This week, we dive deep into an exciting conversation with the minds behind fluencr – a groundbreaking platform for businesses and influencers.
How did the idea for fluencr evolve from scratch?
The idea actually came from personal experience. We, as a team, collectively experienced problems in the influencer marketing and content creator space, firsthand, during our time at companies like Daraz, Koko, Cinnamon Hotels, and Dialog. We saw that there were quite a few inefficiencies in the space and nobody was taking the time and effort to actually fix them.
In 2023, the influencer and content creator market was estimated at a record $ 21.1 billion and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 33% from 2023 to 2030, so the global market is not slowing down anytime soon. There’s plenty of untapped potential in the Sri Lankan market and we felt that if we, as a nation, were to move forward in this space and align with the upward trajectory that other markets are following globally, we needed to change things.
How does fluencr address the pain points faced by both businesses and influencers in the Sri Lankan market?
The best apps predominantly fix inefficiencies in three key areas: time, effort, and money. Think of PickMe and Kapruka for example. They serve as a digital middleman between two parties – a buyer and a service provider – and solve each of these inefficiencies, if not more.
Before the existence of these entities, much of the interaction between a buyer and service provider was manual. It required extensive time and effort and was thereby costly. You would have to walk to the top of your lane to find a tuk tuk, stand in the heat and wait for one to stop by, negotiate the fare before getting in, and then find the cash to pay the driver once you’ve reached your destination.
The same can be said about influencer and content creator collaboration practices in Sri Lanka.
From a business or agency perspective, finding influencers, viewing their insights and rates, reaching out to them, coordinating with them, making payments, and measuring the performance of their content has always been a manual process. To add to that, much of the decision-making in this space has been driven by ambiguity rather than data, largely due to the absence of the right tools and resources to help make data-driven decisions. As a result, many unwanted biases have surfaced in the industry.
For example, you’ll see that most businesses in Sri Lanka are biased toward working with influencers that other businesses work with. This is primarily because of what they see on a surface level. Businesses aren’t really sure of whether the influencers they’re working with are tapping into their target audience. Most businesses are also unsure of how to measure the success of their campaigns and whether their campaigns have been successful or not.
From an influencer perspective, finding work, communicating and coordinating with businesses/agencies, sharing rates and insights, receiving payments on time, and sharing content performance data have been challenging.
Most influencers and content creators have to wait months to receive their payments, largely due to the internal finance processes of the companies that they’ve collaborated with. You’ll also see that these inefficiencies have indirectly led to many other problems within the industry. Young and budding content creators, for example, find it extremely difficult to break into the scene due to entry barriers that have been created as a result of these inefficiencies.
Fluencr solves each of these problems and more by digitising the entire collaboration process between a business/agency and an influencer.
Can you walk us through the user experience for businesses and influencers on fluencr, from sign-up to campaign completion?
It’s fairly straightforward. For businesses, you simply create an account, verify your company, and then you can search for influencers who match your campaign objective and criteria. You can then make a well-informed decision on which influencers to collaborate with by viewing their audience data and rates.
Once you’ve shortlisted, you’ll be prompted to create a campaign, add in a brief with timelines, and choose which assets you want the influencer to work on – posts, stories, reels, etc.
This is similar to an e-commerce checkout page and through our partnership with Seylan Bank, the total campaign amount is then held from your card until the campaign is over. Upon payment, the influencers you’ve selected will receive a request to collaborate.
You’ll then enter a workspace where you can chat with the influencers and review the content. Once the content has been published, the actual charges are debited from your card and refunds are released. You can then view and measure the performance of your campaign in real time.
For influencers, the first step is to create an account and authenticate your social media accounts on our platform. This allows us to pull all your social media insights via the official social media APIs. If you’re a fit, you’ll receive collaboration requests from businesses/agencies that want to work with you.
You can then choose to approve or decline these requests based on the requirement, brief, timeline, and your schedule. Assuming you approve a request, you’ll be taken into a workspace where you can chat with the business/agency. Once the content is approved and published, you’ll receive your payments instantly.
