Influencer marketing platform DRIM helping brands boost their campaign

US-based influencer marketing platform DRIM Global connects brands with social media influencers to generate sales, attract customers and increase brand awareness. Within one year of its foundation, the platform scaled the its growth and onboarded large brands like Domino’s Pizza, Swiggy, Zepto, Amazon, Sugar Cosmetics and more, all this while supporting the growth of over 70,000 social media influencers. Explaining how she got the idea to start influencer marketing platform, Yulia Aslamova, Head (Asia), DRIM Global, in an interview with Bizz Buzz, says, “In 2019, upon organizing one of the biggest Indian digital marketing conferences for 2000 professionals and 50 international experts, I came to the realization that recommendation is a key driving force for sales in the country. And if this recommendation comes from a subject matter expert- it’s even better! India ran on communities and recommendations, and at that moment I had my Eureka moment.”

With what mission and objectives, the company was set up? In short, tell us about your journey since the inception of the company?

DRIM disrupts the industry and brings transparency. Brands have to simply identify their desired goal, may it be, sales, leads or clicks. DRIM team work with influencers to ensure the results come in and the brands pay only for the achieved results.

In 2019, upon organizing one of the biggest Indian digital marketing conferences for 2000 professionals and 50 international experts, I came to the realization that recommendation is a key driving force for sales in the country. And if this recommendation comes from a subject matter expert- it’s even better! India ran on communities and recommendations, and at that moment I had my Eureka moment.

I found investors, as well as a friend who owned the technology stack - an accumulated powerful ML algorithm that optimizes to match the brands with the perfect blogger/influencer who will deliver results. Kirill Pyzhov, the co-founder at DRIM, was looking to expand to Asia and I was looking for a performance influencer marketing platform and technology. It was a match!

Within one year we scaled the company’s growth and onboarded large brands like Domino’s Pizza, Swiggy, Zepto, Amazon, Sugar Cosmetics and more, all this while supporting the growth of over 70,000 social media influencers.

In short, we successfully created a new performance marketing channel for known brands and managed to solve one of the biggest industry questions- how to measure the ROI and impact of social media influencers on a business’s growth. We provide opportunities to nano and micro-influencers to work with large brands and generate income. We are teaching bloggers how they can create viral content and monetise it. And something that’s very close to my heart is that DRIM offers a great WFH job for hundreds of amazing ladies in India.

How do you see the future of the influencer marketing industry?

The world is heading towards another economic recession. We anticipate the advertising industry will face a challenging time. Every crisis is the right time for innovation. Influencer marketing traditionally delivers only brand awareness and visibility. Many brands are not willing to pay high prices for qualitative results that are also uncertain. The industry sees a decrease in bloggers payout by 25 per cent within one year. Brands increasingly seek the direct business impact of any marketing channel they spend on.

We offer a transparent solution and propose brands pay only for the result they get via bloggers/influencers. We believe the industry would collectively grow when brands and influencers are both able to justify their investment and efforts respectively. DRIM, a full-stack platform combines smart segmentation, look-a-like and ML to deliver the desired results at scale along with a project management tool kit.

If you would ask marketers in 2017, what is the next big thing? The most probable answer would be programmatic ads and traffic optimization. If you would ask the same question in 2022, the answer would be, performance influencer marketing.

What do you think is the impact of AI on the effectiveness of influencer marketing?

The benefit of AI is its cognitive capabilities to process massive amounts of data and provide insights that reduce the impact of human bias. AI can learn from data and help us surface the best possible results.

From a discovery and execution perspective, AI can help automate this process. For example, rather than manually reviewing and searching for influencers, companies can use AI to surface not only the best person for the brand, but also assess their content and performance to ensure it aligns with the brand.

From a verification, optimization, and measurement perspective, AI can provide near real-time insights into a campaign. With AI, we can create a transcription in near real-time to extract performance analytics. This includes the duration of the content, how many times the product name was mentioned, when and where they mentioned the product name, and if they read the call to action.

Without the AI piece, influencer marketers will not have the speed and content insights to optimize campaigns at scale. To manage and optimize campaigns across such a large network of influencers requires the speed and efficiency AI offers to ensure marketers can not only justify spend, but also extract greater ROI for every campaign.

What are the perils of influencer marketing for brands? Are there any perils or do you think a win-win situation for both brands and consumers?

The way we look at it there is no peril if the influencer marketing is done with an intent of returns. Brands often complain about influencer marketing not working for them. But they need to really work on finding the influencers that will deliver the desired results. When it comes to influencer marketing there’s no one shoe fit all. Brands should spend time in finding the influencers that really speak to their audience, someone who is willing to deliver the goals that the brands are seeking. All of this ground work is very important for influencer marketing to be a win-win.

What are your plans for the upcoming year, how do you see trends changing in the influencer marketing industry?

We’re significantly scaling by onboarding valuable partners which are top agencies in India. We are already working with over 10 brand marketing agencies and providing them with our unique model for India- performance influencer marketing services.

In the next year, we are going to grow our revenue by 10 times and expand our team significantly. We’re gearing to receive direct integrations with some top social media marketing networks in the country. As part of giving back to the bloggers' community, we’ll launch the bloggers' academy. Whereby we plan to educate over 15 lakh creators and also give them an opportunity to grow with DRIM.