Does size matter? If we’re talking influencer marketing, the answer is not necessarily. It’s not always the size of the audience that matters, but how engaged they are.

Before social media, an influencer was anyone who shaped opinions and trends in real life. Think magazine editors, TV personalities, or local tastemakers. They didn’t always need millions of followers. Their influence came from authority, expertise, or trust within a specific community. Social media just scaled that concept. Now anyone with a dedicated audience, regardless of size, can sway purchasing decisions, opinions, and trends online.

Now, influencer marketing is booming. In 2020 the global market sat at $10B, and in 2025 it’s projected to hit $32.5B (Statista). That’s a lot of eyeballs, dollars, and opportunity. Not sure how to tap into it? News flash, you don’t have to have millions of dollars in marketing budget and you don't have to have millions of followers to get involved on either side.

There’s different tiers of influencers and different use cases for each. But not all influencers are the same. Knowing who to work with and when can make or break your campaign. Here’s our straight forward breakdown of the four main types of influencers and the pros and cons of each for different brand resources and needs.

Types of Influencers

Influencers come in all shapes, sizes, and niches, each serving a unique purpose depending on your brand goals. While their style, audience, and content vary, one of the main ways to categorize influencers is by the size of their following. Each tier offers different advantages, costs, and engagement levels, making it essential to match the right influencer to your campaign objectives.

• Celebrity Influencers: 1M+ followersWell-known public figures with massive reach, ideal for brand awareness and large campaigns.
• Macro Influencers: 100K–1M followersProfessionals with broad audiences, capable of high-quality content and strong engagement within their niche.
• Micro Influencers: 10K–100K followersSmaller but highly engaged audiences, offering authenticity and niche authority at a more affordable cost.
• Nano Influencers: <10K followersExtremely engaged, community-focused creators who are highly relatable and cost-effective, great for grassroots campaigns or testing new products.

Celebrity Influencers

Celebrity influencers are household names, think major public figures with massive followings across multiple platforms. These influencers usually found fame off of social media first, and their audience translated from their fame in another sector. They bring instant visibility and can make a brand feel mainstream almost overnight, but that level of fame comes with trade-offs.

• Reach & Impact: Millions of followers, perfect for large-scale brand awareness.
• Pros: High visibility, strong credibility, mainstream appeal.
• Cons: Extremely expensive, less targeted engagement, can feel less authentic if not aligned.
• Best Use: Ideal for product launches, luxury brand campaigns, or one-off mega campaigns.
• Examples: Cristiano Ronaldo, Leo Messi, Selena Gomez, Kylie Jenner, Dwayne Johnson, Ariana Grande, Kim Kardashian, Beyoncé, Khloé Kardashian

Celebrity partnerships can boost visibility fast, but brands should weigh cost vs engagement. If your goal is precise targeting or niche trust, a celebrity might be overkill. Sometimes it’s more effective to engage several smaller influencers for the price of one celebrity influencer. Also, keep in mind partnering with a celebrity typically requires a multi-million-dollar marketing spend.

Macro Influencers

Macro Influencers are creators with 100K-1M followers, usually known within a specific niche or industry. They’ve built credibility and an engaged audience, often producing high-quality, polished content that feels professional yet still approachable. Macro influencers hit a sweet spot between reach and relatability, giving brands the ability to scale campaigns without paying celebrity-level prices.

• Reach & Impact: Broad audience, strong engagement, recognized within their niche.
• Pros: High visibility, professional content, relatable enough to maintain audience trust.
• Cons: Higher cost than micro-influencers, slightly less authentic than smaller creators.
• Best Use: Perfect for campaigns that need both scale and relatability, like new product launches or seasonal promotions.
• Example: @juuliapuig

Macro influencers are great when you want to balance visibility with authenticity, typically requiring a budget in the $5,000–$50,000 range per campaign, depending on niche, content deliverables, and platform.

Micro Influencers

Micro Influencers have 10K–100K followers and are often deeply embedded in specific niches. They’re known for highly authentic content and a strong connection with their audience, making their recommendations feel personal and trustworthy. While their reach is smaller than macro influencers, the engagement they drive is often more meaningful.

