Brands release multiple marketing campaigns to increase awareness about their product and ultimately boost their revenue. These ads are placed on various social media apps, websites, newspapers and on television.
But, should the brand only focus on making revenue? Don’t you think it is the duty of the brands to raise their voice on social issues? The answer to both of these questions is an absolute yes. The positive thing here is that most of the brands have actually raised their voices against social issues.
Today, we will tell top social issues campaigns done by brands that aimed to create a positive change in society.
Transgenders in India face a lot of social discrimination and are often pressurized to behave in a certain way. They are not given proper education and very few job opportunities are provided to them.
Shockingly, 98 per cent of transgenders in India leave their house or are thrown out. Trans teens have much more suicidal tendencies than the ones whose identities match what is written on their birth certificates. Transgender women have the highest HIV rates, up to 40 per cent.
To make parents understand that they should accept their children as they are UNAIDS, a leading global organisation that aims to end AIDS, launched a video campaign named ‘Mirror’.
In this video, a young boy is not interested in playing with other children during the kite festival. He goes downstairs and drapes himself in a woman’s scarf.
He then dances with joy. Although after a few moments his mother and grandmother catch him dancing. The boy is scared to see his mother. Although the mother smiles and starts dancing with her son.
The video ends with a beautiful quote, ‘Let’s see our children the way they see themselves’. Within just 2:30 minutes the video encourages parents to allow their children to grow as they want to and make their lives happier.
Transgender from all around the country like Australia, Thailand, America, Uganda, Kyrgyzstan and Brazil resonated with the video and said that even though the video is shot in India the message is universal.
2. Good News Is GenderFree: Prega News
Gender inequality has been prevalent in India for many years. Most people prefer a boy child and don’t wish to get a girl child. People feel that a girl child will be a burden on the house.
The worst thing here is that most people have a mindset that a man will achieve a lot of success in life while women are only good for handling household chores. This is the exact reason why people pray to get a boy child.
To change the mindset of the people Prega News, which provides pregnancy detection test kits, launched a video campaign titled ‘GoodNewsIsGenderFree’ on International Mother’s Day.
In this ad, a mother-in-law wishes to get a healthy child irrespective of gender. The company tells the people that instead of praying for a boy child you should rather wish for the mother and baby to be healthy during the pregnancy. The video has generated 16 million views on YouTube.
3. Unacademy: Teach Them Young
If you want boys to respect girls then you must teach boys about gender equality from a very young age. To spread this exact idea among Indians, Unacademy launched a video campaign on various media platforms titled, ‘Teach them young’.
In this video campaign, a father teaches his son to respect her sister’s boundaries and tells him not to interfere in his life unnecessarily. The campaign teaches us that boys should respect the privacy of their sisters and shouldn’t consider them weak.
Protecting your sisters, mothers or wives is a good thing but, always assuming that they need your help is the wrong mindset. 2.3 million people have watched this video on YouTube.
4. Dove: Stop The Beauty Test
Dove is a popular personal care brand that manufactures a wide variety of hair products, skincare and deodorant.
In India, body shaming and colour biases are prevalent. What’s worse is that people consider these things funny or normal and don’t understand the negative impact it creates on the minds of the people. Body shaming decreases the confidence of people and creates serious mental issues.
To stop this, Dove released a video campaign titled, ‘Stop the beauty test’. The video shows how women are discriminated against for their weight, height, skin colour and hairstyles. It encourages viewers to see the inner beauty and skills of the person. The video has 32 million views on YouTube.
5. Truecaller: Shabd
Stalking is another big issue in India. In 2018, 1 woman became the victim of stalking every 55 minutes. Although this number would have surely increased tremendously in 2022.
Stalking is a criminal crime that destroys the mental peace of the victim. The feeling that one gets when someone is following them is one of the worst feelings in the world.
Unfortunately, most stalking cases are not reported. To encourage women to take action against stalking Truecaller launched a video campaign titled, ‘Shabd’ which was based on a true story.
The video tells a story of a mute woman who is stalked daily by an unknown man. The stranger traumatizes the woman by constantly messaging and calling her due to which she is under deep stress.
