Growing a business requires precise planning and one should be able to deliver the message to the right audience. Over the years, online platforms have taken up this opportunity to introduce new brands to people, showing us another facet of marketing strategy. Choosing the person who would endorse the brand is imperative to the marketing campaign as it decided the reach of your product through these influencers.
Helping brands overcome this challenge is a group of enthusiasts who work with a community of influencers, giving the customer a wide arena to choose from and get the product introduced to the market. Here is a team of enthusiasts, headed by Tony John, revolutionizing the influencer marketing model with their venture BrandAware. In conversation with the team about their exciting journey with influencer marketing.
Could you tell us the story behind BrandAware India?
Our founder Tony John has been a blogger and influencer for nearly two decades. Over some time, his blogs evolved into large portals and business websites. With the emergence of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms, several new influencers tried to find and establish their place on the web. Tony felt the need to bring all influencers together to a shared community to support each other. At the same time, the image of the influencer community at large was suffering a setback due to the unprofessional approach of many new-gen influencers; brands were in a dilemma about which influencer can bring the best value for their business through social media influencer campaigns. And thus, BrandAware was conceptualized to standardize the influencer marketing model in India.
What are the products and services that your venture provides?
We provide services like Influencer Marketing, Public Relations, Brand Promotions, and 360-degree Digital Marketing. We connect brands with social media influencers like YouTubers, Celebrities, Instagrammers for promoting brands through their channels, mainly YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Several brands regularly hire popular influencers in India for brand promotions, which brings excellent results for them.
What, according to you, will be the effective marketing strategy for brands launched by individuals venturing out to the business for the first time?
Multiple barter basis promotions with micro-influencers would be the ideal strategy for startups to kick start their business. Once they start generating good sales, they can approach macro influencers for paid promotions. Choosing the right influencers, the right platform, etc., all play an essential role in receiving the desired reach or boosting the existing space of the brand or product.
What are the possible ways in which the influencers can endorse a product without over-emphasizing the importance through their online presence?
A typically dedicated video promotion could result in low reach and poor results due to algorithm work. All social media platforms give more space to the videos based on the engagement it receives. Generally, dedicated promotional videos receive low concentration and thus could result in overall low performance of the video. But suppose a brand mention or product mention is contextually integrated with the video, in that case, it will be accepted by the audience just like any other video content created by the influencer. Also, such brand mentions will not be perceived by the audience as advertisements. This is the best way to register the brand or product name in the minds of people.
Could you tell us more about the influencers you have worked with so far and are currently working with? How do you get in touch with them?
We are working with a few macro and micro-level influencers who are pretty popular on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Apart from this, we are associated with 100+ influencers in Kerala and have listed them on our online platform. We majorly get in touch with them through emails and personal contacts, after that we ensure that we maintain a close bond with all of them.
Could you brief us about a few success stories from your venture?
One of our recent success stories is for the HOPE Child Cancer Care Foundation. We organized influencer-based marketing to promote their contest for children to support the Cancer affected children. This was a huge success, and we received over a thousand video entries to the competition. This was an overwhelming response we received for a charity program with the support of social media influencers. We have plenty of other success stories through influencer marketing in Kerala.
What are some of the challenges you faced while setting this up?
While brands were happy to be associated with us and take advantage of influencer associations, the biggest challenge was to convince the influencers regarding the benefits of being part of such a platform. Many influencers feel that they can do a better job by being alone. However, we successfully convinced—many of them regarding the benefits of uniting under a common platform. BrandAware is currently the most effective influencer marketing platform in Kerala, with over a hundred influencers lined up under our platform, regularly taking up campaigns through the BrandAware platform.
Could you tell us about the team behind BrandAware India? How did you meet each other?
BrandAware is supported by the same team which runs SpiderWorks Technologies, a digital marketing platform in Kerala, since 2005. With 15+ years of expertise in the field, supported by 30+ team members, SpiderWorks is the backbone of BrandAware. Tony John, the founder of BrandAware, has been into digital marketing for more than two decades, with his primary career background coming from working with global companies in countries like the USA, Japan, Korea, and India.
What are your plans for the company? Where do you see yourself in five years?
We have plans to expand our wings beyond Kerala. We aspire to connect with influencers and brands from all major cities in India, thereby emerging as a pan India influencer marketing agency.
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