• Reach & Impact: Smaller, highly engaged audiences within focused communities.
• Pros: Authentic content, strong niche authority, affordable for most brands.
• Cons: Limited reach per individual; scaling often requires partnering with multiple micro influencers.
• Best Use: Ideal for niche products, local marketing, or targeted campaigns where relatability and trust outweigh raw reach.
• Example: @crustbycarson

Micro influencers are perfect for brands looking to build credibility within a niche. Multiple collaborations can create a ripple effect, reaching highly engaged audiences without the massive spend of celebrity or macro campaigns. Budget around $500–$5,000 for one-off micro influencer campaigns, depending on follower size, content type, and engagement rate.

Nano Influencers

Nano-influencers accounted for 75.9% of Instagram’s influencer base in 2024. Nano influencers are everyday UGC creators with highly engaged communities of fewer than 10K followers. Their content feels authentic and relatable, often blending seamlessly into social feeds without feeling like traditional advertising. While their reach per individual is small, collaborating with multiple nano influencers can create a strong, grassroots-level impact. This is word of mouth in the age of social media.

• Reach & Impact: Extremely engaged niche audiences, ideal for community-driven campaigns.
• Pros: Highly authentic, very relatable, cost-effective.
• Cons: Limited reach per individual, multiple partnerships needed for scale.
• Best Use: Community-focused campaigns, grassroots marketing, product testing, or soft launches.
• Examples: @avagonzales98

Nano influencers excel at building trust and sparking conversations. They’re perfect for brands testing products or launching region-specific campaigns. With a budget around $50–$500 per collaboration, you can engage several nano influencers at once and generate authentic buzz without breaking the bank. Engaging nano-ingluencers only really works well as a high-volume UGC strategy.

Find Influencers on SideShift

At SideShift, we’ve built a streamlined system for businesses of all industries and sizes to find and hire UGC creators at scale, whether you need 5, 50 or 500 creators for a product or service launch blitz, or a long-term marketing push.

With SideShift’s creator marketplace, brands can instantly activate dozens of niche creators to flood social feeds with relatable, scroll-stopping content that’s optimized for performance and rapid audience feedback.

From ideation to execution, SideShift makes it simple to manage contracts, payments, and analytics in one place, letting you focus on strategy and creativity. Scale your content army, test multiple creative angles, and iterate quickly, all while maintaining authenticity and measurable ROI.

Get started today with SideShift and connect with the right influencers and UGC creators to drive real results for your brand.

FAQs

1. How do you categorize an influencer?

Influencers are typically categorized by audience size and niche or industry. This helps brands match their goals with the right type of creator.

1. How many followers do I need to be classed as an influencer?

Technically, to have influence is to change the mind of one. There is no single magic number of followers required to be an influencer, you just have to start acting like one. But on the topic of numbers, it’s all about engagement, not just following. A small creator with a highly engaged audience of 500 can outperform a celebrity with millions of passive fans. Influence isn’t just reach, it’s the power to make people act.

1. What's the best niche for influencer income?

Some of the fastest-growing niches for influencer income are health & wellness, fitness, sustainable living and eco-friendly products, finance, parenting and family lifestyle, gaming and e-sports, fashion and beauty, home and DIY, food and beverage, travel and tech (Influencer Marketing Hub). Choosing a niche with high audience interest and purchasing power maximizes ROI for both the influencers and the brands.

1. What are the types of influencer collaborations?

You can get really creative with how you choose to engage an influencer in your social media marketing strategy. Most common collaborations come in the form of gifting or product exchanges, where influencers receive free products to share with their audience; event coverage, where influencers showcase brand events to their followers; brand ambassador programs, which establish longer-term partnerships with recurring content; and sponsored content campaigns, where influencers create paid posts promoting a product, service, or brand message. Each collaboration type offers unique benefits and can be tailored to your brand’s objectives and audience.

1. How much do influencers get paid for campaigns?

Influencer payment depends on audience size, engagement rate, campaign goals, and expected ROI. Nano and micro influencers will sometimes accept product or service exchanges as a form of payment, while larger creators typically require budgets that reflect their reach and performance. As a rough guideline:

• Nano influencers (<10K followers): $50–$500 per campaign
• Micro influencers (10K–100K followers): $500–$5,000
• Macro influencers (100K–1M followers): $5,000–$50,000
• Celebrity influencers (1M+ followers): $50,000–$5M+

Micro and nano influencers, in particular, offer highly engaged audiences and can deliver strong ROI for niche or local campaigns at a fraction of the cost of larger influencers.

Sources

https://influencermarketinghub.com/influencer-niches/

https://www.statista.com/topics/2496/influence-marketing/#editorsPicks

https://influencermarketinghub.com/influencer-marketing-benchmark-report/