The Rising Era Of MicroInfluencers

There are so many accounts on Social Media with the most followers which are usually celebrities - actors, sportspeople, musicians etc. Brands began to see potential in these influencers and began to work with them on digital ad campaigns to increase brand awareness, reach and engagement. Since so many influencers now inhabit social media, they are broadly classified into two categories - macro and micro-influencers. Specialized agencies came up whose job is to connect the right influencer with the right brand. Globally, the most popular influencer marketing agencies include Famebit, Upfluence, Hypr, and Trendkite. In India, names like Blogweet, Winkl, Scrunch, Pulpkey, and Viral Vagon are popular.

Globally, influencer marketing platforms maintain a database of millions of influencers. In India,  that figure is a few thousand since influencer marketing is a relatively new concept. Within this niche, we noticed that brands were keen on working with micro-influencers.

So who is a micro-influencer? Typically, a user who has a following in the range of 500-25,000 followers and specializes in the creation of a specific type of content in specific segments like travel, fitness, pet health, music etc.

These users are not celebrities or sportspeople, but they have amassed a following by creating content that caters to a particular niche audience. To understand the phenomenon of marketing using micro-influencers, we spoke to some industry experts...

We reached out to Rahul Singh, CEO, Winkl who informed us that the platform currently hosts approximately 7000 creators who reach out to an audience of about 40 million users across India. The platform has worked with brands such as Curefit and Flipkart. He tells us that mostly, brands that are looking to reach out to the end consumer (not B2B brands) typically invest in influencer marketing. Singh cites the example of brands in categories like fashion, lifestyle, travel, and even banking (ICICI Bank, Yes Bank) engaging with micro-influencers for their marketing campaigns.

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