Why Influencer Marketing In APAC Just Works

Author, Team GOAT

Social media marketing and in particular influencer marketing has been on the steady rise across APAC for the past couple of years, now in 2019 micro influencer campaigns are quickly becoming a staple ingredient for most marketing strategies.

The engagement rates of these micro influencers attracts brands, whilst regional relevance ensures that niche authentic content is presented directly to key audiences and demographics.

Across APAC companies are waking up to influencer marketing and looking for best of breed assistance with how to set up, manage and drive real value for their brands, in step the Goat Agency and our global, yet local, expertise. Influencer marketing is fast proving itself as one of the most cost effective customer acquisition channels today, especially when engaging with micro-influencers.

The reasons this is driving particular value in APAC are as follows:

Incredibly High Mobile Penetration

It goes without saying that the APAC region is extremely saturated with regards to mobile technology.

Smartphone adoption here is some of the highest in the world.

This in turn means that the number of active social media users in East and Southeast Asia particularly, are incredibly high, four times bigger than in North America.

This makes the region number one in the world with over 1.5 Billion active users.

Furthermore consumer behaviour means that most consumers today leverage reviews and posts published on social channels as part of their buying cycle, the perfect grounds for influencer marketing and content to create and drive demand.

Customisable and Niche Messaging

The APAC region is made up of several smaller markets, each very independent and allowing influencers the ability to create personal, intimate relationships with their followers.

Influencers in the region, particularly micro influencers, have mastered this art and are now driving extremely high engagement rates with their followers.

What are the different types of influencer available for brands today?

There are a number of categories that are particularly prominent in the region, we’ve listed some of the more popular ones below:

Beauty and Cosmetics

In APAC, it’s not only girls who are owning the beauty scene! Both boys and girls are writing reviews and promoting products across the entire region, furthermore as a region there are a number of key local beauty trends such as Korean beauty that are adopted far and wide.

Whilst the top heavy weight influencers in this category often charge high prices for collaboration there is a legion of smaller aspiring influencer, and often this band of social nomads can promote your brand or product for a much more modest commercial agreement and with much greater engagement.

Fitness and Health

It doesn’t matter if you are looking to promote a protein share, slimming tea or equipment to help sculpt the perfect body, APAC has an abundance of fitness freaks looking to help work with brands and promote their products or services to a highly engaged and niche collective of consumers.

Gaming

“Singaporeans spent more time watching gaming content online each week than watching traditional sports on television”, The Drum, 2019

It is probably of no surprise that the gaming sector is huge within the APAC region, whether it be mobile games, console based or even the ever growing and popular eSports. Because of this there is a legion of gaming related influencers spanning every corner of the region, all with a die-hard following of their own fans, captivated by their every play!

Travel and Lifestyle

Lifestyle and travel influencers cover pretty much everything from backpacking and island hoping to wide and varied hobbies, including veganism, entrepreneurship, and even very niche things like pet grooming and origami.

The beauty about working with this category of influencers is the ability to identify those that will have a real affinity with your brand and therefore ensure that their content is not only authentic, but driving real tangible results.

Another huge benefit to brands in APAC is that as countries have their own language this means the vast majority of influencers have a super high country demographic, meaning if you are wanting to target a specific region you can almost guarantee you are hitting over 70% from that country, therefore increasing your chance of further customer journeys such as sales/ downloads.

In English speaking countries, country demos tend to be much lower as they have followers from all around the world.

It’s fair to say that across the region, the trend of using influencers is booming, leaving brands with multiple choices, who do they work with? how do they engage with influencers? how do they measure the success of activity? One thing is for sure, brands can make excellent use of influencers but need to ensure that they handpick those that drive real actionable results and value!

Goat is an influencer-first marketing agency, with global offices in London, New York, Singapore and Monaco. Founded in August 2015, Goat has been built on an ethos of creating influencer marketing campaigns that deliver guaranteed results. As an influencer marketing agency Goat is the bridge between brands and influencers connecting them in the most efficient and reliable way. Goat have won various awards including The Drum Social Buzz Agency of the Year 2018 and this year they were the Highly Commended Agency of the Year at the BT Sport Industry Awards. Visit Goat’s website for more info.