This article is contributed by Mr. Sumit Gupta, Founder Whizard API and The Viral Pitch.
Influencer marketing as a new-age marketing strategy has gained prominence over the period of time. Influencers are considered a beneficial medium that helps boost traffic generation in today’s times. However, what is often goes unnoticed is that not all are relevant or impactful for your marketing strategy!
Factors to be kept into consideration before associating with an influencer
For a brand, the follower base of an influencer is only the tip of the iceberg. It is imperative that brands know the influencer in-depth before planning to associate with them. It is trust that forms the foundation for any association. Since brands will be collaborating with them for their brand communication; it is essential that they know the influencer well so that they can trust them with their campaigns.
Hence, a brand should keep various aspects into consideration before finalizing on the influencer for collaboration:
Knowing the influencer’s follower base
Every influencer boasts of a strong and diverse follower base. However, it is important that you analyze the influencer’s target audience first since you will be tapping them via your campaign. Apart from the influencer’s content feed and storytelling format, followers’ insights should also be taken into consideration. Their age, preferences, interests, etc. are of prime importance when you are conceptualizing your campaign and choosing the influencer.
Gauging engagement rate and relationship with the audience
It is advised that you do not finalize the influencer basis their face value. Other factors such as their engagement rate and their relationship with their audiences are equally important. The influencer’s personal connection and rapport with their followers are relevant points and should be kept in mind while selecting the influencer for your brand campaign.
Ensuring the values and core beliefs are aligned
Your association and campaign will reap benefits only when your beliefs will be in sync with those of the influencer you are opting for. The collaboration will turn out to be advantageous and authentic if they believe in your brand and its core ethos. Hence, you should choose the one where this coordination and alignment are either present or can be worked out in the future post discussions.
It’s always advised to do a thorough check of the influencer’s brand value and their past associations. The kind of collaborations they had, the brands that they partnered with, the reach, engagement, and clicks garnered, that is the campaign success are important points to be kept into consideration. If the influencer does not meet these criteria, then probably they aren’t the right fit for your brand and your campaign!
Communicating personally
Associations are best formed when there is a personal connection. Hence, apart from communicating via texts or DMs, set up a meeting where you can interact and get to know each other well. This informal interaction will give you an idea about the persona and personality of the influencer, their ethics, morals, ideology, etc., and will help you in eventually building a fruitful relationship.
Influencer marketing is one of the effective ways to expand your social media presence. However, a one size fits all approach won’t work. For every communication, a unique campaign and associations with diverse influencers would be required. Content relevance, reach of the influencer as well as resonance (potential level of engagement the influencer can build with the audience relevant for your brand) should ideally be considered before you narrow down on the choice of the influencer for your brand campaign!
Marketing and businesses go side-by-side. It is something that can make a business from nothing to everything.
Be it products, services, movies, or others, everything needs marketing to prosper. Many strategies are now available in the markets. For example- Email, ads, social media, co-branding, etc.
One of the most popular marketing strategies nowadays is Influencer marketing. It was not long ago when it was a budding concept. But now, this strategy has more power in it than one can think of.
This strategy seeks people having influencing personalities and takes advantage of it. Since it is now super lucrative, many agencies help businesses with this.
It is a strategy that takes advantage of the influence that certain individuals hold to meet business goals. This strategy can take place on the basis of payments and sometimes on the barter system.
An influencer is someone who produces content for platforms to gain an audience. With an increasing audience, they are able to develop a sense of trust among them. This gives them the capability to create a big impact on people’s buying decisions. They can help a business to target a wide audience that is beyond their target category.
The influencers involve three main types. These are celebrities, bloggers, and micro-influencers. Celebrity marketing has been in existence for a long. It is the rapid rise of the digital world that paved the way for bloggers and micro-influencers.
In this type of marketing, influencers get paid by businesses to showcase their brand. Since they have a close relationship with their followers, they are able to develop their trust in the brand. Hence, businesses get to reach a large audience with this strategy.
Benefits of Indulging Influencers in Marketing
Influencer marketing is the latest and the most popular trend for marketing currently. Here are some of its benefits:
The first advantage is that this helps a business to reach more audience. A brand may or may not have strong followers of its own. So, this strategy enables them to reach a wide audience towards them.
Another important benefit is the development of trust. People feel more related to the influencers of today. So, this helps a business to integrate trust among the audience.
This strategy has the ability to influence people’s decisions. Stronger the influence, the more they trust, and thus, more sales.
It is cost-effective. A business does not have to make any huge investment for this method of marketing.
It can help a business to increase its engagement. This can also enable a brand to become the talk of the town.
