Festive cheer: Influencer marketing spends set for up to 40% hike

Influencer marketing spends are likely to see a 35-40% high this year, as compared to last year, industry experts and media planners have told exchange4media. The spike is being driven by a rise in brands tapping into influencer marketing as one of their brand-building strategies right in the initial stages.

“We are seeing a lot more inflow of work and briefs this festive season ,” said Viraj Sheth, Co-Founder & CEO at Monk Entertainment.

It is mainly the beauty sector where the spends are going up alongside tech, which is generally a big spending category during times like these because a lot of sales happen on e-commerce platforms. “There is generally a big push on having to work with influencers and exploring various kinds of campaigns during this period, and the difference this year has just been that the market is maturing year on year. So, more brands are entering the ecosystem of wanting to spend with influencers,” he added.

According to influencer marketing agencies, this year even legacy brands, which probably did not believe in spending on influencer marketing till last year, are now willing to do pilot campaigns and are open about working with certain influencers relevant to them.

Influencer marketing platform Klug Klug’s Co-Founder & CEO Kalyan Kumar agrees that there has indeed been an uptick in influencer marketing spends this year. He shared that big brands from sectors like FMCG/CPG, e-commerce, clothing & apparel, and jewellery are the big spenders in the influencer marketing space during the festive period. “Brands are spending a fourth or even more of their marketing budget on influencers. We are looking at 25 to 40 per cent of spends going into this season,” Kumar said.

With respect to the level of the influencer pyramid that is most in demand by brands this year, experts noted that there’s a heavy inclination towards micro and nano influencers. This is courtesy new-age startups and D2C brands that rely heavily on influencer marketing.

Kumar also mentioned that the main spends are being dedicated to nano, micro and macro influencers . He also highlighted that while smaller brands, D2C players and more digitally nuanced brands are interested in the macro, micro and nano influencers, bigger brands are still enamoured by the big names and continue to put a fairly fatigued and almost uninteresting approach to influencer marketing.

The change in influencer collaboration fee is also influenced by the level of the influencer in the pyramid. While Sheth, who works majorly with mega and macro influencers, did see an increase in the collaboration fee during this year’s festive period, Kumar explained that the premium arises in cases where the brand demands exclusivity from the influencer.

For example, if a beauty brand is asking an influencer for an exclusive collaboration, the influencer might ask for a premium fee. “Logically, there's a dampening in the larger volume influencers of the cost per post, and select few in the bigger zone who tend to ask for more unless there's some exclusivity,” he added.