How has the reception been so far?
Incredible! We ran an early access exercise as part of validating the concept. Signing up for early access meant that you’d be able to explore the platform before we launch it to the public. In two weeks, we had 100 entries and we closed it up. After this, we had an additional 200 entries from those who were still interested in early access even though it was closed.
This goes to show that there’s a real need and interest for such a product in the market. Furthermore, we’ve strategically used the fundamentals of community building to bring all of these individuals and entities together into a WhatsApp community where we interact with each other frequently, as we gear up for launch.
We’ve also had the privilege of receiving feedback and insight through fruitful discussions with industry experts, most notably Amitha (APIDM), Bart (Daraz), Mustafa (Roar), Sanjini (ADA), and Sanuth (VA Distilleries), to name a few. We’ve also received incredible support from several entities, most notably Seylan Bank and Dialog.
There’s also been interest from a few venture capitalists who are keeping a close eye on how we navigate and carry ourselves. Talk of a merger/acquisition has also been around. Despite all this, we remain very much focused on what we want to accomplish as a group of young like-minded individuals.
When are you launching fluencr and what’s next on the roadmap after launching?
Q1 of 2024 is when we plan on launching. Our mobile app for influencers is the next on the roadmap, with integration of AI capabilities along with the ability to measure direct conversions and authenticity of an influencer’s followers.
We’ll very soon be looking into scaling outside of Sri Lanka, with the backing of the right people.
How does fluencr sustain itself while remaining free for both influencers and businesses?
Although our platform is built digitally, our revenue model is built on the human aspect. Should a business/agency require a resource from our end to help out with content strategy or campaign management, we assign them a fluencr specialist – a dedicated human resource. For this, we charge 12% of the total campaign cost.
How does fluencr tackle the challenge of incorporating diverse statistics, especially in the context of the limited availability of such data in Sri Lanka?
Our Chief Technology Officer Anuradha Wickramasinghe and his team have done an incredible job in integrating the official Meta, TikTok, and YouTube APIs into the fluencr platform. This allows businesses to view influencer insights in real time including impressions, reach, engagement rate, follower gender, follower age, follower locations (country, city), and follower authenticity (coming soon).
This also means that influencers don’t need to input any of this data manually.
The limited availability of data in Sri Lanka with regard to the influencer and content creator space has been a significant challenge. However, with the launch of fluencr, we hope to be the driving force behind bringing accessibility to this data that’s much needed in the industry.
How does fluencr transform influencer marketing decision-making from random choices to informed decisions through data?
The possibilities are endless, but let’s explore a few.
- With fluencr, all the insights you see are displayed in real time. Companies can make informed decisions based on the most up-to-date data available and this immediacy allows for agile and responsive campaign adjustments.
- This data also helps in identifying which influencers are driving the most impact, allowing businesses to allocate resources effectively and maximise their return on investment.
- Follower demographics including gender, age, and location are crucial insights for businesses to tailor their marketing strategies. Our platform’s ability to provide detailed information about an influencer’s audience allows businesses to choose influencers whose followers align with their target demographic.
- This information is also valuable for companies looking to expand their reach in specific regions or target local markets, helping them tailor their campaigns to suit the preferences and interests of different geographic audiences.
- The upcoming feature on follower authenticity is a testament to our commitment to providing transparent and reliable data, ensuring the credibility of influencers and campaigns.
How did you manage to bootstrap thus far?
We’ve put our own savings into fluencr. We’re extremely stringent in terms of how we spend the capital we’ve invested into the company. We consider ourselves problem solvers and we challenge ourselves in finding cost-effective ways to get things done, which has helped us come this far.
What is the driving factor of the fluencr team?
Persistence. As a bootstrapped business, we’ve been thrown many different challenges across the board. We’ve overcome each of them by being persistent and staying committed to what we want to achieve.