marie x Benefit Cosmetics

Jadé Marie is a professional holistic-medical esthetician and a skincare enthusiast who’s been in the industry for 12+ years and boasts 1.2 million followers. Her content mainly features skincare, makeup, and general wellness videos, and she’s been collaborating extensively with brands in that niche.

One of her more recent and effective collaborations was with Benefit Cosmetics, a well-known makeup company. In this collaboration, Jadé promoted Benefit’s Professional collection of skincare products. Here, Jadé was a great choice for Benefit for a few reasons. Benefit is well-known for its makeup products, but not so much for its skincare lines. Jadé, on the other hand, posts content connected both to makeup and skincare, so through here Benefit was able to present its skincare line to people into makeup, who were likely to know the brand. The medical background of Jadé and her deep knowledge of skincare made the recommendation all the more appealing.

Strategies For Partnering With Mega-Influencers

Influencer partnerships, similar to any other partnership in the business world, are based on many different factors. And for your cooperation to be successful, even if it’s one-time, you need to forge a collaboration where all parties involved feel comfortable and know what the final goal is.

Below, we go through several strategies and tips you can consider that will help you achieve that.

1. 1. Ensure That Your Values Align

As mentioned earlier, for influencers to partner with you, they’ll need to feel that your values align. It needs to be the same for you: before choosing an influencer to work with, as well as during the partnership process, it’s crucial to ensure that your values align. In the beginning, take your time to go through their content, research their background, and look through their previous partnerships. Do you have shared interests? Are they consistent with their messaging? Would their content resonate with your audience? Answering these questions will give you a glimpse if they are a good fit for your brand value-wise.

2. 2. Emphasise Long-Term Partnerships

Consider building long-term partnerships with mega-influencers right from the beginning of your collaboration, even in the case that you have planned it to be one-time. This approach will allow for a deeper integration of the influencer into your brand, as well as give you better understanding of their working style, ultimately fostering a stronger and more trusting relationship that’ll benefit your campaign. And who knows, maybe even lead to repeated and longer-term partnerships.

3. 3. Consider Audience Relevance

When it comes to the niche, mega-influencers are somewhere in between: while they have a more or less defined niche, their audience is not hyper-targeted. Therefore, for your campaign to be successful and achieve what you’ve initially planned, it’s critical that you pay close attention to the audience of the influencer and their relevance to your campaign. For example, if you are looking to improve brand awareness among people loosely interested in your industry, mega-influencers may be a great choice. If you aim to reach a super-niche audience, maybe a smaller creator would be a better fit.

4. 4. Be Flexible And Embrace Creativity

Mega-influencers typically desire to have creative freedom when it comes to their work, and your campaign will be much richer if you embrace this. Collaborate with the mega-influencers to develop campaigns that align with their strength and resonate with their audience all while promoting your brand in the most appealing way possible and highlighting its benefits. Encourage them to be as authentic as possible, and be open to creators sharing personal stories and leveraging storytelling skills. Throughout the process, keep in mind that the creator knows their audience well and has insights into what type of content works best.

These strategies can help you foster meaningful and effective partnerships that will yield long-term results for your brand.

FAQ

Who are mega-influencers?

Mega-influencers are social media creators who have a following ranging between 1M and 10M followers. Due to this audience size, mega-influencers are considered to be celebrities in their own right and are considered to be trendsetters and innovators in their targeted industries.

What are the benefits of working with mega-influencers for brands?

Because mega-influencers are some of the most important voices in the digital world today, working with them can be greatly beneficial for brands. Some of the key upsides are high reach, increased brand awareness, credibility, and noticeable engagement, which come together to in the end boost the sales. Additionally, mega-influencers are quite picky about their collaborations, and working with them will position you as credible and trustworthy.

What are the downsides of working with mega-influencers?

Partnerships with mega influencers, though effective, come with several downsides too. One prominent con is the financial aspect: mega-influencer partnerships come with a significant price tag. Hardships to land a partnership due to influencers being selective, less targeted audience, and the risk of content seeming too promotional are three other downsides that you need to consider.

How can brands make the most of their partnerships with mega-influencers?

Brands can ensure that the collaboration is effective and smooth by ensuring that both parties’ values align, the expectations are clear, and by emphasizing long-term relationships. Additionally, brands should be able to give the creator flexibility and embrace their creative approach as long as it aligns with the campaign goals, even if it’s not how you envisioned the result.

Conclusion

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, mega-influencers remain a force to be reckoned with. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that their influence can transform how brands are seen. Due to their wide reach, large audience, and credibility, mega-influencers have proven to be an important marketing tool in the arsenal of companies looking to position themselves in a more favorable light. Brands started to recognize this, and as they are looking to reach more people and position themselves as credible and trustworthy, many of them enlist the help of mega-influencers.

In case you are considering a collaboration with a mega-influencer, it’s important to remember that the process requires a thoughtful and strategic approach. By understanding the benefits and potential downsides and implementing the right tactics, you can harness the full potential of mega-influencers and drive business growth. Good luck!