Influencer Marketing in Malaysia: Instagram, TikTok or Xiaohongshu?
If you are planning an influencer campaign in Malaysia in 2027, the question is no longer simply, “Should we use Instagram?”
That decision has become much harder — and, in a way, much more interesting.
Instagram is still an important part of the Malaysian creator economy. TikTok has become a serious force for reach and discovery. And Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, has moved beyond being a niche platform for Chinese-speaking audiences and is increasingly relevant for lifestyle, beauty, travel, food and home-related discovery.
The result is a market where choosing the platform before understanding the customer can be an expensive mistake.
A better question is:
Where does your customer actually discover, evaluate and talk about products like yours?
That distinction matters because influencer marketing is not really about buying posts. It is about borrowing trust, context and attention from people who already have a relationship with a particular audience.
For Malaysian brands, that relationship can look very different on Instagram, TikTok and Xiaohongshu.
And the smartest campaigns increasingly use those differences rather than treating every platform as another place to publish the same content.
The Malaysian influencer landscape has changed
Malaysia is already a highly connected market. DataReportal reported 34.9 million internet users and 25.1 million social media user identities in early 2025. By late 2025, its Digital 2026 Malaysia report recorded 16.1 million Instagram users, while TikTok’s reported advertising audience had grown substantially.
But audience size alone doesn’t tell the whole story.
The more interesting change is how brands are distributing influencer activity.
According to AnyMind Group’s 2026 Malaysia influencer marketing report, Instagram accounted for 48% of campaign share in 2025, while TikTok had risen dramatically from 8% in 2023 to 44% in 2025. Xiaohongshu accounted for more than 7% of official brand influencer campaigns in the company’s dataset.
That tells us something important:
Malaysia is no longer an Instagram-first influencer market. It is becoming a multi-platform creator market.
And each platform is increasingly doing a different job.
| Platform | Strongest role | Typical consumer behaviour |
| Brand building, visual storytelling, consideration | Follow, browse, save, share | |
| TikTok | Discovery, entertainment, rapid reach | Watch, discover, share, act |
| Xiaohongshu | Research, recommendations, social discovery | Search, compare, save, ask |
| YouTube | Education, demonstrations, deeper consideration | Watch, research, review |
The mistake is assuming that the platform with the largest audience must automatically produce the best campaign.
It doesn’t.
Instagram vs TikTok vs Xiaohongshu: what is actually different?
Think of the three platforms as different rooms in the same shopping journey.
Instagram is the showroom.
It is particularly useful when a brand wants to create a polished visual identity, strengthen desirability and build an ongoing relationship with followers.
TikTok is the street.
People can discover something they have never heard of because a video catches their attention. The content can feel spontaneous, funny, educational or completely unexpected.
Xiaohongshu is the recommendation desk.
Someone may arrive looking for ideas, reviews, places to visit, products to try or solutions to a specific problem. That makes context and usefulness particularly important.
This difference is why simply copying an Instagram brief onto TikTok or Xiaohongshu often produces disappointing results.
The platforms may all contain videos and photos.
The user intent is different.
Instagram: still powerful, but don’t mistake polish for influence
Instagram remains a major platform for Malaysian brands, particularly in categories where visual identity matters.
Beauty, fashion, hospitality, food, fitness, automotive, property and lifestyle brands can all benefit from strong Instagram creator partnerships.
The platform is especially useful for:
- brand positioning
- product launches
- lifestyle storytelling
- Reels
- carousel education
- creator-generated content
- community building
- social proof
- retargeting and paid amplification
DataReportal’s latest Malaysia figures, available in its 2026 report, put Instagram’s advertising audience at 16.1 million in late 2025, equivalent to 58.4% of Malaysian adults, according to the platform’s advertising data.
But reach isn’t the only reason to use Instagram.
Creator content can give a brand something its own corporate account often struggles to produce: a product being used in an ordinary person’s life.
That difference is subtle but valuable.
Example: a Malaysian skincare brand
Imagine a local skincare brand launching a new sunscreen.
A conventional brand post might say:
Lightweight SPF50 sunscreen with a non-greasy finish.
A creator can demonstrate the same proposition differently:
“I wore this through a full Penang afternoon and here’s what happened after four hours.”
The second version creates a situation.
The product is no longer just being described. It is being experienced.
That is where creator marketing becomes more persuasive.
TikTok: the discovery engine
TikTok deserves separate treatment because its role in Malaysian influencer marketing has changed dramatically.
AnyMind’s Malaysia 2026 data shows TikTok’s share of influencer campaigns increasing from 8% in 2023 to 44% in 2025, putting it close to Instagram’s 48%.
That is a remarkable shift in only two years.