Today, we all can understand the value and importance of this marketing strategy. But putting this into practice can be a bit hard. There are times when brands are not able to find the perfect person for their business. It is likewise for the influencers. So, to solve this gap, many agencies are now present to act as a bridge.
Here are some of the agencies present in India:
Buzzerati
Buzzerati is a platform for influencer marketing, founded in the year 2016, by Samar Verma. It has a wide network of bloggers, celebrities, popular personalities, and more. This network spreads across all the social media platforms.
It collects and analyzes the data of top influencers, their followers, engagement rate, and more. This helps the brands to create appropriate messaging and find the best relatable influencer. This also enables them to create network campaigns.
Plixxo
One of the largest platforms in this field is Plixxo, founded in 2017 by Priyanka Gill. It is powered by the super popular name in the industry, POPxo. It acts as a bridge between brands and influencers.
This enables them to connect with each other and produce the desired content. To avail of its services, both can register themselves here.
They have top influencers on board like Kritika Khurana, Aashna Shroff, and more. Also, the platform has worked with top brands like Westside, Maybelline, etc.
Influencer
Influence.in is another agency, founded in 2015 by Suneil Chawla and Vikas Chawla. This platform has a huge base of influencers over various social media channels. With such a wide range, it becomes easier for a business to find the most appropriate person for their brand.
The catchy name, regular campaigning and, great services have made the platform a popular choice of many. They have worked with renowned brands like Nykaa, Himalaya, etc.
Grynow
This is another popular platform in India. It was founded in 2018 by Washib Khan. This provides the data about the influencers to the brands that help them save a lot of time in researching.
Here, the brands can make requests about their preference of content and channel. Then the interested influencers can send their proposals for the same. The platform helps with the entire process. It takes care of apt video creation, uploading and also tracks engagement and, sales.
Pulpkey
Another popular name in the list of agencies is Pulpkey, founded in 2017 by Amit Mondal. It is a great platform, where both brands and influencers can find each other and work together.
They help the brands to find an ideal creator for their marketing. They have worked with prominent brands like amazon, ZARA, Nestle, etc.
Eleve Media Pvt. Ltd.
It is a compelling agency that helps brands to make the most of their marketing through popular content creators or influencers. It was founded in the year 2012. The founders of the agency are Rohit Khanna and Prince Khanna.
The platforms help the brands with their campaigning strategies and also ensure top-notch engagement. Both brands and influencers can sign up on the platform to give and get the work. The agency has worked with big brands like BMW, hp, Cadbury, Adidas, etc.
Blogweet
It is an agency based in Delhi, founded in 2016 by Darshan Kumar and Satish Arya. It provides the brands’ access to many influencers over social media. The brands can find the ideal person for their promotions.
The agency has worked with popular brands like gaana, BlackBerrys, etc.
Conclusion
The rise in the demand for influencers gave birth to many agencies. These help the brands to connect with the ideal persons. The widening of the digital world during the pandemic helped budding creators develop into established influencers. They were able to create a big impact on people’s mindsets.
These people have earned a huge audience over their social media channels. This makes them a perfect medium for brand marketing. Thus, this marketing strategy has grown well, is growing, and continues to grow even more in the future.
Which are the leading agencies for Influencer Marketing in India?
Leading Agencies for influencer marketing in India are:
Buzzerati
Plixxo
Influencer
Grynow
Pulpkey
Eleve Media Pvt. Ltd.
Blogweet
What are the benefits of Influencers marketing?
Some of the benefits of influencer marketing are:
Increase brand awareness
Increases audience reach
Builds trust
Drives purchases decisions
Saves marketing time
How does influencer marketing works?
Influencer marketing uses influencers to promote a brand to a larger market. Influencers are public personalities with a huge fan following base. They help in increasing brand awareness to a large audience.
Are influencer marketing agencies worth it?
Influencer marketing agency helps in finding and managing your influencers. It saves the time associated in marketing. They are professionals to make proper strategies as per our business needs.
Influencer marketing is the type of promotion that relies on using key pioneers and personalities to drive your message to the bigger market. As opposed to promoting to an enormous gathering of shoppers directly, you rather procure or pay influencers to get the word out for you. Influencer promoting regularly goes connected at the hip with two different types of showcasing: web-based life advertising and substance showcasing. Most Influencer battles have a type of internet-based life segment, whereby influencers are relied upon to get the message out through their social channels.
Numerous influencer battles require a substance component wherein you may make content for the influencers, or they make the substance themselves. Even though web-based life and substance advertising regularly fit inside influencer crusades, they are not synonymous with influencer promotion.
