Long back, in 2014, I was running an Italian Restaurant. I had invited one of my friends for a complimentary dinner. I was also secretly hoping to get some mileage from his favorable review. The friend and his wife were gifted with culinary taste-buds as well as exceptional photography skills. I was silently hoping that once they had the food and if they like it (IF, because I also had genuine interest in our food quality), they will talk about it nicely.
Where? On their FB page (1600+ friends), On our local Foodies Facebook Group (which had 20,000+ members that time; these days it is 100,000+), their blog and on Zomato Website (Those days Zomato used to be a restaurant discovery platform only).
Ok, they write good stuff about us, and then what happens?
People will read about it, and start thronging to my restaurant. They did, in line with expectations. Not that I was not happy with the outcome, I was just casual about it.
I didn’t know that the way my friend helped me; would be known as “Influencer Marketing” in the years to come. And it will be Rs. 900 Cr per annum market by 2020.
What I also didn’t know that my friend will be known as “Influencer” in the times to come and they would have many avatars ranging from Nano (<10,000 followers), Micro (10k – 100k), Macro (100k-1 million), Mega (1 million+) and Celebrity (The big ones). And they will form an integral part of many marketing campaigns across industry verticals.
Since then, we have come a long way. My restaurants (Yes, we progressed into multiple units spread across various states in India) as well as the Influencers and the marketing campaigns executed by them.
In a nutshell, Influencers, Influencer Marketing and the new age marketing campaigns all have changed drastically in the last 5 years.
But where does it go from here? Are we living in a big party place (Instagram) where everybody looks good, eats drool-worthy food, rides some shiny wheels, and lives a pretty much dreamy lifestyle? Or, there is life beyond these cool pics and trending videos which is slowly shaping up. Can it become a full-fledged business model which has something for everyone (Buyers, Suppliers, allied industries, standards and regulations etc).
The good news is, yes the influencer marketing is evolving. It is evolving rapidly. It is happening all around us in such a fast manner that we have just lost track. More tools and technology is getting added (More than $1 billion is invested per annum since 2020 for new technologies and tools for influencer related apps) every year. We are getting used to the cool new gang of boys and girls to create the next level creative assets (pics, videos, shorts etc). Beyond the no. of followers, we have started getting a gauge of terms like Engagement rate, Reach, Funnel, Conversion etc.
Does it make better commercial sense for marketers? In this article, I will try to look at this phenomenon from a client’s perspective.
Yes it does. And these influencers beat the conventional media practices hands down. And I have several arguments in support to my claim. Let’s look at them at 3 fundamental ones:
- Creative Production: Gone are the days where you think making ad film is an expensive affair. I remember those days as well. If you have to make a 30 second ad film, you first engage a media agency. They create some kind of concept and storyboard (script of the film). Then, they decide on production team, location, Star cast, camera and other accessories (Those reflective screens and other equipment are quite heavy and expensive by the way). Then the shooting happens which is typically 1-2 days affair. Raw footage then will be handled by a post-production team who will edit it, add some voice overs (if required), some special effects and then the movie is done. You end up paying heavy amount to Media Agency, Production Team, Star cast, Post-Production team and numerous agents in between. The whole process used to take anywhere from 15 days to 2 months. I remember I was involved in one of such ad films when I was working with Tata Group. It took us 3 months to get the advertisement complete in all aspects (from concept to finish).
Now compare this with today’s scenario. You engage with an influencer and have some brainstorming about possible concepts. The moment both of you agree on the broad details, influencer takes over from that point onwards. He / She is your Media Agency / Production Team / Star cast / Post Production team all rolled into one. What about the cycle time (from concept to finish) you may ask? In some cases, it is as early as 2 days. Typically, 4-15 days depending on the complexity and detailing of the project. And it costs less than 1/10th of the amount it used to take earlier to produce a 30 second ad video.
- Customer Connect: Conventional marketing is like shouting with a megaphone by standing on top of your building. And then hoping that people will listen to you with rapt attention and buy your product. All the conventional ad types like Print Ad, TV Ad, Radio etc work in this fashion. Agreed, some of them talk about specific customer segment (English TV channel, Morning RJ slot having office goers as primary listeners and so on). That’s all you can hope for in terms of customer segmentation and targeting.
Now consider this. Your customer is a male 25-34 years of age, living in Mumbai Malad area, Eating Dosa at least once a week, 634 of them have visited your competition café within last one month, and had seen Rajnikant’s last movie. And you have the perfect way to reach out to them – An influencer who has 5,000+ followers with the similar customer definition. By classification, he / she is a nano influencer. But perfect for your needs, right.
Which option will give you better engagement and conversion with the same ad spends? It’s a no brainer, right. Absolutely!!!
- Relevant Content: Many a times, I see a TV ad which looks completely disgusting. It just feels like someone is trying too hard to produce an ad which is suitable for today’s generation (Gen Z). In the process, they actually ruin the whole thing. This happens when you force a 50 year old (with 20 years’ experience in Corporate Career) to create something which connects with todays’ generation. They assume certain characteristics, some hazy persona and create something which appears absolute non-sense (I am rather mild in my mannerisms; Gen Z will actually use ‘F’ word to describe the outcome). In short, it just doesn’t work.
So, trust the same people to create those ads (creative, Reels, Videos and so on) which connect with today’s world. Make it relevant. Period. Otherwise, there is no fun in spending so much time, resources and energy to create those campaigns.
There are many more advantages I can list, but then I leave it to some other article.
We also need to understand it from the other side (from an Influencers’ perspective). Can they see it as a viable career? Can this phenomenon graduate from a side hustle to a mainstream career?
But even before that, which institute teaches you to become an influencer?
What certifications do you need?
How do you upgrade your skills?
How do you get promotion (or grow your Business)? What is your growth path?
How much money can you make per month? Or, in a Year?
Will the parents approve this as a ‘Socially accepted’ career? Mind you, we live in a society where “Modeling” as a career is still considered only part time and has a limited shelf life (4-5 years).
There are so many questions, which needs to be answered before we start looking at Influencer Marketing as a mainstream business segment. But one thing is sure.
It will grow by leaps and bounds. Some experts say it will cross Rs. 2,200 Cr by 2025 in India. Globally, it will be $10 billion+ Market by then. My own estimates say that these figures will look very miniscule when we approach 2025.
It is here to stay.
And it will change the face of marketing.
See you in the next article. I will try to find out answers to the questions I have raised here.
Randheer
(P.S. You can check out our various courses here.