Divya Premchand

I started to work at a very young age, around 17 at that time. My first job was a job at e-commerce makeup platform, and that's where I started to become familiar working with few influencers very briefly, and it kind of got bigger and bigger. Back then influencer marketing wasn't a separate department, everyone on the social media team was expected to handle influencer marketing as well. Jumping a bit forward, my thesis was about influencer marketing, and throughout my college days, I used a lot of influencer marketing campaigns as the samples. After I graduated, I landed my first full-time job is at InstaShop as an influencer marketer.

I think we actually get massive changes, back then influencer marketing was only a small part of social media marketing. Nowadays, it's a full-fledged department. It's a job and an industry in itself. We even have specialized platforms to just work with influencer marketing right now. 7 years ago, everyone with hundreds of followers can be influencer, but right now, not everyone can be deemed as influencer. You need to have these numbers and metrics, niche, reach, and many more.

I personally have two most memorable campaigns. First one is our Ramadan Campaign, where we organized an intimate dinner and invited only the top 20 influencers in the UAE. From what I understood, the closer the members of community are, the more likely the campaign would perform better. We wanted them to have a really intimate moments and dinner together, and even after the campaign has ended, I can see some of them still hang out together, and that made me happy. The other one, was our first Halloween Campaign where I remember creating these PR packages. They were still on a trial, so I didn't create much, only 20 of them, and sent them to 20 influencers. The packages eventually went viral and a lot of micro influencers are interested and wanted to buy those packages from us. It's amazing to see how it just blew up.

KPIs can differ from one campaign to another, but if I really have to choose, it would be awareness. I basically see influencer marketing as a billboard, as simple as that. People tend to forget the whole idea of influencer marketing, where they see only one side to it. Influencer marketing is very awareness-driven, if influencers are repeatedly mentioning a brand, raising awareness to it, then the sales would just follow after that. In term of choosing the influencers, first KPI would be engagement. I don't care how small you are, but if your engagement is big, that's great. Second comes followers, and lastly has to be the costs.

I used to do all of them on Excel. But while I love excel, I finally found a platform where I'm able to discover influencers based on their audiences, demographics, reaches, and many more. In term of discovery I also love TikTok Creator Marketplace. It helps me figure out top TikTokers in the UAE and each of region.

Definitely explaining to someone on what influencer marketing does. Not many people are aware of the benefits of influencer marketing and it's sometimes hard to explain to them. Another pain point is getting the content done without it looking ad-like. The moment a content is looking straight up like an ad, the views are going down. We need to integrate the brand into day-to-day life of the influencers and make it looks very seamless. But I can see a lot of creators are slowly getting there. Last one is competition. As an e-commerce app, we got a lot of competitors out there. Getting influencers and keeping them within exclusive contracts is very difficult.

I would say, a lot of money is going to be involved. I'm actually very shocked when I see the amount of money brands are putting into influencer marketing. More and more brands are pouring money into these influencers. However, I feel that influencer marketing in the coming years need to focus more on relatability. For example, if I have Beyoncé as an influencer for our app, no one would believe that she actually shops at InstaShop. If you're being relatable for certain period of time, grab the opportunity, grab the influencers, do the campaign, and move on. Influencers also "die" over years. Someone who's relatable now, will less likely be relatable for the next 3-4 years. If you see someone who's getting viral, work with them, get the contents done, and move ahead.