TikTok works particularly well when the creative idea can survive without a long introduction.
Think:
- demonstrations
- transformations
- before-and-after stories
- product hacks
- reactions
- humour
- local observations
- creator opinions
- “things I wish I knew”
- comparisons
- challenges
- street interviews
- behind-the-scenes content
The best TikTok influencer campaigns often don’t look like advertisements at first glance.
That doesn’t mean the product should be hidden.
It means the story comes before the sales pitch.
A simple TikTok test
Before approving a creator brief, ask:
“Would someone watch this if our logo disappeared?”
If the answer is no, the idea probably needs work.
Xiaohongshu: where search behaviour changes the game
Xiaohongshu deserves more attention from Malaysian marketers because it behaves differently from a purely entertainment-led social platform.
The platform is often referred to as RedNote outside China and combines visual content, community discussion, recommendations and search-oriented discovery.
That creates an interesting environment for brands.
A person might search for:
- best cafes in Kuala Lumpur
- Penang food recommendations
- skincare for sensitive skin
- Malaysia travel itinerary
- where to stay in Langkawi
- Korean beauty products in Malaysia
- home decor ideas
- wedding venues
- things to do in Johor Bahru
The content can continue attracting attention beyond the initial publishing moment because the user may be actively looking for an answer.
Academic research published in 2026 also describes Xiaohongshu as an important digital space for Malaysian Chinese users and highlights its role as a lifestyle-sharing and knowledge-oriented platform.
There is also clear commercial momentum.
AnyMind’s 2026 Malaysia report found that Xiaohongshu represented more than 7% of official brand influencer campaigns in its dataset and accounted for more than 28% of campaign spend in the Lifestyle & Home category. Its strongest content areas included Lifestyle & Home, Travel, and Fashion & Beauty.
That’s particularly interesting for brands selling products that require consideration before purchase.
So which platform is best?
There isn’t one universal winner.
Instead, match the platform to the job you need it to perform.
Choose Instagram when:
You need to make the brand look desirable.
Instagram is particularly strong for visual storytelling, premium positioning, creator portfolios, launches and ongoing brand presence.
Choose TikTok when:
You need people to discover the brand quickly.
TikTok is especially useful when the product can be demonstrated, reacted to, explained or turned into an entertaining story.
Choose Xiaohongshu when:
People are likely to research the product before buying.
This can be especially valuable for beauty, travel, restaurants, lifestyle, home, fashion and other recommendation-heavy categories.
Use more than one when:
- The customer journey genuinely needs multiple touchpoints.
- For example:
- TikTok → discovery
- Instagram → validation
- Xiaohongshu → research
- Website/store → conversion
The important thing is that these platforms should not receive identical content.
The 4-part creator selection framework
Follower count is one of the easiest numbers to see and one of the easiest numbers to overvalue.
A creator with 300,000 followers is not automatically more valuable than someone with 18,000.
For most campaigns, assess creators across four dimensions.
1. Audience fit
Ask:
- Where are their followers located?
- Are they the right age group?
- What languages do they use?
- What interests dominate?
- Does their audience resemble your customer?
A Malaysian creator with a highly concentrated Malaysian audience can be considerably more useful to a local business than a creator with five times the followers but a largely international audience.
2. Content fit
Look at the last 20 to 30 posts. Not the best five. The last 20 to 30.
Look for:
- consistency
- storytelling ability
- visual quality
- originality
- product integration
- audience response
- category relevance
You are hiring a communicator, not purchasing a number.
3. Community quality
Read the comments.
This is where the real information often sits.
Are people asking genuine questions?
Are they tagging friends?
Do followers discuss products with the creator?
Does the creator reply?
A comment section full of “nice” and emoji-only responses isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it tells you much less than a community asking:
- “Where did you buy this?”
- “Does this work for oily skin?”
- “Would you recommend this for someone visiting KL for three days?”
Those are signs of attention with commercial potential.
4. Commercial credibility
Check how the creator handles sponsored content.
If every second post is an advertisement, audiences may become less responsive.
If the creator only promotes products that make sense within their normal content, the partnership is more believable.
Nano, micro, macro or celebrity?
The old assumption was simple:
More followers = more influence.
Creator marketing has become much more nuanced.
Recent Instagram benchmark data from Sprout Social reports that nano-influencers can achieve significantly higher engagement than larger creator tiers, with its cited 2025 data putting Instagram nano-influencer engagement at 6.23%.
That doesn’t mean every nano creator will outperform a celebrity.
It means follower count should not be used as the only proxy for influence.