Although one fine day she decides to register a complaint against the men in the police station. The video tells the viewers that it is not okay to be quiet and that everyone should take action against stalkers. The video has 2.5 Million views on YouTube.
6. RadioCity: Cutting Paani
In 2019, India was going through the worst water crisis. According to a 2019 NITI Aayog report, 600 million people in India are water deprived.
The four water reservoirs in Chennai went completely dry. Hotels and Restaurants were temporarily closed due to a shortage of water and residents had to stand in long queues for hours to get water from water tanks.
Several offices in 2019 had asked the employees to work from home since their offices as well had a limited supply of water. What’s worse is that between 2007 and 2017 groundwater levels in India had declined by over 60 per cent.
To make people understand the importance of water and encourage them to use water only when required, Radio City launched a ‘Cutting Paani’ campaign. In this initiative, a small video was released with a peppy song where the RJs gave ideas to people on how they can save water.
They encouraged hotels, restaurants and corporations to serve only half a glass of water to avoid wastage. The video featured big actors like Salman Khan, Raveena Tondon, Arjun Kapoor and Disha Patani.
Radio City partnered with AHAR, the Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association, to distribute ‘Cutting Paani’ certification stickers to the hotels and restaurants.
Conclusion
As you can see a lot of brands have launched various campaigns to change the mindset of the people. Since these brands are popular and have a huge audience base these campaigns create a huge positive impact. It is good to see that brands don’t just think about generating profits but also wish to make society a better place to live.
FAQs
Should companies campaign on social issues?
It is the duty of the companies to raise their voice on social issues. As brands have huge followings they can bring a positive change in society. Brands also benefit from this as they create a positive image in the minds of the customer and might see a growth in their profits.
How can brands talk about social issues?
Brands can launch video campaigns or upload posts on various social media platforms to spread awareness about social issues like gender inequality, racism, poverty and many more. They can also hold webinars and conferences.
It has become very common to hire a celebrity to promote a product. Hiring a celebrity for the endorsement not only helps to connect with people to attract customers but also provides a competitive advantage over other companies. It is one of the marketing strategies that helps a brand to gain popularity.
There are different ways by which the brand can hire a celebrity for endorsement of their product. Everything should be clear about what the company wants to do and whom the company wants to hire for endorsement. In addition check about the celebrity who will endorse the product.
Most of the time the brand hires a celebrity who is highly respected and is sincere, honest and has a good reputation. The company should know about their audience. This plays a very crucial role because if the company understands the needs and expectations of the audience then it is easier for the company to advertise its products. When the audience is vividly known than the celebrity you are hiring should fit into what you are advertising.
If a company is advertising about sports they can hire celebrities like Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, and other celebrities who connect to the product. This will also help the celebrities advertise and endorse the product passionately as they will have some connection with the product and the advertisement in which they can win customers’ trust. Endorsement becomes more effective when celebrities connect through their lifestyle and carrier fields.
Contact the Celebrities Manager or Agency
There are different ways to contact a celebrity but mostly due to their busy schedule their appointments are set by their managers or agents. After getting an appointment both parties can discuss the brand. When celebrities give their consent for the endorsement then they can discuss other details related to the endorsement.
Direct contact
To hire a celebrity you can directly contact them through their managers and set an appointment. Social media is also a direct way through which you can contact the influencers by sending them a message and waiting for their response.
Third-party contact
One can also contact them through agents and websites that work as a medium between the company and celebrities.
Choose the Platform for Celebrity Endorsement
Every business whether it is small scale or large scale can hire celebrities or influencers for the endorsement to promote a brand according to their budget. If a company wishes to hire a celebrity for the endorsement of their brand then television advertisement is the best way as it attracts a lot of consumers.
In earlier times companies would advertise with the help of newspapers, Tv, print advertisement, and other traditional marketing strategies. The modern youth is engaged in social media platforms in which celebrity endorsement can be done effectively.
In today’s time Television, the internet, and social media platforms are the best way to attract consumers to a product, and celebrity endorsement is one of the most effective ways to attract a large number of customers.