The impact on the economy has changed how we purchase things. About 67% of advertisers report that they are occupied with some type of influencer marketing, a number that is probably going to grow as web-based social networking influencers acquire standard presentation. The influencer economy is moving towards increasingly streamlined arrangements, grasping instruments like influencer systems, coordinating stages benefits, and automated processes to assist brands with tapping influencers more effectively.
Brands who aren’t a piece of this economy are losing control. Customers currently control the purchaser’s adventure, and they are becoming more enthusiastic with the advancement of computerized promoting. Here are some drawbacks of computerized
40% of advertisement income lost to promotion obstruct by destinations that target recent college grads – President of IAB.
$7.2 Billion evaluated worldwide misfortunes to bot extortion in 2019.
56% of paid, for advanced promotion impressions are never observed.
62% of customers trust marks less.
A colossal 66% of clients are overpowered by such a large number of web-based promotion of messages, and 20% of purchasers would blacklist a brand in light of inordinate advertisements. Advertisers should think about influencer content since it gives the ideal fix to “promotion weakness” and unlike conventional advertisement crusades, doesn’t convey genuineness.
Brilliant brands are battling this by utilizing influencer marketing in India to make a continuous discussion with shoppers, perceiving that they are impacted by various individuals at various times in different ways. Rather than unavoidable losses from advanced promoting, brand social and substance showcasing, the influencer marketing in India goes past reach and snaps to consistent commitment and discussions that drive trade. This gives you measurements that issue and line up with your business objectives, some of which are:
Pulling in new clients.
Expanding rehash buys.
Driving client dependability.
Augmenting client lifetime income.
The Influence of influencer
Shoppers need genuine voices, not anonymous deals administrators who utilize a similar old stunt. Advertisers can’t overlook influencer marketing in India anymore since content makers can drive business development and convey credibility that draws in with crowds. Envision a large number of voices having valid discussions about your image that hold influence in a manner your voice alone never could. That is the intensity of influencer marketing. The scope of influencer marketing in India is very high as consumers in the country are easy to mould and influence.
How Does Influencer Marketing Work?
If you’re a marketer and feeling the pressure of delivering more revenue while having less control over messaging, you’re not alone. The landscape of marketing has changed significantly and consumers determine the messaging they want to see. Brands no longer have center stage, consumers do. If you want to be a part of consumer conversations, you have to play by their rules. Social media is where consumers are having conversations today, and one of the most impactful products to emerge is that of influencer marketing in India. So how does influencer marketing work?
At a high level, it is a form of branded engagement where marketers connect with those who boast prominent social footprints. The goal is to plug into new communities and connect the brand/product to new audiences through the voice and trusted relationships of the said influencer.
How Does Influence Marketing Work?
Authentic content creates trust. People gravitate toward digital influencers because they value the content that they create. Developing strategic relationships with these influencers allows brands to incorporate their messaging into that content and share it with consumers through a trusted source. To make the most of this opportunity, brands must allow influencers the ability to stay true to themselves when working on sponsored content.
Insincere or irrelevant content will rapidly erode an influencer’s power by reducing their followers’ trust in them. If brands want to be relevant to consumers, they must think of media as a way to attract, engage, and convert prospects. That means meeting consumers with content they care about and trust. Working with influencers is an effective way to fuel a conversation about a brand using trustworthy content.
Influencer Marketing Growth
Since influencer marketing results in engagement, it also results in earned media. Influencers are experts at generating discussions online, and the content they create on behalf of a brand is talked about, shared, and reposted. That is earned media. Earned media is trusted more by consumers. When influencers write about their own experiences and share compelling content about a brand, it can have a dramatic effect on their audience.
Online activity is a core part of the decision making process. In today’s digital world, people can access information about products long before they reach a brand site. They turn to their peers online for recommendations about products, they look for information through search engines, and they read product reviews. Therefore, it makes sense for brands to partner with social media influencers. They can share product and brand information that shapes purchase decisions.
Social media has changed the way brands interact with consumers by fostering an environment where consumers have immediate access to information. Through social media, people gather input about brands and products and then make purchase decisions based on what they discover. Successful brands leverage social media to stay connected with consumers by actively participating in this online dialogue. However, advertising is not the same as being part of the conversation.
Growth of Influencers
How To Start An Influencer Business?
Like any advertising strategy, an influencer program requires focus and arrangement. You won’t discover vital achievement just by sending free things out to everybody who asks or to your current companions and associates. So, here are some steps to start an influencer business,
Discover Influencers And Decide What To Pay Them
Much like any system, exploring is the initial step. Pick the system you need to concentrate on first. You can generally extend to different systems later; in case you’re starting out, stay with one. In a perfect world, your image should as of now have a nearness on this system and knowledge of it. Socioeconomics fluctuates on each system.
