A deep-dive into the world of momfluencers – Where affinity, loyalty, relevance matter

The social media influencer landscape in India is witnessing a fascinating shift. Motherhood, once confined to family circles, is now taking centerstage online. A new breed of influencers, the “Momfluencers”, are captivating audiences with relatable content that speaks directly about the challenges and joys of parenthood. These women, with their diverse experiences and expertise, are building loyal communities and wielding significant influence over purchasing decisions.

Recognizing this power, brands across various sectors are strategically collaborating with momfluencers. Social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube have become battlegrounds for authentic product endorsements and reviews. This mutually beneficial partnership allows brands to tap into a highly engaged audience while momfluencers leverage their platforms to promote products and build their personal brand.

Mom influencers and effective brand partnerships

Kaushik Mukherjee, Co-founder & COO, SUGAR Cosmetics, observed, “Brands seek mom influencers who are authentic, engaging, relevant to the brand values, and credible. The influencers build trust by sharing genuine, relatable content that resonates with their audience, showcasing expertise and dedication, thus strengthening trust. Actively engaging with their audience by responding to comments, answering questions, and participating in discussions fosters a sense of community and connection. Authenticity and engagement are key to creating effective brand partnerships that drive successful campaign outcomes. Trusted mom influencers have a loyal and engaged audience, providing brands with access to a targeted demographic and enabling them to reach potential customers in an authentic and impactful manner.”

Echoing similar sentiments, Ketan Bhatia, Group Brand Director, Good Glamm Group, said, “For brands, the primary qualities that we seek in any creator is the reach and engagement of the creator. We have to move beyond judging a profile by the number of followers they have and also look at rich metrics such as reach of the creator and average reel views. We also like to go through the comments section of the posts and see the quality of comments that the creator receives. This helps in understanding what type of audience the creator attracts and gives us an indication on the type of engagement we can expect from the content that is posted by the creator. For mom creators to build trust, they go by sharing personal experiences and how their need gap got solved. Relatable instances, struggles and tips that other moms relate to helps create credibility. We have historically also seen that the mom creators who reply to the comments of their audience or via DM are the ones who come across as credible moms. Not only does this help the mom creators build a strong network of followers but also lead to effective partnerships with brands because as a brand, we want the creator to leverage their followers and effectively communicate the brand to them.”

Aakriti Singh, Digital Marketing Manager and Founder, Comfymeal, who is also a mom influencer, added here, “In my experience, brands primarily look for alignment when collaborating with any influencer. They look for influencers whose content and messaging match their brand values and marketing goals. Another key factor is engagement. Influencer marketing is about building relationships, and brands seek influencers who can genuinely connect with their audience to humanize their products.”

Reaching the TG through mom influencers

On how brands reach out to their target audiences, Kaushik Mukherjee elaborated, “We identify mom influencers whose follower demographics closely align with our ideal consumers and collaborate with them to create customized messaging that speaks directly to the audience’s needs and preferences. This process includes selecting the most appropriate platforms, adapting content formats, and defining clear campaign goals and objectives. Our target age group is 25-40, we ensure that our content remains relevant and addresses their specific concerns and aspirations.”

Ketan Bhatia said, “Every time we plan a campaign, we look at the demographics of the creator to see what is the affinity of the creators’ followers.  This helps the brand understand the age of the followers, the cities/ region they belong to and what is the male-female ratio following ratio for the creators. We also have Good Creator Co. that helps us scrape in-depth analysis of the audience affinity in terms of the phones the followers are using, how much are they spending online and what is the purchasing behaviour of the followers. These parameters help us define the tonality of the campaign, the language in which the creator should be talking to their follower and how to effectively land the message via the creator content.”

