Influencer Marketing

Want to make Punjabi Chola- Bathura, South Indian Idli Sambar, Malabar Matti curry then switch over to internet and find plethora of videoson your favourite recipe. Chatting with friends on Facebook, watching YouTube videos for cooking recipes, gardening tips, post pictures on Instagram etc. are the most trending activities on internet especially during the pandemic. Today, Indians are not consuming the internet for infotainment but are enjoying making assorted dishes from across the world, learning Yoga and Pranayama, gardening, fashion designing etc. It just got easy with social media platforms.
As on 2019, there are more than 31 million You Tube channels with volumes pouring at the rate of 500 hours’ videos per minute. What is it that the content creators have in mind for making bubbling and bursting content and post it regularly and consistently on social media? Why do they aspire to reach larger audience? Obviously to earn a“rupee.”

Who Are Social Media Influencers?

An influencer is a user on social media with established credibility in a specific industry, has access to a wider audience and can influence others by their authentic remarks and reach.
Influencers make regular posts on a topic on their preferred social media channels.

Influencers are recognised as the subject matter experts in their field and with their best communication skills generate large followings of eager and enthusiastic audience. They entice the followers with their specific niche and also have the power to influence their purchasing decisions. Followers are keen to hear the views of the influencer. It is important to note that influencers connect with the right audience, built a broad and trustworthy relationship that the brands can collaborate and market their products. Brands prefer social media influencers to honk their product. The trendy and innovative promotional campaigns and the influencer’s recommendation audience are more likely to buy the product.

Influencers are classified

By follower numbers: Mega-Influencers are celebrities who have a huge following of more than a million on their social media platform. Major brands usually approach mega-influencers for marketing their products and innovations. A step down from Mega influencers are Macro and Micro influencers with followership varying from 1000 to less than a million and the Nano influencers with less than 1000 followers.
By type of content: Write on your blog or make videos and podcasts is a new approach of letting your ideas, thoughts and knowledge to the world and earn a decent income. People quit the white collared jobs to explore the digital media world.
By level of influence: Celebrities, thought leaders, industry leaders built a reputation in their niche and amassed large fanfare for themselves and their profession. Celebrity endorsement for brand promotion has been the marketing strategy of the past and is still in vogue.
Market research study shows that 85% of Generation Z learn about new products on social media and turn to YouTube before making a purchase. Gen Z cohort (born in late 1990s and 2010) has never known a world without the Internet. Born in a world of internet, survey shows that Gen Z are the most hooked to internet with an average time of 2 hours 55 minutes spent per day on social media.
In 2020, the survey shows that with increase in internet availability and affordable smartphones social media has infiltrated 45% of world population or 3.81 billion population with average user having 8.6 accounts on different networking sites. Social media platforms have occupied centre stage with most of its audiences aged 13+years. Social media influencers make the best of this opportunity catching the younger generation with spicy and interesting content that is widely viewed and shared with the consumers over internet. As the content goes viral, soon these influencers attain stardom on social media, attracting larger audience to their website.

Influencer marketing – the new biz.

Wikipedia’s definition of influencer marketing is ‘it is form of social media marketing involving endorsements and product placement from influencers, people and organisations who have a purported expert level of knowledge or social influence in their field’.
Influence marketing is promotion of products by advertising through influential people, opinion leaders, on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, You Tube, Pinterest and Twitter. It is advertising the product through the word of mouth by influencers’ and not the brand advertising itself. Generation Z is immune to post tags on social media which is driving the influencers creativity in making interesting content and videos and attract large audience to their websites. The influencers provide a fair and genuine opinion of the product and why one should buy it. An influencer marketing platform associates with creators from niche market and helps the brand connect with the right type of influencer within their budget. Influencer marketing is a vast market that deals with multiple forms of marketing and assists the brands: –
In designing strategies for brand promotion
Sales augmentation by building quality content and connecting with the right and enthusiastic audience
Aligning with micro to celebrity influencers from specific niche areas
Scrutinizing the quality of content, organic followers, engagement rates, etc. of influencers for efficient results.

Potential of Influencer Marketing

‘Here’s to the 1000th Post’ –Virat Kohli reflects on his journey and thanks fans for support on Instagram. He also thanked fans for backing him throughout. “2008 -2020 with many learnings along the way, I’m grateful for your love and support you guys have shown me. Here’s to the #1000thPost,” Kohli wrote. Virat Kohli is the India’s highest earning Instagrammer.
People associated with digital marketing and advertising, influencers were the genre primarily aware of the novel concept of Influencer marketing but it remained to be an alien term for a long time for others. Now, Influencer marketing is an established digital market, predicted to be around $75-150 million in India and around $20 billion industry worldwide.

Some of the Indian millionaires-2020

Bhuvan Bam – His creative content earns over £90,000 per month just from YouTube and has an estimated net worth of £2.2 million, making him one among the India’s wealthiest YouTubers of 2020.
Ashish Chanchlani is a mainstream YouTuber who is known for his comedic videos, won a Dadashaheb Phalke International Film Festival award for Best Digital Influencer.
Nisha Madhulika a 61-year-old from Uttar Pradesh, presents culinary tutorials on YouTube, has a net worth of up to £3 million. She has won various accolades, including the Top YouTube Cooking content creator at the 2017 Social Media Summit & Awards and occupies the 3rd wealthiest You Tuber 2020
Amit Agrawal is the first Indian Professional Blogger. The monthly income from his blogs labnol.org and CTRLQ.org is estimated at $60,000/-
Famous blogger Harsh Agrawal’s blog ShoutMeLoudfeatures a monthly earning of$52,434/- and takes 2nd position in the top richest bloggers list.
Shradha the sole female blogger on the toppers list of Indian bloggers, known for her globally recognized website YourStory.com has a monthly income of $30,000.
And it is Virat Kohli, Team India skipper and Bollywood celebs Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone, Shradha Kapoorake it to Instagram Rich List. \

With the social media gaining momentum, the line between the traditional media marketing and social media marketing is blurring. While advertising and marketing have the same goal of reaching the right audience and sell the product or service and increase the rock bottom line of the firm, influencer platforms are gaining prominence as they appear to be cost effective. The success of Influencer marketing depends on its volume of outreach to influencers, engagement with target influencers, conscious tie up with the brands and related topics from your influencer community, scrutinizing the content report from the influencer community and intervention. So if you have got a penchant for writing or do not shy away from the camera then it’s never too late to become an influencer.