The business you’re in matters when you want to actualize an influencer showcasing procedure. Magnificence and style brands sparkle on Instagram and YouTube. The computer game industry overwhelms on Twitch. During your examination stage, investigate the kind of influencers you’re keen on. Are you going for big names with monstrous followings? Or micro-influencers with under 2000 supporters? Maybe something in the middle of in the 5–10k range is more your inclination. Whatever you choose to concentrate on will decide your spending limit.
Pay shifts fiercely, so do see the regular rates for those influencer types. Micro-influencers will, in general, be centered around a couple of themes and acknowledge items. Some micro-influencers work freely while others might be spoken to by an organization or system. Bigger records and big names will require payment and may even experience an ability organization.
One approach may be to contrast your desires for influencers with different firms, and measure the spending limit for a video generation association’s work in making promotion for you versus an influencer making a video. It might appear at first as if passing judgment on the estimation of influencers is erratic; however, this sort of approach will give you a commonplace purpose of examination and complexity.
How To Do Influencer Marketing In India
In 2019, Influence.co distributed the results of its examination into Instagram influencer installment. It evaluated the normal expense per Instagram post and found:
The general normal cost was $271 per post.
The normal cost for miniaturized scale influencers with less than 1,000 supporters was $83 per post.
The normal cost for influencers with more than 100,000 supporters was $763 per post.
Research is critical and you’ll wind up coming back to this progression frequently all the while.
Management And Budget Allocation
You now have some idea on what to pay influencers and decide your spending limit. Factor in time for arranging, executing, and surveying your technique. Running a fruitful influencer advertising effort is anything but a set-it-and-go kind of technique. It’ll include cautious checking and development.
In contrast to an increasingly robotized advertisement procedure, influencers are human and some may fall behind in their duties to post on schedule or make blunders in your mentioned labels or invitations. You’ll have the opportunity to be more active with these connections and refine your methodology by gaining experience about what works and what doesn’t in your specialty.
On the off-chance that you have the opportunity and cash, consider setting up a conventional envoy program. Fujifilm uses its envoys in new item dispatches. With an assortment of picture takers and videographers available, the organization is ready to broaden its feed to feature what Fujifilm gear can do.
Consider setting up a proper diplomat program. For brands that need a more extensive pool of influencers, employing an influencer advertising office who will do the examination and coordination is a decent plan.
Settle On Objectives And Message
The two most regular purposes behind utilizing influencer advertising are to raise brand mindfulness and increment deals. Rather than setting this wide focus as your two objectives, it will be better to commence your technique by focusing on what your image’s needs are. Maybe you need to build your client base in a more youthful demographic. Or, you need to venture into another client bunch with another item. You may need to skip drifts and use influencers to discuss your image esteems.
Your message is similarly as significant as your objective. While you would prefer not to smother an influencer’s inventiveness and uniqueness, you don’t need them to present something random on your crusade. Decide how you need to structure your influencer advertising efforts and message so you can adhere to it later on.
Survey And Change Your Procedure
Regardless of whether your influencer showcasing effort is continuous, you should have pre-decided dates on which you’ll gauge the procedure. The link below will help you in understanding how to follow your outcomes. Not all battles are effective but rather ideally, you’ll learn something new with each one you become a part of.
The best influencer marketing platforms in India are:
1. Plixxo
Plixxo is one of the greatest influencer promoting stages in India with more than 26,000 influencers. Propelled by POPxo organizer Priyanka Gill, it takes into account both influencers and brands. Bloggers, YouTubers, big names, Instagram influencers, and grounds influencers can join this stage. Brands can likewise welcome a huge number of influencers through Plixxo for going along with them in their promotion efforts. To put it plainly, Plixxo helps in streamlining influencer battles for brands.
Plixxo Influencer Platform
For influencers, Plixxo is a stage that checks their profiles, reach, and details. It demonstrates whether they are bonafide influencers. Plixxo is a successful business age instrument that enables them to get paid brand battles. Likewise, it additionally empowers influencers to help their crowd through online networking posts. For brands, Plixxo makes looking for influencers simple. It enables them to dispatch battles involving a thousand influencers and makes running influencer crusades simple and bother free.
2. Influencer.in
Bragging a base of more than 25,000 online networking bloggers and influencers, Influencer.in allows you to locate the privilege influencer for your image. Through ‘Influencer Discovery,’ you can get an vantage view of an influencer and decode if he or she is the correct counterpart for your image. The customers who keep Influencer.in going incorporate Hike, Himalaya, Axis Bank, Nykaa, and SHAREit.
