According to a report by ANI, India’s influencer marketing industry as of 2022 is quite big and poised to reach 2200 crore by 2025. Digital influencers as a possibility tap two aspects of human behavior. From the consumer’s side, one connects better with people “like us” than celebrities due to closer social distance with common people around the street. Social distance is one kind of psychological distance suggested by Nira Liberman, Yaacov Trope, and colleagues in Construal Level Theory (Psychological Review, 117 (2), 440–463) which impacts a lot of our decision making. From the content creator’s (influencer’s side), most brands and platforms provide monetary incentives, the possibility of building social capital (and the rewards of being famous), and even a career path towards a profession for some. Offcourse, all is not rosy – some might suffer psychologically due to the constant stress of being watched, social comparisons, etc., but nevertheless, the trend has caught up. This is especially important and going to stay in countries as a renewed avenue for income – with many people from kids to housewives to daily workers onboarding as an “artist” and claiming to be a freelancer to DM them for promotion putting their work/talent/quality up for brands. Multiple companies are doing market reports on this new direction that is catching up in India very well. (In China, some influencers have been charged with hefty fines from Income Tax departments for not disclosing their true income. This means it is growing bigger).
Here, I glean through Google TrendsTM for the search term ‘influencer’ with the region set as ‘India’ to find new perspectives. This is an interesting research approach that helps us understand digital behavior (here: the rise of digital influencers) by analyzing digital behavior (search interest in the same term). From Jan 2004 to November 2022, one can clearly see after about 2017, a steady rise in people searching for ‘influencer’ on google with peaks just after COVID-19 (May 2020), further fuelling growth in the search. I am assuming that search interest is a proxy for general interest and even expanding markets – which at least in this case seems reasonable. (As a side, peaks are seen in summers – May 2020, May 2021, and May 2022).
One interesting thing to note is the predominance of North East from where most searches originate (Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya), which might come as a surprize; along with Goa (quite expected?) and Uttarakhand. The government of Uttarakhand has recently invited applications for influencers in bids to promote Uttarakhand Tourism.
Next, I looked at related rising and top queries to figure out what aspects of influencer is most popular. A lot of people seemed grappling with what is going on – with the most popular related query being ‘influencer meaning’, followed by ‘influencer marketing’ – quite in sync with the growing influencer marketing space and spending by brands/businesses and even governments. This is followed by ‘Instagram influencer’, again in-line with the dominant position of Instagram in India’s influencer marketing arena and as a social media platform. Next followed ‘influencer in Hindi, and ‘influencer meaning hindi’ – both possibly suggesting the need in people to understand, interpret, and eagerness for more involvement. [I say possibly suggesting as interpretations from search trends are my own and ought to be that way as search interest is not causally related to why the search had taken place].
To further the story, I tried ‘influencer marketing as a topic. There were hardly any changes to the insights that have just been drawn before.
Next, I changed the time window to the COVID-19 times (May 2020-May 2021).
The top locations from which the search was originating had changed. Although there was some presence of the NorthEast, Goa and Uttarakhand continued in the list, and mainland Delhi and Island Andaman & Nicobar came to the forefront.
The relative volume of search as originated is as follows (05/01/2020 – 05/01/2021) Andaman and Nicobar Islands 100, Delhi 93, Goa 76, Uttarakhand 75, Meghalaya 74, Maharashtra 73, Haryana 73, Chandigarh 69, Puducherry 61, Chhattisgarh 60, Assam 60, Arunachal Pradesh 58, Gujarat 58, Jharkhand 56, Mizoram 56, Himachal Pradesh 54, Nagaland 51, Karnataka 51, Punjab 48, Uttar Pradesh 48, West Bengal 46, Kerala 45, Tamil Nadu 43, Rajasthan 42, Jammu & Kashmir 42, Madhya Pradesh 41, Telangana 38, Odisha 38, Andhra Pradesh 32, Manipur 32, Tripura 29, Bihar 25.
A look into top related search phrases, show the prevalence of a need to understand the meaning both in India and other vernacular languages (which again dovetails with the large market presence of vernacular in India social media space – with english being a minority and Hindi being a majority). I also looked at rising related search phrases to find the rising interests among Indians during the COVID times. Removing the keyword influencer helps one to zoom into the phrases better.
Instagram had secured a strong position. A lot of people were now looking for income revenue streams as I started out this article mentioning various other platforms beyond Instagram, like Youtube along with influencer marketing – showing a clear trend in the financial reward structures and motives pushing the industry.
I then looked at 2022 when we had returned somewhat to normalcy after the pandemic while the economy was coming back, did freelance search for income continue? What new things were becoming hot and where are we heading next? The search window was changed from Jan 2022 to Nov 2022.
The regions from which the search originated now had Delhi at the top, followed by Mizoram, Haryana, Maharashtra, and Uttarakhand. This showed a strong entry of mainland areas but a continued interest from the Northeast, Uttarakhand. This was the order in terms of search volume: Delhi 100 Mizoram 89 Haryana 87 Maharashtra 83 Uttarakhand 78 Arunachal Pradesh 74 Nagaland 70 Goa 69 Manipur 68 Assam 62 Karnataka 62 Chandigarh 61 Himachal Pradesh 57 Punjab 56 Gujarat 55 Jharkhand 51 Meghalaya 49 Madhya Pradesh 47 Uttar Pradesh 46 Jammu & Kashmir 46 Kerala 46 Rajasthan 46 West Bengal 45 Telangana 44 Chhattisgarh 44 Tamil Nadu 41 Odisha 40 Puducherry 35 Bihar 33 Tripura 32 Andhra Pradesh 29
In top related search phrases, apart from the earlier ones about meaning and influencer marketing, etc., new entrants were: how to become influencer, influencer marketing agency, influencer marketing meaning, social influencer meaning, meta influencer.
Some Top related search phrases in 2022 related to influencer
People were getting more serious, markets growing, the service industry and professionals developing, and agencies being fully invested – all key directions pointing to maturing of an area and further growth – slowly becoming an industry.
In relation to rising related search phrases, a new phenomenon was up for take – the rise of virtual influencers- also called meta influencers. Kyra as a meta influencer was already hot in search.
This is Kyra – a meta influencer on Instagram with 200000+ followers and a thriving YouTube channel. We are up for more as we progress towards the 2000+ crore economy.
The market in India had matured and is now changing towards aspiration. Here are some directions that seem important to me:
- We shall see a shift with AI-driven artificial influencers who would merge the psychology of real influencers with the more controlled operational dynamics of bots having a close resemblance to humans. The space will be seized by top brands more.
- There will be a pretty big space for micro-influencers as more people join in, there will be many more having followers to the tune of 100K followers. The key will be a match between the brand and the influencer. Many such influencers will be in the fashion domain which is quite flexible to get started with and has low upscale resource needs or knowledge needs. Brands will increasingly use such influencers because of some research shows the highest returns through micro-influencers.
- Keep looking out for hyper-local nano influencers through massive growth in local business and vernacular medium. They will drive authentic local content and spaces to reach them at national interest levels.
- Some people and virtual influencers in the macro category will change their psychology as they turn into celebrities (and will ask for hefty service charges).
- People from all tiers of towns and cities will keep getting on-boarded opening up freelanced work / income sources at deep corners of India – especially from rural or semi-urban spaces.