How to boost influencer marketing ROI in Iran market

Master in International Business Management and Languages (MIBAL) “Cómo superar el retorno de la inversión en la industria de marketing influyente en el mercado de Irán” By SEPIDE MEHRABI Supervisor: NIEVES GARCIA DE FRUTOS September 2018 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to thank Dr. Nieves García de Frutos, my tutor of this thesis, for her help from the beginning of this project, her support, and advice. In addition, my sincere thanks to Dr. Miguel Perez Valls, the coordinator of this master, who kindly helped me from the first day, advising me and guiding me. I would also like to show my special thanks to the Erasmus community, University of Santiago de Compostela and Marhaba team to give me this great opportunity in my life. With the special thanks to Mr. Hugo González, my Erasmus coordinator who helped me from the very beginning day. Of course, I want to thank my family today and always, even though they are not physically here, they have always helped me in any difficulty of life and they have never left me alone. Finally, my thanks to the University of Almeria and Amirkabir University of Technology, which generously opened the doors to science and wisdom. I am very grateful and being a student of both universities is a real honor for me. I hope that in the future I can be a good representative for both institutions. Sepide Mehrabi September 2018 Almeria 2 INDEX PAGE 1. Abstract----------------------------------------------------- --- -----------------3 1.1. Spanish abstract 1.2. English Abstract 2. Introduction -----------------4 3. Theoretical framework------------------------------------ -------------------- --5 3.1. Digital social media in Iran 5 3.2. Social media influencers 9 3.3. Influencer marketing 10 4. Methodology -------------------------------- ------------------- ---- ----------13 5. Guideline Steps---------------------------------- ---------------- -- ----------14 5.1. Objectives of campaign and target audience 14 5.2. Selecting the best fit influencers 15 5.2.1. Influencers categories 16 5.2.1.1. Quantitative Category 16 5.2.1.2. Qualitative Category 17 5.2.1.2.1. Study of Iranian influencers pages 21 5.3. Evaluation of campaign 31 6. Conclusion ---------------------- ------------- ---------------------------34 7. References------------------ -------------- ------------------------------35 3 1.1. Resumen Hoy en día, las empresas son conscientes de la importancia de las redes sociales digitales y su uso como un canal de comunicación eficaz para campañas de marketing. Sin embargo, las empresas están gastando gran cantidad de sus presupuestos en campañas de marketing de influencia (o influencers) sin tener una idea clara de este proceso sólo por seguir las tendencias del mercado. La creación de cada vez más plataformas y agencias de publicidad basadas en el marketing de influencia, confirman la rentabilidad de esta industria en la actualidad. El presente proyecto, une investigación cualitativa y cuantitativa con el objetivo de identificar el alcance, barreras y potencial del marketing de influencia en el Mercado Iraní. Esta información servirá para desarrollar una guía de acción para pequeñas y nuevas empresas que les servirá no solo para tener una visión más completa del Mercado del marketing de influencers, sino también para poder ejecutar sus campañas diréctamente, sin gastar dinero en agencias de publicidad. 1.2. Abstract Nowadays, companies are aware of the importance of digital social media and the usage of it as an effective communication channel for marketing campaigns. businesses spend a huge amount of their budgets for influencer marketing campaigns 1 without having a clear image of this process just to follow market trends. Increase the number of platforms and advertising agencies based on influencer marketing, confirms the profitability of this industry these days. In this research, based on statistics and condition of Iran market and according to interviews with professionals, we tried to draw a guideline for small businesses and startups, not only having a bright insight in influencer marketing process but also being able to run their campaign, without spending money in advertising agencies. 1 Retrieved from https://www.grouphigh.com/blog/organizing-influencer-marketing-budget2017/ 4 2. Introduction By a quick look on the internet these days, we would face so many articles with attractive titles about “How to make money on Instagram 2 ”- “step by step guide to Making Money from Instagram 3 ” . Besides there are so many news and investigations about famous influencers and their high salaries, how they became famous in a short period of time and reach huge numbers of followers, and how much they might earn for sharing an advertising post. Companies are using this opportunity in order to promote their product or services. They found this communication channel with the highest rate of ROI in comparison with other types of advertising. And according to studies, investing in social media marketing has raised, which means they’re willing to spend more money on influencer marketing campaigns. (Khamis & Welling, 2017) On the other hand, advertising agencies noticed the market gap and they’re trying to increase their market share in this booming market. They provide information about influencers, study and categorize them and build a network of famous ones. These advertising agencies can be considered as a mediator between influencers and brands. In addition, the emergence of