3. Mad Influence
With 10,000+ influencers crosswise over India, Mad Influence is one of the main and the best influencer marketing platform in India. Its key target is to bring gifts, content makers, influencers, and brands together and achieve astounding outcomes together. Its classifications are extremely huge and spread across domains—from Automobiles to Education, and Health to Religion. Mad Influence has served more than 50 brands till date. The stages that Mad Influence takes a shot at include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Mad Influence
Key administrations incorporate Brand Activation, Event Promotions and Integrations, Social Media Campaigns, Content Curation, and Product Reviews. Top brands served by it incorporate Dharma Productions, TikTok, T Series, Hotstar, ALTBalaji, Sony Music, HCL and others.
4. PulpKey
PulpKey is an Indian influencer showcasing stage where brands and makers work together to recount stories. You may either login as a brand/agency, or as a creator/talent manager. To sign in as a creator or a talent manager, you either need to have at any rate 2,000 supporters on Instagram, or at least 500 endorsers on YouTube.
PulpKey additionally needs to address and take care of issues relating to the advancements completed by influencers and the absence of trust among purchasers and brands. Their not-too-bad program of eminent customers incorporates Wego, HelloDhobi, Hypstar, Bombay Shaving Company, Happn, and some more.
5. Winkl
Bengaluru-based Winkl helps bloggers, influencers, and substance makers in making their very own media units for displaying their work to companions, get inputs, and interface with brands to chip away at joint efforts.
Winkl Influencer Platform
It expects to turn into the most sought-after influencer showcasing stage in India and become the favored advertising channel for brands, a medium to assist them with collaborating with influencers for accomplishing business results. Top customers incorporate Flipkart and YGL.
6. Eleve Media
Eleve Media helps in ideating brand battle methodologies and sponsorship them with compelling promotion arrangements to convey top-notch commitment for the brand. It plays out various capacities like distinguishing the perfect individuals as indicated by area, specialty, reach, and different measurements. It likewise empowers the brand in utilizing content crosswise over stages, scaling impact, powerful estimation and examination of battles, and giving counseling administrations too.
Brands who trust Eleve Media incorporate goliaths like Amazon, Coca Cola, Chevrolet, Lays, Honda, Bacardi, Airtel, Philips among 25+ other top brands.
7. StarNgage
StarNgage is a worldwide influencer showcasing stage with nearness in India. It also assists in examining, altering, overseeing, and estimating the informal advertising efforts on Instagram. Through StarNgage, brands can accomplice Instagram influencers for pulling in and drawing in clients by conveying important, accommodating, and customized visual encounters. StarNgage also tracks, dissects, and benchmarks a huge number of Instagram profiles which guarantees the accomplishment of Instagram crusades.
8. Blogmint
Blogmint is said to be Asia’s first item based influencer showcasing stage and one of the first influencer advertising stages (in quite a while) which associates brands with social influencers – Bloggers, YouTubers, Twitteratis and Instagramers. Outstandingly, this stage helps in recognizing and connecting with influencers to make amazing social and video content. With more than 29,000 influencers and 900 brands/organizations, Blogmint is amongst the favored commercial centers for influencer advertising.
By 2020, worldwide influencer advertising is estimated to be a $20 billion industry. Of this, India represents a juvenile piece, somewhere in the range of $75 and $150 million.
As it were, it is a current rendition of customary superstar underwriting. Brands team up with “influencers” who have a reliable background and could influence their devotees by connecting promotions to the brands’ offerings.
Most brands in India have distributed between Rs1 lakh and Rs10 lakh ($1,409-14,091) each as their influencer promoting spending plans this year as per an ongoing study. The sizeable binge spend is simply going up, with 72% of Indian firms intending to expand their spending via web-based networking media influencers, of all shapes and sizes, in 2020, the report said.
Brands have chosen influencers based on their fan following. In any case, this has changed as of late, especially since devotees can now be purchased. A study has discovered that Indian influencers on Instagram have 16 million counterfeit devotees.
Also, greater the superstar, more the expense. Priyanka Chopra and national cricket crew captain Virat Kohli, with 45 million and 42 million adherents on Instagram, individually charge well above Rs. 1 crore per post. In the interim, influencers with more than 500,000 supporters energize to Rs. 7 lakh per post, and nano and small scale influencers, who have under 5,000 and 30,000 devotees individually, charge Rs. 8,000 and Rs. 18,000 per post.
Obviously, with incredible power comes extraordinary duty. Since influencers with eager fan-bases can influence enormous crowds, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) is keeping a nearby watch. The advertisement controller is taking a shot at rules for web-based social networking influencers, individuals who advance items on the web to help clients settle on educated choices concerning their online buys.
Influencer Marketing – FAQs
What is the Importance Of Influencer Marketing In India?
