As the trend of influencers picks up steam as a marketing strategy, Tellscore Co, an automated one-stop platform startup, plans to service brands and marketers keen on this trend.
Suvita Charanwong, chief executive and co-founder, said a lot of well-known brands are spending on the influencer marketing strategy, which is faster than other channels.
She said influencers allow brands to specifically and effectively communicate to consumers through influencers' social network channels.
Influencers are not celebrities but have many followers on their social networks. They are specialists in niches such as cosmetics, skincare, sports, cars or motorcycles.
Ms Suvita said Tellscore is optimistic on the growth potential prospects of the micro-influencer management market.
"Tellscore's goal for 2018 is to secure a leading position in Thai market by developing even easier-to-use platforms responding to the varied needs of differing clients," she said.
Pawoot Pongvitayapanu, a new shareholder in Tellscore, reiterated the influencer strategy is an important marketing trend for 2018.
"The use of influencers in marketing campaigns is still an upcycle trend because consumers do not trust celebrities, knowing they are paid advertisers," he said.
Mr Pawoot said influencers can help increase brand engagement and traffic because they are more accessible.
At the beginning of this year, a Tellscore report from 200 marketers found that 39% of them are planning to increase their budgets to use influencers in 2018 and 92% of them said the use of influencers will result in more effective marketing campaigns.
Tellscore forecasts up to 52% of marketers will choose to use influencers, along with celebrities and bloggers for their marketing campaigns in 2018.
Tellscore has been dealing with three types of influencers -- micro-influencers with over 1,000 followers, upcomer influencers with over 10,000 followers and macro-influencers with over 100,000 followers.
Ms Suvita said the company's strength over competitors is in marketing automation, allowing brands to manage a large number of influencers at a time.
Tellscore also plans to expand to foreign markets in 2019 to provide the influencer management service with cutting-edge technology.
She said the company has been very successful as the utility of influencers is becoming better understood.
Tellscore went fully operational in 2017, generating 40 million baht in sales during the first half of 2018.