Endorsement via social media
The companies can also use social media platforms to advertise their products as it is the most used platform and trendy mostly among the youth. The companies can also hire micro-influencers to promote their product to connect directly with the consumers and also get feedback on the product to make changes that are needed. Social media endorsement is beneficial as people watch and purchase products by watching content shared by celebrities and influencers.
Micro-influencer
Micro-influencers are individuals who have more than 1000 followers and can connect with consumers more. Sometimes people don’t believe in the product being promoted by a celebrity as they think celebrities get paid and they don’t trust the words told about the benefit of the product directly by the brand. People trust micro-influencers as they share content that is of consumers’ interest and remove their doubts and hesitation to buy a product.
It helps companies to build brand equity and attract more customers.
It helps customers to set their doubts related to the product aside and purchase the product as the person they idolize use and say benefits of using that product.
All sizes of businesses can hire celebrities or influencers for the endorsement to be its spokesperson for the brand to promote the brand and attract more customers.
Disadvantages of Celebrity Endorsements
The company should analyze everything about their products as there should be no problem with the product. If something goes wrong with the product, celebrities get questioned which affects their fan following.
Analyze and check everything all the angles of marketing and then advertises the product to make sure that there will be no objection.
If celebrities make some mistake or there are some bad rumours about them it affects the product that they promote.
The main focus of endorsement should be to promote the brand as sometimes due to advertisements that focus on celebrity more, forgetting that its main focus is brand and celebrity is a medium which helps to connect with people to increase sales of the product.
Celebrity endorsement is not just risky for the brand but sometimes it also affects the popularity of a celebrity if something goes wrong.
Is Celebrity Endorsement an Effective Method?
When we see some type of advertisement where celebrities endorse the product in the advertisement, this is a crucial way of marketing as the consumers will pay a special alternative towards the product.
Celebrity endorsement is an effective method to attract customers. It is a marketing technique but with this, there are also some limitations for small enterprises and businesses when compared to big enterprises to hire big celebrities to promote their brands. Bigger brands use a celebrity or influencer as a spokesperson to help them promote their brand, product, or services.
Conclusion
A celebrity endorsement is one of the most effective ways to endorse a product or brand. As many people are influenced by a celebrity or an influencer. Not every endorsement will have a significant ROI, so while hiring a celebrity study the demographics of your target audience to maximise the ROI.
As we know the youth follows the trend and famous people who have a lot of fame and buyers adore and trust them as a result celebrities can use their fan following to get the brand a large number of buyers. Though it is an effective method to attract more people it also has limitations.
The world is growing fast, and the catalyst can be easily seen. The catalyst is obviously technology and the hyper-connectedness it brings. The fact that it is easily seen and noticed is absolutely true because it is everyone’s favourite’s place to be.
It would not be wrong to say that we now live ‘online’ most of the time. Whether it is a bad thing or a wonderful thing, that is a topic for another day, but one thing is sure most people love social media. Spending hours and hours scrolling their feed.
When screen times are rising, the demand for online content rises. This clearly tells the reason why this is the best time to be a content creator. When everyone is looking at their personal screens, it affects the marketing world. As marketing is quite an act of catching eyeballs.
Marketers are joining hands with celebrities all over the internet and the world to spread the word about their products. It is efficient and has a wide reach. In this article, we will dive deep into celebrity endorsements and the like. We will talk about various models on which the industry of endorsements stands. Let us see this domain a little closer.
The vocabulary ‘endorsement’ would be a new word for many but believe us, you know the meaning more than us. The word is associated with a channel of brand communication. Mostly it is a work of an artist or a famous person.
A celebrity comes up on stage and certifies the claims that the company makes about their product. It is like advertisements but a little indirect. The celebrity here extends his personality popularity or status in society to the brand’s promises. This helps the brand to generate some revenue by the use of celebrity’s fame and yes, of course, the celebrity gets paid.