The impact on the economy has changed how we purchase things. About 67% of advertisers report that they are occupied with some type of influencer marketing, a number that is probably going to grow as web-based social networking influencers acquire standard presentation.
How much do influencers charge per post in India?
Well, that depends upon the no. of followers influencers have. Like, Influencers having over 500,000 followers, the rate per post can vary between 1.5 Lac to 7 Lac.
What are influencer marketing platforms?
An Influencer Marketing Platform is a software solution designed to assist brands with their Influencer Marketing Campaigns. Influencer Marketing Platforms provide influencer discovery tools for brands and agencies, some also offer massive searchable databases of potential influencers, using clever algorithms.
What is Instagram influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing takes the idea of celebrity endorsement and places it into a modern-day content-driven marketing campaign.
Which platforms do influencers use?
Influencers use a variety of influencer marketing platforms to get discovered by brands and to track their progress too. They also use social media scheduling platforms to regularly publish their content on social media. Among social media platforms, Instagram is the most popular platform for influencer marketing.
How to build an influencer marketing platform?
Here’s how you can build an influencer marketing platform in 5 simple steps:
Plan the platform features
Develop the platform and select the target social networks
Start accepting influencer applications
Grow your influencer database
Collect valuable data on engagement, audience, etc
An influencer is someone who can influence the lives of others or a group of people. An influencer is also capable of changing the world for the better. Influential people have more power to create movement and change than others. According to a survey, 17% of companies spend over half of their marketing budget on influencers. Although, the effect can be constructed from daily activities, hard work and networking. An influencer is usually a person who has critical thinking, is intelligent and highly respected in a particular field.
However, it does not rule out the possibility that you can be an influencer. In the world of influencer marketing, with the use of instagram, snapchat and other social application you can become an Influencer. If you are wondering how to become an influencer then this article will provide you with the foundation to start up your role as an influencer and inspire the masses.
Build Connection with other Influencers and professionals
The first thing that you are doing so you can be an influencer is establishing a connection. The more connections you make, the more well known you become. Moreover, you can establish a connection with your colleagues, your clients, your friends, and your family. Furthermore, your connection with colleagues or your client can specify the success or failure. By building a good connection with your colleagues or your employees it create a motivating personality in you. Thus it gives you the authority to demonstrate your thoughts and perspective to others and they would be bound to listen to you because of your self-created dynamic personality.
Embracing Diversity
The success can be achieved if you have a good teamwork. Do not discriminate against any individual in your team. Embrace them, whatever their background is, you must accept it. Despite their differences in religion, ethnicity, and culture, you still have to unite them and work along with them.
Having a Passion for Competition
The spirit is one of the most important things in the face of competition, and passion will take you on the path of success. For that, you must have a burning passion for competing. You must have the ambition to win the competition in a healthy way. The competition has no meaning if the participants do not have the spirit and are cheating.
Collaboration is the key to becoming an Influencer
At work, collaboration is very important. Your willingness to collaborate with your subordinates reveals your personality. They should trust you because you are easy to reach out to and honest with your perspective. Communicate clearly to work closely with your subordinates. In addition, you also have to listen to the opinions of others. A quality of a good listener would benefit you immensely to become a great influencer. Develop a strong interpersonal communication skill to expand your influencing reach and to bring the best out of you.
Work Hard and be Consistent
Working hard will give you a lot of experience and in turn make you more equipped in becoming a successful influencer as well as a person. Success can be achieved if you are able to maintain your hard work and consistency in the work. In addition, you also have to dedicate yourself to your work. It gets you closer to success.
The talents and abilities need to be practiced on a daily and worked on at every given opportunity. If the talents and abilities are not honed, then over time you will lose your ability because you rarely practiced. So practice makes a man perfect.
Determine your Goals
Define your goals, what you want to achieve from your hard work, what you want to achieve from socializing, meeting with clients, meeting with your team and so on. You should be able to define your goals because with this you can achieve what you aspire.
Do not favor Anyone (Stay Neutral)
Being a neutral person has an advantage. The advantage is that we are not hated by anyone or groups that are around us. Being neutral helps in influencing your audience with your words. Neutrality in a person brings support from the right people to be a leader.
Care about Others
You have to care about each other because people will easily love and respect you if you care and give them attention. They will feel comfortable with you and they will support you in achieving your success.
Have the Integrity of Others
Integrity is such a major foundation of one’s life. If the integrity of a person is weak, it will give negative influence to the layer of that person’s life. To become an influencer, it takes integrity. Respect, dignity, honesty and trust are a fraction of your integrity. For that, you need to increase your honesty. Integrity needs your minute attention towards all the aspects of influencing.
