With the fast-paced digital revolution in one of the world’s largest internet-consuming populations, new avenues for marketing and PR have opened in sync with these rapid transformations. As per a report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), 66% of the urban Internet users in the country frequently access social media platforms and are also strongly influenced by the content posted on these platforms.
Additional statistics prove that 70% of teenagers in the country who access YouTube, trust influencer thoughts over traditional celebrities. The trends further depict that 86% of women turn to social media before buying a product. Hence, along with the high acceptance of social media in the Indian community, influencer marketing has also laid strong grounds in the minds of the people.
Impact of Influencers on Indian Audience
The influencers have an audience who trust their judgment and are impacted by their daily life and practices. They develop a personal connection with their audience and interact with them daily, which is how they have a strong psychological impact on their follower group. Some of the most widely used platforms by influencers are YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Data suggests that 32% of influencers prefer Facebook to be the most viral platform for brand promotions, followed by Instagram which stands at 24%.
Data indicated that 71% of consumers make purchases based on their social media preferences, specifically for lifestyle and beauty brands. On average, companies can generate a revenue of $6.50 for every $1 invested in influencer marketing which is why influencer marketing is the new choice for brand PR today.
Why is Influencer Marketing a key to successful PR today?
As discussed above, influencer marketing is gaining huge traction and the audience’s buying behavior is strongly dependent on what their favorite influencers endorse or publicize. While PR does not mean direct advertisement or paid promotions, but the ability to amaze the influencers with the brand’s products/services, so that they endorse it on their social media is the key to Influencer PR strategy for brands today.
With the new regulations by ASCI (Advertising Standards Council of India), it is now mandatory for influencers to tag their social media posts as promotional posts in case these are paid advertisements. This is done to promote transparency and for the audience to easily discriminate between organic and paid content. While paid promotions have an impact on the audience but at the same time it also clearly depicts that it is not a personal inclination towards the brand but a contractual obligation.
However, when it comes to PR in influencer marketing, a different strategic approach here, helps the brands develop a stronger brand presence.
How is this achieved?
In the case of PR campaigns, brands send free PR packages to the influencers or create PR campaigns around brand ideology/details, without forcing anyone to post about their brand. It is then at the influencer’s discretion whether to post or not post about the brand. Here, the brand can develop a stronger and more authentic influence on people’s minds, which is long-lasting. The new-age PR is harnessing this power of organic publicity on social media, which is everlasting and works similar to word-of-mouth publicity, which has over the years proven to be the best form of publicity in the PR industry.
Benefits of new-age influencer PR Campaigns
The influencers’ PR campaigns are designed to create an ecosystem of organic growth amongst the target audience with the help of social media. By organic, it means no paid tactics or forced promotions. Here the key is to develop a social media campaign that connects to the hearts of the people. The biggest example is that of the recent Cadbury Dairy Milk Campaign #GoodLuckGirls which grabbed massive attention due to the unique social message that it was able to send across the Indian population. Several celebrities retweeted/posted about the campaign out of their own free will, which helped Cadbury to generate immense positive PR across the country.
Hence, new-age PR with the help of Influencer PR campaigns can harness the power of social media to their gain with minimum investment and high returns. Influencer Marketing is the new age of PR!
The views and opinions published here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the publisher.
A strategic communication entrepreneur professional having close to a decade of experience in the marketing communication & the PR business, Neha brings along a specialisation in creating & building the brand across the domain. Her foundation lies in learning & distributing the learning among the peer group.
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