In our efforts to shed some lights on this topic within the Asian region, we looked at the top 200 influencers on Instagram and their 20 most recent posts. They have a combined reach of 26 million, much of their audience is presumably duplicates (given Singapore’s population was only 5.8 million as of November 2018).

This time, we analyzed 4,000 unique posts and found 875 unique brands, organizations or events mentioned. It is important to mention this is a mixed bag of influencers just tagging brands in their posts and commercial partnerships. Still a lot! We all love brands and it’s certainly becoming a way to show off one’s identity.

If you’re a brand marketer and reading this article, you might find Get Kobe’s rate card* of Singaporean influencers useful.

*Disclaimer: The rate card shown above is adopted from Get Kobe, and this does not serve as a guideline for marketers when approaching influencers in Singapore. Every relationship is unique.

The results? Turned out to be quite similar to a neighbouring country, Malaysia, but yet quite different from a marketer perspective. Same same but different.

Like before, we broke the profiles down to five influencer groups based on their follower counts:

• Type A: 1.5m – 6m
• Type B: 201k – 1.5m
• Type C: 101k – 200k
• Type D: 61k – 100k
• Type E: 30k – 60k

The average engagement rate for the top 200 Singaporean influencers on Instagram is 2.65% – That’s 0.17% more than Malaysian influencers. So, if you surpass this with your branded post, then you’ve likely done something right. Feel free to use this as your benchmark when planning your campaign to engage Singaporean influencers.

[If you’re wondering, how we calculated the engagement rate, we’ve explained it in our previous research post about Malaysia here]

How to choose the best influencers for your next campaign?

Similar to our previous research, the highest Reach and Engagement Rate is with the 100k – 200k (Type C) follower influencers at 2.93% (24% more than Type B actually).

Even though the 100k – 200k (Type C) is the ideal influencer follower range, we have not taken into account the quality of the comments and how much they relate to the brand or product promoted by the influencer. Naturally not all influencers are equal. That being said, we would recommend you prioritise engaging with this bracket of influencers first, and then move either to 60k – 100k (Type D) if the quality of engagements is more important or to 200k – 1.5m (Type B) if reach is more important.

Based on the estimated rate card and assuming Type B influencers earn about $1,000 to $3,000+/image or post, Type B might be out of reach for many brand marketers.

What about Type A and Type E influencers?

As Singapore is a rather small country in the context of Southeast Asia, but also globally, there are no A list (Type A) influencers yet. The most followed Instagrammer is Jamie Chua with 882,649 followers and an average engagement rate of 1.46%.

Unfortunately we could not establish a statistically significant correlation between followers and engagement rate (like with Malaysia), this is likely because we’re missing A listers in Singapore.

Brands and Singapore Influencers

The 200 top Singaporean influencers also seem to be more or less commercial already including the 30k (Type E) influencers that we looked at, as there is no significant difference in their number of branded posts. On average 60% of the posts are branded across all influencer types.

This is hopefully a guide for marketers who plan to launch an influencer campaign and don’t know where to start. As mentioned, we suggest you to start with Type C influencers, those with 101k to 200k followers, and when you need to reevaluate your influencers list to determine if your campaign needs either quality engagement (Type D) or reach (Type B).

TL;DR

• The average engagement rate for the top 200 Singaporean Instagram influencers is 2.65%. This can be your benchmark when activating influencers for your next campaign.
• 875 unique brands were found in 4,000 posts from these top 200 Singaporean influencers.
• Cost per post can go up to $3,000 for influencers with over 500k followers.
• The highest reach and engagement rate is with 100k – 200k (Type C) follower influencers at 2.93% (24% more than Type B).
• On average 60% of posts are branded across all influencer types.
• We suggest you start with Type C influencers for your campaign and reevaluate the list of influencers when you need either quality engagement (Type D) or reach (Type B).