A useful way to think about creator tiers is:
| Creator type | Best used for |
| Nano | Community trust, niche audiences, local recommendations |
| Micro | Strong category relevance and scalable creator networks |
| Mid-tier | Reach plus credibility |
| Macro | Awareness and major launches |
| Celebrity | Cultural visibility and mass attention |
For many Malaysian brands, a network of relevant micro and nano creators can be more useful than putting the entire budget behind one large creator.
Why? Because multiple creators create multiple pockets of conversation. That gives the brand more:
- audience segments
- creative angles
- content assets
- local relevance
- testing opportunities
- social proof
The “3R” influencer strategy
A practical influencer campaign can be built around three jobs:
Reach
Get the brand in front of enough relevant people. Use:
- TikTok
- Reels
- larger creators
- high-performing content
- paid amplification
Relevance
Make the product feel appropriate to the audience. Use:
- niche creators
- category experts
- local creators
- community voices
- specific use cases
Research
Give potential customers enough information to make a decision. Use:
- tutorials
- reviews
- comparisons
- FAQs
- detailed captions
- Xiaohongshu posts
- YouTube content
A campaign that only focuses on Reach can generate impressive numbers without much commercial impact.
A campaign that combines all three can move people from:
“I’ve seen this.”
to
“This might be for me.”
to
“I trust this enough to try it.”
A better way to measure influencer marketing
“Reach” and “likes” are useful, but they aren’t the entire story. Build your measurement around the actual business objective.
If your goal is awareness
Track:
- reach
- impressions
- video views
- unique viewers
- frequency
- branded search growth
- share of voice
If your goal is engagement
Track:
- comments
- shares
- saves
- engagement rate
- profile visits
- audience sentiment
If your goal is consideration
Track:
- link clicks
- website sessions
- product-page visits
- time on page
- searches
- enquiries
- add-to-cart actions
If your goal is sales
Track:
- conversions
- revenue
- cost per acquisition
- creator-specific sales
- promo-code usage
- assisted conversions
- return on ad spend
The crucial point is this:
Do not judge an awareness campaign only by sales in the first week.
Influencer marketing can influence demand before the customer is ready to buy. Someone may watch a creator’s video today, search the brand next week, read reviews later and purchase two weeks after that. That is why campaign measurement needs more than one window.
The Influencer Campaign Scorecard
Here is a simple framework an in-house marketing team can use before signing a creator. Score each creator from 1–5.
| Factor | Score |
| Target audience match | /5 |
| Geographic relevance | /5 |
| Content quality | /5 |
| Community engagement | /5 |
| Category credibility | /5 |
| Brand fit | /5 |
| Previous campaign quality | /5 |
| Commercial potential | /5 |
Maximum: 40 points. As a practical rule:
32–40: Strong candidate
25–31: Worth discussing
18–24: Needs justification
Below 18: Probably not the right fit
This isn’t a scientific formula.
It is simply a way to stop a campaign from becoming:
“I like this influencer.”
Instead, the conversation becomes:
“This creator fits our audience, category and campaign objective.”
That’s a much healthier decision.
What an influencer brief should actually contain
Bad briefs often produce bad creator content. A creator shouldn’t need to guess what the brand is trying to achieve. A good brief should cover:
The objective
What should this campaign change?
The audience
Who are we talking to?
The product truth
What genuinely makes the product useful?
The problem
What consumer problem does it solve?
The proof
What evidence can the creator demonstrate?
The creative freedom
What can the creator interpret in their own voice?
The boundaries
What must they avoid saying or showing?
The CTA
What should someone do after seeing the content?
The sweet spot is:
Clear strategy + creative freedom.
If the brand writes every word of the creator’s script, it may end up with content that technically satisfies the brief but doesn’t sound like the creator. And audiences notice.
A real-world example: one product, three platforms
Imagine a Malaysian hotel launching a weekend stay package. The wrong approach would be to give three creators the same talking points. Instead:
TikTok
- A creator makes:
- “48 hours in KL without leaving the hotel.”
- Fast, visual, entertaining.
- The goal: discovery.
A lifestyle creator produces a polished weekend itinerary through Reels and Stories.
The goal: aspiration and consideration.
Xiaohongshu
A travel creator publishes:
“KL staycation guide: where to stay, what to eat and what is actually worth doing nearby.”
The content includes practical details, photos, location information and personal recommendations.
The goal: research. Same hotel. Same campaign. Three different reasons for someone to care. That’s what a genuinely integrated creator strategy looks like.
What Malaysian brands should avoid in 2027
Choosing creators purely by follower count
A large audience isn’t automatically the right audience.
Copying the same creative across every platform
A Reel, TikTok and Xiaohongshu post may feature the same product, but they shouldn’t necessarily tell the same story.
Treating influencer marketing as a one-off post
One post can create attention. An ongoing creator relationship can create familiarity.
