The tiers, and what each one is actually for
Tier boundaries are conventions, not rules; agencies shift them by a few thousand followers. What matters is that each tier does a different job, and paying macro rates for work a micro creator does better is how this budget usually gets wasted.
| Tier | Followers | Typical ask per post | Best used for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nano | 1,000–10,000 | ₹3,000–₹15,000 | Local trust, honest reviews, ten tests to find two that work |
| Micro | 10,000–1,00,000 | ₹15,000–₹75,000 | Category credibility, repeatable performance creative |
| Macro | 1,00,000–10,00,000 | ₹75,000–₹3,00,000 | Reach at a campaign moment — a launch, a festive push |
| Mega / celebrity | 10,00,000+ | ₹3,00,000 upwards, often far upwards | Awareness and PR, rarely direct response |
Why the smallest creators often convert best
A nano creator's audience is mostly people who know them — colleagues, neighbours, a community they're part of. When that person says a clinic was good, it reads as a recommendation. When someone with two million followers says it, it reads as an ad, because it is one and everybody knows it.
The economics compound the effect. ₹5 lakh buys one celebrity post: one hook, one script, no way to iterate. The same money runs twenty nano creators, tells you which two hooks produce enquiries, and hands you those hooks as paid creative — usually where the return actually sits.
So treat influencer spend the way we treat performance marketing: a testing budget with a media outcome attached, not a reach purchase. Buy on cost per qualified enquiry, tracked with clean UTM parameters and a unique code per creator.
Spotting a bought audience before you pay
Followers cost less than the campaign does, so assume nothing. Five checks, ten minutes per creator.
- Ask for a screen recording of their insights, scrolling live, not a screenshot. Screenshots get edited. A creator with real numbers has no reason to refuse.
- Check audience location against content language. A Hindi-language creator with most of their audience outside India is selling followers, not reach.
- Read fifty comments. Emoji strings and generic praise arriving in a tight burst minutes after posting is a pod or a bot farm. Real comment sections argue and go off-topic.
- Compare story views to post likes. Story views are harder to inflate. Views far below likes is the clearest single tell.
- Look at the follower growth graph. Organic growth is lumpy but continuous. A vertical step with no post to explain it is a purchase.
What a usable brief contains
Most campaigns fail in the brief. Either it's a one-line WhatsApp message and the creator invents your messaging, or it's a 40-slide deck with a word-for-word script, in which case you've paid a premium for a voiceover artist.
A brief that works fits on one page: the single message the post must land; what must not be said, especially in regulated categories like health, finance and education; format and length; where the link or code goes; the disclosure label; usage rights and duration; whitelisting, if you'll run it as an ad from their handle; and a deadline with one round of feedback, not four.
Then leave the words to them. You're buying their voice and an audience you don't have. If the copy has to sound like your brand, you wanted UGC-style production, not a creator.
Disclosure is not optional in India
ASCI's guidelines for influencer advertising require a disclosure label wherever there's a material connection between brand and poster — payment, free product, a discount code, anything of value. The Central Consumer Protection Authority's endorsement guidelines put obligations on the advertiser too, so "the creator didn't label it" isn't a position you want to defend.
The requirements are practical. The label — #ad, #sponsored, #collab — must be upfront and prominent: not buried behind "more", not lost in a wall of hashtags, visible long enough to read in video and throughout a livestream, and in the post's own language.
Brands resist this on the theory that disclosure kills performance. Audiences already assume a post is paid; the label mostly signals the creator isn't hiding it. A creator called out for an undisclosed ad costs the brand more, and for longer, than the campaign was worth.