How influencer marketing is turning the tide for brands in India

Influencers and content creators in India are harnessing the resources of marketing to build thriving businesses for brands

In the last decade or so, we’ve seen influencer marketing drive multiple brands’ growth, especially when it comes to leveraging the popularity of influencers to grow their purchase rate exponentially. Take Kim Kardashian’s association with Spanish luxury house Balenciaga, as an example. Kardashian’s Balenciaga era revitalised the brand’s positioning among millennials and Gen Z. According to several reports, her partnership announcement post with Balenciaga from early 2022 alone was worth one million dollars, with the entire campaign on her Instagram netted at $2.43 million. This investment in influencer marketing, in turn, cemented Balenciaga’s position as the hottest brand in the first quarter of 2022, according to The Lyst Index, with the demand for the brand on the index spiking to 108 per cent at the time. 

What started off as style blogs in the early 2000s and gained immense popularity between 2007 and 2010, have now evolved into a well-oiled, thriving ecosystem where brands can reach a wider consumer range by paying a popular influencer to promote their products than advertising with magazines or newspapers. In 2019, influencer marketing was valued at $148 million globally, with an expectation of growing to $202 million in 2022, according to a report by Statista. It is predicted to surpass $337 million by 2027. 

As this industry continues to grow exponentially, the size and value of influencer marketing platforms also continue to expand every year, making collaborations between brands and creators more profitable than ever. We take a look at how marketers are harnessing the power of famous, recognisable faces on social media to leverage their brand among consumers.

Leveraging the power of influencers and content creators

In her essay ‘How influencers make us buy stuff’, Lavanya Mohan, content creator and freelance journalist, explains how influencer marketing taps into the idea of social proximity. “Social proximity is the technical term for emulating the behaviours of people you believe are close to you. This is—quite literally—how influence works in real life,” she writes. “We end up inducting influencers into the circle of people who affect our decision making. You’d totally buy something your best friend recommends, right? And of course you’d check out the restaurant your favourite colleague is raving about. Social proximity ensures that we treat influencer recommendations the same way.”

According to a report by Statista, in 2020, the number of brand-sponsored influencer posts on Instagram surpassed six million, making the global Instagram influencer market a two-billion-dollar business. With almost everyone having access to the Internet and being present on at least one social media platform, what better way to market your product than to go where the customer is? “We’ve all witnessed a major shift from offline to online media during the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier, brands used to have major marketing budgets for product launches and events, with influencer marketing playing a small role. Today, brands dedicate higher budgets specifically for influencer marketing. Brands have also seen a drastic change in viewership, engagement and recall value [of posts]. They are tapping into unreachable markets at remarkably more efficient costs, thanks to influencer marketing,” says Meghna Kaur (@shetroublemaker), a fashion and lifestyle content creator, who has over one million followers on Instagram.

Scroll through her social media account and you’ll find a range of brand endorsements in her last few posts, including Haier, Myntra, L’Oréal, Maybelline, Nykaa, Paco Rabbane and Levi’s, to name a few. Her popularity also brought her the opportunity to walk for designer duo Falguni & Shane Peacock at the Blenders Pride Fashion Tour in Mumbai recently, otherwise reserved for models and celebrities. When asked about how she chooses the “right brand” to work with and promote on her platform, Kaur explains the multiple criteria she considers to make a calculated business decision. “Social media platforms offer various insights based on demographics and gender ratio. The audience analysation is so filtered and precise that matching the brand requirement becomes as close as possible. Because of these detailed insights, we are able to understand our strongest hold in particular cities, age range of audience and gender, among other factors, enabling us to reach out to brands by understanding their niche. We start working with brands we want to engage with—initially without reaching out—by making a case study, showing the results to those brands and proposing a long-term value addition in terms of thought leadership,” she shares. 

While collaborating with an influencer is one way for brands to reach a wider net of consumers across the globe, it has become a crucial way to establish a good relationship with their online community. “Social media and influencers have made it easier for businesses to reach out to their target audience with the various features they offer. It's even favourable for the brands to get honest feedback through social media,” says Lavanya Aneja, founder and CEO of Lea Clothing Co—a homegrown sustainable label that has over 129,000 followers on Instagram. For Aneja, content is king and with good content, brands can leverage the influencers’ committed audience. “Nowadays, before buying anything, consumers tend to go online to get reviews from influencers on social media and trust them over the advertisements the brands spend on. It’s more organic and trustworthy for the consumer this way,” she adds.

Lea Clothing Co’s marketing strategy relies heavily on popular influencers like Kusha Kapila, Vidya Balan, Kritika Khurana, Mrunal Panchal, Jannat Zubair and Rubina Dilaik among others, dominating the brand’s social media feed. “Brands now interact with their clients like friends who are aware of their wants and offer help, thanks to social media. Brands have also started to prefer influencers over celebrities to be their ambassadors as the former have a closer connection with the audience, thereby driving sales and improving brand recognition,” explains Aneja. “Influencers nowadays care deeply for the brand’s product or service and genuinely desire to share it with their close family and friends because they have received actual value and want others to benefit too. Celebrities have lost relevance with consumers as they resonate with influencers and find them authentic. To connect with their audiences, brands are capitalising on consumers' trust in influencers,” she reveals.

The future of influencer marketing

A report published by Forbes India in 2022 suggested that when it came to influencer marketing, celebrities contribute 27 per cent, while influencers contribute 73 per cent with nearly two-thirds of the Indian population following at least one influencer. If numbers are to be believed, influencers are going to be the driving force of marketing in the near future.

Since influencer marketing thrives on the authenticity that content creators bring forth to their followers—whether it’s through reviews, hacks or simple ‘how to’ reels—Kaur believes that the future of the industry will be determined by the credibility of the influencers. “We, as creators, should work on having two-way conversations with our audiences to understand their needs before promoting any product or service. It’s the only sustainable approach to evolving influencer marketing in the coming future,” says Kaur.

There’s no doubt that influencer marketing has been a game changer, particularly for homegrown labels and start-ups, providing them with the necessary exposure online, Aneja points out. “When an influencer tries your product and reviews it, it not only adds a personal touch but also makes it more reliable. Clothing labels, in particular, can benefit from this because reels and stories provided by influencers [on Instagram] function as a charm for brands, a medium that most millennials and Gen Z consume content on social media through,” she adds.

With brands and influencers both equally benefitting through diverse, long-term partnerships in a creator economy, influencer marketing is here to stay.

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