REPORT

State of influencer marketing in India

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Table of contents
1. Introduction
2. Top Findings
3. Method
4. The WOW Factor
5. Influencer marketing is a top priority
6. How important is Influencer marketing for your brand/agency
7. Why do brands collaborate with influencers?
8. How do brands select influencers to collaborate with?
9. What are the main criteria for selection of influencers?
10. Why dedicate a person to influencer marketing?
11. What is the budget for influencer marketing?
12. Measuring ROI
13. Looking Ahead
14. The Sponsored Tag
15. Fake Followers
16. Trends in the Influencer marketing industry

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Introduction

2019 has been a great year for Brands, Agencies and Influencer marketing is a trend that seems to have only
Creators alike. With quirky campaigns around established grown over the last 5 years and doesn’t show any signs of
occasions like Game of Thrones, IPL, emerging moments slowing down. In fact, this year shows record highs.
like the launch of iPhone11, rise of mature bag, Brand But how do everyday marketers actually do influencer
Wars and Banters like Amul vs Britannia, Netflix vs marketing? We conducted a survey with Social Samosa
Hotstar vs Amazon Prime brands have grown increasingly to find out. This report contains the findings of the survey
innovative and experiential. It’s now the time for brands with over 800 participants from every corner of the
to engage in friendly banter on Instagram and Twitter and country. The goal is to provide actionable insights that can
they’re doing a great job with influencers, quirky posts and help to take your influencer marketing strategy to the next
much more. level.

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TOP FINDINGS
Survey Results Challenges Strategic Insights

respondents believe

75% 61% 80%

respondents that the “sponsored”
respondents look at have no tools tag is more transparent
Influencer marketing for measuring and authentic - all
as an important or top their influencer brands would need to
strategic priority. marketing start abiding by it soon.

feel that the

63% 51%
“sponsored” Fake followers is a major problem for
respondents work tag reduces influencer marketing - since India is a
with about 50 (or less) the association market with the third largest number of
influencers. with influencer fake followers, the industry as a whole
marketing could be threatened.

72% 49%
respondents will respondents have Most influencer marketing professionals
increase the amount a defined Influencer are unable to measure their influencer
of money they invest marketing program marketing efforts easily so proving ROI is
in influencer marketing so kickstarting their difficult.
greatly in 2020 program is a problem.

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Methodology
The information and results presented in this report are based on a survey Additionally, we’ve managed to get Industry experts to contribute with
conducted by Talkwalker and Social Samosa between July and September their opinions on the best practices for influencer marketing in order to
2019. The survey was taken by 800 respondents from all over India. enrich the report with their perspectives.
Please note that none of the participants of the survey were
compensated in any manner.
Most of the participants are from the world of Digital or Social media
(49%), followed by Marketing (31%) and then communications, PR and
more. Additionally, the largest percentage of respondents come from
an agency background (35%). Therefore, the audience surveyed is really
relevant to the field of influencer marketing.

Which Department do you work in Which Industry do you work in

Agency 35%
Media/Entertainment 18%
Consumer Goods 7%
49% 31% 6% 5% 8% Retail 5%
Technology 5%
Education 5%
Travel/Hospitality 3%
Professional Services 3%
Finance 3%
Digital / Marketing Communication PR Other
Social Media Others 16%

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The WOW factor

Influencer marketing is on the rise. 72% of respondents will Do you use a specific tool to manage your
increase their budget for influencer marketing in 2020, yet 61% - a influencer marketing program?
large majority – doesn’t have the tools to measure their efforts for
Influencer marketing, forget just ROI.

How will your 2020 budget for Influencer

marketing compare to 2019 38% 61%

38% 34% 20% 4% 2% YES NO

It will continue to increase, and will be aligned to

It will greatly It will moderately It will remain the It will moderately It will greatly the marketing objectives, then. I believe the scope
increase (>20%) increase (<20%) same decrease decrease of influencer marketing will increase as long as the
relevance is kept intact.

So, what is it about Influencer marketing that makes people so ready Chandramohan Mehra
to throw away marketing dollars on it, without measuring the impact?
Is it a guaranteed cash cow? Chief Marketing Officer
Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance and Bajaj
The answer is no. But Influencer marketing does provide a higher ROI Allianz General Insurance
compared to other channels (11x, according to AdWeek), so people
don’t hesitate to delegate a large portion of their budget to it.

