TIRUCHY: With businesses across the food, textiles and crackers segments increasingly turning to Instagram promotions to attract festive shoppers, local micro-influencers are seeing a surge in advertising enquiries, even as growing competition, declining advertisement rates and a shortage of skilled professionals for production put pressure on the business.
Gokul Doss Ravi, founder of Instagram page I Love Trichy, said micro-level influencer marketing began flourishing after the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021 and witnessed a major boom in 2023-24, when demand was high and competition relatively limited.
“The market has changed considerably since then, with several people entering the field. To produce a good advertising reel with quality content, we would ideally need around Rs 25,000. However, due to the growing competition, we are forced to bring down the price to Rs 10,000-Rs 15,000. While we have regular clients who advertise throughout the year, we cannot frequently increase rates for them. During festive seasons, we therefore have to focus on bringing in new clients,” he said.
Ravi added that assembling a reliable production team had become another major challenge, as finding experienced cameramen, video editors and voice-over artists was increasingly difficult amid growing demand for their services.
The Deepavali rush is evident for V Sivasakthi, founder of Trichy Heart City. “Team availability is a major concern. Voice-over artists, in particular, are essential for advertisements, and AI-generated voices are not yet an effective substitute for the human connect required in local promotions,” he said. Advertising rates vary depending on the page’s reach and the nature of the assignment, with a single advertisement fetching up to Rs 15,000, while regular clients are charged around Rs 4,000.
The influencer ecosystem in Tiruchy has expanded considerably over the past five years. From around 10 prominent influencers earlier, the city now has nearly 30-40 established players and more than 100 nano-influencers with fewer than 10,000 followers, Sivasakthi added.
Suresh Kumar, founder of Trichy Smart City, said the expansion had brought even small businesses into the digital advertising market, particularly during festivals. “With the mushrooming of nano-influencers, business owners increasingly prefer distributing their advertising budgets among two or three smaller pages instead of spending the entire amount on a single prominent page. Some businesses also promote their products through their own social media accounts, alongside traditional advertising,” he said.
Meanwhile, established businesses are increasing their digital advertising budgets without abandoning conventional media.
G Ashwin, managing director of Ashwin Sweets, said the company was raising its investment in influencer marketing every year as consumers increasingly relied on mobile phones. “Although we have not moved away from traditional advertising, we are investing more in influencer marketing to reach consumers on the platforms they use regularly,” he said.
N Anand, a proprietor of an advertising agency, said influencer marketing was no longer perceived as a major threat to conventional advertising, as newspapers and radio continued to retain their clientele. “Influencers have taken away a share of the traditional advertising market, but they have not replaced it. Our client base has continued to grow, and we also use local social media pages to promote businesses,” he said.
