A decision framework based on what you need your influencer campaign to do, not on which influencer tier sounds better value.
If you have one budget and one objective, spend on micro creators first in almost every case except a launch that needs immediate fame. Micro creators cost less per partnership, let you test several audiences at once and tend to convert better. Macro creators earn their fee when you need a lot of people to know something by a fixed date.
That's the short version. The reasoning matters more, because the wrong answer here wastes a whole quarter's budget.
What the tiers actually mean
Definitions vary between agencies, which is unhelpful when you're comparing proposals. A common split puts nano under 10,000 followers, micro between 10,000 and 100,000, macro between 100,000 and a million, and mega above that.
Treat the numbers as rough. A creator with 95,000 engaged followers in one niche behaves nothing like a creator with 95,000 followers scattered across four countries. Our FAQ sets out how the tiers differ and what each one is for.
The case for micro creators
Micro creators give you three things macro creators struggle to.
Trust is the obvious one. A micro audience often reads the creator as a person they know rather than a media channel, and a recommendation lands accordingly. Comment sections at this size tend to contain actual questions about the product.
The second is testing. For the cost of one macro partnership you can book eight or ten micro creators, across different niches, formats and platforms. You find out which message works, which audience responds and which creative style converts. One macro post gives you a single data point and no idea why it did or didn't work.
The third is affordability of failure. If a micro partnership underperforms, you've lost a few hundred pounds and learnt something. If a macro partnership underperforms, you've lost a meaningful share of the year's budget.
The shift in the UK market reflects this. The large majority of brands running creator campaigns now work with micro creators, and a much smaller share work with macro.
The case for macro creators
Macro creators do one job that micro creators can't do at any volume: they make something feel like an event.
If you're launching a product on a fixed date, opening a new site or entering a category where nobody knows your name, concentrated reach has value that spread reach doesn't. Ten micro creators posting across a fortnight reach the same number of people as one macro creator, but without the sense that something is happening.
Macro partnerships also bring borrowed credibility. For a new brand, a recognisable name saying yes is itself a signal, and it makes the next conversation with a retailer or a talent agent easier.
The honest downsides: higher fees, longer lead times, more negotiation through agents and usually lower engagement rates than you'd see further down the scale.
How to decide in about five minutes
Ask what failure looks like.
If the campaign fails when not enough people know about you by a specific date, you need macro. Launches, seasonal peaks and anything tied to a retail listing fall here.
If the campaign fails when people know about you but don't buy, you need micro. That's most ongoing work, most considered purchases and anything where the barrier is belief rather than awareness.
If you can't answer the question, you don't have an objective yet, and that's worth fixing before you spend anything.
Why most good campaigns use both
The split that works for a lot of brands is one or two larger creators for visibility, with a wider group of micro creators carrying the detail.
The macro post makes the brand feel known. The micro posts answer the questions somebody has after seeing it, in a voice they trust, in a comment section where they'll get a reply. Each does something the other can't, and they cost very different amounts, so the budget split rarely runs 50:50.
A reasonable starting point is around a third on reach and two thirds on depth, adjusted for how well known you already are.
The mistake that costs the most
Brands pick a tier and then look for creators inside it. That's backwards.
Start with the audience you need to reach, then find the creators that audience already follows, then see what tier they happen to sit in. Sometimes the right person for a £30,000 campaign has 14,000 followers, because those 14,000 people are precisely who buys your product.
Follower count is a filter of last resort, after audience fit, engagement quality and content standard. We audit all three before recommending anyone, including checking that a creator's followers are real.
What to do if you're testing a tier for the first time
Run both at a small scale before committing. Book four micro creators and one macro creator, keep the brief and the tracking identical, and compare cost per click, cost per sale and the quality of the comments rather than reach alone.
Give it a proper window. A macro post front-loads its performance in 48 hours. Micro posts often build over a fortnight, and judging them on day two will send you the wrong way.
Bring us the objective and we'll bring the shortlist
You don't need to have decided the tier before you talk to us. Tell us what the campaign has to achieve and by when, and we'll come back with a shortlist, the reasoning behind each name and what each one costs.
You approve every creator before anything is contracted. Book a free 30 minute discovery call and you'll have a proposal straight after.