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Influencer led marketing is the fastest growing

segment under digital, and we’re seeing brands in
India, now across sectors, become serious about it.
Influencer marketing budgets are changing every Budgets are moving from experimental to planned/
year – driven by ROI, measured for impact and dedicated spends which is great for the ecosystem
quality vs. quantity always. And 2020 is going to further grow. While we see influencer budgets
to be no different. Brands will be choosing their at an average grow 2x, what’s most exciting is the
influencer associations as carefully as their brand way it’s being utilized. 2020 is where it becomes
ambassadors, especially on social media. Where the a lot more strategic than tactical; with creative
budget for the influencer campaigns will still largely campaigns & content being built around influencers,
depend on the nature of the association and the v/s influencers being an almost after thought to
activities, I don’t think it is going to come down. amplify content.

Aakriti Sinha Pranay Swarup

National Head-Social Co Founder
Isobar @ Chtrbox

I believe that influencer marketing is here to stay. 2020 for influencers will be a year of value and
Marketers’ propensity towards the influencing accountability. It will be about driving association
marketing has significantly increased from the and exclusivity and most importantly understanding
previous year. With seeing the current trend, the ROI from them, which could be in terms of brand
brands’ marketing spend in this space will increase value and actual business. We are trying influencer
positively. However, we will also see a lot of one-time marketing for Diwali, 2019 and we plan to allocate
transaction relationships converting into long term more budgets in 2020.
strategic ones between brands and influencers.

Gurpreet Singh Gaurav Midha

Co Founder and COO Senior Manager Marketing
One Digital Entertainment Tanishq

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The short answer is that budget will go up. Now for Influencer marketing is an impactful subset of
the long answer. marketing. We often see people visiting a store or
buying a product just because they saw it on an
Consumers are a lot smarter today than they were
influencer’s social media. Influencers help create
yesterday. They do not necessarily care if the
awareness and garner visibility for the brand, so
content is paid for, as long as it is relevant to them.
much so that it often leads to driving sales. Acting
Hence it is more important to identify and work with
as a more lucrative option as opposed to direct/
the right influencers.
paid marketing, shelling money for influencers is
Also, the way brands are using influencers is becoming ‘critical’ for the brands. The catch here is
changing. Initially, most brands only used to focus to optimise the right money for the right influencers.
on influencers running contests in order to get
Considering the outcome achievement aligned with
a brand trend. Now, brands are looking at doing
the set KPIs, 2020 will witness brands having higher
long term tie ups with influencers to drive brand
budgets for influencer marketing
consideration and other brand metrics

Kosal Malladi Jivesh Gupta

Head of Digital GM-West COO
Madison World One Impression

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Influencer marketing is
a top priority
75% of all respondents who have an influencer marketing
program said that influencer marketing is an important or top
strategic priority for them. However, it’s almost an equal split
for those who have official influencer marketing programs and
those who don’t with 49% of people having a defined influencer
marketing program only.

How important is influencer marketing for your brand/agency?

39% 36% 19% 3% 1%

Top strategic Important Neutral Not important Not important

Priority at all

Of course, 94% of marketers find influencer marketing as a

really useful channel for promotion, so this number is set to
increase.
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Why do brands collaborate with influencers?

Most brands collaborate with influencers in order to gain Other answers were related to creative, more-engaging content,
visibility. No surprises there, and our survey reinforces this since higher loyalty and battling social media crises. Most respondents
a whopping 56% of the people believe that the main objective of we spoke with collaborate with 10-50 influencers (34%) which is
an influencer program is brand visibility. The next most popular no mean number. Therefore, it follows that influencer marketing is
response was direct leads/product purchases at 17%. This is on the rise and the remaining results show that brands generally
also in-line with our global responses from our survey earlier this collaborate with a lot more influencers than we would think.
year where 65.8% of respondents cited brand visibility, followed
by 16.9% who cited direct leads as their objectives for influencer
marketing.

Why do you work with influencers? How many influencers do you work with?

56% 17% 13% 9% 1% 1% 34% 29% 15% 10% 5% 5%

More brand More direct More creative More loyalty from Battle a social Other 10-50 Less than 10 50-100 100-500 500-2000 Over 2000
visibility leads/product campaigns customer base media crisis
purchases

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Brands need to get closer to and connect with

Largely, it is to enable brand engagement by aiding delivery of relevant
their audience in a subtle way, avoiding invasive
message to a desired target group, eventually impacting both, brand
marketing techniques and obsolete commercial
and business objectives.
messages. They also need to humanise their brand
and present themselves as beneficial to their target
audience.

