The Influencer Marketing Demands & Trends For 2021 In Malaysia

Hi SushiVidFam,

We’re back with another mind-blowing blog to enhance your digital marketing game. Make sure to buckle down for today’s blog. You might have seen a lot of brands doing influencer marketing in Malaysia, especially during the MCO period. Brands ranging from small medium enterprises to established brands such as LAZADA and Watsons.

One of the main reasons brands wanted to venture into influencer marketing is to maintain relatability with the audience. Over time, brands began to realise influencer marketing had a positive impact on their promotions and sales. More and more brands began to hop on board with influencer marketing as one of their ongoing yearly marketing strategies.

As one of the pioneers in the influencer marketing industry and has been named as ASEAN's Leading Influencer Marketing Company, we have something to share about The Influencer Marketing Demands & Trends For 2021 In Malaysia.

1. Performance Driven Influencers

During a sharing session with AccessTrade.Global, Yuhwen Foong, our Founder & CEO has emphasised that in the upcoming year, influencer marketing will shift to be more performance-driven.

In the premature stage of influencer marketing, brands tend to be more inclined to the number of followers an influencer has instead of their engagement rate. After the pandemic situation, brands have increasingly shifted to digital and affiliate marketing. In conjunction with this, brands are becoming more performance-driven with their influencer marketing campaigns to achieve their sales target.

Brands are more aware that there is a difference between influencers that are loved by the public and the ones who have the impact to endorse their products and generate sales.

2. The Number of Followers Will Not Matter Much

Supporting our statement above as brands will be more performance-driven, the number of followers an influencer has will not matter as much. What matters will be the number of clicks the influencers have driven to your website.

We predict there will be two major impacts on this chapter in influencer marketing. Firstly, once the public understands that brands are not seeking for the number of followers but the level of engagements, more and more people with the drive for sales (a simple example would be local ambassadors or agents for a local product or insurance) will have a higher demand.

Some brand ambassadors (or agents) have successfully endorsed a product and built their followers based at the same time. What's even more impressive is the audience they have gathered while endorsing the brand is strictly their customer pool. We believe brands will gravitate towards these influencers because of their high insights and engagement.

In the Malay community, it's even common for these brand ambassadors to flaunt the commission they have made from the product which can go as high as 5 digits. This will push influencers to up their game.

Influencers with the Swipe Up feature (above 10,000 followers) will also get higher demands. This pandemic crisis has encouraged audiences to seek shelter at home and shop online. To know more about how you can optimise your influencer marketing Swipe Up Link and Link In Bio, read more about it HERE.

3. Cost-Per-Share & Cost-Per-Sale

Cost-Per-Post is the default of influencer marketing. As influencer marketing matures, brands and SMEs have found a more affordable method which is Cost-Per-Share. Influencers will only have to share their content on their social media platform. In the Cost-Per-Share method, brands can be tagged as the partnership for the post. The price can go as low as RM20 for influencers with over 5,000 reach. SushiVid’s partner GoShareLah offers brands a pool of qualified influencers to share your content on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for as low as RM10.

Meanwhile, brands that are more inclined to performance-driven influencer marketing will gravitate towards Cost-Per-Sale. Cost-Per-Sale is a new structure of influencer marketing where influencers are paid per-commission depending on the sales they have made based on their postings. A few brands have run campaigns the Cost-Per-Share method with SushiVid and it has proven to generate sales.

4. Influencer Career Path

Ultimately, the performance-driven nature of 2021 will create more competitive yet professional recruitments for influencers. Brands will seek influencers with a relatable audience that correlates with their brand. It's common for viewers to refer to different influencers for different specialties such as makeup, OOTDs, and recipes. Thus, brands will become more particular about the influencers they endorse and influencers will also be invigorated to build their identity.

Besides, these last months of 2020 have shown us there will be a lot more influencer communities in 2021. During the Vine days, we were able to see a group of influencers that created content together. Unfortunately, because social media was ever-changing at the time, these influencers did not get to experience the new wave of influencer community. Influencers are coming together to promote each other’s contents. More and more siblings are also rising as a group of influencers together. Growing and supporting each by posting content together and about each other. Kind of like Keeping Up with the Kardashians but the Influencer edition.

5. More Authentic Content

Mobilemarketer.com is saying “The coronavirus pandemic escalated the "TikTok-ification" of social platforms and paving the way for brands to consider influencers as critical to strategy rather than extensions of existing campaigns.”

We are not saying TikTok will overthrow Instagram in the Asian influencer marketing market but we encourage brands to start thinking of TikTok content on top of your Instagram campaigns. A few brands that have been made popular on TikTok include The Ordinary skincare and even Dalgona Coffee. These campaigns became a phenomenon.

In a study in 2019, 86% of consumers say that authenticity is an important factor in their purchase. This brings us to the next influencer marketing trend, which is live stream. According to Talkinginfluence.com, live stream will reign supreme for influencer marketing. Viewers are more engrossed with authentic and unplanned content. Live stream influencer marketing will also contribute to a specialty division in the influencer community.

If you’re new to live stream influencer marketing, contact our influencer marketing expert at [email protected] to know more about it or read more on What’s Good to be Promoted via Live Stream HERE.

6. Long Term Influencers Endorsement

As the performance-driven Cost-Per-Sale method takes over, brands will be in search of long-term influencers to endorse. More and more brands open to collaborating with influencers for a duration of a few months. Influencers will be given a basic payment for a standardised number of deliverables and on top of that commissions for every sale made. A lot of successful international brands such as ASOS and Daniel Wellington have made a fortune by endorsing long-term influencers. Talk to us about starting your long-term influencer marketing campaign today at [email protected].