online platforms and applications with worldwide databases of influencers has made this market even more expanded. This procedure can simply be considered as a linear progress as figure 1 : Figure 1 chain of brands accessing target audience through influencers and marketing agencies 2 https://www.shopify.com/blog/make-money-on-instagram 3 https://neilpatel.com/blog/make-money-on-instagram/ 5 According to our interviews, it seems small companies, especially, newborn startups, have a very limited budget for marketing so they need to be very careful about their marketing decisions. Limited resources do not allow any try and error. Having a clear image of Influencer marketing campaign procedure helps companies to make correct decisions about the main objectives of campaign and evaluations of it by defining the correct KPIs. The aim of this research is to draw a guideline for all local and international small businesses or startups who wish to run an influencer marketing campaign in Iran market in order to reduce their costs of using mediatory agencies and to avoid wrong decisions. In this regard, I studied Insttagram influencers in Iran market and based on the result of sample analysis, I tried to make some suggestions to find best fit influencer and related content for an influencer marketing campaign for all brands who need a clear image of this industry in Iran. 3. Theoretical framework 3.1. Digital Social Media in Iran The population of Iran is estimated at around 82 million people in 2018 4 . The latest statistics show mobile internet users in Iran have reached 53 million in March 2018 according to Iran’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technology. Previous statistics in June 2017 was around 47 million users, based on investments made in this sector by the major mobile operators in the country. Also, over 11.7 million Iranians have a fixed internet and use ADSL or fiber optic or TD-LTE services 5 . According to another report 6 , 87% of mobile users are using Android devices and around 11% are using IOS devices, which means there are approximately 46 million Android and 6 million IOS users in Iran. 4 Retrieved from http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/iran-population/ 5 Retrieved from https://ictamar.ict.gov.ir/ 6 Retrieved from http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/iran 6 According to the Statista, the most popular social media in the middle east are Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram respectively. But this usage pattern cannot be applied for Iran market due to the country special situation. WhatsApp, which is a messenger application, is less popular in comparison with its competitor, Telegram. In addition, other worldwide popular social media, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are blocked in Iran. With the absence of other alternatives in the market at this moment, Instagram is not only the most downloaded social media but also the most popular one. Figure 2 Share of respondents using social media in the Middle East and North Africa as of March 2017, by platform 7 Telegram was the most popular messenger (around 40 million users) with the most daily traffic 8 . The application has been recently filtered in Iran. According to the statistics, 60% percent of the Internet bandwidth was spent on using this app. At April 2018 this messenger had been blocked by judicial authorities. According to the judicial order, ISPs should block Telegram in a way that it should not be worked by anti-filters like VPNs. Although there are still some ways that people could reach this messenger, Internet bandwidth spent by this app had been decreased based on news. At the same 7 https://cafebazaar.ir/app/com.instagram.android/?l=en 8 http://techrasa.com/2017/09/06/infographic-telegram-usage-statistics-in-iran/ 7 time, the installation of Instagram in Cafe Bazaar (the most popular Iranian android market) has been increased from 16 M to 20M. Figure 3 Cafe Bazaar application with the number of active installed Instagram If we want to estimate the number of active mobile users on Instagram, we can consider Cafe Bazaar which is the most popular Iranian Android market(36 million users). There are 20 millions of active installs only through this android market. In Addition, there might be many downloads by Google Play too. It is estimated that google play has 10 million Iranian users so that we consider at least 4 million Instagram install through this android market too. Considering 6-7 million IOS users in Iran (which we assume they are most likely to have Instagram). So there should be more than 30 million Instagram users in Iran. Considering the fact that 6 million Iranians, mostly the younger generation, are living outside Iran and the number of Persian speakers (e.g. Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, and . . ) users of Instagram would raise respectively. Users population is growing every day and it seems they react favorably and fast to the new features like stories and lives. User behaviors, like their attention span and activity time, are another aspects to study besides the quantity of the of installed Instagram app in Iran. Based on Nazarbazaar.ir 9 online survey published on July 2017 with the population of 3707 9 https://www.nazarbazaar.ir/infographic/ 8 responders (2839 men and 878 women, 18 to 65 years old) 80% of Iranian users check their Instagram app on daily basis. Figure 4 An average usage of Instagram based on Nazar Bazar On average 50% of responders check their Instagram page more than 5 times per day and each time they spend averagely more than 17 minutes. Figure 5 Usage of Instagram per day based on Nazar Bazar online survey 15 10 shows the different stages of the purchasing procedure. Each stage requires to transfer a tailored main message to the customer. If you are a small startup (which is the main focus of this research) and your product or service is new in the market, you should increase awareness about your existence. Increasing awareness is usually the main and very basic objective of all influencer marketing campaigns. But if you’re in consideration and loyalty stage, you might be already a known brand. In this stage, you need endorsers to compare your brand to others and provide more information for your target audience, in order to convince your costumers to purchase your products or services. If you are in the last stages, the goal is to stimulate purchasing by loyal customers. Obviously, the stage of your brand and your target audience is the foundation of choosing the appropriate marketing campaign strategy. Especially, by considering all the mentioned factors, you might have a better insight in order to choose the best-fit influencer who are the true match with the objectives of the campaign. Figure 10 Different stages of the purchasing procedure (F. Kotsi & N. Slak Valek, 2018) 5.2. Selecting the Best Fit Influencers Selecting the best-fit influencer is not as easy as it might seem in theory! In reality, you will have to work hard in order to line up your brand with the content that influencers are providing for their audience This procedure is one of the most important steps of influencer marketing campaign. According to our interview with Ali Fozooni, Co-founder of Chanka Platform about Iran market, two years ago, there were few influencers in the market for each category. There was surplus demand for influencers Awareness Consideration Purchase Loyalty WOM 16 in the market, consequently, influencers were overpriced and working with them and building a network among them was not easy. But nowadays, this market has become more balanced due to increasing the number of influencers. It is recommended that companies build a relationship with their hired influencer instead of just dealing with an agreement. As Carter Hostelley, CEO and Founder of Leadtail, said: “Building relationships with influencers can be a very effective way to reach your target audience in a more credible manner than simply buying advertising. With that said, “influencer marketing” is not an overnight process. It starts with knowing who the most relevant influencers are in your industry segment. Although finding an influencer who already knows our brand is a smart choice, for newly born startups, it is not an option. In this case, it is recommended to educate your selected influencer about your brand first. It is also recommended to give freedom to the influencer about publishing post for your campaign. As the influencer knows better about interests and reactions of his/her follower. In addition, it perceived more naturally than other types of advertising posts. This matter intensifies the importance of educating the influencers about your brand, its features and values. Another important consideration of choosing an influencer is to consider their previous or future sponsors, if they have been already working with your competitors, it might damage your brand image. Therefore, it should be mentioned in your contract in order to avoid conflicts. In the following chapter more details of finding best-fit influencers will be discussed. 5.2.1. Influencers Categories 5.2.1.1. Quantitative Category Influencers can be categorized by different quantitative and qualitative aspects. These categories might help businesses to select them based on targets of their campaign and reaching precisely to target audience and also might help CEO to have insight about budgeting of campaign. one of the main categories is separating influencers by their numbers of follower:  None influencers have less than 3K followers  Micro influencers are the ones who have 3K to 25K followers.  Intermediate level influencers have from 25K to 100K follower 17  Macro influencers have more than 100K followers.  Celebrities are influencers who are famous by their name or face among people due to their occupation. Actors/actress, artists or athletes are in this category. All interviewees admitted that micro influencers have a higher level of engagement. Correspondingly, due to the lower number of followers in comparison with macro influencers, they offer cheaper prices, consequently, ROI of using them, is usually higher. Although the number of followers is an important indicator especially for pricing and budgeting, it is not the only factor to consider due to the possibility of having fake followers. to get more benefits, users often artificially increase the popularity and engagement on their content in several ways. Some of the prevalent ways are to leverage bots, purchase social metrics such as likes, followers, and shares from black market services, and become part of collusion networks which can be used to trade inorganic engagement. Such artificial bolstering of popularity can cause brands to lose money, advertisers to not reach the relevant audience, and recommender algorithms to give poor suggestions. (I. Sen et al, 2018) Other quantitative factors should be considered which we will talk about them in the evaluation chapter. Given the recognition that online influence is about quality, not quantity, these methods should be viewed as a starting place only (Freberg, 2011). 