“Our Look-Alike & ML Features Help Find Look-Alike Influencers” Says Yulia Aslamova

If there is one thing that has revolutionized advertising and marketing, it is influencer marketing. All credit to the closeness or the way the audience finds them relatable and much better if the influencer is a celebrity. But not everyone can engage them in marketing campaigns and so the baton is passed on to the look-alike influencers. Finding a person having a significant following, who can connect to the audience well is a challenge in itself. DRIM, a global performance influencer marketing firm has developed practical algorithms to find that perfect match. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Yulia Aslamova, Head of Asia at DRIM.

1.Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that your company offers.

At DRIM we believe that results are of the utmost importance- both for brands and influencers. Keeping this idea in mind DRIM helps generate sales for brands via effective micro-influencer/blogger campaigns. We are essentially a performance influencer marketing platform where brands meet the perfect influencers/bloggers and only pay for the results.

Our unique technology stack helps scale your campaign. With innovative features like; smart segmentation where the platform identifies statistically significant segments of influencers who perform best for a particular brand. The look-alike & ML features help find look-alike influencers of the ones that generated sales for your brand.

Our flagship analytical system will find the top-performing influencers across 8 social networks within a database of 250k+ micro-influencers. Our 500+ managers will assist them to deliver results and scale your campaigns.

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

I've been in the digital marketing industry for 8 years, the influencer marketing is something that I always kept an eye on since 2014. India is my home, my daughter was born here and my family lives here. The more I researched influencer marketing the more I realized what a big role it plays in the day-to-day lives of Indians. Right from taking a purchase decision to a mindset shift, a large chunk of that is being shaped by the influencers of today, which is why becoming a social media influencer in itself is a life-changing opportunity for young talents. Especially for the ones located in remote parts of India. It gives them financial freedom and the achievement of being their own boss!

Then, in 2019, upon organizing one of the biggest Indian digital marketing conferences for 2000 professionals and 50 international experts, I realized 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 believes in communities & recommendations, and this idea gave me my eureka moment. 

Micro bloggers and social media influencers can prove to be scalable performance marketing channels. And at the same time use the power of influence of any subject matter expert no matter what the audience size (we work with influencers who have 1500+ followers). 

I'm a marketer at heart who thinks with my mind; I could not miss an opportunity of introducing an innovative model to work for the D2C brands – Cost-Per-Action. The traditional way to measure the success of influencer/brand collaboration is impressions, reach, and views. These metrics often don't lead to tangible sales nor have a clear indication of ROI.

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

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.

Over 100 women in India were able to earn a stable income via DRIM; they work with us as influencer talent specialists. We train them and offer an opportunity to work at their convenience just with one device – a smartphone.

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. All this while providing opportunities to nano and micro-influencers to work with large brands and generate income. We are teaching bloggers how they can create viral content & monetize it. And something that's very close to my heart is that DRIM offers WFH opportunities for hundreds of amazing ladies in India.

3.Mention some of the awards, achievements, recognitions, and clients' feedback that you feel are notable and valuable for the company.

Arif Ehsan, Head of Digital Marketing at Domino's Pizza in India, says, "DRIM launched the influencer marketing campaign very swiftly while negotiating with bloggers, onboarding them, managing publications, and handling payments. Unlike other SaaS solutions, DRIM has been operating the full-stack solution very easily without a lot of technical expertise."

Shivani Bhasin, Chief of Staff at Gourmet Garden said. "We at Gourmet Garden are obsessed with two things, good food, and great customer experience. As part of our growth phase and awareness-building journey, we wanted to create a community of social media advocates who can help us educate prospective customers about stepping up to healthier, fresher, and better food with Gourmet Garden, while simultaneously building a strong sales funnel. DRIM helped us achieve both of these objectives with their intelligently designed platform and data-driven influencer outreach. They were also able to engage with the right set of content creators who genuinely shared the same ethos as our brand and were willing to walk the extra mile in their content – to help us build recall, plus drive acquisitions"

4.How do you see the company and the industry in the future ahead?   

The world is heading toward 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 blogger payout by 25% 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 & influencers are both able to justify their investment & efforts respectively.  Our full-stack platform combines smart segmentation, Look-alike & 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.

5.What are your growth plans for India in the next 12 months?

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-specific performance influencer marketing services. 

In the next year, we are going to grow our revenue by 10x 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.

6.Kindly brief us about your role at the Influencer marketing platform – DRIM and your journey in this highly promising sector.

I'm a problem solver and I look at the business growth across all departments. I've been in digital marketing, and SaaS for a while and led the international brands' expansion to India. I'm proud to have built a team that has consistently performed & has earned the trust of top brands in the market. All of this in just one year of operation!

7.What is your leadership mantra?

All great companies have been built by great people. I ensure that my team has everything they need for their growth and success, along with providing the space to experiment, and the ability to make their own decisions. Together, we find the most efficient ways to implement the innovation.