Influencer frenzy keeps brands busy this festive season after grand success last year

Influencer marketing budget increased for festive period last year.

As the festive season gets closer, e-commerce companies are rolling out sales bonanza and brands are reaching out to influencers for their campaign blitzkrieg.

Brands are banking heavily on influencers for campaigns after influencer marketing offered a bang for their buck last year. The budget for influencer marketing was jacked up 21 percent and the influencers delivered up to 11-fold return on investment (RoI) last festive season, shows an analysis by Qoruz, an influencer marketing firm.

Traditional advertising, on the other hand, recorded a 4.4 percent drop in spending on tele media during Diwali and there was a 10 percent decline for print media, Qoruz said.

More than 22,000 influencers created over 67,000 posts, enhancing brand visibility and consumer engagement during festivals last year. They engaged 80 percent of Diwali shoppers. For millennials, influencer campaigns turned out to be 1.5 times more effective. The fashion category saw high engagement through micro and nano influencers.

Influencers are categorised into five types basis their social media following. Nano influencers are those with 100 to 10,000 followers, micro influencers command a following of 10,000 to a lakh. Macro and mega influencers have a following of 1 lakh to 1 million and more than 1 million, respectively.

Qoruz has analysed the number of influencers clothing brands as well e-commerce platforms under their fashion category associated with and also the engagement rate after associating with the influencers.

Fashion e-commerce firm Myntra associated with over 1,700 influencers during 2023 festive season, while Flipkart for the fashion category onboarded 610 content creators followed by ethnic wear brand Biba with 295 influencers. Amazon for the fashion category signed up 205 influencers and clothing brand Libas signed up 179 influencers.

Amazon registered the highest engagement rate of 2.85 percent, followed by Libas and Myntra at 2.02 percent and 1.73 percent. Biba and Flipkart recorded engagement rates of 1.28 percent and 1.19 percent.

Engagement rate refers to the percentage of people who engage with posts through comments and likes.

Nano influencers had an engagement rate of 9.68 percent for the fashion category during Diwali 2023.

In the food category, food influencers from tier 2 and 3 cities outperformed those from the tier 1, the analysis noted. Dominos, Swiggy and Zomato signed up with most number of influencers at 839, 375 and 345, with an engagement rate of 2.6 percent, 2.3 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively.

The influencer marketing highlighted that as many as 66 percent of online shoppers trust influencers' recommendations over traditional advertisements.