5.2.1.2. Qualitative Category Based on the Industry: Besides the quantitative indicators, one of the most important categories for selecting an influencer is the content of their page. Each influencer is recognized by the area of knowledge, specialty, proficiency, skills or abilities in a certain industry. According to our interviews and database of our interviewees, influencers can be categorized by the following groups. Although there might be some overlaps in the areas, this is the most common pattern we could offer based on the market norms. depending on a product or service, businesses can use a combination of following influencers for their campaigns. 18 FASHION AND BEAUTY PHOTOGRAPHY ART LIFE STYLE CAR Beauty Press Visual artist Inspiration Car reviewer Fashion designer News and politics Painting Magazine Car photographer Jewelry Nature Designer Cancer Model Film Home decorator Ideas PARENTS AND CHILD Luxury Wildlife video creator Yoga New born equipment Accessories Reporters Cartoonist SHOPPING Children life Shoes Documentaries Producer Cats Cosmetic Director Health WRITER FOOD AND RESTAURANT SPORT Travel and Hospitality PSYCOLOGY Blogger Vegan Racing Travel writer Sexology Journalism Cooking Basketball Travel Equipment Child psychologist Travel writer Foodie Body building Travel photographer Mental health Chef Football Adventurist Fun and entertainment Recipes Motorcycle Comedian Cakes Standup comedian Restaurants Gamer Table 1Influencer Categories based on the interviews in Iran market 19 These categories would help in finding key leader opinion (KOL) especially in technical areas, a journalist in the information technology area, an athlete, a dentist or a dermatologist could be best examples of KOL influencers. They have the most influence on their followers due to their specialty and their posts or opinions are more likely to be trusted by their followers. One of the best usages of KOLs in influencer marketing campaign would be for technical products such as a car, cellphone or health-related products. By considering key selling points of product (KSP) we can find the best KOL for specific products and services. Ongoing chain-reaction which is called “Word-of-mouth” is invaluable by itself, but the support of opinion leaders, who are industrial rather than public celebrities, can also be taken on board more formally, such as in advertising or through appearances at company seminars. Some technological companies (Compaq and NEC Technologies) have managed to secure the endorsement of a number of wellknown technical journalists for their FPD screen. Also, Pharmaceutical companies try to attract the views of prominent doctors on their new drugs to influence the views ( Easingwood, 2000) there is another local example of successful influencer marketing campaign in Iran which is related to Huawei Company, their objective was to emphasis on features of their new mobile phone, in this regard they run a campaign, by using specific influencer based on each KSR as following. Figure 11 Huawei influencer marketing campaign using divers KOL based on KSP Battery life •Travelers •hitchhikers camera Specification •photografers ultimate performance •Athletes •Tech Journalist Grafic •Gammers Resistant Frame •adventurists 20 Based on personal Character of the influencer: Another important category would be the personal character of the influencer or a celebrity. This factor is important since it is highly related to brand positioning. On the other hand, a better understanding of the perceived personality of social media influencers provides tools for optimizing an organization’s SMI capital (Freberg, 2011). Matching the target segment and brand values with the characters of the influencer need to be carefully selected. The typical consumer may symbolically aspire to identify as a celebrity by purchasing the product recommended by the celebrity. If a celebrity is recognized, recall of information endorsed by this influencer is superior to when an individual fails to recognize the celebrity (F. Kotsi & N. Slak Valek, 2018), it means, followers would perceive the personal character of influencer same as the characters of the brand. In this regard, finding the best fit would be vital for brand positioning. According to our interviews, most common personal characters which had been used for brand positioning are as following.  environmentalist  humanitarian  athletes  positive  luxury  mom and child  family person If the target of the campaign is to position brand values or corporate social responsibility (CSR), it is better to use this category as well. Based on followers and demographic characters: There is another factor in order to categorize influencers which is demographic characters of their followers. What is the age range, gender or location of each influencer? This indicator would help us to optimize ROI of the campaign by knowing followers age range, gender or location. Finding information about the demographic characters of the followers would be possible through some platforms and tools or simply asking the influencer to send this information 21 since one of the advantages of having “business Page” in Instagram, is to have demographic information of followers 5.2.1.2.1. Study of Iranian influencers pages As a result of the interviews, I considered some hypotheses to test the quantitative data. For example, some agencies admitted that “Campaigns with the fun theme are more successful”, “micro influencers have more influence on target audience than macro ones”, “one of the important factors in choosing an influence is the gender”. To examine these claims, I did the quantitative analysis for the following three main questions: 1) What are the most popular categories for Iranian Instagram users? 