The definition of marketing has changed in the generation of GenZ and millennials, with brands now focussing on bloggers, Instagrammers, and YouTubers.
Influencer marketing, which involves using metrics to gauge and increase brand recognition on the new age channels, has become the most preferred tactic for companies to connect with their target audience. The segment is growing rapidly and is evolving to get smarter and measurable.
According to MarketsAndMarkets, the global influencer marketing platform market was worth $6.0 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow to $24.1 billion by 2025, at a 32.0 percent CAGR.
Here are some platforms that help brands and influencers get more value for their investment.
Barcode Entertainment
Founded in 2018 by Rahul Khanna, Mumbai-based technology-driven influencer marketing agency , says it brings together data-led performance, expert creative strategy, real human relationships, authentic engaging content, and paid media targeting.
“The creator economy is expanding rapidly as more and more people have turned to content creation as a secondary or primary source of income. India has more than 20 lakh content creators and they are growing exponentially. We want to support this new creative class by connecting them to the world’s enterprise consumer brands, allowing them to turn their passion into a possibility to earn a living,” said Barcode Entertainment Co-Founder Rahul.
The startup aims to make the space much more accountable by making it easier for brands to collaborate with the creator economy.
MAD Influence
Mad Influence team
Founded in 2018 by Gautam Madhavan, Noida-based influencer marketing platform brings talent, influencers, content creators, and brands under one roof to collaborate.
The startup provides bands with solutions to market their services and products through influencers. It claims to have worked with names such as Dharma Production, ALTBalaji, TikTok, Hotstar, HCL, Alibaba.com, T-Series, Pen, Vivo, and Sony Music, among others.
“We have on boarded over 8,000 content creators across India from multiple networks, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, etc. We provide real-time analytics for all the promotions that we do with each of our influencers with our integrated artificial intelligence tool built into our platform. This enables brands to access and choose between thousands of influencers with just one click,” Mad Influencer Co-Founder Gautam said.
It charges commission from the influencers on every deal they get, and also charges the client a premium for the services rendered.
Winkl
The team at Winkl, which is community-led, unlike other influencer platforms.
Founded by Rahul Singh and Nikhil Kumar, Bengaluru-based influencer marketing platform helps influencers create detailed, received feedback, showcase their work, and make money via brand collaborations.
The startup also helps brands run influencer marketing campaigns at scale in a manner that is as easy as running a Facebook ad. It claims to automate 90 percent of the process and ensures that manual work is completed without the need for human intervention.
Winkl makes money by charging brands a commission of 2 to 5 percent of the brand’s total campaign spending.
Winkl Co-Founder Rahul said, “Winkl was born out of the problems we faced while working on one of our earlier projects. We had a tough time with influencer marketing as we had no clue who to work with, how much to pay and what kind of content would work for us. From this need, we came up with the idea.”
Pulpkey
Started by Amit Mondal in 2017, Bengaluru-based influencer marketing platform Plupkey helps brands identify the perfect creator for their services or products and provides cost-effective and authentic services for modern advertising strategies.
The startup aims to give brands “a human voice through collaboration with internet influencers” to “leverage their creativity and social intelligence.” It uses data mining, creativity, technology, content creators’ collaboration habits, human input, and quality check-in to match a brand with the right set of influencers and creators.
Pulpkey says it works with brands such as Kingfisher, Amazon, Oppo, HotStar, Zara, Taco Bell, Rebel Foods, CureFit, Happn, Pocket Aces, Beardo, Goderej, Times of India, Paypal, among others.
“Our in-house technology solutions, powered by AI and machine learning, provide in-depth analysis for your audience. Technology ensures minimum human support, so our campaign turnaround time is reduced. Our team takes care of everything: planning and strategy, creative direction, influencer management, overseeing content creation and live analytics/reporting,” Pulpkey Founder Amit said.
PickMyAd
L-R – Aruljothi Kuppusamy, Prabu Dass, Sivakumar Selvaraj and Arun Pious
Started by Prabu Dass, Aruljothi, and Sivakuamr S, Chennai-based influencer marketing platform allows brands to book influencers for collaborations and promotions.
The startup focuses on YouTube, with plans to add Instagram in the near future. It allows influencers and brands to register themselves on the platform.
PickMyAd charges 10 percent commission from brands and 20 percent from influencers. It works with 37 brands from Tamil Nadu, such as IppoPay, Giottus, Podhini Diary, Jingle Bid, among others.
“We noticed the changes and trends in influencer marketing. At the same time, there was an increase in scam complaints from brands of being cheated by influencers and vice versa. We are trying to remove the hurdle for influencers where they are bombarded with requests,” explained PickMyAd Co-Founder Prabu.
