MAM
GUEST COLUMN: How Micro-Influencers become creators for brands
Mumbai: Until recently, the concept of brand endorsements and the way brands reach their target audience has recreated the social media landscape. A newer concept of influencer marketing has emerged in the era of the creator economy. Considering the explosion of social media and creator tools in the market, the creator economy has grown from $1.7 billion in 2016 to $6.5 billion in 2019 further crossing $9.7 billion in 2020.
Given the accelerated transformation of the advertising economy to the creator economy, it has become necessary for brands to develop relationships with influential personalities and promote their products and ideas. Creator economy is centered on creators becoming influencers, someone with 10,000 to 1 million followers or micro-influencers with 500 to 10,000 followers. Brands partner with influencers on a smaller scale to generate authenticity in brand promotion instead of focusing on sponsored ads or paying hefty to branded influencers for their stardom.
Influencers vs Micro-influencers
Influencer marketing is at its peak. It has gone beyond the brands partnering with people with thousands and millions of followers and promoting their product to their audience. Having said that customers are more likely to purchase from a brand they can connect with. That’s where influencer marketing comes into the picture as an effective tool for word-of-mouth marketing and increasing social media authenticity. Hence, brands pay macro influencers to create and publish content based on their products or sponsor their events, as large-scale outreach programs.
Micro-influencers, on the contrary, have fewer followers and are extremely valuable for brands looking to increase their awareness within a particular niche. With the surge in the popularity of micro-influencers, younger generations are coming forward with their charismatic appeal and niche expertise, leading the brands to capitalize on the youth marketing techniques. For instance, go-to Gen Z fashion brand – Urbanic created a 150+ community of best-dressed campus students aka creators, who created some fabulous content and engaged in a variety of brand collaborations, drove meet & greets to drive brand sales, digital visibility and grow community size.
Collaborating with the right influencers
Influencers are appreciated for their real content. They are considered to be more authentic and community oriented than a brand or a celebrity promoting a product. Known for being more engaging with the TG, the influencers typically get more time to connect with their follower base. This helps in creating a loyal audience for the brand. Instead of having followers with varied interests, demographics or geographics, these influencers tend to be more specialized and niche specific.
In the fast-paced creator economy, influencer marketing offers several benefits to brands. As social media algorithms continue to change, brands struggle to reach their audience in broader terms. According to the facts – influencers with more than 5,000 followers are usually responsible for 70 per cent of all reach in the influencer landscape. Hence, a smaller follower base of micro-influencers can actually create engagement for the brand by making the content appear right in front of the eyes of the target audience. Furthermore, it becomes more cost-effective to collaborate with micro-influencers as brands can share free product samples or coupons with micro-influencers.
Strong community building
Social media connects people on a global level. However, a community is built with like-minded people who have common ideas and thoughts to share. Though micro-influencers do not have instant name recognition, their narrower reach and specific content build a strong community of followers for brand endorsements. Even with a smaller reach, micro-influencers have higher credibility than some high-profile endorsements. This helps brands to create connections with the targeted audience with local interests that can have a huge impact on the brand’s marketing front.
Brands experiencing growth
Onboarding the right influencers and empowering them to create real content is always followed by long-term relationships that further depend on the success metrics of the campaign. However, brands still find it challenging to evaluate the results of a micro-influencer marketing campaign. Differentiating between real influencers and people who buy inorganic followers that can offer no guarantee of engagement or success remains the biggest concern of the brands. Those looking to experience growth and engagement need to explore different marketing perspectives and tools such as followers, profiles, quality of comments, profile visits and even previous experience of influencers as brand endorsers to evaluate results. They can prove to be important numbers to quantify success metrics and can work as great ROI predictors for brands as well as micro-influencers.
The author is Sociowash co-founder Pranav Agarwal
Brands
Anupam Sengupta joins L&T LTM in senior leadership role – strategy & global business development
AI and media tech veteran to steer global business push in CME vertical
MUMBAI: Larsen and Toubro has brought on board seasoned media and technology executive Anupam Sengupta in a senior leadership role within its LTM division, tasking him with shaping strategy and global business development for its communications, media and technology vertical.
In his new role at L&T LTM, Sengupta will focus on driving consulting-led growth, sharpening global go-to-market strategies, and building deep-tech partnerships, with a particular emphasis on AI-led transformation.
Sengupta joins from Camb.ai, where he served as business head for SAARC and Southeast Asia. There, he played a key role in establishing the company’s regional presence, accelerating adoption of voice AI solutions and securing high-profile enterprise partnerships.
His career spans more than two decades across AI infrastructure, SaaS, consumer technology and media, with leadership roles at companies such as immerso.ai and Eros Innovation, where he worked at the intersection of streaming, gaming and enterprise AI applications.
Earlier, Sengupta spent over a decade at Sony Group, leading digital sales and partnerships across South Asia and managing large P&L portfolios. His experience also includes stints at WPP Group, Zee Group and Standard Chartered Bank, giving him a cross-sector view of both media and non-media ecosystems.
Known for building high-value partnerships and scaling new business lines, Sengupta has worked across global markets, handling enterprise SaaS sales, strategic alliances and large deal cycles, often in emerging technology environments.
His appointment comes as Larsen and Toubro sharpens its focus on digital and media technology services, an area seeing strong demand as AI, streaming and content platforms converge.
With Sengupta at the helm of strategy and global growth initiatives, the company appears set to deepen its play in the fast-evolving media tech landscape, where scale, speed and smart partnerships increasingly define success.