This method is common everywhere and can be seen almost in every domain of products. In this world, which mostly lives online, brand endorsements may even include internet-famous people. That is the reason why you see your favourite influencer appreciating some specific product. He/she acts as a spokesperson for the brand behalf and entailing its benefits, claims or certifies the claim that the brand makes.
In any market that entails a very high proliferation of regional and international brands, a celebrity endorsement can add a distinct differentiation to the product. Over the years, brands have tried to change their methods of marketing their products due to the change in consumer demands and technology advancements.
Top world’s brands like Nike have done this to get customers on board. In fact, that was probably the best endorsement collaboration that the world has seen. To pull out a successful endorsement campaign there are a lot of checkpoints to be checked.
Essential Aspects of an Endorsement by a Celebrity
If you look at some brand endorsement by a celebrity, you most probably will think about the fact that the celebrity is the epicentre. That the celebrity is the main focus of the campaign and mostly the reason for successful endorsements. That is not true.
In fact, brand endorsements are just a part of a bigger process. That bigger process is nothing but the infamous “Branding”. Celebrity endorsements are a cog in the wheel of the big machine called Branding.
Nike’s association was not just about Tiger Woods but more than that. The sportswear brand has managed to establish its image as a strong brand in everyone’s eyes (Perception).
Nike Tiger Woods Endorsement
This is the result of a constant and deliberate process of practising constantly. However, celebrity endorsements are just a part of the process doesn’t mean it is a small part. It plays a big important part in branding.
There are several benchmarks/checkpoints that need to be looked at before organising endorsements. Here we list them, before any brand signs on a celebrity, they should consider three main aspects.
Pleasing Index of the Celebrity
It is a valid question to ask about the phrase ‘pleasing index’. It is the index/scale on which the celebrity is pleasing to the general audience and the targeted audience. It is important that the celebrity is somewhat attractive to the audience. Pleasing/attractiveness here doesn’t mean the look, it is more of intellectual capabilities, athletic and physical appearance and lifestyle.
This point states that a positive attraction index will impact the audience in a positive manner and eventually push the whole endorsement to the positive side. The endorser has to appear attractive to the audience and should meet the basic criteria that the brand strives to fulfil. That is the reason why most of Nike’s brand endorsements are with athletes. The compatibility enhances and extends the endorsement’s stretch.
The Believability of the Endorser
It is of importance that the celebrity with which the brand is collaborating is credible. The person has to have some sort of social value in the society, often known as ‘trust’.
If the endorser is trustworthy, he/she makes the recipe for a perfect endorsement. Trust here is the public perceived expertise and trustworthiness of the celeb. Thus, the personal credibility of the endorser is crucial for the campaign.
Credibility eventually transforms into another form of social force. This special force can influence the viewers to take some effort and buy products. For example, Nike did something similar due to its endorser’s credibility criteria. When Oscar Pistorius’s credibility began derailing, it ended the endorsement contract with him in 2013. He was then accused of premeditated murder. This severely damaged his trustworthiness or social credibility.
Overall Relationship with the brand
Easy before the endorsement process is even started, there has to be some rapport with the endorser. A brand can’t just come out of the blue and create a comfortable relationship with a celebrity.
Only when both the parties communicate enough and have some level of understanding, the campaign goes well. The whole collaboration heavily depends on the compatibility scale of the brand-celebrity relationship.
More than one dynamic of the campaign has to do with the overall relationship with the brand. Terms of identity, positioning and personality in the market affects the efforts and the outcomes in the market. This eventually will result in a fertile land on which further communication and relation build.
These were the three most notable sorts of dynamics that resulted in a successful endorsement. However, there can be more than just these depending on the demands of the brand’s product-market fit. It is specifically hard to find a celeb that particularly fulfils all these demands. It is specifically hard because celebrities are all different in nature and credibility in their own communities.
All brands however should lookout for a long term outlook and brand building rather than a short term solution to revenue. Here we are listing some dos and don’ts that help in maintaining a good brand presence over a long period of time. Let us see what are these touchpoints.
As we discussed previously, celebrity endorsements are just a part of the bigger picture of branding. Branding is just a repetition of great marketing tactics.