Ignoring smaller creators
Micro and nano creators can provide strong relevance and community trust, particularly in niche categories.
Measuring vanity metrics only
Millions of views are exciting. But the more useful question is:
What happened because those people saw the content?
Over-controlling creators
Creators understand their audiences better than most brand decks do.
Give them the message, then allow them to find the voice.
Forgetting search behaviour
People don’t only discover brands through feeds anymore.
They search social platforms for recommendations, reviews, tutorials and experiences.
That is particularly important as platforms increasingly blur the line between social media, search and commerce.
The 2027 influencer marketing playbook
If I were planning a Malaysian influencer campaign for 2027, I would start with the customer journey rather than the platform.
Step 1: Define the commercial objective
- Choose one primary objective.
- Awareness?
- Consideration?
- Leads?
- Sales?
- Retention?
Step 2: Map the customer journey
Ask:
- Where does this customer discover products?
- Where do they ask for recommendations?
- Where do they compare options?
- Where do they finally purchase?
Step 3: Assign platforms to those behaviours
Don’t start with:
“We have RM50,000. How many influencers can we buy?”
Start with:
“What combination of creators and platforms can move this customer from discovery to decision?”
Step 4: Build a creator portfolio
Instead of one giant creator, consider a mix such as:
- 1–2 larger creators for reach
- several micro creators for relevance
- nano creators for community depth
- specialist creators for product education
The exact mix should depend on the category and budget.
Step 5: Create platform-specific concepts
One campaign idea. Different executions.
Step 6: Whitelist or amplify winners
If a creator produces something that clearly works, don’t let the content disappear after seven days. Consider paid amplification, creator licensing or longer-term partnerships where commercially appropriate.
Step 7: Measure beyond the campaign window
Look at:
- immediate performance
- branded search
- website behaviour
- sales
- repeat exposure
- audience comments
- content reuse
- assisted conversions
Then use what you learn to improve the next campaign.
Why this matters even more as AI changes discovery
There is another shift marketers should pay attention to. Search is becoming increasingly conversational.
Google has expanded AI Overviews across more than 200 countries and territories and more than 40 languages, while its newer AI Search experiences are designed to handle longer, more complicated questions and connect users with relevant websites.
Google has also said that AI Search uses techniques such as query fan-out, where a complex question can be broken into related searches across multiple subtopics. That changes the value of useful content.
Consider the difference between:
“Brand X launches new serum.”
and:
“What is the best serum for dehydrated skin in Malaysia, and what should I look for if I have sensitive skin?”
The second question requires context. It requires comparisons. It requires evidence. It requires people to explain their experiences.
This is one reason creator content is becoming more interesting beyond the social feed itself.
A useful review, tutorial, comparison or firsthand experience can become part of the wider information ecosystem surrounding a product.
Google’s own updates increasingly emphasise connecting people with original content, firsthand perspectives and useful websites rather than simply returning a list of generic answers.
For brands, that means creator partnerships should increasingly produce useful information, not just promotional impressions.
Conclusion
If you are comparing influencer marketing agency Malaysia options, ask each agency to explain why it would choose particular creators for your brand.
The reasoning is often more revealing than the creator list itself. How do I find the top influencer marketing agencies?
How do I find the top influencer marketing agencies?
Don’t rely on a generic “top influencer marketing agencies” list.
Shortlist agencies based on the kind of work you need.
A fashion brand, a B2B company, a restaurant group and a property developer may all require very different creator strategies.
Ask for relevant examples, campaign methodology, reporting structure and the actual people who will manage your account.
The bottom line
The Malaysian influencer landscape isn’t moving from one winning platform to another. It is becoming more fragmented — and that is actually good news for marketers who are willing to think beyond follower counts.
Instagram can build desire. TikTok can create discovery. Xiaohongshu can support research and recommendation.
Smaller creators can build trust inside specific communities. Larger creators can provide scale. And useful creator content can continue working long after the original post has disappeared from someone’s feed.
The best campaigns in 2027 won’t necessarily be the ones with the biggest creators. They’ll be the ones that understand why a particular person would listen to a particular creator on a particular platform at a particular point in the buying journey.
That is where strategy starts to matter more than reach.
Looking for an influencer marketing partner?
If you are looking for a team to plan, manage and scale creator campaigns in Malaysia, ZUMAX Digital is worth considering as part of your shortlist.
The right partner should do more than send you a list of influencers. It should help connect audience research, creator selection, platform strategy, content direction and campaign measurement into one coherent plan.
For brands entering 2027, that distinction matters.
Because influencer marketing is no longer simply about getting someone to post about your product.
It is about finding the right people, the right context and the right moment to make your brand worth talking about.
