SushiVid: The Size of Influencer Management in Malaysia

Background

his white paper is written in the perspective of the potential of Influencer Management in Malaysia and an estimation of how much social media influencers could make with this profession given that this new form of marketing strategy is rising greatly in the country.

We have divided the white paper into three sections, where we have touched based on:

Section 1: How much does an influencer make per campaign?

Section 2: Brands’ investments in Influencer Management in Malaysia

Section 3: SushiVid’s assumption on market growth rate with Covid-19

The Strategy

Introduction

any have been asking and may still be wondering, what is Influencer Management and how does being a social media influencer (especially a full time influencer) really make a living, particularly in Malaysia.

First of all, let us dissect the influencer management landscape in Malaysia.

The Rise of Influencer Management in Malaysia

n Malaysia, be it a primary school student or a grandmother who stays home looking after their grandchildren, almost everyone owns at least one social media account. The number of people reading newspapers, watching televisions or listening to the radio have decreased tremendously, thanks to the rise of social media.

The stark difference here, regardless of media, is really about a user’s contribution. Traditionally contents are one sided - fed to us consumers whether we like it or not, today we have an option to scroll, skip, comment and share contents we prefer. The interaction and ability to somewhat control our action on social media is what makes it so much more appealing.

With this rise of social media, comes opportunities for marketers to tap on. This is how Influencer Management, a new form of marketing strategy is introduced to the market. Using users to share about products that they like. Except these users have thousands of followers. Marketers no longer have to scratch their heads wondering where to advertise their products and services, as a company that has been running around chasing the next big wave, we can tell you the platforms your audiences are lingering on. Instagram, TikTok, and the rest is history - at least for Malaysia. Facebook is definitely trying to re-emerge itself with the recent integration with Instagram on the login process. We will see how that pans out.

With the new forms of engagement and interaction in today’s marketing scene, as well as the growing demand for Influencer Management, it has no doubt created a stage for social media influencers to shine. According to Marketing Dive, 82% of consumers are highly likely to follow the recommendations made by the influencers, before making the final buying decision.

How does an influencer get paid?

here are many ways where the influencers get paid based on the type of content they create. Taking SushiVid as an example, there are a few pricing models for the brands and influencers to choose from:

Section 1: How much does an influencer make per campaign?

ccording to Marketing-Interactive, with 80% of marketers investing heavily in Influencer Management, influencers have become the go-to-solution to overcome a growing list of advertising hurdles in the social media landscape of Malaysia.

However, how much will these influencers make out of these marketing budgets?

Based on the data SushiVid has gathered and analysed through the 1,400 campaigns we have managed in 2019, let us give you a simple analytic.

The number of influencers in Malaysia (by tier)

ushiVid has about 12,000 influencers on our database, whom we have worked with over the years. Out of these 12,000 influencers, about 8,400 of them are Malaysian influencers. Of course, not all influencers are on our platform. Just say we only have 50% of the influencers in Malaysia signed up on SushiVid, we would conclude that there are about 16,800 Malaysian influencers out there.

In the industry, we categorised these influencers based on the below tiering:

Based on the listing above, let’s give an estimation to the number of influencers in Malaysia.

Anyone can be an influencer as long as you own a social media account and is able to engage with your followers. We calculated Table 3 based on the percentage of influencers in each category in our database. Referring to the table above, we can see there are a lot of Nano influencers in the industry. Nano influencers are our everyday people that usually do not make a living out of content creation. Some of them are actually students that are trying to make some extra pocket money during their free time.

With the data above topped with data that we collected via our platform and analysis via social media channels, we made an estimation on the income for influencers based on their tierings.

Based on the calculations above, we can calculate for any given tier, the maximum they can make in a month and the minimum they would make in a month. With that we will be able to estimate the yearly earnings of influencers in Malaysia. See table below:

This is only an estimate calculation based on cost per post. If every tier influencer makes the minimum number of campaigns, we know that the industry is spending RM78.84 million a year and if the opposite is true, every influencer at their most active rate, can make up to RM459.6 million in a year. This is only for Instagram Picture Posts. We have not included the pricing for Instagram videos, Instagram stories etc.

Moving along to YouTube, one YouTube video from our renowned YouTubers can easily cost up to RM100,000 per video. With other ambassadorship or freelance jobs they are getting, each of them can easily make up to RM150,000 per month!

Let’s take a look at the table below on the YouTube video categories, and an estimation of how much each video will cost based on the categories. For the purpose of this exercise, we have intentionally excluded all professional publishers such as Cilisos and Says and ...etc.

Adding both Instagram and YouTube earnings together, and taking into consideration both ends of the continuum (highest and lowest earning influencers could obtain from Influencer Management using the Cost Per Sale model) we know that there should be at least RM99.78 million in influencer management expenditure this year.