We looked at the 200 Top Australian influencers on Instagram and their 20 most recent posts. Moving on from Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, we used a variety of tools that identify influencers and some good old manual searching. They have a combined reach of over 89.7 million, much of which is presumably duplicate audiences (given Australia’s population is 25 million). In total, we have analyzed 4,000 posts and found over 1,000 unique brands, organizations, companies, and events mentioned. Among them are global brands like Zara, Swarovski, Tommy Hilfiger, PayPal, Fanta and also hundreds of local businesses. This is unsurprising as many Australian influencers collaborate with international brands especially travel brands as well as many local Australian indie brands.

In total, we have analyzed 4,000 posts and found over 1,000 unique brands, organizations, companies, and events mentioned. Among them are global brands like Zara, Swarovski, Tommy Hilfiger, PayPal, Fanta and also hundreds of local businesses. This is unsurprising as many Australian influencers collaborate with international brands especially travel brands as well as many local Australian indie brands.

As we have done previously, we broke the profiles down to five influencer groups based on their follower count:

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

Posting frequency does not change much across the different types of influencers, it seems like everyone is publishing new content 3-7 times a week. Some influencers post less frequently, some more than 20 times a week. Post frequency does not affect the engagement rate of the overall influencer, in fact, the engagement rate is more influenced by the number of followers of the influencer.

The average engagement rate of Australia’s Top 200 influencers on Instagram is 5.48%. This is a great measure to take as a benchmark when planning for your next activation with Australian influencers. By comparison, the global average engagement rate for Instagram is only 1.66%.

Overall, Type B and E influencers garnered the highest engagement rate amongst the five influencer types. This result is surprisingly different from the other Southeast Asian markets (Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia) that we’ve analyzed previously as in those markets unanimously concluded that Type C had the highest engagement rate.

Besides, Type A, B, and C influencers have the highest ratio of branded to unbranded postings with over 65% of their posts being branded compared to an average of 56% branded posts in Type E and D. Most branded posts are incorrectly tagged with an average 81% of postings tagged incorrectly across all influencer types. The highest reach and engagement rate is with 201k – 1.5m followers (Type B) influencers at 6.58% engagement rate (more than 1.4x vs Type A).

How to choose the best influencers for your next campaign?

It is important to mention that there is always the option that some of the smaller influencers are faking it to seem more credible. In order to minimize any potential issues with potentially fake audiences once the campaign is live, we suggest you start the selection process based on data, but still run through the final list manually. This way you can also harness ideas for briefing influencers later.

Note that almost every influencer’s branded engagement rate is smaller (4.88%) than their general engagement rate (5.48%). In other words, if your brand activation outperforms the benchmark, you’ve probably done something well.

Australian influencers score significantly higher in average engagement rates than Indonesia (4.62%) while doubling the engagement rates of Malaysian (2.48%) and Singapore (2.65%).

On top of the usual lifestyle influencers, we saw more pets, YouTubers and Athletes in Australia compared to Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. It is known that Australia has one of the fastest-growing pet industries with many Australians spending more and more on their pets each year. This is also reflected in the influencers with the highest engagement rates:

Abby with an average engagement rate of 50.75%

Georgia with an average engagement rate of 22.94% 

Mason Cox with an average engagement rate of 20.75%

Kurt Tilse with an average engagement rate of 20.73%

Louis Solywoda with an average engagement rate of 20.73%

From what we can tell, their engagement rates are incredibly high because of the entertainment value of their content and they clearly know what their audience wants. Every influencer in the Top 200 list seems to bring a bit of uniqueness to their delivery.

Among the Top 200, most of the influencers’ content can be classified as Lifestyle (27%), followed by Fashion (19%), Travel (11%), Fitness (9%), Entertainment (9%), Beauty (7%), Family (7%), Food (5%), Pets (2%), Art (1%), Gaming (1%) and Music (1%). The definition of lifestyle literally means everything we do on a day-to-day basis. With this type of content, influencers typically incorporate the brands into their daily activities from our grocery shopping to our daily make-up routine.

What about Type A and E influencers?

As Australia is a relatively small country with only 25 million in population, the number of A list (Type A) influencers are very small. This is also because most major Australians influencers are celebrities residing outside of Australia who are not considered Australian influencers in the context of this research. The most followed Instagrammer is Tammy Hembrow with 9,442,795 followers and an average engagement rate of 4.85%.

Unfortunately, we could not establish a statistically significant correlation between followers and engagement rates (like with Indonesia), this is likely due to the low number of Type A influencers in Australia.

Brands and Australian influencers

Australian influencers across the Type A to E are almost equally commercial as there is no significant difference in their number of branded posts. On average, 62% 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 above, it is recommended to partner with Type B influencers for the best reach and engagement rate ratio. If budget constraints are faced, you should reevaluate your influencers list to determine if your campaign needs either quality engagements (Type B) or reach (Type A).

TL;DR

• The Top 200 Australian influencers have a combined reach of 89.7 million in the total of their 20 recent posts, which presumably includes duplicate audiences.
• In the total of 4,000 posts we’ve analyzed, there were over 1,000 unique brands found.
• On average, they typically post 3 – 7 times a week but there are cases with some posting more than 20 times a week.
• In almost all profiles we’ve analyzed, their branded engagement rate is typically lower than their general engagement rate.
• Contrary to other markets, the highest reach and engagement rate is with 201k – 1.5m followers (Type B) influencers at 6.58% that is more than 1.4 times higher than Type A.
• Unlike the Indonesian (4.62%), the Malaysian (2.48%) and the Singaporean (2.65%) markets, Australian influencers top the chart with their average engagement rate with a whopping 6.58%.
• Most of the influencers’ content can be classified as Lifestyle (27%), followed by Fashion (19%), Travel (11%), Fitness (9%), Entertainment (9%), Beauty (7%), Family (7%), Food (5%), Pets (2%), Art (1%), Gaming (1%) and Music (1%).
• We would suggest prioritizing Type B influencers (201k – 1.5m) for best reach and engagement rate ratio. If the budget is an issue, you should select Type B (201k – 1.5m) for quality engagements while selecting Type A influencers (1.5M – 6m) for better reach.

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