Nano-influencer campaigns
Small audiences, real relationships. The published research is unusually clear about why this works, and unusually ignored by the people selling reach.
What a nano-influencer actually is
A nano-influencer is someone with a small social audience, usually in the low thousands or fewer, made up largely of people who know them: family, workmates, the netball team, the neighbourhood. There is no agreed cut-off, and the number matters less than the composition. The defining feature is that a post reaches people who can recognise whether it is honest.
The commercial argument for nano campaigns is not that they are cheap. It is that engagement and audience size pull in opposite directions. Research published in the Journal of Marketing in 2023, covering 802 campaigns, found engagement with sponsored content follows an inverted U against follower count: reach rises with audience size, but the likelihood of any individual engaging falls.
theSalt runs the model at the far end of that curve, with real customers rather than a roster of small creators. Nobody in the community is chosen for a follower count. They are chosen because they already buy in the category, and the post reaches the people who would ask them about it anyway.
Run at customer scale.
A nano campaign is a logistics problem before it is a creative one. Fifty small posts need a system that a handful of large ones do not.
Brief
The product, the audience, and the outcome. No follower minimums are set.
Match
An opt-in survey filters the community by category purchase behaviour and lifestyle data.
Buy
Each participant buys the product, and proof of purchase is matched to them and to their post.
Post
Everyone posts to their own network with the advertising label at first interaction.
Select and boost
Organic performance decides which posts earn paid support behind them.
A rate card buys reach. A customer brings belief.
The usual nano campaign is a macro campaign with the budget divided up: a list of small creators, a brief, a gifted product and a hashtag. The mechanism that makes small audiences work, which is that the audience knows the person, survives none of that.
Nano influencers off a list
- Selected by follower count and engagement rate
- Product gifted, so the purchase never happens
- Same brief, same caption, forty accounts
- Disclosure often left to a hashtag
- No purchase to verify, so no trial to count
Real customers, at nano scale
- Selected because they buy in the category
- Product bought through normal retail
- The occasion is briefed, the opinion is not
- Advertising label at first interaction, every time
- Every trial verified and counted
The evidence, including the awkward part.
Two published studies and one New Zealand campaign.
Journal of Marketing, 2024
Beichert, Bayerl, Goldenberg and Lanz compared campaign economics across influencer tiers.
- EUR 0.265 revenue per follower from nano-influencers, against EUR 0.049 for macro
- 17.85 return on influencer spend, against 4.67 for macro
Source: Beichert, Bayerl, Goldenberg and Lanz, Journal of Marketing, 2024.
Journal of Marketing, 2023
Wies, Bleier and Edeling analysed 802 campaigns and found engagement follows an inverted U against follower count. Bigger reach, smaller chance that any one person engages.
- 802 campaigns analysed
Source: Wies, Bleier and Edeling, Journal of Marketing, 2023.
Kiwicare Weed Weapon
Five Canterbury gardeners, no follower requirement, filming their own driveways and paths.
- 2.78% click-through on customer content, against 1.07% on brand paid ads
- NZ$0.20 cost per click
Source: Kiwicare Campaign Report, January 2026.
The questions worth asking.
How many followers does someone need?
None in particular. We do not set a minimum, because the community is matched on category purchase behaviour rather than audience size. Some participants have a few hundred followers and some have a few thousand.
If the audiences are small, how does the campaign reach anyone?
Two ways. The organic posts reach the people who know the participant, which is where the credibility sits. Then the content that performs organically is amplified as paid media to a much larger audience, which is where the reach comes from.
Is nano cheaper than working with one large creator?
Usually, but that is not the argument. The published research points to better revenue per follower and a better return on spend at the nano end, which is a different claim from being cheap.
How do you stop forty identical posts?
By briefing the occasion rather than the caption. Each participant is buying the product for their own reasons and shooting it in their own house, and content that reads as a copied script does not get accepted.
Do nano-influencers still have to disclose?
Yes. Audience size has no bearing on it. If the brand paid for the post, the advertising label goes at first interaction under the Advertising Standards Authority codes.