Working with influencers to promote a product or service is not a new game in Thailand. The swift and fast-growing prominence of social media in the last ten years essentially gave this south-eastern Asian country a new meaning to the concept of influencer marketing and how the whole thing is conducted. A study sponsored by Twitter and Annalect discovered that users report a fivefold increase in brand affinity and purchase intent when they view promotional content by influencers.
With that said, here are a few reasons why brands and marketers active in the Thai market alike must endeavor to create a greater degree of authenticity when using influencers to communicate their product.
There Are Risks for Both Parties
Influencer marketing is essentially a partnership between the brand and a well- known member of a specific community present on social media. Brands and influencers need to know that their partnerships can have good or bad consequences when the word gets out to their followers. A well-managed campaign can translate to a win-win for both parties while running a flawed one can be of immense loss for both. Both partiesʼ reputations are at risk here.
While it is tough to predict undesirable outcomes, there are resources out there that you can use to find the perfect influencers for your marketing campaigns in Thailand. For instance, at Influencer House, we base our influencer selection processes on technology – namely Augmented Intelligence and Machine Learning. This helps us analyze and determine top-performing influencers in Thailand who are perfect for your niche market.
Our tools weigh influencersʼ engagement, profile, and examine their content history and intangibles like the mood and tone produced from their content and whether their message resonates with their audience. The data we have available coupled with technological tools allows us to pinpoint the best influencer for your niche industry, see whether their message aligns with your brand, and measure their impact and influence.
Influencers Amplify Your Content. Not Vice-Versa.
Influencers are an important extension of your communication strategy. Meaning that, whether youʼre an FMCG firm, e-commerce website, B2B service provider, or an SME, engaging influencers will require you to slightly alter your content marketing strategy.
Influencer marketing injects the “human touch” element that is lacking in a tool-based digital marketing approach. The majority of brandʼs products and services can be amplified immensely when the human factor is added to create a sense of trust and credibility.
Having said this, technological tools allow you to do this right and successfully engage your influencers, particularly if it involves more than a handful of them! Should you do it alone, youʼd need to coordinate with influencers and their staff, make sure that youʼre all on the same page in terms of concept, strategy, production, and implementation.
There is More
Since youʼll likely be working with their managers, youʼd need to invest a lot of energy to sync your expectations and requirements with theirs and remain synced throughout the campaign. The more influencers you want to include in your campaign, the greater the challenge of managing them all.
This calls for the need to use professionals like Influencer House who have data-driven systems and tools in place to ensure nothing is left to chance. Influencer House has a database of top-performing influencers who deliver in terms of performance and campaign execution in Thailand and other ASEAN countries. We operate transparently and you get to see the whole campaign process coming together in real-time.
Using influencers injects a human face to your branded content. However, creating a high level of authenticity requires that all parties are in sync throughout the campaign. Since everything is interconnected, one campaign blunder can prove fatal for everyone.
Create Trust by Influencer Marketing
The objective of influencer marketing is to promote your brand to your new target audience. Therefore, itʼs good to know that reach and trust are the two unique differentiators between sales and influencer marketing. The larger the reach, the more trust is at risk. Consumers have grown to become cautious and doubtful to traditional forms of branding. A recent study conducted confirmed these attitudes by discovering that only 22% of consumers in Thailand trust brands.
However, consumers are eager to trust and buy into what influencers have to say. Statistics have shown that over 50% of millennials and younger consumers in Thailand depend on influencersʼ reviews and suggestions when browsing for product recommendations.
Ultimately, authenticity is the quality that influencers need to influence the masses. Meaning that authenticity should be the core priority for brands looking to use influencers to create a meaningful impact on their product and brand.