In the long term horizon, a company should help and build a long term relationship with the celebrity with whom they are working. This ensures more rapid progress in the process of branding. And it also helps businesses reach greater heights in the long view.
Consistent scanning
Taking forward the point earlier, it is important to think long term. It should not be the case that a brand partner with a celebrity and leaves it there. It has to constantly monitor the behaviour and public image of the endorser.
The reason is that a slight effect on the endorser’s image will affect the product’s image in the eyes of the public. It is one of the most effective ways to damage control if any. Not only that, it works in other directions too. An improvement on the endorser’s image will probably benefit the product demand too.
Keep looking
If you are a brand, you should not nest in one endorser’s home. Keep looking and keep tracking down new influencers and celebrities. It will be a win-win situation for both the brand and the celebrity. It will also help control and cut down prices too. As established celebrities already have a high price tag companies should not rest with one of the top influencers.
It is more important to think in longer terms with the brand and then make goals for it. It will result in a more solid brand building. Now it is time to move to the next and probably the main focus of the article. We will discuss various modes and methods of brand endorsements.
When we talk about brand endorsements, there are many sorts. It is all about the partnership and knowing what can happen. Knowing what’s possible, will help you get more clarity in a brand endorsement. As a brand, knowing what’s possible will help you predict market outcomes in some probability. That is half the battle won. So, don’t be afraid of thinking out of the box, as soon as you are adding value, you are open to experiments.
Affiliate partnerships
The word can be quite new to many but it is not really a rarity these days. Affiliate marketing refers to the most basic and commonly seen partnerships that happen in the digital era. It is simply a partnership between the brand and the endorser to share some percentages of profit that is generated by a link or a discount code that the influencer has shared with its audience.
Kylie Jenner Endorsing Daniel Wellington
This is a very good source of revenue for established celebrities. A brand gets an already built market for their products who sign up with the links that are shared by the celebrity.
It is easy for the brand to share a specific link (or a discount code) with the celebrity. It becomes easy to track the number of clicks and signups and thus, payments are smooth. It is fast, smooth and reliable, which makes it the recipe for a great endorsement.
Guest work
Brands that work extensively on content creation, are the ones pursuing guests. A guest can be a celebrity that appears in a work of the brand, a piece of content or sometimes when he/she writes a blog about the work.
It is always enriching to have a person on the set of content and it provides so much value (in terms of content). This also provides good exposure and brand association to the celebrity/influencer.
There are plenty of examples. Netflix is the industry expert in guest works departments. Netflix is super sensitive to content and in building relationships/partnerships with celebrities and influencers. Bumble, Tinder and new-age companies can always be seen featuring guests. It can also be seen in the Ranveer Allahbadia podcast or the Raj Shamani podcast.
Re-sharing something
Sometimes what brands do is simply re-share or forward what a celebrity created. It can be an image that someone created, it can be any sort of piece of content that someone created.
This method works well when done right. Sometimes more than often, a content creator or an expert has a better thing to show to the audience than the brand itself. So, brands use that for endorsements.
Sometimes brands do that re-sharing or the re-tweet without asking which become a copyright violation but most of the time, it is duly named with credits. The method works most of the time because an influencer is most of the time creative and a lot more engaging than a brand’s studio created content assets.
Gifts with Endorsement terms
‘There is no free lunch”, this quote holds true for this one. Sometimes brands give their products to influencers for free. Well, the product is not completely free, it comes with some terms. The terms simply claim that the influencer has to open the product for their audience. It creates the needed exposure for the product in front of the influencer generated audience.
This method of gifting products to influencers is more than normal for every beauty brand. This is popular in these products as this provides good exposure to the audience. The best influencers for these are the beautiful ladies of the internet. The workings of the model can be different. Brands can send products to a lot of influencers and wait for posts, or they can also negotiate with someone for a specific online post.
Tours and trips
This is another mostly seen sort of endorsement. You don’t normally see Bhuvan Bam travelling to Spain to meet the cast of ‘Money Heist’. It is obviously paid and sponsored by Netflix. This is exactly what we want to call out in this model of endorsements.