2) Is there any relation between gender of influencer and number of followers in each category? 3) Is there any relation between the engagement rate and the number of followers? I gathered information about the Instagram page of 365 active influencers in the Iran market who have around 10 thousand to 2.4 million followers and have already worked with our selected agencies. Although we could not find all the influencers in the Iran market, I have at least 8 influencers for each category based on Table 1. I labeled the influencers considering the content of their pages and their areas of specialty. Although there were some influencers which could be fit in more than one category (Mostly for lifestyle pages), I decided to use only a unique label in order to avoid conflicts. For example, an influencer who could be fit in both photography and lifestyle categories, got a label of Photography or an influencer who were a producer and his content could fit in both lifestyle and art, I considered him as an art category, to balance the number of influencers in each category. Since I could not find the information about the influencers active in the field of travel, I labeled travel writers influencers in “Writer” category too. As a result, we have 32 subcategories which could be fit into 11 main categories (All labeling were based on table 1). 22 Figure 12shows the percentage and population of each category, in our studied sample. Since lifestyle label, indicates a general concept, it could be predicted with the highest percentage. Figure 3. Number of influencers in each Category based on the studied sample In order to answer the questions and examine the hypothesis, I also extracted the numbers of followers, average likes and views on the latest 5 posts of each page. Also, the gender of the influencer was extracted from their Instagram page. LIFE STYLE 36% PHOTOGRAPHY 15% FASHION AND BEAUTY 13% FUN 12% CHILD 5% ART 4% FOOD 4% CAR 4% SPORT 2% WRITER 2% PERCENTAGE OF INFLUENCERS IN STUDIED SAMPLE LIFE STYLE PHOTOGRAPHY FASHION AND BEAUTY FUN PARENTS AND CHILD ART FOOD AND RESTAURANT CAR PSYCOLOGY SPORT WRITER 0 50 100 150 NUMBER OF INFLUENCERS IN EACH CATEGORY BASED ON STUDIED SAMPLE POPULATION of influencers in sample 23 For the first question, about the most popular category for Iranian users, according to my sample, 7 influencers have more than 1 million followers. As it can be seen in table number 2, four of them are in the Fun category and 2 of them are in Fashion. Which shows the market interests towards Fun content. Table 2 INFLUENCERS WITH MORE THAN 1MILLION FOLLOWERS Above table is not enough to have a conclusion about interests of the market, considering the fact that, the sample size for all categories were not the same, for example, I had 133 influencers in “LIFESTYLE” category, while there were only 8 influencers in “WRITER” and “SPORT” categories. In this regard, I calculated the Mean for followers in each category, Mean of like and view for each category were also calculated. Figure 14 MEAN OF FOLLOWERS PER CATEGORY influencer Category influencer #1 FUN 2.4 million influencer #2 FUN 1.6 million influencer #3 SPORT 1.5 million influencer #4 FASHION AND BEAUTY 1.4 million influencer #5 FUN 1.4 million influencer #6 FASHION AND BEAUTY 1.3 million influencer #7 FUN 1.3 million Followers 0.0000 0.0500 0.1000 0.1500 0.2000 0.2500 0.3000 0.3500 0.4000 0.4500 Thousands MEAN OF FOLLOWERS PER CATEGORY 24 Figure number 14 confirms the first hypothesis about FUN content. It seems FUN and SPORTS categories have more average followers and FOOD, FASHION AND BEAUTY and PARENTS AND CHILD are the next most popular ones. On the other hand, CAR and PHOTOGRAPHY are the categories with less average followers. So it can be suggested that, in order to have a successful influencer marketing campaign, having fun content or relating the campaign with SPORTS activities or FOOD, would be a good strategy, in order to reach more audience. Figure 15. Comparison between Mean of like and view for categories Not only the number of followers but also the number of likes and reviews, confirms that the Iranian market has so much interest in the FUN category. Above charts shows the trend in average likes, has the same pattern as average followers. The average number of viewers in the FUN category is higher than number of followers, due to the high rate of missed data in view column. It is worthy of mention that based on calculation, influencers in FUN, SPORT and FASHION categories have a large range of followers, likes and views due to a high standard deviation. As a result, to run an influencer marketing campaign in these categories, finding an influencer with a higher number of followers, is important. - 100,000.0 200,000.0 300,000.0 400,000.0 500,000.0 600,000.0 Mean Category COPMARISON BETWEEN MEAN OF LIKE AND VIEW FOR CATEGORIES. Follower Like View 31 5.3. Evaluation of campaigns One of the most important steps in influencer marketing campaign is an evaluation. By correctly defining KPIs, the success of the campaign can be determined and it helps companies to decide about continuing to work with influencer even as a brand ambassador or just finish Cooperation. The most common indicators