Can Influencer Marketing Help Small Halal Brands?

Will influencer marketing help small Halal brands market and sell their products in their target markets?  There are a few companies here and there offering influencer marketing to Halal businesses of all types. But is it worth it?  Should you spend your hard-earned money to market your Halal products through influencers? If yes, who these influencers should be?

Being a small Halal business, you may want to ask yourself a few questions like the one below.

• What’s your marketing strategy to promote your products?
• Where are you going to sell your products?
• How are people going to find out about your Halal brand?
• What marketing strategies or what type of influencers are you going to use to grow your Halal business?

We hear a lot of people talking about the importance of influencer marketing for small Halal brands so that they could start selling almost immediately.  Many people tend to think that getting influencers on your side is a guaranteed way to success. It may not be entirely wrong to think that way.

We have seen quite a few examples where influencers like Michael Jordan and George Clooney have been used to market various products successfully. But, let us not forget. In most of these cases, very large brands used these influencers to increase their sales massively

But, the question is. can you afford A-list influencers to promote your small Halal brand? Not everybody may be able to do so due to budgetary constraints.

Size of Influencer Marketing Industry

While access to A-list celebrities is beyond the reach of most small enterprises, further down the food chain there is more chance of collaboration. If anything there is possibly too much choice. The influencer marketing industry was worth $13.8bn in 2021, up to $4.1bn compared with the amount in 2020, according to the latest Influencer Benchmark Report.

How Do Brands Use Influencers?

But how do brands, particularly small Halal businesses, pursue this marketing strategy? “You’ll find there is some low-hanging fruit,” say the owners of The Steak Shop, an online meat supply company. “After this, it gets more difficult. You must continue to scour the internet for the best creators. Worry not so much about subscriber count, but [rather the] engagement and views rate [as] this is much more important and will help your results.”

The Steak Shop, which is sister to Steak on the Green, an award-winning restaurant in west London, was founded during the first lockdown of 2020. The ability to reach a large, targeted audience who trust the influencer’s opinion was transformative for the business. They started slowly, gifting cuts of meat to content creators who would invariably post YouTube videos of themselves searing steaks in their back gardens.

The results were immediate: increased traffic to their website and an uplift in sales. So much so that the company has now hired a manager to focus on this marketing strategy exclusively. But for every success story, there is a cautionary tale. Blue Elvin, a brand that creates protective sportswear for women who weight train, found the experience disappointing. They gave away a lot of products, but the influencers did not deliver in terms of sales or content.

As a result, they see this approach as being more relevant for bigger companies. “It is a great strategy for larger brands who have better profit margins, tonnes of stock, and multiple products,” says co-founder Tamara Short. “They can offer more attractive packages to influencers that smaller brands just can’t afford,” she adds. “. . . It’s a numbers game, and so you’re up against it from the start.” This is a difficult situation to navigate for small businesses. It is hard to make demands if you cannot afford to pay, but with no power of enforcement, companies can feel exploited when expectations are not met.

That is where authenticity is key: finding people who love what you do and would use your products regardless of whether or not they get paid.

So, what is the way out? How can you grow your Halal brand which is small but you would like to reach out to ever-larger audiences in your target markets?  As mentioned earlier the success rate for influencer-led marketing efforts for smaller brands has been less than perfect.  The best way for you to find other ways to grow your small Halal business could be to market your halal products by engaging only selected influencers, evaluating their performance on the sales numbers, and adopting other marketing techniques as well to grow your Halal brand.

Who Should Be Your Influencers?

One way to do so could be to advertise your Halal products through niche sites such as ours which have the power to influence the buying behavior of potential customers in your target markets.

Another important way for you to promote your Halal brand would be to hire Generation Z folks who are truly digital natives and whose phone plays an important role in their lives.

Gen Z is shaping our digital media offerings, the way we shop (mobile), and starting businesses within their teen years. It’s time to recognize the power of Gen Z.

If you are serious about influencer marketing you must take the challenge head-on and start looking for the best marketing to start growing your Halal business.