Chandramohan Mehra Gaurav Midha

Chief Marketing Officer Senior Manager Marketing
Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance and Bajaj Tanishq
Allianz General Insurance

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How do brands select

influencers to collaborate with?
It’s really tempting to go with big numbers – so historically
influencers with the largest fan following have always
enjoyed a high level of popularity. However, this has slowly
and gradually changed – particularly in light of the fact that
followers can be bought on Instagram. The number is a
whopping 16 Million fake followers for Indian influencers!
However, the good news is most respondents have rated the
quality and creativity of the content as the most important
factor for selecting influencers to work with, followed by
engagement levels and coherence with brand messaging and
finally size of their community. The interesting thing to note
was that the budget/costs involved were the least important
priority amongst all. This could be in part due to the fact that
celebrity endorsements are still very much a thing in India
and the budgets involved for them are always huge.

What are the main criteria for selection of influencers

53% 48% 48% 38% 30%

Quality and Engagement Coherence of Size of Costs

creativity of the content with community
content brand message (followers)

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Why dedicate a person to Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing has been proven to be an effective marketing This is of course for those who have a defined influencer marketing
channel time and again. Therefore, just like it makes sense to have a program (49% of the total number of respondents).
dedicated person for content marketing, it would make sense to have
a dedicated person for influencer marketing. It’s great to see that
influencer marketing has evolved into a sub discipline of marketing
with 69% of respondents having one or more people dedicated
How much time does your team invest in influencer marketing?
to influencer marketing in-house. In addition to this, another 12%
outsource influencer marketing to an agency. Moreover, 34% of
respondents spend over 2 hours a day on their influencer marketing
program – which means it is a major part of the day for them. 34% 27%

Do you have a dedicated person for your influencer marketing

program? More than 2 Several hours
hours a day throughout the
year
35% 34% 12% 10% 7%
22% 15%

More than 5 More than 10

Yes, more than 1 Yes, 1 person I outsource work No, and I am not No, but I am hours a week hours a month
person to an agency planning on hiring planning on hiring
someone someone

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What is the budget for Influencer Marketing?

Budget is a very important area of focus when it comes to Influencer According to our survey – this is generally one of the areas of
marketing – since more often than not, most influencer collaborations influencer marketing that are on the rise, with the default amounts
are paid partnerships. Influencers have a finger on the pulse of the already quite high. 32% of respondents spend between INR1,00,000
audience and are therefore the best people to create highly engaging and INR 10,00,000 on influencer marketing every year and 24% spend
posts that are relevant to your brand’s target audience. over INR 10,00,000. Additionally, 72% of respondents mentioned that
their budget for influencer marketing is set to increase in 2020.

What is your annual budget for influencer marketing?

32% 24% 16% 14% 12%

Even though a lot has to be done in terms of tracking measures for

influencer marketing, people are not hesitant to increase spends
because of the rich returns.

Between INR Over Between INR Less than INR None

1,00,000 – INR10,00,000 50,000 – INR 50,000
INR 10,00,000 1,00,000

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Measuring ROI
I recommend tools to be used for both – influencer
discovery and then performance monitoring and
measurement. At isobar, whether through internal
ROI is the magic word that every marketer is supposed to be on top tool mapping (isobuzz) or when partnering with
of at all times. With influencer marketing ROI is always tricky. But vendors, we see the relevance and quality of
at the same time, the biggest challenge for the industry is clearly influencers when suggesting them for any brand.
measurement since 61% of respondents actually do not have the tools But it should not alone be a performance of tool
to measure their influencer marketing efforts. It seems as though and a good amount of (manual) social media
marketers and PR professionals seem to still be on the lookout for intelligence is required in terms of checking for
the perfect solution to help them measure their influencer marketing the latest news/image of the influencers and their
efforts, since at the moment, it is quite challenging to measure the latest set of content pieces.
success of their initiatives. Lastly, the tools are most important to measure the
effectiveness and success rate. Don’t just chase
numbers, see if the paid influencers showed up as
your top authors, map the kind of sentiments and
Do you use a specific tool to manage your comments it garnered.
influencer marketing program? Aakriti Sinha
National Head-Social
38% 61% Isobar

All of this goes back to the ultimate goal of influencer marketing

however – if it is brand awareness, the ROI comes in the form of
engagement or impressions. If it is direct leads or sales, there are
several models like attribution, discount codes and UTM tracking that
can help for online initiatives. But the fact remains that a tool to meet
all these needs is still missing in the marketplace.
YES NO

