Vincent Mariel Galang
Published:
Courtesy: Influencees
About 70% of the platform's more than 4,700 users are creators.
Influencees Pte. Ltd. is offering brands and content creators tools to manage influencer marketing campaigns, using audience relevance rather than follower counts to help companies identify suitable partners.
The Singapore-based startup has onboarded more than 4,700 users since its launch in July, with creators accounting for about 70% of users and brands making up the remainder, Influencees CEO Davidson Chua told Singapore Business Review.
“We are trying to help the brands see that impact more from the angle of the people that are being influenced,” Chua said in a Zoom interview.
Chua founded the company with Edwin Koh this year after identifying challenges faced by both creators and brands. Before starting Influencees, Chua ran Autosave Pte. Ltd., an automotive platform serving enthusiasts, sellers, and service providers in Singapore.
He said many creators struggled to expand their operations because they lacked the resources to build teams, whilst marketing agencies often tracked campaign performance manually across multiple social media platforms.
Influencees addresses those issues through subscription-based tools for brands and creators. For brands, the platform helps users identify creators by niche and campaign type and provides weighted audience metrics designed to assess whether a creator's followers match a brand's target market.
Brands can also manage campaign planning, creator selection, communications, reporting, and conversion tracking through the platform.
For creators, Influencees offers tools such as customer relationship management software, media kits, and market-rate benchmarks to help them prepare proposals and negotiate commercial agreements with brands.
The company is also building its user base through community activities. In July, it organised a hackathon in which creators were given brand challenges and asked to develop content using their own style and area of expertise.
Chua said the event allowed brands to receive content ideas whilst enabling creators to produce material suited to their audiences instead of focusing solely on product promotion.
Influencees plans to expand into Malaysia next year after establishing its presence in Singapore. The company aims to more than double its user base as part of that expansion.
Longer term, it plans to enter one or two more Southeast Asian markets within three years and operate in five to six markets across the region within five years.
Cross-border marketing is a key part of that strategy. Chua said the platform can help overseas brands identify creators with local audiences in markets they want to enter, whilst giving creators access to brands seeking to reach consumers outside their home countries.
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