are as following Impression: number of times each post had been seen Reach: number of times each post has been seen from the individual account Engagement: the total number of likes and comments on each post Not only for evaluating campaign but also to have an overall view of an influencer, these quantitative factors should be calculated for at least, last 5 posts averagely. some common indicators formula which could be useful as follows: 𝐸𝑛𝑔𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑡 = numbers of likes + numbers of comments numbers of followers ∗100 Engagement rate of page = average of likes for last 5 or 10 posts + average of comments for last 5 or 10 posts numbers of followers ∗100 Depending on the target of campaign sometimes comments are more valuable than likes, for example when the target of the campaign is to viral a Hashtag by the help of followers or to increase an interaction between target audience by sharing their posts or experience, you need to choose an influencer with the higher rate in comments. Because it shows that followers of this specific influencer, respond favorably to “call to action” arise from this influencer. in this regard, we can use a weighted average. Weighted Engagement rate of page =(average of likes for last 5 posts) + (average of comments for last 5 posts ∗ 3) numbers of followers ∗100 32 One of the other commonly used evaluation is to follow the hashtag activities. How many times it has been shared or other related hashtags used with the selected one. When a company creates a unique Hashtag for each campaign or, it might help to determine the success of the campaign by tracking numbers of impressions and reach for the Hashtag itself. Especially, when companies use multi influencer for one campaign, it might be better to have specific Hashtag for each influencer. On the other hand, By Hashtag tracking you can find out about relevant hashtag had been used with your campaign in order to understand users opinion about your campaign, the specific reaction of the audience and determine the perceived image of your brand as a result of your campaign. There are some platforms and websites which are useful for evaluating campaign and also to choose best-fit influencer: keyhole.co 13 is one of most powerful platforms to Track hashtag in all social media. It can be used to find information about a specific influencer if he/she gives access to you. Following diagrams and infographics show detailed information can be extracted from this platform. It’s a useful application for discovering individuals who are leading the conversations on industry-related events and topics. This information can be also implemented to determine which profiles will likely have the most influence in your industry. 13 https://keyhole.co/mytracks#hashtag 33 There are some other tools and website with database of Iranian influencers which give you a report whether for an Instagram account or Hashtag as the following list:  https://minter.io/  https://klear.com/  https://www.tapinfluence.com/influencers/  https://upfluence.com/  https://influencermarketinghub.com/instagram-money-calculator/  https://hypeauditor.com  https://deep.social/ Figure 22 an example of infographic information , extracted from KeyHole Hashtag tracker platform 34 6. Conclusion One of the main criticism about university projects is that researchers do not focus on real market needs. In this research, I tried to find a real gap in the market and by interviewing with professionals in Iran market, suggest solutions. Nowadays, with the advent of internet-based businesses, internationalization of brands, are not only limited to big companies. So, this article aims to help all small companies and startups around the world, to have a clear image of influencer marketing industry in Iran. Following offered guideline, to run an influencer marketing campaign in Iran market, would highly recommended for small and medium-sized companies who want to enter Iran market in order to have a better image of the market and reduce costs arising from wrong decisions. Suggested steps are including alignment of brand strategy and target market, finding the best-fit influencer, finding the most attractive content and the main theme of campaign based on service and product. And finally, implement and evaluate of the campaign. This article also shed a light to interests and behavior of Iranian Instagram users. There were so many challenges in gathering information about statistic information of influencers pages. The nature of this industry is so dynamic and unstable since it has dealing with human behavior. For example, to estimate the number of comment or likes for pages, I had to make sure that a high number of likes or comments, doesn’t have an external reason such as critical social issues or special event in influencer life or sponsored posts. In this regard, I had to check at least 10 last posts to find a trend of each page. In addition, there were some limitations to find the precise statistic of influencers since it has commercial value for agencies and platforms, for example, demographic information of followers or numbers of clicks on Story links was a useful information which was not possible to obtain since it is personal information of Instagram users. However, according to available information, I found that, If the target of the campaign is receiving most view and like, choosing the FUN or SPORTS theme and male influencer, would have the highest ROI. 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