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We use tools such as Qoruz which crawls profiles ROI for influencer marketing should ideally be
creating a comprehensive social footprint that measured according to the KPIs set for particular
includes five major social networks – Facebook, campaigns.For example- If we know that our KPI is
Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Blogs. This helps brand awareness, we will measure the total content
identify and rank influencers basis the number of pieces produced and engagement of the posts
followers, engagements on the various brands they that is inclusive of likes, comments, shares etc.
have worked in the past thereby helping us create However, if the KPI is to drive sales, the campaign
the right influencer strategy for the brand. ultimately becomes performance based. You either
used tracked links, redirection through discount/
coupon codes or calculate CPLs, CPMs or CPVs
Gaurav Midha to evaluate the cost spent v/s outcome achieved.
Similarly there are other analytics and media
Senior Manager Marketing value that is aligned to measure the return in a
Tanishq systematic way.

Jivesh Gupta
COO
One Impression

Historically, Influencer marketing has been handled

by both Digital Media agencies and PR agencies.
Both have claimed ownership on this.
However, at Madison, we believe that Influencer
marketing works best if both the parties get
involved. Madison Digital works very closely with
Madison PR for Influencer marketing.

Kosal Malladi
Head of Digital GM-West
Madison World

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There is no one way to measure ROI on Influencer

Marketing. Brands may indulge into several practices
to do it including
Influencer Marketing is measured much like • Social media analytics:- Keeping a regular check on
everything else on digital. You start with a clear your social media handles in terms of followers/new
goal in mind, and establish most optimized followers etc.
approaches to deliver those goals be it awareness, • Brand Visibility: - Brand visibility is the most
reach, engagement, consideration or conversions. indispensable part to measure ROI if your primary
Today, the right influencers are driving significant goal is to create awareness about the product/
ROI by having disrupted the cost, speed and brand. It is equivalent to ROI if the potential customer
personalization at which great, influential branded becomes cognizant of your brand. More than half of
content is created, distributed and consumed. the job is done there
Gaining ROI is directly proportional to establishing
the right mix and strategy for your brand, no • Syncing the influencer marketing campaign with the
shortcuts in advertising, neither in Influencer brand’s landing page does a great job to keep a check
Marketing :) on the audience.
• Using the influencers’ discount code also helps to
Pranay Swarup check on ROI

Co Founder Gurpreet Singh

@ Chtrbox
Co Founder and COO
One Digital Entertainment

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Looking ahead

Given the fact that the Government is looking at Influencer marketing is stil at a nascent stage
making brand ambassadors more accountable under and we are seeing it grow rapidly across
the consumer protection law, I anticipate that this will platforms, languages as well as genres. While
also be applied to social media influencers at some fashion, beauty, food, travel, tech and parenting
point soon. That’d mean the end of the unorganized already has a lot of influencers we are seeing
cottage industry around influencers and bringing some many other genres picking up. Even in terms of
semblance of professionalism in it. This may include platforms we are seeing TikTok and ShareChat
streamlined ‘rates’, disclosures for promotional posts influencers growing. We even have some on
and so on. Telegram now.

Karthik Srinivasan
Independent communications Vikas Chawla
consultant. Author- Be Social: Building Co-Founder of Social Beat
Brand YOU online 22 Languages and Influencer.in
Ex-Ogilvy, ex-Flipkart, ex-Edelman.

Clients and agencies alike need to mature quickly and Influencers have become a mandatory inclusion
stop using influencer marketing as a sweeping term in all large campaigns for amplification
for celeb endorsements, brand advocates and true purposes. Marketing teams have started
influencers. ‘Influence’ – the word says it all. A Nat evaluating this almost like a media plan, and
Geo photographer may be credible enough to shape comparing the kind of engagement influencers
someone’s decisions related to travel but maybe not drive to other forms of online advertising. This
for beauty products. A consumer who is an avid brand influencer plan should contain specifics on
advocate may not have many followers, but their story targeting, reach, average engagements etc.
could be compelling enough to promote.