Bhuvan Bam Money Heist Promotion
So to promote something, brands can often do this, that is to take some famous person for a ride-related to their product/service. These are less common than the standard paid post, as they’re expensive and it is hard to take both the influencer and the product on the same page.
You don’t get to see Ashish Chanchalani promoting Marvel movies on their first show of the first day (Well, you do). Marvel does that, Sony does that and it is what it is. Everyone wants to see their favourite reelers and you tubers in more relatable situations. In this consumer want, Brands like Netflix capitalise and induce some demand for their content too. Thus, a win-win situation for everyone.
Social takeovers
It is a model in which an influencer takes control of the brand’s social media handles for some time. You’ve seen it many times, the time frame can be a day at most times.
During that one day, they create quite a lot of ruffles/ripples on the brand’s page. Which makes the page more intuitive and engagement starts jumping. People follow and join those pages to see their favourite person doing some cool stuff on the page. It helps in getting more engagement and getting more people to follow and interact with brand posts.
Giveaways
You must have participated in one of these sorts of giveaways yourself. A brand often does this, they partner with some influencer to give away free products. The terms and conditions for most of these giveaways are simply that all the participants should follow, like or share the brand’s channel. This is easily seen in standalone influencers and brands. Technical Guruji does that, Beebom (Tech content creator) does that and examples include a lot more.
The chance of winning is very minute on a large scale in the online world but people like to take the chance to win something for free. The hype is boosted more when some flagship device/product is the prize, like the latest smartphone or any new tech gizmo. Brands get a lot of engagement from these minute probable events with influencers.
Pure Endorsement
This is the purest form of brand endorsement. It is well known and it happens more than you think it happens. It is simply the model when a brand pays a creator an influencer or a celebrity to post something specific. That something specific can be a post, a video or any sort of content that aligns with what the brand wants.
Bhuvan Bam BoAt Promotion
Every brand that wants to build some online engagements has done this on one point or the other. They purely endorse the product with the help of the influencer and get their product listed. From locally grown bands to international brands, all rely on these pure forms of endorsements.
Social Events
Brands can host a social event and can endorse their work via that place or an influencer. A brand can invite some guest host who is also an influencer and through that, they can promote the product or service.
YouTube used to do events like these before the pandemic hit and it used to invite creators to make it a star-studded event. With this social event mask on, brands can promote or market their products to the public. There can be sponsors, content supporters and content creators who can charge for these events.
Traditional Advertisements
Then comes a different model that is some sort of a hybrid of influencer endorsement and traditional commercials. This model tries to capture more audiences by adding two differentiating factors. One factor is the influencer or the celebrity and the other factor is traditional media.
You can recall these too, remember Bhuvan Bam and the Pizza Hut advertisement. These are hybrid models that didn’t exist before but you know that there has to be some first time. In this new world where technology is the new normal, marketers also are trying to snap new methods of promotions.
How to Create a Successful Partnership with Celebrity?
It is highly crucial that a partnership between a brand and a content creator or a celebrity has to be even. Even then, sometimes the relationship can prove to be bitter. It is important to keep in check the relationship and set some boundaries on every turn.
A content creator may be able to create amazing and engaging content but not be able to influence their following to take a certain action. The brand has to choose well and keep the partnership working. Let us see how a brand can take advantage of the partnership between itself and the endorser.
The sales and revenue are hugely dependent on the consumer’s psychology, content creators have to just act as a catalyst. With that being said, a celebrity is just a direction sign, a brand should expect accordingly with that. There are however some questions to ask yourself as a brand that helps you find the right endorser.
The first is to know that the content creator or the influencer is able to create/build and influence a section of the audience. What is the relationship between the influencer and his/her audience? Is the relationship strong?
The second is to know the budget of your campaign. It is about knowing in perfect terms how you are going to reimburse the celebrity or the endorser. It can depend heavily on which model the brand is pursuing its promotions.
The next question is to know about its authenticity. You have to make the conversation about the product look very authentic. It should not look scripted or staged, in the online world. It is hard to be authentic.