Understanding of the campaign brief

Elaborating on the steps that brands and mom influencers take to ensure a clear and effective understanding of the campaign brief, and impact of collaboration on overall success of the campaign, Kaushik Mukherjee explained, “As a brand, it’s important to ensure a clear understanding of the campaign brief and this can be done by providing mom influencers with detailed briefings outlining campaign objectives, target audience demographics, content guidelines and desired outcomes. Throughout the campaign, regular check-ins and updates ensure content adherence to the brief. The campaign's success largely depends on how well mom influencers actively engage with these materials, seeking clarification and contributing their insights during brainstorming sessions. Simultaneously, we adapt our content formats to suit the preferences of our target audience. This includes a mix of photos, videos, stories, blog posts, and live streams, depending on what resonates best with the audience. Ultimately, this lays the groundwork for a successful campaign by creating tailored content that leads to higher engagement and meaningful outcomes.”

Ketan Bhatia added here, “As a brand we always believe in narrating the thought behind the concept, what was the rationale and why we suggested the concept. Rather than making the brief a one way communication, we have a conversation with the creator and get them to ask questions, make suggestions and discuss any thoughts that they may have. Not only does this help the brand make the campaign messaging sharper, it also helps the creator understand the thought much clearly, and as a result the content created by the creator is effective and as per the brief.”

“Collaborating with influencers has more to do than just showing sales brought to the brand, we also look at the number of eyeballs that the post has attracted, the engagement of the brand page going up after the influencer has posted, the number of people enquiring more about the brand,” he further said.

Aligning content created with the brand value

When asked about the strategies employed to ensure that the content created aligns with the brand value and messaging of companies that mom influencers collaborate with, Aakriti Singh replied, “Understanding the environment you want to succeed in is the first step to any entrepreneurial journey. As influencers, we can't afford trial and error; we need to know our audience and how to connect with them authentically. My career journey originally began as a dentist, and incidentally, I found my passion for marketing by promoting my clinic. 

I then decided to revive my passion project, Comfymeal — an Instagram page dedicated to sharing nutritious meals for kids and parenting insights. But I soon found that building a brand is not as simple as promoting one, I knew that I needed to upskill to establish a strong foundation to attract brand attention. I enrolled in the Strategic Digital Marketing program at Great Learning and found myself approaching marketing in a more organized and strategic way. I then reapplied these skills to my page, which started with just 283 followers—mostly friends and family, to a thriving community of over 370,000 today. I have since had the opportunity to collaborate with brands like Philips, FirstCry, Lovingle, and Flipkart.”

Singh further said, “My goal was always to be authentic and genuine, which resonated with my followers and helped build trust with brands. I ensure my content aligns with brand values by deeply understanding the brand, authentically integrating products I've tested, maintaining consistent communication, and creatively collaborating. Staying true to my voice and valuing feedback ensures that my content remains genuine and engaging for my audience.”

Kaushik Mukherjee explained, “To ensure that the content created by mother influencers aligns with your brand values and messaging, brands should clearly state their purpose, and key campaign objectives. Brands must conduct thorough research to identify mother influencers whose personal brand ethos and audience demographics align closely with their own. Furthermore, brands should engage in proactive communication and collaboration with mother influencers throughout the campaign lifecycle, provide examples of previous campaigns to maintain consistent brand tonality, which can prove helpful. Moreover, brands can leverage technology and analytics tools to monitor and evaluate the performance of influencer-generated content in real-time. By tracking engagement metrics, sentiment analysis, and audience feedback, brands can assess the effectiveness of content in resonating with their target audience and adjust their strategy accordingly.”

Ketan Bhatia said, “Few things that work for us include:

• Thorough selection process: choose creators whose content aligns with what your brand stands for
• Co-create content with the creators: let them give opinion, ideas, etc.
• Long term partnerships: get the creators to come on-board for a long term partnership, to make the content more credible via the creator
• Measure the success of the campaign, clearly share it with the creator and define the future course of action.”

Replying to a question on maintaining trust with the audience and how that translates into effective brand partnerships, Aakriti Singh said, “Building and maintaining trust with my audience is really important to me. I make sure to stay authentic by only promoting products that I have personally used and trust for my family. This way, my audience knows that I genuinely stand behind what I recommend. As a result, my audience trusts my opinions, which in turn makes brand partnerships more effective. Brands appreciate that my endorsements are sincere and relatable. This authenticity is the key to creating strong and lasting relationships with both my audience and the brands I work with.”