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SMEs turn to social media influencers for business boost
More than half of online purchases start with a phenomenon known as “discovery commerce”, where idle browsers happen upon and decide to purchase goods.
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A social media influencer at work. (Shutterstock/paulaphoto)
S
mall businesses in Indonesia are increasingly counting on digital influencers to market goods and services to the country’s large social media audiences.
These influencers tend to have major followings and the power to affect the purchasing decisions of others because of their popularity, reputation or expertise.
Devina Sarita, a distributor for a small beverage company called Healthy Cendol 18, has been using endorsements from influencers as her go-to marketing strategy since she started her business a month before the pandemic hit. She generally asks influencers to try her product and post reviews using the Instagram Story feature.
“I also used Instagram ads briefly before focusing on marketing my product through influencers and celebrities. I think in terms of views, using influencers is the most effective,” she told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Devina said, many influencers offered to promote small and medium enterprise (SME) products for free. But since November she had been paying for influencer marketing services, which ranged from Rp 3 million (US$212) to Rp 15 million.
Indonesian small businesses, which account for more than 60 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and employ a majority of the labor force, have been hit hard by the COVID-19 outbreak, as the economy shrank by 2.07 percent in 2020.
Indonesia’s 196 million internet users mostly use the internet for social media, education and online shopping, according to the latest annual survey by the Indonesian Internet Providers Association (APJII).