It is to be noted that Generation Z hates direct advertisements. It is a total red flag for these young people. Thus, conversations about a product have to look appealing and obviously authentic to the viewers.
When you find some content creator aka a celebrity, it is easy to build relations with them. Your brand can benefit largely from these relations in the short term as well as in the long term. It is however advisable to make the reaction long term as everything gets better in a long horizon in economics.
When a celebrity or an influencer acts as a spokesperson for a brand, it adds a lot of audience to the product. It is then on the customers to pay or not pay heed to these product promotions.
A celebrity endorsement helps in garnering a bigger audience by using a celebrity face for the campaign. In this method, we discussed that the influencing person lends his/her personality, status to the brand.
There are many checkpoints that need to be checked. The conversation should be authentic and organic, too much drama will kill the attention. The celebrity should be relatable with the audience, or I should say “vibe” with the viewers.
There are many dynamics at place but if done right with optimum usage of work, it can do wonders and signups. A creative-authentic celebrity and a product conscious brand are all the ingredients that make an endorsement a perfect recipe.
FAQ
What are the types of celebrity endorsements?
Affiliate marketing, Giveaway, Social media takeover and Traditional Advertisements are types of celebrity endorsements.
How do celebrities endorse products?
Celebrities appear in commercials of the brand or promote the product on social media platforms.
How does celebrity endorsement help a business?
Celebrity endorsements build the credibility of the brand among consumers and increase brand awareness.
In this era, people have a great influence on others as they idealize social media more than the real world. These people are popularly known as social media influencers. Often the so-called influencers have created a good fan base that is loyal and high on trust, while there are people who have just started to set the trend. They are known as Nano influencers. To know more about who they are and why brands are targeting Nano Influencers more as a part of influencer marketing.
Today, social media plays such an important part of all our lives, be it from a point of view of leisure activity or be it a business, almost all the millennial’s and adults today are using many social media platforms. These platforms have the ability to impact the lives of many. These people brand themselves on platforms as Facebook influencers, Snapchat influencers, and Instagram influencers.
Nano-influencers are usually Instagram users who have a minimum of 1000 followers or more. Typically the range of followers that Nano Influencers have is from 1000 to 5000 followers. These are the people who aren’t very glamorous or shiny but do have the strength to influence their local neighborhood or the community to which they belong. Nano Influencers are regarded as ‘regular everyday people’ who help a brand to promote their products and services by influencing their friends, family, and people around them.
Nano Influencers are also becoming more prominent because they post about very specific categories targeting the audience that is hyper-invested in such topics. More importantly, audiences seek out Nano influencers because their expertise in niche topics is unique and might not be found anywhere else. Nano Influencers are also very famous in categories like food, fashion, travel, and beauty.
Why do people work with Nano Influencers?
Brands Choosing Nano Influencer
There are various reasons for why brands want to work with Nano influencers’ in spite of small follower base and less fame.
A few reasons are:
Nano Influencers are Authentic. They are normal and they act normal, unlike many other macro-influencers. This helps them to gather audiences’ trust and makes them more relatable and approachable.
They tend to have high engagement rates and have a deeper sense of engagement with the audience.
Nano influencers believe in personal endorsement and their word of mouth recommendation helps the brands to get value.
Nano Influencers tend to provide an excellent return on investment. Brands choose to collaborate with Nano influencers because they do not have the fear of risking a high amount of money.
Nano Influencers are easy to work with people as they are much more agreeable to the terms decided by the brands. They do not demand much from the brands and work with utmost efficiency almost at all times.
In the year 2019, the Hype Auditor stated that the engagement rate of Nano Influencers has been twice as high as that of the other group of influencers. Nano influencers have become more approachable since they haven’t reached celebrity status. This helps their collaborators reach the right masses with excellent engagement rates. It is a fact that when the engagement rate is high the ability to reach the masses is increased and automatically the cost invested by the investor reduces per impression and engagement.
