Influencer culture online has been rapidly on the rise since the mainstream success of YouTubers. At its core, influencer marketing is a hybrid between the old and new styles of conventional advertising – essentially it mixes the tried-and-true technique of celebrity endorsement with the relatively new form of widespread digital advertisement, social media. But what exactly is an Influencer?
An influencer is defined as someone who has the power or authority to influence a person’s purchases and opinions on certain products, brands or ideas. Influencers are those on social media with a considerable number of followers and they have often built a reputation for subject-specific knowledge or talents. Often, they will make regular posts about this topic and can build a follower count in the millions. Influencers are usually the creators behind online trends and at the moment brands love working with influencers due to their loyal followings. Influencers can use any social media channel and can have any number of followers to be considered an influencer since they can be categorised into groups based on their follower count, these categories are mega-influencer, macro-influencer, micro-influencer and nano-influencer. As mentioned before, influencers can be found on any and all social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. There are two different types of traditional influencers which can be described as the celebrities (like Justin Bieber and Rihanna) and opinion leaders, such as journalists and academics (like Brian Cox and Louis Theroux). Social media influencers, however, do not fall under either category since they are different to traditional style influencing. Perfect examples of social media influencers include Molly-Mae Hague and Nikkie de Jager.
Now that we know what an influencer is, let’s talk more about influencer marketing and how companies can benefit from using it.
Influencer marketing will usually involve a company working with an influencer to promote a product or service. An example of this is the promotion of the company Skinny Tea on some of Kylie Jenner’s posts on Instagram, the company would have paid Jenner to post a photo of her with the tea along with a review in order to boost revenue. It can also involve an influencer working with a company to provide and also promote a product as well. This can be seen with the countless amount of YouTube beauty blogger eyeshadow palettes such as the James Charles x Morphe eyeshadow palette and the Jaclyn Hill x Morphe palette – the brand will work with the influencer to create a product and will also rely on the YouTuber for promotion of the product to boost sales. This form of marketing is often seen on YouTube however Molly-Mae Hague has also done this with the clothing brand Pretty Little Thing with whom she has created a clothing collection. Brands also sponsor videos on YouTube quite a lot. Another form of influencer marketing is the widespread use of discount codes where the influencer makes money through commissions on the sales using the discount code. This is often seen in peoples’ videos and is an infamous phrase of James Charles due to his 10% off coupon code with Morphe – he would often say “use code James for 10% off” at the end of his makeup tutorials.
To conclude, influencer marketing can be a valuable asset if your target demographic in advertising are people that would look to influencers for opinions however due to the high demand, they can be costly. If you are looking into using influencers to promote your brand, you should choose one with followers in your target demographic with some of your target psychometric factors.