Amaresh Godbole Chandni Shah

CEO COO
Digitas.in Kinnect
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The Sponsored Tag

The sponsored tag is the most obvious indication that a post is not 80% of those of have an influencer program responded that this
organic but something that was crafted in collaboration with an makes the posts more transparent and helps readers/consumers
influencer. Adding the “sponsored” tag to almost every Instagram understand the impact better.
post became the norm recently, but it was not always the case. At the same time, around 51% of respondents mentioned that this
However, today almost every post that has been worked with in also reduces the impact of the association between the brand and
collaboration with influencers has the tag. the influencer. While this may, to a certain extent, be true, 68% of
respondents mentioned that it doesn’t actually affect the overall
The sponsored tag increases transparency? performance of the campaign as long as the content created is
good.
80% 19%

The content created is key – The sponsored

tag doesn’t affect overall performance

68% 31%
YES NO

The sponsored tag reduces the impact of

your association with the influencer

51% 48%

YES NO

YES NO

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Fake followers
While Instagram is the prime channel for influencer marketing as per
our survey, with 83% respondents indicating this, a major problem
is fake followers in India. Following the US and Brazil, India has the
third highest number of bought followers in the world. So while on the
one hand, brands are more than willing to spend marketing dollars
on influencer marketing on Instagram, on the other hand, influencers
could be promoting products to inflated numbers of followers.
According to A Good Company, fake Instagram followers could
be costing the company about $750 million globally. This is huge,
keeping in mind that the market is worth $1.7billion.
What can companies do to counteract this? The easiest way is to
target influencers who may not have a massive number of followers,
but smaller, more targeted audiences. This could be a win-win
because micro-influencers would also cost the brands less without
compromising on the quality of the content. Looking at the survey
results, it seems as though we’re already on the right track, since the
number of followers is not an important factor in choosing which
influencers a brand will work with.

What are the key platforms that you engage with influencers on?

Instagram Twitter Facebook Youtube Linkedin Others

83% 83% 83% 83% 83% 83%

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Trends in the Influencer marketing Industry

Influencer marketing is an ever-changing industry and the trends are Instagram has been toying with the idea of hiding the number of
constantly changing here, along with the algorithms on various social likes for a while now – if that is the case, what would happen to the
media platforms. It’s constantly getting progressively harder for posts influencer industry which basically thrives on likes? It isn’t great
to gain as much engagement as they used to. news, but a lot of influencers don’t seem to mind it. Comments would
One of the things that keeps influencers evergreen is relatability – become more important in this case or even the UTM game could
for instance, while catwalk looks can be trending, it’s important to become more important.
note that people can’t actually wear these outfits on a daily basis. It’s important for marketers to be prepared for these kinds of changes
So influencers promoting your every day girl-next-door look are more since the influencer industry is constantly on the move. What is a
relatable and hence more evergreen! An example of this is Prajakta reliable channel for promotion of your products today could actually
Kohli – better known as mostlysane. disappear tomorrow, so it’s useful to look at influencers as an
extension of your marketing team and collaborate with them on how
to maneuver this constantly changing industry.
As the industry matures, the brands need to
allow influencers to stay true to their identity.
Story telling is still key and brands should allow
influencers to bring in their voice, opinion and
tone into the campaigns.
The second trend would be to make sure to start I see 2 key trends – a shift away from paid
leveraging influencers in multiple languages and influencer activation to true engagement. We
platform to diversify the impact are doing this for some of our clients wherein
their ‘behind the scenes’, factories, events etc
Finally, with privacy and data being a crucial are compelling enough reasons for influencers
discussion influencer marketing will also require to engage as it gives them rich unique content.
disclosures in India, which will help the industry Secondly, use of data and technology to better
to consolidate. segment and measure influencer activities will
pick up steam.
Vikas Chawla Amaresh Godbole
Co-Founder of Social Beat CEO
22 Languages and Influencer.in Digitas.in

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1. With influencer campaigns moving towards

being more ROI-driven, this indicates that their One trend that would be good to see is adding more
campaigns must be seen as more organic and authenticity into influencer marketing. Right now, it
less sales-y. resembles a busy street where vendors are hawking
products and services left, right and center. Hopefully,
2. Artificial intelligence (AI) will drive influencer it can be more experiential, where influencers offer
marketing greatly in the future, particularly by their views on products and services after their
helping marketers identify the ideal influencer personal experience, without bias. This may lead to
for a brand. But that’s not where it ends - AI can more trust in both the influencers and the brands that
also help with image identification, personality engage with them, since both are willing to showcase
identification, ROI prediction for the brand, and maturity in not behaving like the extension of a brand
predicting the response of customers to the brochure (for the influencer) and not wanting to use
influencers (i.e. their level of engagement with influencers like dumb TVC models to spout pre-
the influencers). In short, AI will help marketers scripted lines (for the brands and agencies).
with better and sharper communication
and increase efficiency for both brands and
influencers.
Karthik Srinivasan
Chandni Shah
Independent communications
COO consultant
Kinnect Author- Be Social: Building Brand
YOU online
Ex-Ogilvy, ex-Flipkart, ex-Edelman.

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