Closer relationship with the audience
It is often said that the connections made by Nano-influencers with the masses are very strong. Due to their personalized dialogue and one on one communication with the audience, they tend to be more intimidating and engaging. When the masses comment on their post, Nano Influencers often reply to almost all the relevant ones, understand them well, and make good relationships with them.
Since, Nano Influencers just start their paths to become famous, they tend to be more enthusiastic and loyal towards their followers and hence they love to interact with them. As a result, this helps them to gain higher trust and engagement from the audience. When a brand collaborates with them for an exchange of minor payment or a freebie, they happily agree to join hands and deliver the rightful content.
Trust of the audience
Trust of Audience
Nano Influencers are creators who are very careful about choosing a product or service that they want to advertise and the reason behind this so that they do not want to disappoint the handful audience that they have with them. Since they are friends with most of their followers, they tend to choose their adverts wisely. Also, this gives the brand a surety that the audience will trust Nano Influencers as they aren’t jammed with content line the macro-influencers. And the audience trusts nano influencers that they will the genuine and right advice to them.
Can give a competitive edge
Even today in India, people do not trust influencers that have a small audience. For a brand that trusts Nano influencers, this could be an edge over the competition. In today’s market Nano influencers are becoming more and more prominent because they come with loyalty and guaranteed results. Whereas many macro level influencers charge a high amount of money and give no results.
More relevant influencers
Nano influencers work for very specific categories and niches. This is why their content is preferred by their followers. Nano influencers can also help the brands to test and identify what works best in the market. They can help to know the response of the audience by seeing their reactions and engagements.
Cost-friendly option
Many Nano influencers tend to be very cost-friendly and cost-effective. The reason is that they work in exchange for a very nominal fee or in fact, might also work against freebies or gifts. According to a survey conducted by Social Public, less than 45% of Nano influencers prefer monetary compensations. Such researches confirm that Nano influencers are proven to be cost effective and also are beneficial for most brands that collaborate with them today.
More dedication
Nano Influencers are considered to be Instagram lovers in the Indian marketing platform. They are usually passionate about their work and maintain their feed and content as a hobby. With the zeal and spirit of their work, they create fruitful content and produce quality work as compared to large influencers.
Macro Influencers charge heavy price because they have a strong follower base and also carry expertise, where as Nano influencers do not have much experience and expertise in the subject matter. This might be a cause of concern for a lot of brands as many want to work with people who have a high level of expertise.
Limited reach
One of the disadvantages of connecting your brand with Nano influencers is that their reach is very limited. A lot of times their average engagement rate is also just 2% to 3% which proves to be not very beneficial for the brands.
Difficult to measure the performance
Since Nano influencers have low data volume, it becomes hard to measure their performance. Also, many Nano influencers don’t use business accounts and stick to regular accounts. The problem with regular accounts is that they do not provide robust and detailed analytics about the posts and engagements.
Nano-influencers are your everyday social media users, with anywhere from 100 to 10,000 followers.
Are they professional influencers?
They aren’t professional “influencers” in any way – and the majority of their posts feature typical content like photos of their family, friends, cat videos, and memes.
How much do Nano influencers get paid?
Nano-influencers get paid around $5–$25 per post.
What is smaller than a Nano influencer?
The hierarchy of influencer is as follows-
Mega: 1 million + followers.
Macro: 100,000 – 1 million followers.
Micro: 10,000 – 100,000 followers.
Nano: 10,000 followers or less.
To answer the question, Nano influencer comes in the last type of influencers.
Are Nano influencers effective?
A Nano-influencer offers credibility and authenticity. They’ll help you market to the target audiences that matter.
Why Nano-influencers are better?
Nano-influencers are more engaged with their audience. Their smaller following means it’s easier to establish meaningful communication and connection.
Nano-influencers are the new breed of influencers that are emerging recently. They tend to have a smaller number of followers in comparison to micro influencers, less than 10,000 followers. A Nano-influencer is a person who has influence within their community and is more popular locally. This can be someone who has influence in the local neighborhood or community. For example, the person might be a local pastor, local community leader or local government leader. Or a person who is popular in his local community with followers less than 10,000.