Conclusion
Follow the above simple steps to bring out the best in you to be an influencer and to achieve success and prosperity in your life. Before starting as a influencer marketer you need to learn all the aspects of being an influencer and practice to influence people around you. We hope that this article has brought some positive and informational insights to you.
Frequently Asked Questions- FAQs
Who is an influencer?
An influencer is someone who has the power to affect the purchasing decisions of others because their knowledge, position, or relationship withtheir audience.
Digital Media – something that has changed the idea of marketing and advertising over the decades. It can be safely put that digital media’s growth is that of a dorky teenage kid who’s just been hit by puberty. It now has become an independent platform for digital content creators and advertisers alike. Audiences have gravitated to digital platforms because they have been devoid censorship and have provided authentic and raw content over the last decade. Same goes for marketing and advertising. Digital media includes gamification, teasers, promotional blogs, sponsored posts, websites, apps, you name it.
The social media influencer businessis rocketing sky high as brands are pursuing and collaborating with these audience-attracting magnets to push their products from smartphone screens, straight to their doors. Marketers and advertisers are weighing in for audience friendly faces who create quality content that is potent and niche. But how do we know that the services or products being endorsed on the social media platforms are genuine? How authentic are these influencing accounts? There is a blurry line between a paid ad and a generic post. to comprehend this difference certain draft containing guidelines was introduced earlier this week, the digital media influencer guidelines.
Reason to Introduce the Digital media Influencer Guidelines
Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI)
To distinguish between what is an authentic opinion or a strategic product placement, the self-regulatory Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) drafted the guidelines for “Influencer advertising on social media” in February 2021. So what are these guidelines and what are the gains for the consumer and the influencer? Read on to find out.
ASCI guidelines for Influencers on Digital Media
The main motto of the draft is to distinguish between genuine and fake influencers and to make the consumer a little more attentive. It aims to protect the average consumer from plagiarized or low quality services or products. Lets dive straight into it.
The draft asks the influencer to specify that an ad is an ad. You need to disclose:
What: clarification that the piece of communication is an ad
Why: it shouldn’t be rocket science for an average consumer to identify that a video/post is an advertisement.
How: by using disclosure labels that state the post is an ad.
When: Upfront, before further engagement of the viewer/reader/consumer.
Who: the responsibility is upon the respective influencer/advertiser/publishing account.
Digital media influencers are now required to post any brand endorsements along with disclosure labels such #ad, #promo, #collab, #sponsored and #partnership.
These disclosures are to be made upfront that is in the first two lines of the post or caption and has to be a part of the posts/images in case of stories or feed posts.
The disclosure has to be in English or the language (regional) that targets a specific audience and should be in a way that is understood by the average consumer.
In case of audio media, the disclosure has to be announced clearly at the beginning and at the end of the audio.
The draft discourages usage of filters which might enhance the look of the product, e.g.-makes teeth whiter or makes skin a shade fairer.
Due diligence about any technical or performance claims made by them such as 2X better, effect lasts for 1 month, fastest speed, best in class etc. Evidence of due diligence would include correspondence with the advertiser or brand owner confirming that the specific claim made in the advertisement is capable of scientific substantiation.
Influencer’s Take on ASCI Guidelines
When the guidelines were drafted earlier this week, there have been mixed reactions from various digital creators and industry participants.
Kunal Kishore Sinha, Co-founder of influencer marketing startup ClanConnect, says, “ASCI’s newly issued guidelines for influencer marketing will unlock a wealth of new opportunities for the fast-evolving segment that will result in positive outcomes for the sector in the long run.”
Aayush Tiwari, Head of Talent Acquisition, Monk Entertainment
“I believe that the latest issued ASCI guidelines is a good step to secure the future of now one of the most popular ways of brand promotions – influencer marketing. As the guidelines states, consumers, here disguised as a follower, should have all the rights to know what’s being uploaded organically and what’s a paid advertisement. This declaration also will motivate the influencer to study about the brand/product and investigate their claims before they go all out publicizing them. Post formulation we’ll surely see less cases of misleading advertisements, safeguarding both the consumer spends and influencers getting caught off guard for their claims.”
“..Different rules for different content types and platforms would be very difficult to follow and even difficult to regulate as drafted by the ASCI. Other guidelines suggested by ASCI such as non usage of filters when referring to ‘whiter teeth’ and claims such as 2x better, are in the favor of the consumer. As a creator we always look into these claims before highlighting it in our branded content, but unfortunately i see ads on television not following such norms which are regulated often but also are not followed by many brands… The rise of influencer marketing and its potential is huge and yes, there should be guidelines in place but the guidelines should also not hinder content viewing experience. Working with platforms is a better way to start and content creators also should work with brands with their due diligence keeping their viewers in mind.”
