The pandemic has intensified digital consumption worldwide. The striking popularity of social media in the recent years has set off influencer marketing in Asia.
More than a million YouTube channels in Asian countries attract over a thousand of subscribers, which is the official number of followers a channel needs to be qualified for sponsorship.
As buyers spend more time on their phone, their decisions are unsurprisingly affected by what they see online daily. Brands are taking advantage of this rise to build reach, increase awareness and ultimately raise sales.
What is influencer marketing?
Influencers in this case are people who generate digital content with a goal to gain attention and build a large audience. Fundamentally, influencer marketing involves the collaboration between a brand and an influencer who will promote a product or a service of the brand on their social platforms.
In short, if you hire an influencer to promote your product, you are using influencer marketing.
If used the right way, influencer marketing can work wonderfully thanks to the level of trust that the influencers have gained from their audience.
The popularity of influencer marketing in Asia
In 2022, Asia topped in number of social network users globally with Eastern Asia ranking first (approximately 1,190 million users), followed by Southern Asia and Southeast Asia, according to Statista. This has boosted the widespread presence of social media influencer.
The number of micro-influencers from Asian countries is growing daily. This signifies that shoppers favor user-generated content, or content created by an individual and not a brand, over paid advertisements.
Asian consumers have unique wants and needs. They highly value authenticity and trust, which rely heavily on shared beliefs, cultures and backgrounds. Thus, they look out for real experiences and opinions from influencers that they feel connected to.
What to expect for the future
Though influencer marketing will not leave any time soon, it is certainly changing. Consumers are expecting to see more mindful, informative and practical messages in what are supposed to be entertaining and engaging. It will be interesting to see how future influencers will balance this two sides of a fast-moving content.
Additionally, it is forecasted that the platforms will introduce more guidelines and regulations with the growing interest in monitoring influencers across social media. Ethical and moral concerns will also be taken into consideration given the bad reputation of the past conduct of influencer marketing.
Nevertheless, it is a good time to upgrade and leverage your influencer marketing strategy or even launch one to capture the Asian market in 2022 and forward.
