BY: SARI ARAMBULO
So, What is “Influencer Marketing”?
With the rise of social media platforms, “Influencer Marketing” has become a buzzword in the advertising landscape. Scrolling through your instagram feed, you’ll come across an actor or content creator posing with a new teeth whitening tool, or facemask scrub, claiming their loyalty or love for the brand. Companies compensate these influencers for such posts. And it works. According to Mediakix, 80% of brands deem their influencer marketing strategies successful. Let’s take a deeper dive into this marketing phenomenon.
Tell me about its history!
To understand Influencer Marketing, we must understand that this technique has been a part of our history long before modern advertising:
Marketing 1.0 – Early 20th Century
Characters / Fictional Personas were used with brands to connect with their consumers. Think Santa Clause for Coca Cola or Tony The Tiger for Frosted Flakes. Though they weren’t called “influencers” per say, they elicited similar feelings of trust and had the same function as they do today.
Marketing 2.0 – 2000’s
Marketing during this period is about creating an on-going dialogue with the consumer. This starts to come to the forefront with celebrities being used as a spokesperson, relating to the customer. Hello Brittney Spears in that Pepsi commercial!
Marketing 3.0 – Present Day
Marketing 3.0 takes Marketing 2.0 one step further, suggesting the customer must be focused on in its entirety, with an emphasis on values. This is when Influencers come into play. With an influencer, consumers have already established a sort of relationship with them.
Ok, so why is it effective?
The influencer has already built trust with their fans, thanks to the participatory nature of social media. Through comments, polls on instagrams, and Live Videos, now more than ever influencers have the ability to connect with their audience. This leads to a level of trust. So when an influencer posts something like this with that infamous “hashtag ad”:
The gap between consumer and product has intuitively come closer. If their favorite influencer is using this product, then it must be good. Creating positive if then phrases. If I trust this influencer, and they trust this brand, then I want the product too.
Wanna give a recap?
Clearly, this sort of marketing is making waves in the advertising landscape, pushing brands to collaborate more and more with influencers. Not only do consumers place their trust in the influencer, but brands entrust their product to them as well, giving the power to these content creators with huge followings. It will be interesting to see what this means for the future of advertising, and we’ll be here watching. In the meantime, go ahead and buy that face-mask as used by your favorite blogger. You know you want to.