BeYouNick aka Nikunj Lotia, Digital Content Creator
“This is a welcome change. Many brands have their own directions when they do sponsored posts like mentioning them, putting a mention on copy or a link etc, this brings them into a common operating guideline of what to use and when. It’s a great starting point but it will probably also evolve from here onwards. Digital content creators have their own format of content, some do travel, some practice a skill, some entertain, brands are often involved in specific parts of the content instead of the content at its entirety. It can get confusing or misleading for the audience there. For instance, if I was wearing a jacket bartered with a brand on my road trip where I perform, my performance isn’t really a brand partnership.”
There are a lot of ways in which these guidelines may be perceived. The draft has provisions for any suggestions or feedback until 8th March 2021. The final guidelines are to be issued by 31st March 2021. The influencers would be complied to imply these guidelines on all promotional posts made on or after 15th April 2021.
As a part of the guidelines, influencers need to take note of events where there will be a requirement for these disclosures:
If it’s an ad for your service/product or a contest run by you.
When you’ve received payment/barter for promoting a product or service.
If you are willing to accept fees/service/discounts/hospitality in exchange of the promotion.
Final words – What is in it for Everyone?
The guidelines are only meant to promote authentic and genuine marketing. Advertising agencies will be able to create long term engagements with their respective ambassadors and the trust and brand loyalty could be kept intact.
As for the consumers, they will be able to distinguish between fake and genuine influencers and be seldom hammered with misleading ads and endorsements.
Digital media and the marketing gimmicks have proven to be so potent in nature as it doesn’t cost them a fortune anymore and reaches a wider spectrum of consumers. Everyone is glued to their screens and the marketing industry uses exactly this to screen through their target audience. Every brand is resiliently battling for the consumers’ attention and feeding off of the time spent by the consumer on social media. To wrap it up, we can say that guidelines will help regulate the faux and authenticity will prevail.
Flipkart has come up with the idea of launching social commerce on its 2GUD platform. 2GUD social commerce platform is owned by Flipkart where it sells all its refurbished goods. This new feature has been introduced to the users with a concept of uninterrupted video shopping.
Influencers Playing An Important Role
Under this feature, users can follow their favorite social media influencers and will be kept updated about all the latest fashion trends, gadget reviewing, latest make up or beauty tips and many more. it will contain a video feed consisting of all the influencers who will be promoting different brands and also reviewing the products. While the influencers will be reviewing some of the products users can even directly buy it through these videos.
A Variety of videos will be available through which the users can go through and select the product of their choice. Review videos will be available which will help the customer to go for the right choice. There will be a virtual store which will provide the customers wide variety of products.
Currently Not Available For Mobile Site and Web Site
After launching the feature on the 2GUD app, the company is also looking forward for becoming available for mobile site and website too. Having more than a million customers and spread around 15000 plus pin codes around India they offer around 600 plus refurbished products segments.
Flipkart Statement
Chanakya Gupta, Head of 2GUD gave a statement,“We want the next 200 million customers to be able to experience social commerce comfortably and build their trust on 2GUD as they come on to the platform for an engaging shopping experience. These consumers quite often face trust and style deficits. In a situation like this, recommendations from a person like yourself or an influencer play a critical role. Influencers are changing the landscape of online retail and bringing greater opportunities for social commerce platforms in India.”
Social media has played a very important role in changing the way that the users are shopping now. Influencers are creating a great impact on the new market. With the growing of influencers in the non metro cities too it has created a larger impact in the market. Due to this, people have started to feel a personal connection which has also created a good impact.
Lately, people have gained a lot of interest in this type of shopping concept. The younger generation is also getting attracted and becoming a smart shopper. While clothing, accessories, gadgets etc are being mostly bought online for a while now, so mixing up with this concept can be a unique way to promote the brands.
2GUD was launched in 2018
Prospecting Concept
This concept is gaining popularity among users and does have a great prospect. Influencers promoting these products is also helping in gaining the trust of the users. A good future can be expected and with more users and influencers trying to fit in.
Flipkart said that social commerce has already made inroads and accounts for 15-20% of the online retail market today, which is expected to hit the $70 billion mark in the coming decade, according to industry reports.
With the market now moving from celebrity influencers to the small home grown influencers, people will be able to develop a trust quite easily. With the involvement of Instagram, Youtube these influencers has been an inspiration for the newer generation. So, Flipkart can actually play a great role with the help of this concept.
FAQs Related To 2GUD
Will 2GUD only provide refurbished products?
No, 2GUD has been into offering new products for the quality conscious customers in the small cities since August 2019.
Is this safe?
Yes, this site is 100% safe as it is a counterpart of the ecommerce giant Flipkart only.
Devashish Shrivastava
